Miranda Jarrett - The Secrets Of Catie Hazard

“Mrs. Hazard,” he protested weakly, trying to rise. “Please, ma’am, I’d prefer—”

But at once he began to sway, and barely in time Catie grabbed his uninjured arm to guide him back down into the chair.

“I’ve tended far more grievous efforts than your piddling little scrape, Major Sparhawk,” she said, with more gentleness than she’d intended. With his handsome uniform disheveled and stained with blood and his face taut with pain, he bore little enough resemblance to the proud, haughty officer who’d belittled her hospitality earlier. “You’re hardly the first gentleman that’s sat there begging to keep his sins secret. When a woman runs a tavern, sir, there’s nothing she won’t see.”

“Nothing?” His upper lip beaded with sweat, Anthony smiled faintly, mortified by his own weakness. “I thought this was a respectable house.”

“It is,” she said promptly as she rolled up her cuffs. Though she knew he was only half listening, she continued talking, hoping that it would help take his mind off the pain. “You won’t find any more genteel than Hazard’s in all Newport County. But the better-bred the custom, the greater the mischief. Gentlemen are always getting into scrapes of one sort or another beneath my roof, and then begging me to keep the scandal down. And I do. Can you take off your coat yourself, sir, or shall I help you?”

She would have bet the tavern that he’d do it himself, and he did, working so hard to master the pain that by the time he’d finally eased the tattered sleeve from his wounded arm, she was certain he was going to faint. Most men she’d known would have. But he didn’t, and grudgingly she gave him credit for being able to back up his bravado.

“Now, this sorry rag I will leave to your man to put to rights,” she said as she took the blood-soaked coat from him.

With his face rigid with hard-won control, all Anthony could do was nod.

“Then what can I fetch you from the bar? We’ve brandy, sack, canary, whiskey, peary—”

“Rum.” The single word came out as a harsh growl, and Catie realized that his fainting was still a definite possibility. She hurried to the taproom, filled a tankard with more rum than water, and put it into his hand. “There you are, the best Rhode Island rum there is. At least your taste’s still Yankee even if your colors aren’t.”

He closed his eyes and drank deeply, and while he did, Catie ripped away the linen of his shirt’s sleeve. The ball had gone straight through his arm, and though the swelling and bruising made for a hideous-looking wound on both sides, it did not take her long to clean and cover it with an oiled poultice to help drain away the poisons.

Though the rum was strong and she worked as swiftly as she could, she knew she’d hurt him further. There wasn’t any way to avoid it. Yet not once had he cried out or complained, his only sign of pain the way his fingers whitened around the tankard of rum.

“You’re a fortunate man,” she said softly as she wrapped a linen bandage around and around his arm. “Another inch to the side, and the ball would have struck the bone.”

He sighed—an exhausted, drawn-out exhalation— now that the worst was past. “Another eight inches, and it would have found my heart. I’ll warrant that’s where the bastard was aiming, and lucky I was that my horse shied when he did.”

Automatically Catie’s glance shifted to the broad expanse of his chest, trying to imagine the heart beneath it stilled forever. For the first time, she noticed the little silver circle, unlike any official medal or badge she’d seen, pinned to the breast of his waistcoat.

“What is that?” she asked curiously. “I’d say it was perilously close to a stout Yankee eagle, save that it’s worn on a British uniform.”

“Yankee, yes, but a hawk, not an eagle.” He took another long drink from the tankard, grateful for the way the rum eased the pain. “It’s the Sparhawk mark that my grandfather used on all his dealings with the Indians. He gave the pin to me when I was a boy, and I’ve kept it since as a kind of charm. Not that it brought me much luck this night.”

“Oh, but it has,” said Catie quickly. “Think of how close this shot came to being mortal!”

“You believe in degrees of luck, then?” he asked wryly. “Too bad I was shot, but at least I wasn’t killed outright?”

He looked at her over the rim of the tankard. Now that the task of cleaning the wound was done, she was once again achingly aware of him as the man who had haunted her thoughts and dreams for so many years. But reality was so different from dreams: reality was the curling gold hair on the muscled forearm that rested so close to hers, reality was the stubble of beard above the lips that had once kissed hers, reality was the blood-spattered uniform that made him her enemy.

“You were riding when you were struck?” she asked, striving to turn her thoughts back to where they belonged. At least this might be something that would interest Jon.

He sighed ruefully, rubbing his palm across his forehead. “What an easy mark I must have been, too, there in the moonlight with the sea around me. I was south of the town, near a place called Damaris Point. Or so it was called once. Do you know it?”

She nodded, her throat constricting. Of course she knew it. Damaris Point was Sparhawk land, land that Jon would know even better. Could Jon have done this, then, aimed and shot to kill his own cousin?

Not his cousin, but a Tory officer. Not another Sparhawk, but the enemy. Remember that, Catie, remember, or else you’ll be lost once again!

“Ah, forgive me, Mrs. Hazard,” he said softly, misunderstanding her silence. “I forget myself. Of course you’d know Damaris Point. A good tavernkeep knows everything, doesn’t she? All the better to advise her guests, even the ones who don’t wish to be advised.”

Swiftly she turned away, busying herself with washing her hands. “You’re not forgetting yourself, Major, as much as speaking nonsense.”

“It wasn’t nonsense when you told me about my uncle,” he said. “I didn’t believe you, perhaps because I didn’t want to. But you were indeed right about his…his allegiances. I wonder, Mrs. Hazard, did you laugh at me behind my back as I left for the general’s headquarters?”

“Oh, no,” she said, remembering how she’d watched him leave, with Belinda’s picture clasped tight in her fingers. “However could I laugh at such a thing?”

“No?” He turned his head to look at her, his green eyes searching and his expression quizzical, and she almost gasped aloud. That expression, the angle of his jaw as he leaned his head to one side to study her, even the small hint of a smile that curved the corners of his mouth—all of it was so much like her dear little daughter that she could have wept.

No, Catie, not your daughter alone. His daughter, too, the daughter you made together…

“No,” she said, as firmly as she could. She pushed her stool away from him and rose, bundling the soiled linen in her hands. “You need your rest, Major. Shall I fetch Mr. Routt now to help you up the stairs to your room?”

“Stay a moment,” said Anthony softly, and before she could pull away he had covered her hand with his own. Such a little hand, he thought, for all the work it must do. She didn’t look like the stern tavernkeeper now, not with her pale eyes so full of sadness. What could make her so unhappy? Had she a lover fighting far from home, or was this still grief for her husband? In all the years he was a soldier, he’d never stayed in one place long enough for any woman to mourn his leaving with genuine regret. What would that be like, to have a woman like this one waiting and worrying for him?