Cates, Kimberly Read Online Free PDF Page A

Why would anyone write such a thing? Because he didn't intend a meeting with Captain Redmayne at all—except at the deadly end of a pistol barrel.
    She swallowed hard. That had to be it. Ballyaroon might no longer be a village, but it was completely deserted, miles from anywhere, anyone. No one dared stray near it, haunted as it was by screams of those too newly dead. It was the perfect place to lure someone you intended to murder.
    God above, had this man been mad to come here? As if treachery among his own ranks wasn't danger enough, he'd be loathed like a rabid wolf by every Irish-born crofter who crossed his path.
    Hatred of the English had been a chronic fever in Irish blood for six hundred years. It surged into violence and then, battered back by British swords, sank beneath the surface again to simmer in the veins until it broke into yet another rebellion. An officer accidentally separated from the rest of his men might easily become a target. Captain Redmayne must have known how dangerous it was when he found himself alone.
    She folded up the letter again, her fingers plucking nervously at the seal. The good news was that his assailants must know how deserted this place was. Perhaps they hadn't searched for him at all after he was shot. Once wounded, they would believe there was no chance that their quarry could escape alive.
    In all likelihood they'd ridden away, certain of their triumph. If not dead already, Redmayne would bleed to death in but little time. No one who knew the isolated reaches around Ballyaroon would guess that any living soul would trek up into this fiercely lonely wild place.
    He'd been hunted, left for dead. And for some reason fate had seen fit to cast him into her path. But Rhiannon was Irish enough to know that fate could be malevolent as well as kind, cruel as well as kissed by magic. Time alone would tell which spirits had been responsible for the outcome of this day.
    Returning the letter to Captain Redmayne's pocket, she turned to an equally disturbing task, getting him out of his soiled clothes.
    Grasping the heel, she worked the polished boot from his uninjured leg, then attempted to strip away the other. A low groan tore from the officer's throat. She winced. Only one thing to do. Cut it away, so it wouldn't hurt quite so much. She grasped heavy shears and carefully slid one blade inside the expensive leather. A sheen of perspiration dotted her brow as she wrestled with the recalcitrant leather, even the officer's boot seeming to object to suffering the indignation of such clumsy handling.
    The boot thunked to the floor at last, and she glided her hands up the muscled length of his calf to ease down his bloodstained stockings. The instant her fingertips brushed his bare skin, her cheeks tingled and she felt a need to turn her eyes away—an entirely impractical notion—yet this was a man... a man's body beneath her hands. A very handsome one at that. Sick or well, she was undressing him.
    She swallowed hard. What kind of featherbrained idiot was she, indulging in such nonsensical thoughts? He was injured. He needed her help. And she wasn't some giggling schoolgirl to be reacting this way.
    Resolutely she stripped away his other stocking, trying not to notice how strong, how beautifully shaped, his feet were. Moistening her lips, she moved to the red coat. Reluctant again to jar one of his wounds, she took up the shears, making short work of the fine red wool, the dashing gold braid. In minutes it joined the boots in ribbons on the floor.
    The shirt he wore beneath was still pristine white where the jacket had protected it, only the ripped sleeve blood-soaked. She slipped her fingers beneath his neckcloth, unnerved by the vulnerability of the skin at his throat, the pulsebeat, faint but steady, the soft stirring of his breath against her wrist as she unknotted the cloth and slid it from beneath his neck.
    Then, fearing that she might nick him, Rhiannon opened his shirt enough to slide