The Return of the Prodigal. Кейси Майклс

much for believing in Good Samaritans,” Rian said, smiling. But his teeth were chattering, and Lisette quickly slipped out of her own damp cloak, to lay it across his chest. “Damn. Maybe I do need one of those vile draughts of yours.”

      Lisette reached down to open the portmanteau and made a great business out of searching it for the bottle of medicine she knew wasn’t there. She’d had enough of Loringa’s potions, confusing him, keeping him perhaps too muddled to find his way home. “It isn’t…I…I can’t find it, Rian!” She pulled underclothing from the portmanteau and dug deeper. “It’s—no, wait, here it— C’est une tragédie! I have brought the wrong bottle! It was dark, and I was fearful of lighting a candle. Oh, Rian, no!”

      She held up the dark blue bottle with its cork seal.

      He looked at it owlishly. “What is it?”

      “Not the medicine for your fever,” Lisette said, sighing. “It is laudanum, to make you sleep. For the headache, for the pain from your wounds. It will do nothing for your fever. Rian, I am so sorry. You will die now.”

      He looked at her, one eyebrow raised, and then laughed. “My loyal nurse cheers me no end. I won’t die, Lisette. I’m weeks past dying. But I will avail myself of some of that laudanum, once we’ve stopped for the night.”

      “Because you’re in pain? Where? Tell me. Where is the pain?”

      “In my ears. I keep hearing silly chattering in my ears.”

      “You are not amusing, Rian Becket. Not at all.” Lisette replaced the bottle and threw the underclothes back in on top of it. But this was good. He would take the laudanum instead, as she had hoped, and he would sleep. She needed no more of the confusion she found when he held her in his arms at night, as he made love to her. “I liked you better when you were sleeping. My pretty poet, with the face of an angel. I will mix some with water for you when we reach Petit Rume.”

      She felt his heated fingers against her nape as he took hold of her collar and pulled her back up straight on the seat.

      “We’re not heading toward Petit Rume, Lisette,” he told her, and she looked at him in very real shock. “I begged a rude map from the fellow back at the stables, and he drew me the most direct route to the Channel.”

      Lisette nodded furiously. “Yes, yes. And Petit Rume is a logical step in that journey.”

      “Exactly. Think, Lisette. We’re fleeing the Comte, a man you believe will follow you, try to bring you back to the manor house. He would expect you to head for the Channel, and England. After all, you are English, and you say you have no one in France to care for you. It’s only, as you said, logical. So, instead of traveling west, as I assured the stable owner we would do, we are heading directly north.”

      “North?” Lisette fought an urge to pull down the side window, stick out her head, look for the men who were following after them. “But what is north?”

      “Belgium.”

      “But…but—”

      “We are no more than forty miles distant from Brussels, although there is no reason to travel that far before heading to the west once more. I’ve studied maps of Belgium, Lisette, so much so that I can very nearly see them in my mind. I’ve ridden the miles between Brussels and Nivelles to the south, and Tubize to the east, reconnoitering for Wellington. The land is easy to travel, and the people friendly to the English. We’ll make our way to Ostend, where I first landed, and take ship there.”

      “But…but wouldn’t the Comte think you would do that?” Lisette asked him, racking her brains for a way out of this unexpected disaster. “He has to know you might take us to more familiar…territory?” She crossed her arms in front of her. “So my way is better, yes?”

      “No way is better, Lisette,” he said, rubbing at his forehead as if his head ached. “Yours is one way, mine is another. I chose mine.”

      Lisette wasn’t ready to give up. “But mine is probably faster.”

      “Yes, and if I were to leave you when we next stop to rest the horses, and used some of the Comte’s lovely English gold to buy myself a mount, I could be in Ostend tomorrow night. Now let me rest, all right? Either I rest, or I’ll soon be casting up my accounts all over your shoe tops.”

      “Your stomach is sick? Then perhaps I should give you some of the laudanum now?”

      He shook his head, and then winced, clearly having caused himself pain. “I need my wits about me, Lisette. And, when next we stop, I need to search out a pistol, a sword. I feel naked, and I’m supposed to be defending you.”

      “That’s very nice of you, Rian Becket,” Lisette grumbled, settling against the back of the seat, knowing she had lost the battle. “When we are finally safe with your family, and if you have not had occasion to throw up on my shoes, I will tell them all how brave you were.”

      How brave you were…

      Rian squeezed his eyes more firmly shut, his body swaying slightly with the movement of the coach, wishing away the words that kept repeating, repeating, inside his head as he floated in and out of a dream.

      Brave? Had he been brave? He didn’t remember, couldn’t remember. God only knew how hard he’d been trying to recall what had happened that day, how he had come to be wounded, how he had been brought to the Comte’s manor house.

      A residence approximately three miles outside of Valenciennes. He knew that now, too. And after seeing it drawn on the stable owner’s crude map, he knew that Valenciennes was more than forty miles away from the battlefield now spoken of as the battle of Waterloo.

      It made no sense. None of it. Who rescued a wounded soldier from the field and then moved him to a place more than two days’ travel away?

      Why hadn’t he thought of all of this sooner, as he’d begun to recover from his wounds? He’d tried to rouse himself, he really had, but then he’d fade away again, become interested in a sunset, the way light played across Lisette’s hair, the smoothness and sweet smell of his sheets, even the texture of the meat in his mouth as he chewed it. He could stare for hours at the trees outside his window, fascinated by the way the passing breeze stirred the leaves into pictures for him…houses, boats, even prettily spotted cows.

      Cows in trees. How asinine.

      Yet it had been so easy to keep drifting away, to be enthralled by pretty pictures, pretty colors, almost able to forget that he was no longer a whole man, even stop feeling tingles and itches in a hand that was no longer there.

      It damn well had been easier without the fever.

      But no. No more medicine, and at least now he wouldn’t have to find ways to pour it away rather than drink it. Because he had to concentrate his mind. Lisette depended on him. And he might have put her in more danger than she could possibly comprehend.

      So he let his new, waking dream take him back to that day, the morning of the battle. Pushed himself to remember.

      He’d spent the morning riding out, relaying Wellington’s orders, carrying messages back to the Duke as he and Bonaparte waited for the mud to dry on the field between them, waited for the first man to give the order to begin the battle.

      Yes, he remembered that. Jupiter had been magnificent. Never tiring, always ready to give his all for his master, even as the long day wore on and there were more messages, requiring more riding. Dodging French patrols, galloping over rough terrain, never shying at the crash of the cannons, the sharp barks of the rifle volleys.

      One last command, one last mission, even as dusk came early with the smoke from the cannons, the rifles. One more, and he would be done. They would take the day, he was almost sure of it, and it was a message of a small victory that he carried back to Wellington with him, tucked up inside his jacket.

      Rian’s breath came faster in his half sleep. Because he was remembering things