The Secrets Of Catie Hazard. Miranda Jarrett

sent him to his bed an hour ago, along with the rest of my own help. We’ve precious few customers tonight, thanks to you and I saw no reason to make them all wait up.”

      “That still doesn’t give you the…give you the…” Lord help him, he couldn’t remember. All he knew now was that the fireplace was drifting upward at a crazy angle, and if he didn’t sit down directly he was going to fall down, here at her feet. He groped for the chair that must be behind him, his uninjured hand tangling clumsily in his cloak.

      “Let me help you.” In an instant she was there at his side, her arm around his waist as she guided him into the chair. “Here you are, no harm done.”

      But as soon as he was seated, Catie drew back, frowning down at the blood smeared on her hand and sleeve. Before he could protest, she gently lifted his cloak back over his shoulder to reveal the torn, bruised wound where the ball had ripped through his arm.

      He grimaced, but didn’t flinch. At least for now, the fireplace had stopped spinning. “Not pretty, is it?”

      “Not in the least.” To his surprise, she didn’t flinch, either. Deftly she unfastened the clasp at the neck of his cloak and pulled it off. “Is a jealous husband after you already?”

      “Something like that.” He flexed his fingers and grimaced, noting how the blood still oozed fresh from the wound. “Send for my servant, Mrs. Hazard, so I can stop cluttering up your kitchen, as well.”

      She looked at him sharply. “Don’t you wish me to summon a surgeon?”

      “What, and have the news common on every street corner, with every rebel in town claiming credit for having done this?” He shook his head with disgust at his own foolishness. “No, thank you, ma’am. For now, I’d rather stake my luck on Routt.”

      Catie bent closer to him, her arms akimbo as she studied the wound. At least now she had something safer than politics to discuss with him. “You don’t need Mr. Routt just yet. I can tend to this well enough myself.”

      He glanced at her skeptically and tugged his neckcloth loose with his thumb. “How do I know you won’t put arsenic in the dressing, and thus be rid of one more wretched redcoat?”

      “You don’t know. You’ll simply have to trust me.” Without waiting for an answer, Catie went to one of the wall cabinets and took down a wooden box filled in readiness with neatly rolled bandages and lint, scissors, needles and waxed thread. Next she hung a kettle of water over the coals to boil, and laid a clean towel and a dish of soap on the table beside Anthony.

      Yet as Anthony watched her preparations, his doubts grew. The only other woman to nurse him had been his own grandmother, when he was still a boy. And considering how this woman had practically spat at him this afternoon, trusting her now hardly seemed wise.

      He pushed himself up from the chair, leaning heavily on the edge of the table. “A lady such as yourself needn’t do such—such tasks.”

      “You won’t escape that way, sir,” she said softly. How could a man as tall and strong as this one be so clearly terrified of her? Jon had been right when he’d called her kindhearted. Perhaps because she’d been something of a stray herself, no mongrel was ever turned from her door without a plate of scraps. She’d always been tender that way, and she doubted she could ever bring herself to harm any creature, beast or man, enemy or not.

      Yet even so, the hazy reality of what he was to her pricked uneasily at her conscience. Was she being kind to him only because he was a man in sore need of her help, or in spite of it?

      Anthony thought of the long retreat from Lexington to Charlestown, when he first learned that the people they’d come to protect didn’t want protecting. The rebel marksmen had stayed hidden in houses and behind walls, like the one who’d fired at him tonight, and like that unseen man, the Massachusetts rebels had almost always found their mark. His regiment had formed the rear guard of the retreat, and over the musket fire and screams of the wounded and dying he had shouted at his men until he was hoarse, to hold their lines steady, to reload, to fire, to be brave.

      But by the time they reached Charlestown, more than two hundred British soldiers had been wounded or killed outright, and those marked as missing, those left behind, had found no mercy at all at the hands of the enemy, even hands that seemed as gentle as Catharine Hazard’s. Better to leave now, to find Routt. Aye, Routt he could trust.

      “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