Blood of Roses by Marsha Canham

Author:Marsha Canham [Canham, Marsha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Romance
ISBN: 9780440224556
Google: I_i3GHBy5y4C
Amazon: 0440224551
Barnesnoble: 0440224551
Goodreads: 707222
Publisher: Dell
Published: 1988-12-31T11:00:00+00:00

Lauren pried her eyes open slowly. She was alone on the bed, her body flung sideways across the mattress, her limbs splayed inelegantly on the crumpled and stained satin covers. The shreds of her gown were gone. Her breasts throbbed and her thighs ached; it felt as if she had been used by ten maniacal men, all at the one time.

Her head wobbling drunkenly, she tilted it forward. The major was standing by the fireplace, his hand propped on the mantelpeice, his face profiled against the orange and bronzed light. A faint groan settled her head back onto the cloud of her own scattered hair, and a half-formed thought of modesty had her fold her legs together in a graceful tuck.

“What the bluidy Christ happened? Dinna tell me I fainted.”

“All right. I won’t tell you.”

Lauren frowned and stared at the canopy overhead. He was lying, of course. Or gloating. She had never fainted beneath a man before in her life—not even Struan MacSorley, and he had a well-deserved reputation for putting several women in a swoon in a single night.

She turned her head slightly, testing the ache at the back of her skull and prodding gently at the puffed lip, the bruised tenderness along her jaw. It was no wonder she had fainted, if indeed she had done so: The bastard had hit her hard enough to have scrambled her brains for a month of Sundays.

When the soldiers had stolen her off the moor at Prestonpans, her first thought was that she would die—or, at least, be slated to die. She had been taken to Colonel Putnam and questioned, but it became clear within the first few moments that the colonel was more interested in what lay beneath the gaping fabric of her bodice than any information she might or might not have had about the rebel camp. She had passed herself off as a local girl, put up a few groans of resistance, then kept the Sassenach colonel salivating at her feet for almost a month. In that time, she demanded and received the luxuries she had only dreamed about. Silks and satins, maids to tend her baths, to crimp her hair, to trim her toenails when her lover complained of too many scratch marks. She amassed quite an impressive purseful of gold coins as well—not as impressive as the one she was filling at Hamilton Garner’s expense, but the combined sum was already more than enough to set her up in a comfortable house in Edinburgh. Not nearly enough for what she wanted, of course, but it was a good start.

Sighing expressively, she slipped down off the bed and padded barefoot to the full-length cheval mirror, scowling as she inspected the cuts and bruises that marred her face. She flashed a look of disgust over her shoulder as Garner came quietly up behind her.

“If ye treated yer sweet Catherine as gently as ye treat me,” she said, sneering, “it’s nae wonder she left ye f’ae Alasdair.”

Garner smiled blandly, the barb falling harmlessly to the wayside.

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