The Highwayman by Doreen Owens Malek Page B

think, and I was captivated by what I’d heard. I looked up his image on the bookplates in my father’s library, before his books were sold with his entailed estate when he died. There were copies of Alexander’s likeness. He was fair, like you, with the same brown-gold hair.”
    Burke stared at her, listening.
    “He was clean-shaven also, in a time, like now, when the fashion was for beards.” She smiled. “Perhaps he was vain, too.”
    “And?”
    “Not so big as you, not above middle height, but very comely. The story goes that his games master believed in a strict regimen of sparse diet and little sleep for children, and this kept him small. He blamed his childhood for his size, which he felt was a failing. His greatest friend, Hephaestion, was described as taller and better looking, in which case he was certainly handsome. Alexander went near to mad when Hephaestion died, of physician’s neglect, so he thought. He gave orders immediately to hang the doctor.”
    “That was not wise,” said Burke. “So your hero had a flaw.”
    “Yes. I remember it because it seemed such a lack of judgment, as if he must have been quite driven from his senses.”
    “Great fondness followed by a loss can do that.”
    “True. He seemed to think he and his friend were twin souls, almost the same person. How you feel about Rory, I imagine. Or your brother.”
    Burke rubbed his shoulder, lost in thought.
    “Don’t touch that,” Alex said.
    “This bloody thing is putting me in hopes of an asylum,” he complained.
    “It almost put you in your grave,” Alex said. “And I must take issue with Rory. He once told me you stood wounds very well.”
    “He stands the wounds well,” Rory said, entering the tent. “It’s the mending he can’t bear.”
    “I’ll take a walk,” Burke announced.
    Alex rose as she and Rory exchanged glances.
    “Tomorrow,” Alex said. “And now you must rest. You’ve been listening to me babbling all this time when you should have been napping.”
    “She treats me like a stripling,” Burke said to Rory.
    “You’re behaving like an infant,” Rory replied.
    Alex sighed. “It’s time for you to sleep.”
    “Tell me some more interesting stories about your namesake.”
    “Stories?” Rory said, arching his brows. “Are we in an English nursery now, pestering the governess for bedtime stories?” He rolled his eyes and left the tent.
    Burke looked at her expectantly.
    Alex resumed her place on the dirt floor. She told him what else she could remember about the man who had changed history, back when Burke’s distant ancestors were still migrating from the banks of the Danube, to keep him quiet until he fell asleep.
    * * * *
    Burke awoke in the middle of the night, sweating and parched, and reached for the deerskin flask Alex had left at his elbow, wincing as the movement stung his shoulder. He drank deeply and then considered his nurse, sleeping a short distance away, curled up on his tweed cloak.
    This must stop, he thought. He must get some exercise, find some way to relieve the pressure of her constant presence. He was not so injured after all, despite the protestations of his attendant. He was at least well enough to spend every waking moment when he wasn’t talking to her indulging in fantasies of making love to her.
    And sleeping was worse. Each night, like this one, he awoke, perspiring and dizzy with desire, from dreams in which he caressed her creamy skin and kissed her budding lips and the languid, heavy lids of her emerald eyes. He told himself that it was hopeless, that their situation made it so, but logic did not avail him. He told himself that sooner or later she would surely be restored to the English so his feelings were a waste of time. Lastly, he told himself that she was a child—which he knew was a lie.
    She was a woman fully grown, and she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He knew it from her furtive looks, the longing glances she had not the cunning to disguise,