“Wake up!” Jason shook the girl’s other shoulder, but her eyes failed to open.
He couldn’t help but gape. How on earth had he ever thought she was a boy? She was a maiden full-grown, with a woman’s curves beneath her men’s clothes.
He rubbed the back of his neck. Why, that sorry excuse for a disguise wouldn’t fool a living soul…well, perhaps only one as travel-weary as he was. It seemed the ache in his shoulder was muddling his brain.
He rose, shoved the rapier back into his belt, and crouched to try to rouse her once again. No luck.
A pair of dusty shoes strolled into his vision and stopped by the girl’s head. Jason straightened. “Did you send someone to fetch the authorities?”
“The magistrate’s in Lancashire. Visiting his ill mother.”
Typical, Jason thought in disgust.
The innkeeper, a wiry, balding man, rubbed his nose. He eyed the girl with sympathy. “She took room three. If you wouldn’t mind bringing her up?”
“I expect I owe her that, at least,” Jason agreed gruffly.
He grabbed the girl’s pistol off the floor—the oldest, ugliest gun he’d ever seen—and lifted her into his arms. A limp bundle she was: slim, soft, and smelling of flowers. Feminine.
So why the boy’s clothing?
It hit him like a bolt of summer lightning: She was after the reward.
Of all the deuced—rotten—foolish—
He thought of a dozen more oaths as he stared at her, picturing Geoffrey Gothard already miles down the road.
The beast had eluded him again, and all because of an incompetent Scottish reward hunter who would certainly bungle the capture—if she didn’t get herself killed outright.
Jason had laughed at the ridiculous rumors, but the joke was on him…because here was Emerald MacCallum, right in his arms.
TWELVE
WITH A GRUNT, Jason laid Emerald on the bed, then lit a candle and set it on the plain wooden table beside her. Rubbing his aching shoulder, he stood staring at her chalk-white face.
The flickering flame cast a sense of movement he knew was only an illusion. He lifted one slender wrist and let it drop back to the bed. Limp and deathly still.
Just like little Mary.
A strange hollowness opened in his gut. He reached to feel for the pulse at her throat, relieved to find it warm and steady beneath his fingers. After drawing a deep breath, he untangled the plaid shawl. As he tossed it over the spartan room’s only chair, Emerald’s soft floral scent wafted to his nose.
He supposed he should make her comfortable. His face feeling hot, he drew off her shoes and dropped them on the planked wood floor, then rolled her stockings down and off her small, arched feet. The room seemed suddenly short of air.
He’d never noticed a girl’s feet before.
Studiously ignoring them, he focused on her cut shoulder. He loosened the laces of her shirt, eased it down—only enough to uncover the wound, though his face seemed to grow even hotter anyway—and brought the candle close to the cut. It was small and shallow, the blood already clotted against her smooth skin.
Quickly, he set down the candle and tugged the shirt back into place, noticing a pendant nestled in the loose-laced opening.
He lifted her head and drew off the necklace. Warm from the heat of her skin, a rectangular green stone shone in an ornate gold setting. The simple link chain had seen much wear. Candlelight glinted off the stone’s rubbed surface.
An emerald. Emerald MacCallum.
He set the pendant on the bedside table with a little click that seemed to reverberate in the quiet room. A soft noise from the girl lifted his hopes and drew his gaze back to her.
Asleep, Emerald looked very sweet. And young, like a little dairymaid, with her plaited hair. She wasn’t at all like he’d pictured the fabled Emerald MacCallum, but then, it weren’t as though anyone knew what she looked like. Drawings on broadsides were of the outlaws, not their pursuers.
But the thought of such a petite young woman capturing outlaws was laughable. Though she had to be older than she looked—for she looked no older than Kendra—he couldn’t imagine what desperation might drive a maiden like her to take up such a profession. Guilt lodged in his stomach as he looked at her long, full lashes, wondering what color her eyes were. He ran a thumb along her soft cheek.
Then snatched his hand back in alarm.
What on earth was he doing?
Shaking off the strange impulse, he reached to roll his patient onto her stomach, then wrestled the thin quilt from beneath her and settled it over her back. His hands gingerly explored her head for the lump he knew must be there, given that she’d been knocked unconscious. He winced when he found it, hard and large and warm to the touch. The tight plait on that side couldn’t be comfortable.
He set to undoing it to relieve the pressure. Straight and shimmering, hair every hue of blond and brown slid between his hands. When the first side was loose, his fingers lingered at the place where her white part ended at the nape of her neck. Baby fine hairs glimmered gold in that spot.
No matter that the girl was Emerald MacCallum, the downy little hollow looked innocent and vulnerable. Anger flared. At himself, at the Gothards.
He’d thrown down his sword to avoid bloodshed, and now someone else was hurt.
It seemed no matter what he did, he only caused more harm.
His fingers absently loosed the second plait while he seethed at the whole situation. Though he tried to block a vision of poor little Mary, the effort only led him to picture Emerald in the same state. The thought made him shake.
And those deuced blackguards had slipped away. Again! He rose and paced around the room, lighting more candles and cursing his mistakes.
His attempts at mercy only led to more suffering. He should have gone in with loaded pistols and blade at the ready, prepared to handle the brothers once and for all,
