"Perhaps I will have that toast now, Colonel Coally."

"We made a bargain, Abigail. Until the storm ends we call each other by our first names and you are free to indulge in any sexual urges that you wish."

The red-hot stove hissed as water boiled over onto it. Grabbing a towel, Robert picked up the handle of the bucket and poured the hot water into the little hip bath beside the sink. Steam roiled up to the ceiling. The remainder of the water he poured into a tea pot. Then he refilled the bucket and set it back on the stove.

"Are we on bread-and-water rations?"

"Only until Mrs. Thomas makes it through the storm. She and Mr. Thomas look after the cottage. For a few extra shillings a week she cooks and cleans and does my laundry."

"I doubt she'll make it today."

"No." A warm glow of anticipation grew inside Abigail's stomach. Another night with this man was well worth a little starvation.

Robert toasted bread to a fine turn. And spread strawberry jam lavishly.

She waved her cup toward the cupboard. "There's butter insidenot much, so unless you want to save it for later…"

His gray eyes darkened. He met her gaze, a half-brooding, half-searching look. "Why did you pull away last night?"

She squared her shoulders, fully prepared to lie. If he had not discovered her faults, who was she to point them out? Instead, she said, "You were taking my hair down."

"You have beautiful hair, Abigail."

"I have gray in my hair, Robert."

She did not expect evidence of her rapidly approaching old age to inspire laughter. But it did.

She tilted her chin and held up her cup of tea with her little finger sticking out at the required degree. "I am glad you find my age amusing, Robert."

"Abigail, I am five years older than you are. And if you had any gray hairs, I would not be laughing."

"But I do," she stubbornly insisted.

"Then I don't see them."

"A woman my age should not let her hair down."

"Perhaps that is why there are men like me, to take it down for them."

She lowered her eyelashes to block those pewter eyes before she started believing in the impossible.

"Is your leg well?"

"Which one?"

Abigail's gaze rose to the bait. "Your left one"

Only to be stopped by the glint in his eyes.

"You have a wicked sense of humor, ColonelRobert."

"And you have a sore bum to look after, MissAbigail."

"It is not my bum that is sore."

"I know what is sore. And I know how to make it better."

The bucket of water on the stove hissed. He added it to the hip bathand disappeared behind a fog of steam. Vigorous pumping sounds penetrated the gray mist; they were followed by the cascade of water pouring into water. The writhing steam thinned, revealing Robert leaning over the tub, checking the temperature with a seductive swish of liquid.

He straightened. "Your bath, madam."

Abigail approached the tub and boldly dropped the blanket. Robert just as boldly picked her up.

He kissed her.

His tongue was scalding hot. It was flavored with strawberry jam.

The bathwater was just as scalding hot, with none of the sweetness.

Disregarding dignity, Abigail threw a leg over each side of the tub and heaved herself up. Robert was equally determined to hold her down. And far more successful.

"Let me up! This is scalding!"

"Hold still, Abigail. The water is not going to do you any good unless it is hot."

"Only a lobster would benefit from water this hot!" Closing her eyes in pain and frustration, she tried a more civilized approach. "Please let me up."

"Did I tell you how beautiful you are?"

Abigail knew perfectly well that she wasn't beautiful. Her eyes snapped open. "You are fond of the color red, I take it?"

A low, masculine laugh filled the hot steam. "Abigail, you get much redder when you blush. I promise that after you've soaked for a while, you will feel much, much better."

"You mean that after I have soaked for a while, I will be well done."

"Done 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, Indiais 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. ASepoy 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.

"TheSepoy 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 theSepoy, 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 base of her neck where her pulse wildly drummed. "I drove the second drumstick into his throat. The moment I did it I wanted to take it back. I will never forget the look in his eyes. He pulled the stick out and stood there staring at it while blood and air gushed out of his throat and I thought,he's not going to die. But it was too late, there was no stopping it, the blood, it kept coming even when the wheezing breath stopped."

Hot, salty steam ran down Abigail's cheeks.

"When my commander saw what I had done, he gave me a rifle. The rebellion hadn't really ended; wars never do. We weren't there to establish peace, but to establish British rule. I killed my first man three months to the day of my enlistment, Abigail, and I have been killing ever since."

"You had no choice, Robert." The words that were meant to be a practical condolence were curiously thick.

Something flickered in his gray eyes. His chest moved against her headhis left arm came up. He cupped her face in both hands, thumbs smoothing her cheeks.

Abigail tensely waited, willing him to say it all.

"When my enlistment was over, I went back to England, quite prepared to take whatever work I could find. But it wasn't the same England. I wasn't the same man. I couldn't tell my family the horrors I had committed, fighting for their beloved country. I couldn't take the same pleasures they did in their simple day-to-day lives, knowing what so-called God-fearing men were capable of doing. So I reenlisted."

He bent his head. A whisper of a kiss closed Abigail's eyes; hot breath caressed her lashes.

"In hand-to-hand combat there is a certain closeness; you almost feel an affinity with the enemy. Black man, white man, brown man, yellow man, it makes no difference. When a man is stabbed, or shot, his eyes open wide in surprise. Surprise that the impossible is indeed possiblethat they should die while the enemy lives."

TearsAbigail distantly recognized the hot, salty substance that spilled down her face as tears, not steam. She was crying the tears that he was unable to.

"Four months ago, I didn't shootso I got shot." His thumbs continued smoothing her slippery cheeks. "They shipped me back to England. The leg healed and I knew I would go back to the Army. And I knew that the next time I looked into the eyes of a man, that the surprise would be in mine. And I found out something about myself while I was laid up, convalescing."

She had to strain to make out the rest of his words, feeling them rather than hearing them. "I found out that I did not want to die without knowing what it is like to lose myself inside a woman."

He raised his head and rested his chin on her forehead, a soft prick of stubbly beard. "I am not indulging you, Abigail. You are indulging me."

Dear God, she had wanted to know, and now she knew.

Abigail swallowed the lump in her throat. "Robert."

"Hmm?" His response was a low rumble in his chest.

"I think the sponge is growing."

The rumble grew, until it erupted full force into a shout of laughter.

Her head fell back from loss of support.

Robert leaned over the tub and extended long, brown fingers.

Without a moment's hesitation, she placed her hand in his. And was hauled up in a cascade of water.

"No. Don't stand. Squat down."

She stiffened, tears forgotten.

"Trust me."

The stark gray eyes were warm pewter.

She squatted.

"Spread your legs."

"In case you have failed to notice, Robert, this is a hip bath. There is no room to spread my legs."

Before she could divine his intentions, he bodily picked her up and faced her sideways in the tub.

"There is now. Lean back against me and spread wide, sweetheart."

Sweetheart. No man had ever called her by an endearment. Five-foot-nine-inch-tall women were not endearing. Yet this was the second time he had used the word. Once in the dark of night, and now in the light of day.

Excitement coiled in her stomachand spine-melting vulnerability. Spreading wide her legs, she pressed her back against his chest, trapping her hair between them. The small pain seemed insignificant in comparison to what was going to happen.

Very firmly, very gently, he reached between her legs.

"Relax," he whispered. He nuzzled aside a strand of damp hair and rimmed the tip of her ear with his tongue. "Bear down."

His tongue stabbed into her ear. At the same time, his fingers delved inside her, creating pain, giving pleasure. And then he had it, the sponge, and he was pulling it out and holding it up for her inspection.