The Passionate One
Page 15
Savagely she wrenched around in Ash’s arms, scoring his wrists with her nails. He did not even counter her frantic clawing. There was nothing malleable or soft in him.
“If you are trying to assuage your guilt over abducting her, it’s not that easy, Merrick.” Phillip’s face was pale, white lines bracketing his nostrils, his jaw trembling. “We can still marry. Other brides have not been virgins. Leave her here, Merrick. I assure you, no one will call off the wedding.”
“You leave me no choice but to take her,” Rhiannon thought she heard Ash say under his breath. His horse danced sideways.
“You cannot simply steal her like this,” Phillip said.
She felt more than saw the curl of Ash’s lip as he turned his horse away and set his heels to its sides.
“Oh, but I can.”
Chapter Seventeen
Late that afternoon in an unnamed hamlet thirty miles west of Fair Badden, a single horse rode into the yard of the local blacksmith. It carried a dark man riding behind a tousled young woman. The smithy abandoned his bellows, wiping his own hands on his leather apron. He did not like the looks of this pair.
First off, they were quality. Dusty quality, sweat-stained and travel-worn quality, but quality nonetheless. But, it weren’t that they were quality alone that set a nerve twitching beneath the smithy’s eye. It were that they were quality on the run, and running hard from the looks of them and their barrel-chested, lathered horse.
The girl looked exhausted. The man, a hard and tensile-looking creature, took no note of his companion’s condition. He dismounted, leaving the girl sagging in the saddle.
The smithy, a fond father with daughters of his own, moved forward until he saw the sparkle of fury in the girl’s bright eyes. A lovers’ spat, perhaps, thought the smithy. Perhaps his interference would not be appreciated. Though if his lover had looked at him like the girl glared at the man’s back, he’d have looked elsewhere for his sport no matter what the lure of reddish hair and a full bosom.
A glance at the watchful way the dark man waited—limbs balanced just so—added its counsel urging the smithy to mind his own business. A nasty-looking customer, the stranger.
“I need a horse.” The man pointed at the roan mare fenced in the yard beside the smithy.
His speech marked him a city man, as did his tight breeches and the pearl blade handle protruding from the folded edge of his boots.
“And a saddle, too. Not a lady’s saddle. I’ll pay in coin,” he said and named a sum far exceeding the worth of either horse or leather, and the smithy, what with all those beloved daughters, abandoned chivalry in the interest of practicality. Daughters liked dresses.
The smithy caught the mare and tied her at the fence before fetching an old saddle from its peg.
“May I get down?” he heard the lass ask. From the stilted sound of her voice and the blood rising in her cheeks, the smithy guessed she disliked making the request.
The man studied her a minute. She lifted her chin defiantly. Proud lass. Foolish lass. The man’s mouth tightened but he went to her and without word or warning plucked her from her perch.
“No.” Her single word was denial—repudiation and calm, frigid command. “Don’t touch me.”
The man’s narrow face dulled with color but he did not set her down. He swung about, the lass in his arms as stiff as a paste doll.
“You’ll go round back there,” he said to her. “And you’ll come back before the mare’s done being saddled.”
He set her down, stepping back before she could push him away. She yanked up her heavy skirts and paced off behind the smithy, her hem swishing angrily.
“Yore wife?” the smithy asked, pricked again by the unwelcome call of gallantry.
“Don’t think of interfering, friend,” the man advised. “It will only get you hurt.”
The smithy could fair believe that but still if the lass needed him …
The young woman reappeared a minute later and watched while the smithy finished cinching the girth strap. Nothing was revealed on that pretty face. It was as blank as a churchyard angel’s. As soon as the saddle was on, the man tied a lead rope to the mare’s bridle and called to the young beauty.
For the first time, something other than anger showed on her face. Her eyes shimmered with telling moisture. The man called out again. She bit down on her lip, approaching the mare at a foot-dragging pace.
Once more he swept her up into his arms. Once more she went rigid, a shudder passing through her slight frame. And then, as if against her will, she flung her arms full around the man’s neck. With a soft whimper, she pushed her face against his throat. Tears ran down her smooth cheeks. She clung to him like moss to a rock, her body—before so rigid and denying—now malleable and entreating.
The man froze, a slight check no longer than a heartbeat, before disentangling the girl’s arms from his throat and lifting her into the saddle. He turned his back on her at once.
All the fight seeped from her posture; a lost and bewildered expression appeared on her face. And when she looked at the man, something bled from her eyes that the smithy recognized from long ago and that mostly from dreams, and troubled dreams at that.
How could the man rebuff this woman?
Then the dark stranger strode past the smithy to mount his own steed. His face was averted from the lady and the smithy saw him close his eyes, clenching them tight, and the smithy knew that the cost of his seeming callousness was immense.
They traveled north throughout the evening. Ash stopped once at a farm and bought some bread and cheese from the timid woman who answered the door.
Rhiannon did not speak. After forging that outrageous tale about someone deliberately maiming Stella and trying to kill her, Ash had made no attempt to speak, either.
For her part, she had no words to say to this … devil. He’d taken them in with his polished manners and ready laughter, his easy smile and amiable charm. They’d fed him, and sheltered him, allowing him time to regain his strength, unaware they’d harbored a predator in their midst.
Bitterly, she wondered what he wanted now. She’d already given him what men value most. Perhaps, the acrid thought occurred to her, he’d never considered allowing her to marry Phillip. Perhaps he’d merely taken the opportunity for a profitable holiday, all along planning on taking her to this Lord Carr. Perhaps her infatuation had merely been an agreeable happenstance.
Clearly, he no longer wanted her as his lover. He touched her, yes, but only to assert his strength and her comparative weakness, to show her, she was sure, how easily he could have of her whatever he wished. To frighten her.
He succeeded.
With no reins to clutch, her fingers had grown numb from gripping the rolled edge of the saddle. Her back ached with each step the mare took but she would not ask for mercy. Her thoughts swirled between a dream and waking state.
She had no idea how long he intended to ride. The moon had long since risen above the rutted country road. Its pale light smothered the landscape in a ghostly cowl. Crickets chimed from the grass, and an occasional night-dwelling predator rustled in the ditches, yellow eyes glowing flat and incurious. She’d seen their like before.
Images and sensations flicked through her mind. Memories were like wolves waiting for the door to open to come ravening in, and each mile forced the door open, inch by painful inch.
The sharp line of moonlight cresting the mountain. Muted voices whispering from the hiding hole in the clansman’s croft. The staccato of hoofbeats. Scarlet coats made black by the night, suddenly illumined by torch fire. Discovery. Panic. Shouts …
No!
Her head snapped upright, her stomach roiling, the taste of bile thick on her tongue. Dizzy and disoriented she stared about her.
They were rounding a curve. Ahead, an inn squatted beside a crossroads. Bright light poured from small windows, and a curl of smoke stood pale against the indigo sky. Ash halted, waiting until she was alongside him to speak.
“Why won’t I?” she muttered, head aching dully.
“Because it wouldn’t do you any good,” he replied. “I have papers naming me your guardian in my father’s stead. No commoner is going to challenge the Earl of Carr’s will or, by extension, mine. And if you should bedevil some half-drunk farmer into thinking himself Galahad to your damsel in distress, remember, his wounds would be your doing.”
“No. Please.”
No, please! Come out! The smoke …
“You wouldn’t want more guilt on your tender conscience, would you, Rhiannon?”
She shivered.
“I would think that particular cup is full.”
“Bastard.”
“Unfortunately quite legitimate.” He yanked on the lead rope.
At the inn, he dismounted and came to her side, lifting his arms. Weakly, she slapped his hands away. He stepped back and watched her pull her feet free of the stirrups and slide to the ground. Her legs, numbed from so long in the saddle, buckled.
He reached her as she collapsed, lifting her. “Don’t be a fool. Hurting yourself isn’t going to make me return you to Fair Badden.”
“What will?” she asked weakly.
“Nothing.” He clipped out a command to care for their horses to the tired boy who materialized beside them. Then he kicked open the inn’s door and ducked beneath the low lintel.
A gristle-cheeked innkeeper blinked at their sudden appearance.
“I need a room,” Ash said. “And the lady needs a basin of fresh water, towels. We’ll eat now, while you prepare it.”
Rhiannon squinted around the room, praying she would recognize someone of authority, someone who could stop this madman. There was no one. A pair of rough-looking travelers eyed her interestedly until their gazes fell on Ash.
“See them scars on his wrists? Manacles,” she heard one mutter to the other. “Seen ’em before. Tattoo of the prisons.”
Manacles? Prison?
“Now,” Ash barked at the innkeeper.
“Yes, sir!” The man pattered off behind a door.
With a predatory smile at the two travelers, Ash moved to the fire. He set her down on a stool and dragged a small table in front of her, settling himself on a chair across from her, effectively penning her into the corner.
Heedless of him, she leaned her head against the wall. Her eyelids drifted shut until a rich, earthy aroma filled her nostrils. She opened her eyes. Two steaming bowls sat on the table beside a half loaf of dark bread and a bottle of wine. Her stomach rumbled loudly as she tried to focus her vision. A sickeningly familiar sensation of near-starvation swept over her with all its eviscerating power. Saliva drenched the interior of her mouth.
“For God’s sake,” she heard Ash say, “eat.”
Shamelessly she lifted the wooden bowl and slurped down the thick, viscous liquid in great gulps. She was starving. Ravenous. Her hands shook as she tore into the stale bread and rammed a piece atop the mouthful of mutton stew.
She was breathing too fast, eating too fast, and the wine she sloshed into her mouth to chase down each mouthful of bread stifled the air from her throat.
Memory became present.
Time turned inside out.
Hunger. Excruciating hunger. She hadn’t eaten in days. Nothing but berries and water. They hadn’t dared poach a rabbit or build a fire. The redcoats would see.
Fear and flight. Hounded and hunted on roads, on foot, at night. The mocking moon made crossing the fields near suicidal. They skulked in the ditches, as the soldiers drove the roads, hunting down clansmen, all those men who’d answered the McClairen’s call. The smell of gunpowder. The smell of blood. Men screaming. The mountains looming. The Highlands.
She stared wild-eyed at the cold-eyed stranger sitting opposite her. He was taking her back there.
Her head pounded. A rushing noise began in her ears, dimming the sound of the others’ voices. Her vision swam and she stared into his eyes. Pale like the betraying moon, cold, like a Highland night, beautiful and uncompromising. She rose shakily to her feet, clutching for the edge of the table, spinning, out of breath—
Ash snuffed the guttering candle flame between his thumb and index finger, steeping the room in darkness except for the thin moonlight that trickled from the window and blanketed the slumbering woman on the mattress.
She’d fainted hours ago and had yet to come fully conscious. He’d seen the like in prisoners who’d gone too long without food and were finally fed.
He’d experienced it himself, his first night of freedom from the French gaol. A crease furrowed Ash’s brow. Amongst prisoners such an occurrence might be commonplace but not in gently reared young ladies. Not that his experience with that breed was extensive.
Rhiannon had downed that vile broth as though it had been her only meal in a month. And when she’d risen to her feet, horror had clouded her eyes, a deeper, older horror than that which had blazed from her eyes since he’d taken her from Watt.
He pulled a chair near the narrow cot, cocking his head and studying her. Her lips parted on soft susurration. Not only was she exhausted, she was frightened.
It was his doing, of course. He’d pushed her too far. He should have recognized that earlier, but she wore bravery so well and he’d not much experience with fear, having become inured to it long, long ago. Yet he’d felt a lick of it earlier that day, when he’d recognized what had been done to the dog and realized a trap had been set for Rhiannon. And later, when they’d come out of the forest and seen Watt’s cheerful approach, that lick had become a flail.
He reached over and tucked his jacket up around her throat, taking care to wipe her square little chin. So elegant a jaw, so proudly fashioned …
Abruptly he straightened, raking the black hair back from his face. What the bloody hell was he going to do?
He couldn’t let her return to Fair Badden to be murdered, and murder was exactly what he feared had he left her in Watt’s suspect care. Granted, Watt’s reason for wanting to kill Rhiannon eluded him. He was not satisfied that Watt’s motives could be wholly ascribed to his aversion to marriage—yet the attempts on her life seemed to have begun with their proposed marriage. Nothing else had changed, or threatened to change, the status she’d held in Fair Badden for ten years.
But Watt had refused the excuse to withdraw his suit that Ash had offered him. Yet his vow that he would still marry Rhiannon hadn’t been made by a besotted man, nor even one too proud to acknowledge himself cuckolded. A desperate man had made it. Which made no sense.
And if Ash wouldn’t allow Rhiannon to marry Watt, he would not allow her to become one of his father’s short-lived brides, either. He couldn’t marry her himself. Even if he could find some place to hide her until she came of age and no longer needed Carr’s permission to wed. Or if he could persuade her to marry him in Scotland where Carr’s permission wasn’t needed.
He had nothing in this world: no friends, no holdings, and no future. What money he had was promised to his brother.
Abruptly he stood up, the chair scraping loudly in the hushed room. The only thing in this world that he owned was a promise he’d made to his mother on the day of her death: to watch out for Raine.
All his life it had seemed enough, been his lodestar. When Raine had been taken by that tattered McClairen mob, he’d fought and killed without remorse to free him.
He would not forsake his promise. He could not. It was the only thing he’d not forsaken, having abandoned faith, and hope, and lo—and everything else that romantics wept over and pious madmen preached. Nothing he’d done or become had diminished that obligation.
Nothing until Rhiannon Russell.
He stared down at her, and as he watched, she twisted her cheek into the deep velvet pile of his jacket collar, murmuring in distressed tones. Unable to help himself, he loosed a coil of hair that had caught
against her lip and tucked it behind her ear.
She opened her eyes. For an instant they lightened with recognition but then the light died, killed by fear. She scooted up, heels drumming the mattress in her climb to the headboard.
“If you touch me, I’ll kill you.”
Well, yes. The thought was distant, like an echo in a cave, hollow and detached and having nothing to do with a body that seemed incapable of motion, a mouth that refused to speak the denial that clamored for expression.
Why, yes. If she refused to believe she’d been in danger, she could only think that that was why he’d taken her. It hurt. God help him, it hurt, and he nearly laughed at how ridiculous it was that such a little matter as a girl’s misplaced fear could cause such immeasurable pain.
And was it so misplaced? Would she be wrong at that? All day he’d taken any excuse, however feeble, to hold her, embrace her, touch her; he wanted her so damned much.
And if something in him shriveled before the fearful suspicion in her eyes, well, it was a weak, trifling part of himself that succumbed, a part that he’d never even realized he’d owned, now happily dead.
He reached down, grabbed her arm, and yanked her to her knees.
He was better off without it.
Chapter Eighteen
What little light came through the window did not reach Ash’s face. He didn’t say a word. He just stood over her, like a child’s golem, a construct of darkness and earth, holding her like a child’s cloth doll. Only the violence of his grip bespoke the deep well of anger his silence could not quite contain.
Well, Rhiannon, too, was angry. Years of obeisance fell from her like rusty shackles. Fair Badden had been an opiate, a sweet illusion of kindness and gentleness. But she’d only needed to pass beyond its borders to be wakened to the world she’d left behind, one of treachery, desperation, and deceit.
She pitched herself against his hold and he released her. She fell back on the bed on stiff arms.
“Is that what you think?” he whispered.