Feather Castles Read Free

poor devils. Now—”
    But again Rachel dodged that long hand and slipped her arm beneath the shoulders of the injured man, struggling to raise him.
    â€œGo!” he gasped faintly, his dark head rolling against her shoulder. “Your friend … perfectly right. No place for—for blessed angel such as you.… Go!”
    Looking up at Diccon, Rachel grated, “Help me lift him into the phaeton.”
    The looters were coming back. Diccon swore under his breath. Sister Maria Evangeline said, “We’ll manage. I will help. Oh, if only he were not such a big fellow! Andrews? Where are you? Come!” She clambered into the phaeton, urging, “Hurry! Hurry!”
    Between them, Diccon and the groom lifted the soldier and disposed him in the phaeton so that he half sat, half lay across the seat with his head in the nun’s lap. Rachel squeezed into the vehicle and knelt on the floor, attempting to quench the blood that welled from the wound in the soldier’s arm.
    The looters rushed then, two wielding swords, and one thrusting a rifle at Diccon, the bayonet gleaming wickedly. Diccon’s pistol blasted Rachel’s ears. The man with the bayonet howled and went down. Andrews sprang for the driver’s seat. A slap of the reins and the frightened horses plunged forward. With a wild dive, Diccon caught the back of the phaeton. The looters jumped clear, and the phaeton was away.
    *   *   *
    They had been at sea for a very long time, and the storm was so fierce he was unable to hold himself steady in the bunk but was constantly flung against the side, each collision seeming to hurt his throbbing head more than the last. The portholes were closed because of the high running seas, and the tiny cabin was oppressively hot. Yet sometimes the spray managed to penetrate the closed ports and splash, icily refreshing, against his face. With stunning force he was hurled at the side once more and, crying out, awoke from his dream.
    A cool hand touched his cheek. A blurred shape bent above him, and a sweetly musical voice said in lilting French, “Lie still, please, sir! You must not toss so.”
    Puzzled, he stared at that indistinct form until the mists faded a trifle, and he saw again the girl he had thought to see in his dreaming. Gentle of eye, fair of skin, her face a vision of loveliness, her whole being the very personification of feminine grace and purity. Scarcely daring to breathe lest she disappear, he lay very still, but when she started to move back into the mists, asked faintly, “Am I now … dead, mademoiselle?”
    A smile curved that pretty mouth. “No,” she answered gently. “You seem very much better, in fact. The road was hopelessly blocked and we could not get back to Brussels, but our groom found this cottage. It has been abandoned, so we pass the night here. Sir—we are greatly indebted to you. May we know your name?”
    His name? He frowned painfully. A simple enough question. Tell her, you simpleton! But to think, hurt. And the harder he tried, the more it hurt, so that he sighed at last, “I will tell you, but—not just now, for … I cannot quite seem … to recall.…”
    When he looked up again, the girl had gone. He was relatively comfortable, lying in bed in a room that held the echo of a sweet fragrance. Who was that lovely girl? And who, by heaven, was he? He closed his eyes, fighting to remember. That he was French, he knew, for he had a vague recollection of conversing with someone in that language, and of a scornful British voice saying, “He’s just another ruddy Frog! Scrag the perisher!” But as to what had happened, why he was hurt, and where he lay, he had not the faintest notion. He certainly must have a name. A family. Yet all he could clearly recall was an Englishman sobbingly pleading not to be murdered. His brows twitched together. Murder? Good God! What dark