Read Online Far In The Wilds by Deanna Raybourn - Free Book Online

needed him to pick up the pieces again.
    “So when’s the big day?”
    Her smile was touched with relief, no doubt because he had decided not to fight her. “Just as soon as you’re bright-eyed enough to give me away.”
    Ryder smiled. “Give you away? With pleasure.”
    She stepped to the bed and touched his right hand. It was still swollen and painful from his struggle with the leopard, but at least it was whole, he thought. God only knew what was lurking under the bandages. He pushed the thought away.
    “You’re going to be alright, you know. The doctors said it didn’t bite through anything important. You’ll still be able to feel with it and use it and all. You’ll just have some very impressive battle scars.”
    “All the better to enchant the ladies,” he said lightly.
    Jude paused. “She’s gone too, Ryder. She left with him. She was pretty hysterical for a while, but he was worse. She took care of him and when the time came, she just went with him. Didn’t even leave a note.”
    Ryder tried to shrug, but the searing shaft of pain stopped him. “It wasn’t a great love affair, Jude. It was just something to do to pass the time.” He would never know if Mademoiselle had slept with him to prick the prince’s jealousy or to amuse herself or because she wanted something real with him, however briefly. Whichever it was, it did not matter. She had chosen her old life, the comfortable groove she had worn with Freddie. But then, Ryder reflected, he had not asked her to stay. He did not regret it.
    Jude paused again, groping her way toward her words. “I’ve had a lot of time to think it over. And I’ve wondered...do you think he did it on purpose? Do you think he missed the first shot because of her? Because of the two of you?”
    Ryder opened his mouth to deny it then snapped it shut. He saw it over and again in his mind, the leopard turning as the poor shot grazed her flank, the prince seized with emotion and unmoving.
    “I don’t know,” he said finally. “If he did do it on purpose, he’s a fool. There was no guarantee the thing would have come after me instead of him if he only winged it.”
    “But there was a guarantee,” she corrected. “You.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Think back to the night you met them, Ryder. The Christmas party at the club. A lion walked right down the middle of the street in Nairobi, and in a club full of hunters and big brave men, you were the only one who stepped forward to take it down. Freddie knew exactly what sort of man you are. He would have known that there was no way you would stand aside and let a leopard attack a paying client. You would step in and let it attack you instead.”
    Ryder swallowed hard. “Give me some of that whisky.”
    She poured a small measure into a tooth glass and he drained it.
    “Don’t think about it anymore, Jude,” he ordered her. “I don’t want to think that anybody could be that evil.”
    “I don’t think he is,” she told him. “Not really. I think it was an impulse, something that took hold of him that he wasn’t strong enough to shake off. I think that’s why he got so upset, why he pissed himself. He’s been on safari before. He would have seen an animal taken down close. But if he gave in to the temptation to do the worst thing a human being can do to another and then realized too late what he was doing—”
    Jude did not finish. She turned away and when she turned back Ryder saw her eyes were bright.
    “Who are those tears for? Me or him?”
    “Him, idiot. If I’m right, he has to live with what he’s done, what he knows himself capable of. You got off rather lucky. You’ll have an armful of scars to attract a fresh pack of willing women. What do you think you’ll take this time?” she asked lightly. “A blonde? A redhead? Another one with black hair and very red lips?”
    He thought of Mademoiselle, twining herself about him in the dark and he thought about the sharp teeth of a