Amanda did not need any urging. She ran her hands anxiously over little arms and legs, and tipped the child’s small white face up for a flurry of fevered kisses before she was able to assure herself her daughter had only suffered a bad scare, nothing more.
Dianna stood beside them, her hand clasped over the tight constraints of her bodice.
“My God,” she gasped. “How could a man do such a thing to a woman … to his own wife?”
Amanda could not answer. It was just occurring to her that she had been the one to send Ned Sims down to the cabin, and that if she hadn’t, Sally might still be going about her chores with her usual shy efficiency.
Shaken by the thought, Amanda gave Verity a last, reassuring kiss on her cheek and turned to Dianna. “Will you take her back up to the house for me, please? I must go and see if I can do anything to help Flora.”
“Of course.” Dianna took Verity and tilted her head in the direction of the servants and workmen who were beginning to gather in front of the cabin by twos and threes, having plucked the news out of thin air as usual. “Shall I send someone for the doctor as well?”
Amanda nodded. “Please. And have someone prepare one of the bedrooms; I don’t want her staying here a moment longer than necessary.”
Dianna left and Amanda issued another series of curt orders to some of the men standing nearby before she went back into the cabin. Mrs. Reeves was on her knees beside Sally, pressing a cloth to her head. Michael and Foley had managed to turn the injured girl gently onto her back; Michael was pouring water into a basin, and Foley was propping her head under a wadding of folded linens. There was still a great deal of fresh blood leaking from the wound each time Flora lifted the cloth away, and Sally’s arm, Amanda noticed, was twisted at an odd angle away from the elbow.
Michael was suddenly there in front of her, blocking her view with his big body.
“Go back outside,” he ordered quietly. “There’s nothing you can do here. If you want to help, you can send for a doctor and—”
“I’ve already sent for one. How is she?”
“She’s taken a nasty blow on the head, but she opened her eyes a minute ago and tried to say a few words to Flora. Her arm is broken and she has a few cuts … but I think she’ll be alright.”
Amanda raised a trembling hand to her own temple. “I’ve asked two of the men to find a plank to use as a stretcher, and I’m having one of the bedrooms in the house made ready.” She had to stop to catch hold of a painful breath, but when she looked up into her husband’s eyes, her voice was firm and clear. “I’ve also sent someone to find Ryan, and I’ve ordered a dozen horses saddled. Sims can’t have gone far on foot.”
Michael nodded grimly. “It looks like he had a stash of money hidden and took the time to retrieve it before he bolted. And no, he couldn’t have gone more than a mile or two on foot. We'll find him, and when we do—”
“When ye do,” Flora declared vehemently, “I’m gonna kill him maself, I swear I am! Ma Sally’s a good wee lassie. She didn't deserve this, no sir. So you go on out o’ here an’ find him! Find the bastard an’ tie his ballocks to the saddle-horn, then drag him here by the roughest road ye can find. Anything left of him is mine. All mine!”
Sally moaned softly and Flora was instantly attentive. “There now, Lovey, yer mam’s here. Don't try to talk … what? The child is fine, hon. She came to fetch me like a wee angel with wings, she did. You just rest now. Doctor’s on his way.”
Amanda’s eyes burned as she watched Flora bend over and whisper soothing words into her daughter’s ear. She felt a strong hand clasp her elbow, and she let Michael guide her outside and into the heat of the sunlight.
She turned without a care for the eyes that were watching them and pressed her cheek against his chest. Dianna’s query rang in her ears, repeated itself in a muffled whisper. “What kind of man does that to a woman? To his wife?”
Michael’s response was delayed by the thunderous approach of a horse and rider. It was Ryan, and, from the stricken look on his face, it seemed he had already heard what had happened. Or part of it anyway. He brought Diablo to a skidding halt and dismounted in a swarming boil of dust.
“Where is Verity?” he cried. “What the hell happened?”
“Verity is fine,” Michael said. “She wasn’t harmed. She’s up at the house with Dianna.”
“Wasn’t harmed? What the hell kind of maniacs do you have working for you?”
“The kind who won’t be able to work for anyone again when I’m finished with him this time,” Michael promised coldly.
“This time? You mean he has done this sort of thing before? He’s beaten his wife to a bloody pulp and you’ve just let him go on with his chores?”
“Ryan, please,” Amanda began.
“No. I’m interested in hearing his answer. Only minutes ago you were singing his praises, telling me what a fine and decent fellow you’ve married."
"He is fine and decent," she said, "And if you can't see that Ryan Courtland then ... then get the hell off our land."
Ned Sims, crouching in his hiding place not a hundred paces away, grinned.
He hadn’t planned on staying around to watch, but he hadn’t covered a hundred yards before he realized there was nothing but open fields between him and the road or the river, no matter which way he tried to run for it. He needed a horse, and the only way he could get one was to wait for dark and try to steal one out of the stable.
For the time being, he was stuck where he was, watching the entertainment. The big boss and his rebel brother-in-law were exchanging insults while the wife jerked back and forth like a puppet, not knowing which one to run after as the husband grabbed up the reins of the stallion and headed for the stables, and the brother stormed up the drive to his carriage. Sims would have laughed out loud had Tarrington not passed so close to his hidey-hole he felt a spray of gravel from his boots.
Ned reckoned he had two hundred dollars, give or take, in his pouch. Not nearly enough to keep the smile on his face very long, but maybe enough to buy himself some protection while he figured the best way to skin out of town with his neck intact. Too bad he hadn’t thought to snatch the kid— they would have paid more than a few measly hundred to get her back alive. Maybe there was another way, though. Knowing what he knew about the prim and proper Mrs. Michael Tarrington, coupled with what he knew about the Yankee captain himself … he might just be able to find a buyer interested enough to pay for his information in cold hard cash before Tarrington and his hounds sniffed him out.
In a way he was glad he’d stuck around, because at least he knew he wasn’t going to be hunted down for murder. He wasn’t too keen on the idea of letting Tarrington catch up to him, but it wasn’t a hanging offense for a man to have a fight with his wife. Still and all, he thought sure he’d left her for a corpse, just like the one back in Boston. Next time, he decided, he would make damned sure when he killed someone, they stayed dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Sally was carried gently to a bedroom in the west wing, one that would benefit from the warmth and cheer of the sun for most of the day. Amanda ordered it aired thoroughly and brought several vases full of the roses she had cut that afternoon to brighten the window ledge. When the doctor came, he set the broken am and sewed a row of tiny, black stitches across Sally’s forehead and temple An inch lower, he declared, would have struck the vulnerable indent of the temple; an inch to the left would have put out an eye. It was common to bleed voraciously from a head wound, he assured them, and so long as there were no signs of distress to the bone—nausea, dizziness, befuddlement— he could predict with some confidence a full recovery.
Verity had suffered nothing more than a scraped knee when she had fallen in her run back to the house. She insisted on seeing Sally with as much stubbornness as Sally insisted on seeing her, and, with one standing shyly on tiptoes and the other wearing a thick turban of bandages around her head and another around her broken arm, the two came togethe
r, dissolved in a huddle of smiles and whispers.
Once it was determined that Sally, Verity, and Flora were settled comfortably, Michael rode out to search for Ned Sims. He and Foley led two large posses to scour the fields and farms north along the river, south toward Natchez. The sheriff had arrived with more men and dogs just as dusk was drifting in a heavy mist over the land; their torches and lanterns could be seen dotting the darkness in scattered groups as the hounds tried to isolate a fresh scent.
Amanda watched it all from one of the tall parlor windows. Dianna was sniffling on a settee behind her. She had not left with Ryan and alternated between being furious over his pig-headedness and frantic at the thought she might lose the one and only man she had ever loved.
When the misty lights and baying hounds moved off and Amanda could not see them any more, she abandoned her seat by the window and coaxed the exhausted and red-nosed Dianna upstairs to bed. A good night’s sleep, she promised, would do everyone a world of good.
Taking her own advice, Amanda retired to the room she shared with her daughter. Verity was fast asleep, surrounded by her usual brigade of dolls. One of the house servants dozed in a chair in the corner, her dark face gleaming like ebony in the lamplight, her head bowed, her chin touching her chest and riding the soft rise and fall of each breath.
Amanda stood in the doorway for a long moment before pulling the door quietly shut again. Standing in the vaulted hallway, cloaked in the darkness and the silence, she let her hand fall away from the brass knob and went into Michael’s room instead.
It was dark, full of shadows and shapes of heavy furniture. The curtains across the alcove were swagged open and admitted a pale, milky hint of moonlight from outside. She used it to guide her way to the mantel where she found a tin of matches and two candlesticks. She lit one of the candles and left it by the hearth. The other she carried to the desk in the alcove, shielding the flame with a cupped hand, intending to light the oil lamp. Something stopped her. A shivered spray of alarm went up and down her spine and she started with enough of a jump to splash hot wax over her fingers.
Michael was lying on the bed, his arms folded behind his head, his long legs crossed at the ankles. His shirt was open at the throat, the whiteness of the cambric a stark contrast to the dark pelt of hair on his chest. He had been watching her. His dark eyes caught the reflected sparks of candlelight, and the intensity of his gaze sent another shower of icy sensations coursing through her body.
It was the same undermining sensation that had robbed her of sensibility earlier in the day when he had told her she looked lovely. The same melting weakness she had experienced when she had seen him run to Flora and hug Verity to his breast, the relief flooding his eyes with naked emotion.
They were shining now and they were all she could focus on as he pushed himself upright and swung his legs with slow deliberation over the side of the bed. His gaze dropped briefly to the erratic movement of the flame, and he reached up with a gentle hand and removed the candlestick from her trembling fingers. He set it down on the bedside table and, still without a word, drew her into the vee of his parted thighs.
The candlelight was bathing her face, gilding her skin in gold. Her hair—never a thing to obey the constraints of pins and orderly curls too long—fell loosely over her shoulders and cascaded down her back. Soft, misty wisps surrounded the pure oval of her face, and the breath he had been holding rattled harshly in his throat as he expelled it.
Michael drew her closer. His hands were on her waist, and he took a moment to admire how trim and slender a thing it was before he leaned his head forward and pressed his lips against the blue sateen that covered her breasts, holding them there so long the heat began to scorch through to her skin. Her body was rendered nerveless, her arms barely strong enough to lift her hands and guide them into the long, wavy thickness of his hair. He welcomed them with a small sigh and turned his head so that he could not help but hear and feel the wild beating of her heart.
"I... thought you were still out searching for Ned Sims," she stammered.
"The fog is too thick, the woods too dark. We'll go out again in the morning."
She closed her eyes, swearing she could feel the heat of his breath through her bodice. It had been so long. So very long since he had held her like this. There had been nights she thought she would go mad with wanting him, and days she nearly wept just to see him striding across a field or listening intently to some whispered calamity Verity shared with him. It had been so long since he had touched her this way, she could feel her heart breaking and falling to dust around her ankles.
Anything, she thought. I will promise him anything, do anything, be anything he wants me to be …
… if she will just forgive me, he thought. If we can just start over, start fresh. Forget the past and just start again.
His hands moved slowly up her back, spreading flat, feeling the warmth of her flesh through the satiny layers of fabric, the silk of her hair as it brushed his skin. His fingers carried on up to her nape and threaded into the golden mane, and he lifted his head, tilting his face upward so that it took almost no movement at all to find her mouth and cover it, to mold her lips to his and hold them there until a shallow sigh set them free.
It was a brief freedom, for his hands were suddenly fierce in their possessiveness. His tongue thrust between her lips and deepened the kiss, tracing delicate, searching patterns at first, then lashing her with an urgent savagery that almost brought her down onto her knees before him. He prowled and probed. He swirled around the lush, slick lining of her mouth, teasing and cajoling, delving deeper and deeper until her whole body began to quiver and dissolve.
Michael’s hands descended with a trembling violence and sought the fashionably complicated fastenings of her bodice. With no patience for hooks, buttons, and laces, he fumbled and tugged until the delicate sateen lay open from breast to waist.
He trailed a fiery path of kisses down her throat and onto the swell of her breast. He pulled at the silk and ripped at the ribbons, and Amanda gasped with pleasure as his mouth claimed one bared nipple, then the other. Deft, suckling strokes of his tongue had her head arching back and her body pressing shamelessly into the wet heat. Quick, careless sweeps of his big hands stripped her arms from her dress and camisole and sent the sateen spilling in a blue wave over petticoats and underpinnings that survived only a few feverish moments more before they too were cast aside and forgotten.
She whimpered softly and tried not to notice how eagerly and willingly her thighs parted at his invitation. His fingers slid into her wetness and emerged shiny and sleek. He stroked them back and forth again, then thrust them deep inside the quivering slickness, his other arm having to brace her now as her body writhed and recoiled with the pleasure.
Michael pressed his mouth against her belly, feeling the distinct clutches and contractions that streaked through her body on every purposeful swirl of his long fingers. It was not enough, suddenly, just to feel her pleasure, and with a husky groan, he brought her down on the bed beside him. He dropped himself onto his knees and buried his mouth in the soft, silky thatch of yellow curls, plunging his tongue into the pearly folds and tasting her ecstasy as it flared bright and hot within her.
Amanda’s whole body quaked with the shock and splendor. A wild, breathless rush of pleasure sent her hips arching off the bed, and his hands were there to catch her, to steady her, to hold her hostage beneath his mouth until she was all molten heat and flame. His tongue chased each shudder and shiver, searching and exploring the succulent pink folds, heedless of the ragged cries that warned of another impending climax. He managed, somehow, to push his trousers down past his hips, but Amanda neither noticed nor cared that he was still half dressed, or that the buttons on his shirt chafed her belly and breasts as he rose above her. She only felt the hard and unyielding thickness of his flesh stretching hungrily inside her, and she strained to meet him with a feverish need.
She cried out and held him as long
as she could before the spasms shook through her body. Michael bowed his head to her shoulder and tried to steady himself, to keep his wits about him, but he was too damned close and he wanted her too damned badly to control his hunger too much longer. He forced himself to take up a slow, measured pace, tempering some of his own desperation but doing nothing to moderate hers as she gasped and clutched him, gasped and clutched him again and again. When the orgasm released her, she continued to shake with the effects, groaning as his thrusts seemed to gather speed and force and momentum.
This time his hands slipped under her hips and lifted her, pulled her into each stroke so that the shivers rippled along the gliding length of him, tightening and quickening around his flesh like hundreds of greedy little fingers. He groaned and shifted his hands again, hooking them under her knees and raising her limbs so that his penetration was full and absolute. He rolled his hips harder, faster, testing the very limits of his sanity and reason. And when he could no longer deny himself a share of the ecstasy flushing through her body, he pulled her hard into his next powerful stroke and braced her there while his release scorched every nerve and muscle, seared away every definition of pleasure, real or imagined, and replaced it with one word: Amanda.
It could have been seconds or minutes or hours that they clung together, fused by passion, locked in breathless rapture. Michael collapsed forward, panting like a drowning man, and she peaked again, softly, for no reason other than the fact she was holding him in her arms again, sharing his heat. The knowledge was exhilarating and she wanted to laugh out loud from the sheer joy of it, but she contented herself with the lingering sensation of all that expended power and passion pulsing gently inside her.
She did not want to move or spoil the moment in any way. She scarcely dared to breathe as he raised his head slowly out of the crook of her shoulder and looked down at her.
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