“Good night, Nate.”
* * *
Nick was awake by the time Alex returned from the Taggert house—as was everyone in the Montgomery house.
“What have you done now?” Nick growled. “A man can’t get any sleep with you roaming about the country. Your father wants to see you.”
“He can wait,” Alex said. Now that he was home and with someone who knew his secret, he didn’t have to hide his pain. “Help me undress. The blood’s stuck my clothes to me.”
“Ah, I’d heard the Raider was wounded. Your brother-in-law has dogs looking for you and the woman.” Nick helped Alex ease out of his banyan, then his nightshirt. Under the garments was wrapped the padding and under that his tattered Raider costume. “It looks as if some of the gunpowder hit you.”
“Just the debris. It removed some skin on my back.”
Nick gave a low whistle as he pulled away the blood-soaked padding. Great furrows of skin were gouged from Alex’s back and embedded in the gashes were pieces of black silk. “I’m going to soak this with water. It’ll loosen the blood. I take it the woman was Mistress Jessica.”
“Of course. Only she’d be fool enough to walk into a circle of gunpowder that was ready to explode.”
“But she saved your miserable life, didn’t she? I’m going to have to use a knife to remove the cloth. My father would disown me if he saw me playing nursemaid.”
“Stop bragging and get on with it.”
“Where did you go after the explosion?”
“To save Jessica’s hide. Pitman ran right to her, just as I thought he would.”
“So now Mr. Pitman has another enemy: Alexander Montgomery. How are you going to smooth this one over?”
Alex gritted his teeth against the pain as Nick pulled shreds of silk from the raw places on his back. If he could have had treatment soon after the explosion, it wouldn’t have been this painful because the blood would not have dried with bits of the fabric inside the wounds. But he didn’t regret his actions. He had been right in going to Jessica before having his own wounds seen to. As it was, he had barely made it to her in time. “I don’t know. I just want to sleep for a few days. Tell Pitman I am indisposed after my ordeal at the Taggerts.”
“And let him suspect you may have injuries besides exhaustion?”
“Then I’ll tell him I’m in love with Jessica and I couldn’t bear to see her come so close to harm.”
“You’re in love with her? Or is the Raider?”
Alex was quiet for a moment. “She risked her life to save a man she says she hates. She’s as bad as Abigail, in love with a dashing figure on a black horse.”
“Sit up and I’ll bandage your ribs.”
Alex struggled to sit up. “Alexander rides up and holds two pistols at the head of the king’s man and all he gets is a kiss on the cheek. Yet the Raider stupidly walks into a trap and he gets tears shed over his welfare. She was scared the bastard was bleeding to death in some ditch. And when I, Alexander, assured her he was safe, she bit my head off. Damned stupid woman! Why can’t she see who is the real hero in her life? Do all women fall in love with a pretty face and broad shoulders?”
Nick poured a tumbler full of rum. “Tell me, if Nelba Mason had been standing on the porch that day of the first raid, would you have tried to kiss her? Would you have dumped her in washwater if she’d refused you?”
Alex downed the rum and shivered at the thought. “I’d have celebrated,” he said a moment later. “It’s not the same thing at all. Nelba can’t remove that nose of hers and besides, she didn’t risk her life to save the Raider.”
“Maybe she would if the Raider courted her in the middle of the night.”
Alex refused to comment. “Get out of here and let me sleep. And take those bloody rags and burn them.”
“Yes, master,” Nick mocked before leaving.
Chapter Nine
AND now the Montgomerys seem to have adopted the Taggerts,” Mrs. Wentworth said. “I think that if they wanted to exercise their Christian charity, they could have chosen a more worthy cause.”
Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth were at breakfast with their only child, Abigail. There was nothing on the table, in the room or on their bodies that wasn’t of the finest quality, all of it imported from England. They wanted nothing to do with any crude American products.
“Eleanor has worked for the Montgomerys for years—she practically runs that house—and of course there is the fact that if Marianna hadn’t married Mr. Pitman, the Taggerts might still have their belongings,” Mr. Wentworth said.