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still lodged in your thigh and had to be removed by a surgeon, you see. Fortunately, that happened while you were unconscious. You really ought to drink some water. Let me help you sit up high enough to sip from this glass. It will not be easy for you-you have a nasty lump on your head. And a cut."
    "It feels as if the lump must be the size of a cricket ball," he said. "Am I in Brussels?"
    "Yes," she said. "We brought you back here."
    "The battle. I remember now," he said, frowning. But he did not say any more about it. Rachel was not sure she wanted to hear any of the gory details anyway.
    He drank a little water, though she knew that the pain of lifting his head was almost unbearable for him. She lowered him carefully to the pillow again, wiped up some of the water that had run down over his chin, and then pressed the cool cloth to his forehead once more.
    "Do you have any family here?" she asked him. "Or any friends? Anyone who will be anxiously awaiting news of your fate?"
    "I . . ." He frowned at her again. "I . . . am not sure. Do I?"
    "We really would like to inform them that you are safe and that you are here in Brussels," she said. "Or perhaps your family is all in England. I will write a letter to them tomorrow if you wish."
    She was quite unprepared for what he said next.
    "Who the devil am I?" he asked her, though she had the feeling it was a rhetorical question.
    It chilled her to the bone.
    He appeared to have lapsed into unconsciousness again.
     
    I T WAS DAYTIME WHEN ALLEYNE AWOKE AGAIN. NOT that he had been entirely unconscious through the night. He was aware that he had been alternately burning up with heat and shivering with cold, that he had dreamed and had strange hallucinations-none of which he could now remember-and that he had called out several times. He was aware that someone had hovered over him all night long, cooling his hot face with wet cloths, tucking warm blankets about him, coaxing water between his lips, and crooning comforting words to him.
    But he awoke feeling totally disoriented. Where the devil was he?
    He had been shot in the leg, he reminded himself, and knocked from his horse, jarring every bone in his body as he landed and giving himself a massive concussion. He had been picked up and brought to a brothel, which was inhabited by at least four painted whores and one golden angel. He had contracted a fever and had been having hallucinations through the night. Perhaps it was all a strange, bizarre dream.
    He opened his eyes.
    He had not imagined the angel. She was rising to her feet from a chair beside his bed and coming to lean over him. She set a cool hand against his brow. Her hair was pure, shining gold, her complexion roses and cream. Her eyes, hazel in color, were large and thickly fringed with lashes several shades darker than her hair. Her mouth was wide and generous, her nose straight. She was neither slender nor plump. She was beautifully proportioned and all woman. She smelled sweet, though of no discernible perfume.
    She was surely the most lovely woman he had ever seen.
    He was in love, he thought, only half in humor.
    "Are you feeling any better?" she asked him.
    She was also, if his guess earlier had been correct, living in a brothel. Did that make her . . .
    "I have the monarch of all headaches," he told her, giving his attention to his physical condition-not difficult to do when it was clamoring to be noticed. "I feel as if every bone in my body has been wrenched none too gently into a new position, and I dare not even try moving my left leg. I am uncomfortably warm, yet I am shivering too. My eyes are sensitive to the light. Apart from those minor complaints, I am, I believe, in the best of health." He tried to grin at her and felt a sharp pull from somewhere to the side of his head-that must be where the wound was. "Have I been a troublesome patient? I believe I have."
    She smiled down into his eyes. She had white, even teeth. The expression warmed her eyes and made