Ride the Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

Y-you’ll need t o . . . to remove your leggings and lie down on your belly if I’m to stitch you.”
    She had a faint accent—sweet and melodic. Scottish? But what she’d suggested was easier said than done. To remove his leggings, he would need to remove the tourniquet. If he removed the tourniquet, the blood would flow freely again. He might lose consciousness, perhaps even die. But she wouldn’t be able to treat him if he kept his leggings on. There was only one solution. He pulled out his hunting knife, began to cut through the supple leather.
    Bethie watched as he sliced the leather from his right leg with smooth, strong motions, noticed things she hadn’t noticed before. A thin white scar ran down his left temple to his cheekbone, made him seem even more dangerous. But his face was ashen—what she could see of it above his beard—and his lips were pallid, bloodless. Clearly, he had come close to dying. He might die still. When his leg was cut free, he tossed the blood-soaked leather by the door. Pistol still in hand, he stood, a bit unsteady at first. Then he took up his great shaggy coat, strode to the bed, spread the skin on the homespun coverlet. In one fluid motion, he stretched out over the skin and lay down on his belly. He was trying to keep from getting blood on the coverlet, she realized—an oddly considerate thing to do.
    The sight of him lying on her bed was more than a little disturbing. His dark hair spilled over his broad shoulders, fanned across the undyed linen of his shirt to his narrow hips. He was so much bigger than Andrew—leaner, more muscular, taller. His feet hung off the foot of the bed, and he seemed to fill it, just as his presence dominated the tiny cabin.
    Then she saw his wound. Gaping and raw, it was at least six inches long, parting the skin of his upper thigh, digging deep into the muscle. If it festered, he would lose his entire leg, perhaps even die.
    She must have gasped.
    “That bad?”
    “I’ll need to wash the blood away first.” She added a bit of cold water to the hot, tested the temperature with her fingers. Then she pulled a chair over to the bed, set the bowl of water on it, together with the needle, thread and several clean strips of linen.
    She sat beside him, careful to keep her distance, tried to gather her thoughts, which had leapt in all directions like frightened deer at the first sight of him. He would not harm her now, she reasoned. Not yet. His hurt was grievous, and he needed her help. But what would he do when he recovered his strength?
    As Bethie knew only too well, there were many ways a man could hurt a woman. And this man was dangerous. Every instinct she had told her that. Hadn’t he already threatened her with his pistol and used his strength against her?
    She must not give him another chance to harm her. She must find a way to take his weapons from him, to render him helpless, to gain the upper hand. Christian charity might demand that she help him, but that didn’t mean she had to leave herself defenseless against him. She dipped a linen cloth into the water, squeezed it out, began gingerly to wipe the blood from his leg. It was unsettling to touch the stranger in such an intimate way, to feel his skin, the rasp of his dark body hair, the strength of his muscles beneath her hands. She tried to take her mind off what she was doing, gathered her courage to ask him the question she’d wanted to ask since she’d seen he was wounded.
    “If you dinnae mind my askin’, how did this happen?”
    “I was attacked by two French trappers. I killed them, but not before one of them tried to hamstring me.”
    The way he spoke of killing, as if it were nothing, sent a chill down her spine.
    He seemed to read her mind. “They tried to murder me as I slept.”
    Bethie said nothing, afraid her voice would reveal her fear and doubt. Instead, she bent over his injury to examine it. Blood still oozed from deep within despite the tourniquet, pooling red