Winter's Warrior (The Wicked Winters Book 13)

  Winter’s Warrior

  The Wicked Winters Book 13

  Scarlett Scott

  Winter’s Warrior

  The Wicked Winters Book 13

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2021 by Scarlett Scott

  Published by Happily Ever After Books, LLC

  Edited by Grace Bradley

  Cover Design by Wicked Smart Designs

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is punishable by law.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events, or locales, is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  For more information, contact author Scarlett Scott.

  www.scarlettscottauthor.com

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Preview of Sutton’s Spinster

  Don’t miss Scarlett’s other romances!

  About the Author

  For all the readers who have found comfort in my happily ever afters in uncertain times.

  Prologue

  East London, 1815

  It had taken three of her brother’s guards to carry the felled giant from the streets and settle him in Caro’s bed. But after he regained consciousness and began to fight, it had required five of them to help her tie the thrashing monster to the posts so she could tend him.

  “Bloody madman,” cautioned Randall as Caro secured the man’s left wrist.

  “Touched in the ’ead,” counseled Hugh with a grunt as he narrowly escaped a swinging right fist before catching the man’s arm and holding it to the post.

  Good thing she was a bloody expert at securing prisoners. That was what spending her entire life in a gaming hell did to a girl. The beast would not escape a Caro Sutton knot.

  “If he is mad, we will send him on his way,” she promised, slipping around the bed to tie his other wrist as Bennet, Timothy, and Anthony held the man’s legs.

  “Sutton is going to rip out our guts and feed them to ’is dogs when ’e gets a sniff of this, miss.” The warning, issued by Bennet, was an exaggeration.

  Likely.

  “I have never seen Jasper feeding entrails to his dogs yet,” she said calmly, finishing the knot.

  The man suddenly roared, half-insensate yet still struggling for his life.

  She laid a gentle hand on his brow, which was matted with blood. “Calm yourself, sir. I only aim to help.”

  “I’ll kill you,” the man growled, thrashing some more.

  It was impossible to tell if he was awake or in the grips of violent delirium. His eyes had swelled closed. The beating he had received had been merciless. There was the distinct possibility that he was also drunk, though she did not smell spirits on him. She had seen more than her share of sotted fools getting beaten and robbed in the alleys around The Sinner’s Palace over the years. ’Twould be nothing new.

  When she had first come across him in the alley behind her family’s gaming hell, she had believed he was dead. A closer examination had proven otherwise; his chest had been rising and falling. That had been when she’d fetched Randall, Hugh, and Bennet. But from the moment she had first touched him, she had known instinctively there was something different about this man.

  Her reluctant patient aimed another kick at Bennet and Timothy, landing a boot in the latter’s abdomen. Timothy fell on his arse, clutching his belly and gasping for breath.

  “Damn it,” she grumbled.

  Fortunately, she was accustomed to unruly men in need of healing. She tended to her brothers whenever there was a fight involving knives, fists, pistols, or sometimes all three at once—the Suttons were a bloodthirsty lot. There was no other solution when a man was out of his head as this one was. She was going to have to pour some laudanum down the poor cove’s throat.

  “Hold his head still for me, Randall,” she ordered, fetching the bag she always kept at the ready and plucking the vial she required from it. “But take care where you touch him. We don’t want to give him further injuries.”

  “If ’e bites me, I ain’t going to be ’appy,” the guard said.

  A few months ago, her brother Rafe had accidentally bitten Randall’s finger instead of the leather strap he’d been meant to gnaw on whilst she had stitched up a particularly vicious knife wound. Randall had not forgotten. Nor had he entirely forgiven Caro, even if he did favor her over all her siblings.

  Caro did not fool herself for the reason. If the men were on the wrong end of a knife stick, they wanted to be certain she would be at their sides. The whispers circulating about her in the hell—that she could heal anyone—had not been aided by her natural inclination toward the medicinal. Nor all the treatises she spent each night reading until the stub of her candle flickered out.

  “He shan’t bite you,” she told Randall, drawing nearer as the man continued to thrash and shout curses. “As long as your hold remains firm, that is.”

  Randall glared at her, but he did as she asked, dutifully holding her patient still as she held the vial to his lips and forced the laudanum into his mouth. Just to be certain he would swallow—for there was no telling with a man in his condition—she pinched his nostrils together. He made a choking sound but complied.

  When she was satisfied he had swallowed enough of the liquid to calm him, she turned to the three men at his feet. “Hold him still for me, lads.”

  Chapter 1

  His only memories were of a witch trying to kill him.

  She had cast a spell over him, until he felt as if he were weighed down by boulders and had been unable to move. Then, she had forced a bittersweet potion down his throat until the darkness claimed him.

  As he pondered it now, he was sure it had been the delirium of the fever Caro said had raged through him after she had found him, beaten nearly to death, with a pistol wound in his upper arm. Fortunately, the ball had passed cleanly through, but the infection that had set in after she’d stitched him up had almost been the end of him.

  And the source of those terrible nightmares, which still clawed at him every night when he fell asleep.

  But it was morning, light shining through the edges of the window dressings, and the bustle of the street below telling him it was past time to rise. His stomach growled, as if in competition with the din of the voices of the men and women and the clattering of drays passing in the street. Hunger was a good sign. It meant his broken body was healing.

  Too bad his mind continued to be utter rot.

  He threw back the bedclothes and rose, shucking the nightshirt the glowering fellow named Randall had helped him to don the evening before. Removing the shirt required great care and patience, for his injured arm remained difficult to move. Now that he was at last feeling like a man instead
of an invalid, however, it was worth the risk. He had been longing to wear the shirt and trousers which were neatly folded and awaiting him across the room.

  When Caro had brought him the clothing a few days ago, he had not yet been strong enough to don them. But each day, he regained more of his ability. And when he had risen this morning, he had decided it was at last time to make an effort.

  He may not recall a single, damned detail about who he was or why he had found himself nearly dead behind a gaming hell called The Sinner’s Palace, but today, he was going to wear some cursed rigging as if he were an ordinary chap.

  He winced as he struggled to remove his wounded arm from the sleeve of the nightshirt, then cried out as the stitches pulled. But he was determined. Biting his lip hard, he pulled his arm free, then slid the entire garment over his head.

  The door to the chamber flew open and Caro stepped over the threshold, bearing a tray.

  He froze, and the one portion of his anatomy which seemed to have remained unaffected by the injuries he had endured went rigid. Forgetting himself, he attempted to clamp his hands over his cockstand, and howled in pain as the stitches in his arm pulled once more.

  Wide, hazel eyes were upon him. Upon that particular part of him.

  “Oh bloody hell,” she said, nearly sending the tray’s contents to the floor. “Forgive me. I had no notion you were bare-arsed.”

  The heavy door had already closed on its own momentum at her back.

  They were alone.

  Damnation, she was beautiful. Through the haze of pain, through the agony of fire burning in his arm, he recognized it. The shock of his hasty movement had made his cock soften, but it did not remain so for long.

  It never did in this woman’s presence. Miss Caro Sutton was an angel. He was convinced of it.

  “Apologies, Caro,” he managed, standing there awkwardly, trying not to admire the flush creeping over her or the glistening strands of auburn in her chestnut hair.

  “It is I who should be sorry,” she said, her husky voice falling around him like a warm caress. “I ought to have knocked. In my haste to bring you some sustenance, I assumed you would be abed and…dressed.”

  “I was about to be,” he said wryly, nodding toward the stack of clothing.

  The place where the bullet had passed through his flesh still throbbed, but the woman before him had a way of soothing even the greatest of pains. Ever since he had arisen to her lovely, concerned face hovering over him, he had found himself strangely comforted by her presence.

  Indeed, over the course of the time she had spent nursing him back to health, he had become hopelessly taken with her. At least, he thought that was what this strange warmth was in his chest, this need he had for her, which burst forth, uncontrollable and overwhelming.

  The devil of it was, without his memory, there was nothing he could do with the feelings churning inside him. He could already be wed to another. He could be anyone. Hell, he still did not know what he looked like. For all he knew, he was bracket-faced, and a goddess like Caro would never look twice at him were she not nursing him back to health.

  “I am not accustomed to you being able to move about with such freedom,” she said, averting her gaze as she placed the tray upon a table. “I am well pleased to see you out of bed.”

  Greedily, he watched her every movement, admiring the way her gown clung to her bosom, the swell of her hips, the creaminess of her skin. He should probably return to the bed and cover himself, but he did not want to move, lest she flee.

  Over the last few days, as he had become increasingly coherent, his mind clearing and his body regaining strength, she had been more skittish than usual. On edge, it seemed to him, as if there were some burden weighing upon her.

  “Have you told your siblings I am here?” he asked her, wondering if the secrecy surrounding his presence was what had her so prickly or if it was merely him.

  Over the course of the time she had spent tending to him, she had revealed they were staying in her family’s gaming hell, The Sinner’s Palace. Although her family’s guards had helped her to bring him here to her rooms, they were loyal to her and had kept her secret. Her very protective siblings would not have been pleased to know their sister had brought a stranger into their midst. One she was hiding in her private room, in her bed. He still had not discovered where she was sleeping.

  Now that he was well enough to hoist himself out of bed, he had to address the question. It was deuced unfair for Caro to be deprived of her own chamber because of him, a stranger she had rescued from death. He owed her a debt of tremendous magnitude.

  “I will tell them soon,” she said, moving so that her back was to him as she fussed with the items on the tray. “I was waiting until you were well enough. I’ll not have an injured man forced to endure an inquisition.”

  She spoke well for a woman who lived in a gaming hell.

  Or at least, he thought she did. There were some things which seemed to make sense in his foggy mind. The notion of this soft-spoken, gentle, intelligent woman in the East End was not one of them.

  “You will tell them today,” he said. “I’ll not keep you from your rooms any longer. I am well enough to go.”

  But as he said the words, a wave of dizziness hit. He stumbled to the side. Christ, mayhap he had done too much, too soon. Or perhaps it was the question of where he would go when he left his temporary lodgings here. He was no one, with no money, no memories, no name.

  Caro was at his side in an instant, her arms around his waist, guiding him back to the bed. “You still need time to heal.”

  Her sweet scent teased his senses. Floral, he thought. Lavender? Rose? He had not asked, and his muddled mind could not be sure he even knew the distinction between the two, though the words appeared readily enough.

  He forgot he was naked as a babe as she helped him to settle on the mattress.

  Until he glanced down at her and realized she was carefully looking in the other direction, the flush still kissing her cheeks. “Thank you,” he said, aware of the manner in which his large form must tax her smaller frame.

  But she was resilient, Caro, and capable, too.

  With a stern air, she flipped the bedclothes over his lap. “You are not strong enough to be wandering, but next time I will be certain to announce myself before entering, and you, sir, will be certain to be clothed.”

  It was a reprimand, he knew, but coming from Caro, it possessed little bite. He wondered what sort of man he was. Honorable or a rogue? A gentleman or a scoundrel? Was he kind and considerate? What if he had a woman at home? He had never considered that possibility before.

  His body certainly had a mind of its own, and it wanted the woman before him.

  “Aye, Caro,” he said, attempting a gentle nod. Moving too strenuously still produced the devil of a headache thanks to the beating his old knowledge box had taken.

  He wished he knew who had attacked him and why. Caro had told him it was a miracle he was not dead, and he believed her. He must have been in a bad way. About to croak.

  But it was difficult indeed to comprehend himself in danger, when now he was ensconced in the softness of her bed, the seductive floral notes of her scent, those hazel eyes pinned on him, her hands fussing with his hair. Sweeping a lock gently from his forehead.

  Christ, had anyone shown him such care?

  He could not remember, but he thought not.

  “How are you feeling today?” she asked him, frowning.

  He did not like when she stopped smiling, for he knew from experience that her expression meant she was concerned. Worrying. Usually, over him. He did not know why, or what he had done to produce such fretting.

  “I feel like I want your smile,” he blurted, and then regretted his tongue’s haste.

  He was strangely adrift, uncertain of who he was, what he would ordinarily say. There remained the questions, as ever, gnawing away at him, filling him with guilt.

  “My smile?” She obliged him by giving
him a bright, teasing grin. “And here I thought you would be wanting to break your fast.”

  The scents on the tray she had brought with her reached him. His stomach growled. “I cannot tell you how pleased I am to be beyond broth and gruel.”

  “I can well imagine.” She flitted away from his bedside to fetch it before returning and placing it carefully upon his lap. “Broth and gruel are detestable. I was sick once, and my sister spooned bone broth down my throat until I nearly choked for fear of what would become of me. To this day, I cannot stomach broth.”

  If she had taken note of his incessant cockstand, straining against the bedclothes, she said nothing. He was partially ashamed for the rampant display, but also partially concerned with the need to keep her here, at his side. To ignore his body’s reaction, over which he freely acknowledged he had no control. Being ill required a man to give up all hope of reining in his own anatomy. Ever since he had awoken, he’d been a prisoner of his inabilities: to remember, to move…hell, even to complete the simplest of tasks.

  He turned his attention to the sustenance she had brought him. Coffee, eggs, a rasher of bacon, honey cakes. His stomach growled once more, but she was watching him, hovering near, her delicious scent like a continued benediction. He shifted on the bed, trying to find a more comfortable position, to seek some relief.

  Finding none.

  As long as she was here, within reach, casting her spell upon him, he was stripped of any chance at producing the necessary defenses. “I meant what I said, Caro. I’ll not be taking your bed from you any longer.”