A Highlander's Heart: A Sexy Regency Romance (Highland Knights Book 1) Read Free Page B

that wasn’t there.
    The way he held himself… God, could it be Rob? Claire chewed on her lip, trying to beat back her clambering hope. She lifted her skirts and walked toward him.
    Don’t be a frightened ninny. Don’t burst into tears. It is absolutely not allowed. You must seem calm. You must appear composed.
    She carefully stepped over the debris, and as she drew closer, the wind ruffled his hair and his square jaw came into focus, and she knew, without a doubt, that this was her husband.
    “Rob,” she whispered. As much as she tried to beat it back, the emotion she’d been trying to suppress came bubbling free, and she gave a little, wild laugh. “Rob?”
    Thank the Lord, he was alive. Her husband was alive!
    Joy burst through her the likes of which she’d never known, and for the first time she realized the true extent of her fear for his life.
    His face compressed into a tight mask of wariness, but she didn’t care. Let him be angry with her. He was alive, and that was all that mattered.
    “Claire?” he asked in his familiar Scottish rumble. She’d missed it so much.
    He looked suspiciously at her, then down to the man that lay by his feet, and finally back up to her again.
    “What’re ye doing in this accursed place?”
    “I came for you,” she said as she took the final steps toward him. Every cell in her body demanded she throw herself into his arms, but something held her back. His hands had remained clenched at his sides, he was so pale, and the way he was looking at her… It was almost as if he was afraid.
    “You canna have me,” he said gruffly. “Not without young Archie.” He braced his feet in a defensive posture as he gestured down at the boy lying at his feet.
    She frowned at her husband, confused. He must still be dazed from battle. “Of course,” she murmured. She held out her hand. “Come with me, Rob.”
    He took a step back, staring at her hand as if it bore a lethal weapon.
    And then he fell to his knees, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped forward.
    He’d fainted.
    Claire rushed over to him. He must be injured after all, she thought with a twist in her gut, to have fallen like that.
    She attempted to turn him to no avail, then finally managed to move his head so he could take in air unimpeded. As her hand slipped over the back of his skull, her fingers slid over a bump the size of her fist. She quickly moved her hand away from the area, so as not to disturb it, and gently turned his head to take weight off the injury.
    She cradled his cheeks in her palms and stared down at him. Mud and blood caked his face, and his unshaven skin was rough in her hands. His eyes were closed, and in spite of the muck, he looked peacefully asleep, russet brows long and lush arcing over his eyes, his chest rising and falling in slow, deep intervals.
    “I’m sorry,” she whispered to him, because it was safe now that he couldn’t hear her. “I wish I’d never said an unkind word to you.”
    She pressed a kiss to his dirty brow, then lifted her head. The mist had cleared a bit, revealing Stirling walking tentatively at the edge of the battlefield and looking green about the gills. “Captain Stirling! I found him.”
    Stirling gathered some men, a sprung carriage, and a cot to transport Rob to the field hospital at Mont-St-Jean. But when they arrived, a surgeon told her there was no room for him there, especially given his comparatively minor injuries. Even unconscious, evidently, her husband was considered one of the walking wounded.
    It was ultimately a relief—Claire didn’t want him in that fetid place anyhow. Instead, they returned him to the 92nd camp and laid him in a tent.
    What wasn’t a relief was that when they arrived at camp, she learned that the regiment had received orders to march that afternoon. Wellington was leading his army to Paris.
    Certainly they did not expect her unconscious husband to march with him!
    Apparently, however, they did.
    Claire frantically