He said her name as if it were a prayer. Then his long fingers sank into her hips and he rose beneath her with deep, hard thrusts, once, twice, a third time.
Her very being coalesced around him. She cried out her wild joy and grief as hot, liquid pleasure crested inside her. He caught her to him, burying his face between her breasts as he shuddered, pouring his being into her, and what felt like his love.
A mile farther along the road, or perhaps two, she stirred. She was still sitting astride him. Anyone glancing in upon them as they whirled past might see her there, spy her open bodice. She eased from him, began to do up her buttons while he fastened his trousers then leaned to help push her skirts into place.
Abruptly, a thudding explosion shook the air. Hard upon it came a shouted order.
Sonia’s gaze flew to Kerr’s. His grim nod confirmed her fear even as another shot whined above the coach. The diligence jerked as the coachman grabbed the brake handle.
Dust billowed, catching up and surrounding them in a dirty cloud as the heavy vehicle slowed. A horseman appeared, galloping toward the head of the mule team. Another followed, and another. They shouted, cursing in Spanish. The diligence came to a rocking halt.
The door beside Kerr was snatched open. He paused in the act of replacing the studs in his shirt as a familiar face, swarthy and decorated by a thin, newly grown mustache, thrust inside. Just below it appeared the silver bore of a wicked-looking pistol. It did not waver as it centered on Kerr’s chest.
“Step down, if you please,” Alexander Tremont ordered with a chilling blend of menace and manners. “Take care how you go about it. I’d hate like hell to shoot you, my friend, but will if you give me cause.”
Sonia sat for an instant in stunned incomprehension. It was routed as red-hot rage swept through her. “What is the meaning of this, monsieur?” she demanded, even as she searched for her slippers and pushed her toes into them. “By what right do you dare stop a public diligence?”
“You will also step down, Mademoiselle Bonneval.” Tremont dipped the pistol in her general direction.
“I’ll do no such thing. We are on our way to Vera Cruz, and you cannot—”
She was stopped in midtirade as Kerr reached to lay a finger across her lips. He met her gaze, his own dark with warning before he pulled away. Taking her arm then, he drew her with him as he alighted from the heavy coach. When her feet touched the ground, he stepped in front of her, using his body to shield her from the men who milled around them on horseback.
What was Kerr thinking? His face was set in hard lines. Every muscle was rigid as he stood waiting. With his tremendous size and agility, he appeared deadly savage, the very epitome of a master at arms.
He had no weapon save a pocketknife.
“Step away from her, Wallace,” Tremont ordered as he retreated out of arm’s reach. His pistol was steady of Kerr’s chest.
“I don’t believe so.”
“No harm will come to her at my hands, I swear to you. I am only delegated to escort her to her future husband.”
Kerr gave a short laugh. “To think I actually hoped you hadn’t drowned.”
“Oh, we were all rescued and treated most courteously, including Tante Lily who anxiously awaits her niece at Rouillard’s town house. Unfortunately, you won’t be a welcome guest.”
Sonia felt an easing inside her. Her aunt was really alive. She wasn’t at the bottom of the sea or in a Mexican prison. The longing to see her, hear her bright chatter, was so strong that she swayed a little with it.
Kerr must have felt the whisper of her relieved breath past his shoulder. He reached to clasp an arm around her waist, even as he gave Tremont a speculative look. “Rouillard knows I’m here.”
“As you say. And he prefers to avoid a meeting.”
“It may be postponed but won’t be avoided.”
“He thinks differently.” Tremont’s voice hardened. “I said step away.”
Kerr held his place.
Something flickered across Tremont’s face that might have been regret. Then he looked past Kerr’s shoulder and gave a nod.
A horseman wheeled in close behind them, lifted his rifle like a club and struck. The blow thudded into the back of Kerr’s head. Sonia cried out, clutching at his arm as he staggered. A second blow landed between his shoulder blades. She went down with him, pulled by his great weight. Scrambling to her knees, she reached toward the dark wetness already matting his hair.
She was snatched from behind by a hard arm around her waist. She kicked and fought, shrieking like a madwoman, striking backward with her elbows. A grunt told her the man who held her was Tremont and she had hurt him.
It made no difference. A moment later, one of his men trotted up with his mount. She was hefted across the saddle. Seconds later, Tremont swung up behind her. Wrenching her upright so she sat across his lap, he shouted an order. Then he swung the horse in a neighing, pawing turn and kicked him into a hard run.
Sonia strained against Tremont’s hold, bobbing, jerking with the horse’s hard gait as she craned her head to look back. For an instant, she could see nothing except four or five of the brigands milling around the diligence and its open door.
A space cleared between them then. She saw Kerr sprawled on the ground with blood seeping into the dirt beside him.
Twenty-Three
A groan, low and heartfelt, roused Kerr. It was a moment before he understood it had come from his own throat.
Hell, but his head ached as if a thousand blacksmiths banged away at their anvils inside it. His back hurt, his eyes hurt. Damned if even his teeth didn’t hurt.
Flashes of images danced in his mind in backward progression. A slow ride in a cart with squeaking wooden wheels under a blanket that smelled of dogs. Dirt in his mouth and eyes. A man with a silver pistol. A diligence with the door thrown wide. Sonia, livid with anger yet with fear welling up into her eyes.
Sonia…
He came up off the cot where he lay so fast that his head swam. A chain running from the wall to a shackle on one ankle caught him. He tumbled to the floor, catching himself on his hands and knees. Sinking back to a sitting position, he braced his spine on the edge of the cot and pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes.
God, where was she? What was happening to her? Tremont had said he would take her to Rouillard. Was it the truth, or did he want her for himself?
Tremont and Rouillard.
It was difficult to credit, the pair of them working together. He’d thought better of Tremont after a few days at sea with him. The guns aboard the Lime Rock—he and Rouillard must have partnered in that trade. One shipment had been lost, but there might have been more, could still be more.
Tremont wouldn’t hurt Sonia, surely he wouldn’t. The same couldn’t be said for Rouillard. A man who discovered his bride-to-be had been consorting with his worst enemy would be in no mood to welcome her with open arms.
Thank God for that.
Or maybe not.
Kerr couldn’t decide which might be worse in his head-pounding confusion, that Rouillard would fold her to his bosom with glad kisses and a hasty wedding or that he might beat her.
A shudder ran over him as sick rage washed through him. He’d slice Rouillard to ribbons and leave him fluttering in the wind if he hurt her. Nothing would prevent him, not stone walls or bars, not the shackle that held him or the sanctity of vows spoken by a priest. If Rouillard put a mark on her, he was a dead man.
His fault, Kerr thought with another groan. If she was in danger for being with a man before her wedding, the blame could be laid squarely at his door. He should never have taken her, never tasted her, never held her.
Yet how could he not? She was so lovely in her passion. Her skin was smooth as satin under his hands, sweet and warm under his lips. Her smile as she rode him in the diligence had been tender yet wicked with delight. He had wanted to stay buried in her for aeons, feeling the hot silk of her depths, counting the fervid pulsations of he
r heart. And her breasts—their tender skin under his eyelids, the sweetness of her nipples hardening under his tongue made his mouth water at the memory. To take her in the diligence had been the height of stupidity, yet he would not trade even a second of it for his dearest hope of heaven.
He had made love to her in the beginning because she had asked it, and because he had thought to provide for Rouillard a reason to challenge him, one he could not ignore. It had seemed a form of protection since her fiancé might well call off the wedding she dreaded after it was discovered.
He saw now the reasons were mere excuses, and weak ones at that. He had wanted Sonia in the most desperate way, and was sure it was the only chance, only time, he could ever have her.
Now it was over. Done. He only prayed he hadn’t harmed her more than Rouillard ever could.
Kerr opened his eyes, squinting at the opposite wall and the door that centered it. If she was with Rouillard now, the job he’d been paid to do was at an end. He was freed of any obligation to her father. He could take her away if she wanted to go. She deserved that choice.
First, he had to find her. That was after he managed to get himself out of this coil.
Taking a deep breath, his first in what seemed a long time, he gazed around him. He was in a small room with four walls, three of plaster and the fourth of stone with a slit of a window let into it well above the height of a man. The only furnishings were the cot and a bucket. The floor was of stone, and the door that gave access of heavy wood. There was no lock, which suggested it might have a bar and padlock on the outside. Stains on the floor and a lingering scent of vinegar and corn made him think the place had been a storeroom at one time, or maybe a wine cellar. That it was part of a house or barn was plain enough, for somewhere in the distance he could hear the cooing of doves, children at play and snatches of voices in rumbling conversation.
The knowledge was no good to him. He wasn’t sure he could stand up just yet, and there was no give in the chain that held him.
He let his eyelids close again as he listened. His head swam and he nodded. He must have dozed off or maybe passed out sitting upright, for his chin was on his chest and the door in front of him was opening when he came to himself again.
The man who stepped into the cell-like room was running to seed. His sandy hair was thinning, his face shiny and centered by a purple-veined nose and with a second chin hanging under the first. His tailor had done his best to conceal the man’s expanding waistline, but nothing could disguise the sag of his trousers in the back. The blue of his eyes had a faded quality that dimmed the cunning in their depths, and they darted here and there as if he suspected an ambush in every corner.
He wore neither hat nor gloves, a circumstance that led Kerr to think the storeroom could well be located in whatever dwelling he’d acquired for himself. That meant, in turn, that he had undoubtedly arrived in Vera Cruz.
This was the man who had ordered Sonia sent to him as he would a parcel of linen or jar of pomade. This was the man who intended to bed her every night for the rest of his life, the one who would get his children on her, grow old with her and lie beside her for all eternity.
“Rouillard, I suppose.”
Kerr made no attempt to disguise his utter contempt. Dragging himself up by bracing on the edge of the bed, he pushed slowly to his feet. The move made his head reel and his stomach heave, but it didn’t matter. His visitor seemed inclined to loom over him and it went against the grain to allow it.
“At your service,” Sonia’s fiancé said with a snort.
Rouillard had left the door open behind him. A second man stepped through it just then. It was Tremont, dressed more formally than when last seen. Kerr’s hands clenched into fists and he took a short step toward him. His chain scraped and plaster dust sifted from the wall where it was fastened, but he was still brought up short by the shackle.
“Where is she?” he demanded, his gaze hot on Tremont’s face. “What have you done with her?”
That gentleman said nothing, but only moved to prop his shoulders against the wall beside the door.
Rouillard advanced farther into the room. “You refer to Mademoiselle Bonneval, I imagine. She is quite well and resting in my care. And I might add that she is pathetically grateful to be with me at last.”
“You lie,” Kerr said in quiet certainty. “Sonia—Mademoiselle Bonneval—was never pathetic about anything in her life. I’ll be bound she wasn’t grateful to be carried off against her will, either.”
Rouillard gave him a narrow look and opened his mouth to speak, but Tremont forestalled him. “She is well enough. Certainly she came to no harm from me. I believe she’s resting at the moment.”
She was well. Kerr wasn’t sure why he accepted that assurance from Tremont when he doubted Rouillard. Something tight and hard inside him dissolved at the news, an indication of how fearful he had been.
“I can’t see why she had to be dragged out of the diligence and brought here,” he said. “We were on our way, had been since the shipwreck.”
“Don’t be a fool.” Disdain was heavy in Rouillard’s voice. “The necessity was to separate her from you.”
“You know why I’m here.” It was a threat as much as a question.
“I’ve known from the moment I heard your name on the lips of Sonia’s aunt. Not that I wouldn’t have recognized you on sight. You have the same size and coloring as your brother, the same stiff-necked pride and damn look of being ready to take on an army by yourself. How Bonneval came to be taken in by you, I can’t imagine. You’ll find me more wily.”
“No doubt. Look how you fooled Andrew.”
Purple color appeared in Rouillard’s face. “I did what I had to do. He could have come with me when I left the Rangers. The idiot refused as a matter of honor. As if that was worth shit when we were all about to die.”
“But you lived.”
“I lived, and I’ve done well in spite of you. Oh, I’ve always known you were on my tail. Now look where it’s got you.”
“Just look,” Kerr agreed with irony. He had come up with his quarry, after all. That was something after all these years. “What will you do now?”
“I thought we should talk, see if there isn’t some compromise. I have a great deal of money and will have more when my wife’s fortune is in my hands. You could buy a sizable piece of property in South America and live like a king.”
“I don’t figure I’d make much of a monarch,” Kerr said softly.
Rouillard pushed out full lips. Putting his hands behind his back, pushing them under the tails of his coat, he took a turn around the small room. “Everybody likes money. You’ll change your mind after a few days in here.”
“I doubt it.”
Disappointment and trouble were plain in the man’s petulant frown. “I should have let Tremont kill you.”
“Why didn’t you, just as a matter of curiosity?”
“I thought he would, didn’t know he expected me to actually give the order.” Rouillard shot Tremont a hard stare as he took another turn, his manner as offhand as if the topic had no more importance than a misplaced invitation to a soiree.
The man was a coward, Kerr saw. His methods were the sly, underhand ones of a weakling, someone too squeamish to get his hands dirty. He’d always known it in the back of his mind, but never quite the extent of it.
More than that, Rouillard had no conscience. He gave not a thought to the hopes, the dreams, the very lives of those he used or who got in his way.
He was hardly worth killing.
And this was the man Sonia was to marry.
Disgust raged through Kerr at the thought. Rouillard would never appreciate Sonia’s courage and independence. He’d try to break her; his ego would demand it. He’d confine her, use her, treat her no better than a dog to be kicked or petted at his whim. All her lovely passion would be wasted, for such a man would see it as something to be deplored or even feared, a threat to his feeble manhood.
&n
bsp; The thought sickened him to the bottom of his soul. It could not be allowed to happen.
“Release Mademoiselle Bonneval from the marriage contract between you,” he said abruptly. “In return, I’ll give my pledge to return to New Orleans and leave you in peace.”
Rouillard stopped, turned to face him. A bark of a laugh rasped in his throat. “I suppose I’m to take your word for that.”
“I am no less a man of honor than was my brother.”
The small room was quiet while the other man stared at him. Tremont, against the far wall, gazed at his fingernails as if in boredom, though it may have been a pose.
“You want my bride,” Rouillard said finally.
God, yes, he wanted her, Kerr thought fervently, but it would be crass to say it, and stupid as well. “Allow her to set up her household, if that’s what she wants. Or send her back to her father on the next ship with or without escort. It’s all one to me.”
“Let her go, when she came here expecting to be married?”
“She would rather be free.”
“And you would rather see it, would trade your hope of revenge for it.” Rouillard gave a wheezing snort. “I’m amazed, I must say.”
“It seems a fair exchange.”
“So you say, but there is her dowry to be considered.”
“Marry her first and keep it when you let her go.”
“Now, that’s an idea—or would be if you were in any position to be a threat. Fortunately for me, you aren’t.”
That could not be denied, at least for now. “She doesn’t want this marriage, she’s said so time and again. Why would you hold her to it?”
“Her family is one of the most distinguished in New Orleans and it may suit me to return there one day. She is her father’s only heir, an important consideration. As for what she wants, I like to think I can change her mind.”
“You won’t. If she fought so against making the voyage here, think what grief she’ll give you.”
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