His Mask of Retribution by Margaret McPhee Page B

his face. She could identify him. Both of them knew it. Her fingers gripped tight against the sides of her skirt as she waited for him to react.
    And then she saw the single crimson drop land upon the pale silk of her skirt. There was a horrible sinking sensation in her stomach, for she knew what it was even before she raised her eyes to see the blood dripping from the fingers of his left hand, and the bright red stain that soaked the sleeve of his shirt. In that terrible moment everything else fell from her head.
    ‘You are bleeding!’ Her eyes shot to his.
    ‘The bullet skimmed my arm.’
    The bullet that had been meant for her. She stared at him, understanding fully for the first time what he had done.
    He moved away to sit down, leaning his back against the red dusty bricks of the wall, and with his good hand began to unfasten his neckcloth.
    ‘Let me help you,’ she said and, shrugging off the greatcoat, she knelt by his side.
    His gaze met hers. Then he let his hand drop away from the half-loosened knot of his neckcloth.
    She leaned closer and, pushing aside the black-silk kerchief that still hung around his neck, her fingers finished what he had started. She unfastened the knot and unwound the linen strip from around his neck. In his highwayman’s guise he was not wearing the fine dress shirts she had seen in his bedchamber, but something much cheaper and thinner through which she could see a hint of the flesh of his chest and the dark smattering of hair that covered it.
    He made to take the neckcloth from her and their fingers collided, but she did not release the linen.
    ‘I must bind the wound to stop it bleeding.’ His voice was low, that same half-whisper even though the mask was no longer tied around his face. ‘It is no sight for you, Marianne.’ The linen was taut between their hands.
    ‘Do you think I cannot face a little blood to help you?’ In the rookery he had saved her from... She could not even think the word. And not half an hour ago, in the burying ground, he had saved her life.
    ‘Most young women in your position would not offer to help me.’
    ‘Then you should be glad that I am not like most young women,’ she replied and thought of the terrible dark secret she was hiding.
    ‘No, you are not, Marianne.’ His gaze held hers and as she looked deep into his eyes she felt something shift between them. In her hand he yielded her the linen. Then he pulled a knife from within his boot and offered it, handle first, to her. ‘You need to cut away the sleeve of my shirt.’
    She looked at the blade and then up into his eyes. ‘With such a weapon I could do a better job than the bullet.’
    ‘You could,’ he agreed, but the knife still lay upon his palm and she knew it was more than the knife he was offering her. Trust. It was such a fragile word. Power. It was not something she had ever known.
    She looked at him a moment longer, then her fingers closed around the handle. The blade was sharp and wicked, and she wielded it with great care to cut away the thin linen sleeve of his shirt. With the skin exposed she could see the wound that gaped in the flesh of his upper arm and the glisten of the blood that leaked from it.
    ‘Lay the sleeve flat upon the ground and check that where the bullet entered none of the material is missing.’
    She did not understand the reason, but did as he instructed, smoothing out the blood-soaked linen, finding the small gaping hole the bullet had made and showing it to him. To her shock he pulled his injured arm across his chest and began to poke his fingers into the wound. She could see the way he gritted his teeth against the pain; the blood flowed all the harder.
    ‘What on earth are you doing?’
    ‘The missing piece of shirt is within the wound. It will fester if left there.’
    ‘Allow me.’
    ‘Marianne,’ he growled.
    ‘Are you afraid that I will hurt you?’ she goaded.
    ‘Perhaps.’
    ‘I do not believe you. You do not fear anything.’
    ‘We