The Fall of Maggie Brown by Anne Stuart

more protest, then shut it instead. What was that saying? Wisdom was the better part of valor?
    Being carried was a lot less comfortable than it looked in the movies, she thought dismally. When Richard Gere swooped someone up in his arms it looked divinely romantic. When Ben Frazer swooped her up in his arms to carry her up a steep, rocky pathway it was jarring and uncomfortable, his grip on her was as impersonal as a baggage handler’s, and each step made her teeth rattle.
    She didn’t say a word.
    It was full dark by the time he set her down, and she was past noticing anything more than the basics. They were in some kind of shelter, and the rain had stopped. She curled up where he placed her, huddled and miserable, beyond words. She watched him as he built a fire in a pit in the center of the room, content to simply doze, when he finally spoke to her.
    “Do you want to change first or eat?”
    She roused herself. “Change into what? All my clothes went over the cliff with the Jeep.”
    “Mine didn’t. You’re caked with mud, sugar. There’s a stream out back where you can wash off—it’s not that cold. You’ll feel better if you do.”
    “I doubt it.”
    “I can wash you myself.”
    She glared at him. It was probably an empty threat—he had to be almost as exhausted as she was, though he still appeared to be brimming with energy. It took all her effort to rise to her feet, but he wisely made no attempt to help her. “All right. Where’s the stream?”
    “Out back. I’ll take care of dinner while you’re gone.”
    “How domestic,” she said with a trace of her usual fire, taking the pile of clothes he handed her.
    The stream was easy enough to find—she just followed the sound of gurgling water. There was even a shallow pool, and it wasn’t as icy as she’d feared.
    They’d stopped at the ruins of an old farmhouse. Ben had chosen the one room that was reasonably intact, although most of the roof was gone. He’d built the fire in the middle of the floor, the smoke going straight out into the starry night. The rain clouds had finally cleared, and the night was still and beautiful. On any other occasion Maggie would have been awestruck by the sheer physical beauty of it. Right now all she could worry about was getting clean and dry.
    The pool was marginally warmer than the running stream, and as quickly as she could she stripped off her muddy, rain-soaked clothes and jumped in. The water came to her thighs, and she sank down, shivering, rubbing the dirt away from her skin briskly. She even dunked her head under the water to wash away the stray blood from her forehead. The cut above her eye stung, but she was past caring.
    No towel, of course. No underwear, either, though she could have hardly expected that Ben would come equipped with panties and a bra. Her own were too wet and muddy to even consider wearing, so she simply yanked on the baggy jeans, then grabbed the soft khaki shirt.
    One button. One damned button and no bra underneath. He must have another T-shirt somewhere, but he hadn’t bothered to give it to her, the pig. She had no choice but to tie the long tails of the shirt together and hope the one button would preserve what tiny amount of modesty she had left.
    He was busy by the fire when she came back, and he didn’t even bother looking up at her as she took a seat as far away from him as she could, on the other side of the blissfully blazing pit. Heat was wafting out of it, reaching into her icy bones, and her icy mood was beginning to melt as well.
    She made one last effort to hold onto it. “Don’t you have any shirts with buttons on them?”
    He looked up, across the flames, and his innocent smile looked saturnine. “Not for you, sugar.”
    “Pig,” she said without any real antipathy.
    “You make a real nice swashbuckler yourself, Maggie,” he drawled. “Or a pirate wench. How’s your head feel?”
    “Could be worse.”
    He came around the fire to her, so quickly she