Clay, I am going to remove the bindings on one of your hands so you can sit up, but your legs and the other hand will remain tied.”

His eyes watched Ellis as he nodded. Since his left shoulder had sustained the injury, Ellis decided to release his right hand. Her fingers fumbled with the ties, finally loosening the knot she’d made this morning.

As the ropes fell free, she scooted away from him. He flexed his fingers as if trying to get feeling in them but otherwise remained still.

“I will lift your head,” she told him as she moved back into position. “Use your hand to help yourself sit up.”

Ellis slid her hand under his neck. This time, he turned his head to look up at her. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Green eyes.”

He said the words in English, his first use of that language since he’d arrived on their property. What that meant, she would have to ponder later. For now, she had a job to do, and that job involved repositioning a very handsome but very mysterious wounded soldier.

“Ellis,” she corrected as lightly as she could manage at this close distance. For up close his eyes were deep and soft and his weak smile would make the heart of any woman who had more than an interest in his health beat faster.

But she only held an interest in healing this Grey’s wounded body and allowing him to return to the cause of freedom for Texas. If she was wrong and he was a foe, then she would still have a clean conscience knowing she had treated one of God’s beloved children even if that child was an enemy to a cause Ellis held dear.

“Ellis,” he repeated.

“Just as we tried before, only we will move slowly,” she said as she lifted his head. “Are you ready?”

“I am.”

Though the soldier groaned as if he was in agony, he refused to allow her to lay him back down. After a few minutes of the two of them working together, he managed to sit up.

Ellis grabbed two extra quilts and rolled them, then added his pillow to support his back and neck as she settled him into a semi-reclining position. Now, though he could sleep this way, he could also eat.

Unfortunately, the effort must have exhausted him, for Clay fell into a deep sleep as if he had forgotten all about his hunger. Ellis took the opportunity to remove the plate and return it to the kitchen, making sure to bar the barn door when she left.

Dumping out the old food for the dogs to devour, she made quick work of cooking another plate of eggs. She also pulled a tin mug down from the shelf. If the soldier could manage food, then he could also manage a mug.

She crossed the yard to return to the barn but paused to look up at the sky before she released the latch. Ominous black clouds floated toward her, the high-hat type that were known to come up off the Gulf on warm summer afternoons.

But this was October.

Still, the weather had remained temperate as it sometimes did here in this part of Texas. As long as the storm did not prevent Mama and the boys from returning, then a decent soaking of rain was always welcome.

Rain. He always loved the rain, didn’t he? It rained where he was from, didn’t it? Yes, he thought it did. Or maybe that was only the place where he visited?

Maybe all of this was just another thought the green-eyed woman had given him. Like the name that did not seem to fit or the accusation that he would somehow do her harm or escape if he were to be released from these ropes.

He was weak as a kitten and had no desire to do anything but sleep. Not true, he decided as he slid his eyes open just enough to catch sight of the woman reading by lamplight.

Had he the ability to focus well and to remain awake, he would want to look into those green eyes and manage to say something. Anything. Why did they render him mute?

But they did not, did they? For he had answered questions. That was her who asked, wasn’t it?

Though everything that happened before the moment he saw those green eyes looking down at him was wrapped in a fog he could not yet penetrate, he knew this was not the first time he had seen her.

This woman held some meaning, but what? Was she only here to tell him things? To offer him water and change his dressings?

Was she real at all?

He exhaled a long breath. He was not so far gone that he did not recall the feel of her hand at the back of his neck. Of her encouraging words whispered against his ear and the warning look she gave him when she freed his hand.

Flexing his fingers, he glanced over at his left hand. A rope still held him to the bed, but even without that binding, the pain in his shoulder likely would have discouraged movement.

What had happened to him? Hadn’t she asked him that? Had he answered?

She caught him staring and lowered the book she had been reading. “Hello again,” she said to him. “You had a long rest.”

A flash of lightning sizzled between them and then thunder shook the room. She had lit a lamp, but there were shadows all around.

He avoided the shadows, this much he remembered. Shadows held danger.

“Are you hungry?” she asked, diverting his attention from the search of the corners of the room. At his nod, she came toward him, a plate now in her hand. She offered a fork, but his hand shook when he tried to take it.

“Let me help,” she said as she loaded the fork with something on the plate and offered it to him. His mouth opened, but he kept his attention on those green eyes.

On Ellis.

Yes, he must remember that name. Ellis.

“Slowly,” she said again as his attention shifted to her mouth. Her lips were pursed into a pout. As soon as he took a bite of whatever she had put on the fork, those same lips curved into the beginnings of a smile.

After a few bites, she paused. “Slowly,” she repeated as she set the plate aside. “Give yourself time.”

Everything in him wanted to protest. To explain that although he did not currently recall with any accuracy his name or anything else about himself relating to where he was or how he got there, he was still a man who was not used to being fed or taking orders.

He gave the orders.

Or at least he hoped that was a memory and not just another thing Ellis had said to him.

No, he decided as he tried to force his feeble brain to focus. He had given an order once. An order he regretted.

But what was it?

After a moment, he let that thought go and watched it disappear like a wisp of smoke on a dark night. She was feeding him again. He accepted the sustenance, allowed her to care for him. He would do that until he was well enough for the balance of power to be restored.

For he was not a man to be ruled and run by a woman. He’d not been raised to lie abed without doing hard work, had he? The answer of no felt correct, so he hoped that was the case.

Outside, the thunder rolled on. The lamplight shook with each peal, and the patter on the roof continued. The combination was a symphony that lulled him to sleep once again, this time with his belly full.

Then something jarred him awake. Questions. Yes. She was speaking to him, the green-eyed woman who had tied him here. Something about his plans for a date in November.

November 18.

Recognition jolted deep inside him. Focus. What was important about that date?

Think.

He knew this. Knew why it was important. Something more important than anything else in his life.

He closed his eyes and then opened them again. Ellis had stopped talking and was looking at him as if expecting an answer.

Was he being interrogated? Yes, that was it. She knew something and thought he knew more. That was why he’d been trussed up like a Christmas turkey and relegated to some dark room in a place he could not name.

She walked over to the table and placed the book she’d been reading next to his lamp and a pair of oddly familiar Wellington boots. Then she offered more eggs, and he shook his head.

Still those green eyes kept watching him. Beneath the quilt, he pulled against the ropes holding his left hand and paid for the effort with a jolt of pain in his shoulder. Was she the one who caused him to be in this position, or had she merely followed the orders of someone else?

November 18.

He had no idea how long in the future that was. Or perhaps the day was already past and this had been the result.

In either case, what would she do next? Was she his healer or his prison guard? Rain continued to pound the roof and thunder shook the walls as he considered these questions with as much care as his feeble mind could manage.

Then he knew. It did not matter what she would do next, for he must strike first. If the green-eyed woman was a threat to his mission, he must neutralize the threat.

With his free hand, he motioned for her to move closer. Though he thought he detected reluctance in those green eyes, she did as he asked.

Quick as a snake, his hand wrapped around hers. “Who are you, and why are you holding a man who represents the president of the United States?”

The words were out, but he had no idea where they came from or what they meant.

Ellis willed herself not to panic. Though her heart raced and her fingers trembled, she kept her expression neutral. “Release me,” she told him.

He ignored her.

She could hit him where it would hurt the most—namely his shoulder—but as a healer she would take that action only as a last resort. “Clay,” she said gently, “I am the person who has kept you alive.”

He blinked hard as if trying to understand the statement.

“You were bound for safety,” she added.

His eyes narrowed. “Yours or mine?”

A flash of lightning split the sky outside the high window. This time there was no thunder, only a deafening crack and a flash of white light inside the small barn. Out of the corner of her eye, Ellis saw a slim thread of something bluish-purple race down the wall. Then came the unmistakable scent of something burning.

“Fire!”

With the soldier distracted, Ellis yanked her hand free. The wall had begun to glow with fire, though thankfully, the rain appeared to be keeping the old wood from igniting.

At least so far.

“Remove the ropes,” the soldier commanded, reverting back to Acadian French as he fumbled with the bindings that still held his left hand to the bed.

Despite the rain that poured down on the roof, flames had begun to take possession of the wood on the opposite side of the small barn. Soon the fire would reach the table beside the door. There it would consume the lamp that held enough flammable oil to cause an explosion.

They would then be trapped.

Ellis hurried to the end of the bed and lifted the quilt just enough to tug at the ropes binding the soldier’s feet together. Behind her she could feel the heat of the flames growing.

With her hands trembling, the knots refused to budge. She looked up from her work and their gazes connected.

“We will live,” Clay told her as he jerked at the bindings on his left hand. “Keep trying.”

“Yes,” she shouted over the rain and her fear. “We will.”

Ellis tarried only a moment as she tried to latch onto the claim. Then she went back to her work with the same result.

“There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.”

The words of the psalm she had only just been reading moments ago. Psalm 91.

Her fingers stilled.

Though the flames grew and her heart raced, calm settled inside her. The next attempt to untie the ropes was successful. The soldier’s feet were free.

Unfortunately, Clay had not yet managed to accomplish the same feat. He now lay back against the quilts, exhausted and seemingly unable to move.

“Go,” he told her when their eyes met. “Save yourself.”