Riverrun by Felicia Andrews

far corners of the room, shadows she would just as soon not have noticed. Eric, in silence, began rubbing his gloved hand against his thigh, and she was drawn to stare at it by the movement. When he noticed her questioning look, however, he rose quickly and bowed.
    “You must rest,” he said, eyes and lips smiling tenderly. “And tomorrow you must begin working that leg of yours. I’m sure it must hurt you considerably, but I suspect that a good deal of it comes from the fear of being in pain rather than the pain itself. I really think you’ll be walking about before you know it.” He smiled again, took her hand and bent over it, his lips feather-light and cool as they brushed her skin in a courtly kiss.
    Then he was gone, and the room was hers again, drawn about her by the candles’ shadows and filled with the night noises that drifted through the windows.
    Several minutes passed while she stared at the back of her hand, groping for a way to keep the memory of his touch, of his lips, from fading before she could draw every last delight into her lungs like the sweet, cool air of dawn after a storm. Reason told her the giddiness she’d felt at his closeness came only from her gratitude for his saving her life. But reason, she thought with a sly grin, wasn’t half the fun that dreams were, and she began toying with the buttons of her nightdress, wondering how rough or soft his palms would feel against the curve of her—
    She shook her head sharply in silent self-scolding and pushed herself up to a sitting position again. Her hand reached out, then, to curl a finger around the slender base of the candelabrum. The silvered metal was cool, smooth, and she stroked it unconsciously, using her nail to scrape at the bits of wax that had spilled over the lip.
    A strange man, this Eric Martingale, she thought. Practically an exile, living precariously on an island in the midst of bloody, turbulent waters. She made an attempt to imagine the grandeur of the house as it must have been when he had first arrived, and the rapid and— anguished decay as the war swirled around the plantation’s foundations. It must have been, and must still be, hellish; and she wondered that he had stayed as long as he had. Surely he could have seen that once the fighting began there would be little or no communication between himself and his homeland. Had he really been that smitten with Riverrun? Had he really become so attached in such a short time, or was there something else, something he hadn’t told her?
    Not, she reminded herself guiltily, that he owed her more than he had already given. Quite the contrary, it was she who owed him her life. She hugged herself tightly then, and rubbed at her arms to rid them of the goosebumps that rose on her flesh. And the way he had looked at her! The kiss that had lingered a brief second longer than necessary. It was much the way that poor Geoff had kissed her hand on that first night when he and his men had visited the farmhouse. A welling of grief surged, subsided, and she took a handful of hair over her shoulder and began to caress it thoughtfully. Geoff. Eric. In all her life the only men she had seen, other than her father and brothers, were those from the nearby farms and from Gettysburg. Few, if any, had paid much attention to her, and those who did had their lumps to remember her by. Now, suddenly, a Union captain and a British gallant. But Geoff was dead.
    She stared at her leg, frowned, and tossed aside the bedclothes. Carefully, she flexed her knee, turned her leg from side to side, tensed against the pain, and shouted silently when there was none. Cautiously, she eased herself to a sitting position on the edge of the mattress. Was it possible that Eric was right and much of her agony was more imagined than real? Carefully she tested her right leg, her toes curling at the touch of the cool floorboards beneath her sole. The leg would be weak from disuse, but she sensed that it would hold her,