Untamed by Pamela Clare Page A

would be beaten upset her.
    Morgan would remember that.
    Without a word she pressed the cold cloth to his right cheek, the chill bringing relief from the sting of that whoreson’s fist—Rillieux she had called him.
    He watched her as she bathed his cheek, his gaze seeking out the details of her form. The dark and delicate sweep of her lashes. The soft curve of her cheek. The fullness of her lips. The slender column of her throat. The gentle swell of her breasts beneath the lace of her bodice. The silken length of her hair. And her scent—fresh linen, lavender, and woman.
    She is promised to Christ, you lummox.
    Aye, she was. And he to Satan.
    ’Twas then he remembered what he’d planned to say to her. He’d thought through the words all night, shaped them in his mind. ’Twas time to speak them. “ ’Tis sorry I am about your father, Miss Chauvenet. If I could call back the ball that stole his life, I would.”
    She met his gaze, a look on her young face that might have been astonishment—or anger. When she spoke, her voice quavered. “H-how can you speak to me of him?”
    “There’s naugh’ I can say to ease your grief. I ken that. But I am deeply sorry that you should suffer, and I ask your forgiveness.”
    Unable to breathe, Amalie looked into the Ranger’s blue eyes and saw only sincerity. It was the same earnestness she’d seen in the eyes of wounded soldiers who’d asked her to pray for them—the naked honesty of men who knew they were about to die and sought to make peace with the world.
    As upset by the Ranger’s unexpected apology as she was by Lieutenant Rillieux’s loathsome kiss, she turned away, at a loss for words. She dipped the cloth back into the water, only vaguely aware of what she was doing.
    How dare either of them! How dare Lieutenant Rillieux kiss her, knowing full well that she did not wish to marry him! And how dare the Ranger ask her forgiveness! He hadn’t trodden upon her foot, after all. He and his men had slain her father, stealing the joy from her life, filling her nights with grief and loneliness.
    “What kind of man are you, Major MacKinnon?”
    “Just a man.”
    His humble answer shamed her. In God’s eyes he was just a man, oui, but here on earth he was a British officer, a Ranger, a legend amongst both his people and hers. But now he was in her care, a wounded man and condemned to die. And he had asked as respectfully and gravely as any man might for her forgiveness.
    How could she deny him and yet call herself Catholic?
    Without forgiveness, Amalie, there can be no peace.
    The mère supérieure ’s stern voice echoed through her mind.
    Amalie slowly turned to face him, the damp cloth in hand. He was watching her, his gaze gentle, a strange contrast to the fierceness of his appearance—bruised cheek, shackles, beard, warrior marks. “I…I loved him very much. He was my only real family. He was killed last summer in the first attack while I was here in the hospital helping the wounded. I thought for a time that he had survived, but—”
    “Sweet Mary, you were here during the battle?” He stared at her, his blue eyes filled with what could only be dismay.
    She swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded, looking down at her hands, trying not to remember that terrible day.
    “Och, lass, ’tis sorry I am that you should have seen it. War is bloody and cruel. It makes monsters of men. ’Tis no place for a woman.”
    “It was awful.”
    “Aye, that it was.”
    Something in the tone of his voice made her look up, and she knew by the lines on his face that he had his own terrible memories. “You lost someone, too.”
    “Aye, many. Good men and true. They died for nothin’, pawns in a war not of their makin’.” The last words were spoken with a measure of bitterness.
    She understood bitterness. “I have hated the Rangers since that day.”
    He grinned—a sad, lopsided grin. “And do you hate me?”
    “I have tried to hate you, monsieur.” She lifted