Read Online A Lady's Pleasure by Robin Schone - Free Book Online Page B

enough to eat."
The blistering heat that flooded her body had nothing to do with the water.
With a little sigh, Robert sat down on the floor at the head of the tub. "Lean back, Abigail."
With an answering sigh, Abigail leaned back. The hair on his chest made a wiry pillow. A sure hand came up and brushed the damp hair off her forehead. It repeated the soothing motion until the water and the caress became one and Abigail felt as if her bones were dissolving. She tilted her head back.
His head tilted forward to meet her gaze.
She felt her heart skip a beat.
He looked so alone.
No man, regardless of what he had done, deserved to bear that much pain.
"Tell me," she softly commanded.
The gray eyes grew opaque. Bending his head down, he rubbed his nose against hers. "Tell you what?"
"Tell me why you entered the Army at the age of thirteen."
"But you said that was illegal."
"And then tell me what you did in the Army."
He raised his head. Thick black lashes veiled his eyes.
"I enlisted in the Army because I was ambitious and I wanted to see the world. I was a big strapping boyno one questioned my age. No sooner did I sign on as a drummer boy than my dream came trueI was shipped to India ."
Steam collected on his lashes, pearled on the black stubble covering his face.
" India is a diverse country," Abigail prodded. "What section were you stationed in?"
The thick black lashes lifted. He looked so terribly remote, staring at her out of eyes that were looking back twenty-two years. "Have you been there?"
"No."
"You are correct, India
is
a diverse country. It has jungles. It has deserts. And it has mountains. When the morning sun rises over the mountains, it turns the sand blood red."
"It sounds beautiful," Abigail said quietly, cautiously, wondering what could possibly have happened there to put that kind of expression on a man's face. "Were you there for the Sepoy Rebellion?"
The pewter-gray eyes filled with cynicism. "It's ironic, actually. The Sepoy Rebellion started because the Muslims and the Hindus objected to the British use of rifle cartridges greased with pig and cow fatwhereas the British infantrymen would have been perfectly happy to have some of that fat on their hardtack."
He shrugged, a fleeting scratch of hair and muscle against her back. "No, the rebellion was over by the time I arrived in India . My regiment was stationed at the foot of the mountains. I sneaked away to practice my drumming one morningit's easier to drum than to sew and cook, which were the duties assigned to me until I learned how to properly drum a march."
Robert paused, lifted his right arm. Long fingers gently stroked her throat.
She arched her neck, giving him access to her body, the only comfort, she suspected, that he would accept. "So that morning did you learn how to drum?"
"No. A
Sepoy
a Bengal army mancame upon me where I was playing in the ravine. The rebellion wasn't over for him. He thought it sport to kill a drummer boyone less British soldier to deal with in the future. Not worth a bullet, but certainly I was worth the effort of skewering on a bayonet."
Abigail writhedinside. Outside, she calmly held his bleak gaze and accepted the gentleness of his touch while she tried to imagine her eldest nephewthirteen now, still playing with hoopsin the Army facing death.
"What happened?"
"Do you really want to know?"
"Yes." Her voice was firm.
"The
Sepoy
taunted me, rushing me with the bayonet, drawing blood, pulling back. After a while he got overconfident, thinking that the English boy with blood and sweat and snot and tears running down his face was no threat. He forgot about the drumsticks. They're tapered, you know, and made out of good, solid wood. I drove the first one into the soft part of his belly."
Abigail's breath caught in her chest, seeing the blood red sand, seeing the
Sepoy,
seeing the child Robert had once been.
"Did it kill him?" she asked evenly.
"No. But it took him off guard."
The fingers thrumming her skin pressed down at the