by Henke, Shirl
He smiled, but it was not the beautiful smile that melted her bones. This one was ruthless and cold. “Robert Blackthorne is as blindly loyal to the king as you, but unlike the old man, you are tied to me in a rather unique manner—what was it the priest said? We are one flesh, Madelyne. You are my wife, and as such you owe me unconditional loyalty.”
“And you are a spy and a traitor! How could you betray every principle of honor and aid these rebels? Sons of Liberty! Pah! Mobs of drunken malcontents too lazy to do an honest day's work.”
“I quite agree with you about our local Liberty boys. They do the patriot cause far more harm than good,but they scarcely comprise American leadership.”
“American leadership,” she scoffed contemptuously.
He advanced a few steps toward her and asked, “Are you acquainted with Mr. Franklin or Governor Jefferson? Perhaps General Washington? No? Then don't be so quick to judge us all by the likes of a backwoods mob.”
“How could you join the Georgia Royal Militia? You fought at the siege of Savannah.” Her hand flew to her lips, and they thinned with anger. “Did you shoot your fellow Englishmen in the back while the French and the rebels charged from the front?”
His expression betrayed a fleeting glimpse of agony as he remembered those hellish weeks. “If you think me capable of such perfidy, there's little I can say to refute it. I sent that French fop d'Estaing word that Prevost was fortifying the city, but he delayed the attack. There was quite sufficient carnage on both sides without my shooting anyone—British or American. God, do you think I came to this allegiance easily?”
“Perhaps you only did it to spite Robert.”
He appeared to consider that for a moment. “The temptation was great, but that wasn't the reason. I genuinely admire the British system of laws and government—so do all the men who signed the Declaration of Independence. Else we'd not have modeled our own new government on it. But we've remonstrated too long. The ocean's too wide and the king's ministers too intractable. Perhaps Edmund Burke summed up our feelings best when he said to Parliament that an Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery.”
“Slavery! That's nonsense. You're traitors, all of you.” She stubbornly held her ground.
Quintin reached out and seized her fine-boned wrist with one hand, pulling her against him and holding her fast.
“You're hurting me!” She did not plead, only gritted out the words, then stood stiffly in his arms.
He took her face in his hand, forcing her to look up and meet his eyes. “Will you betray me, Madelyne? T'would rid you of a husband who's dealt you more than a few passing hurts. Robert would probably be glad to see the last of me, Lord knows.” He paused, studying her confused expression. “Well, my fierce little loyalist, what's it to be? I can scarce chain you to my bed.” He began to stroke her cheek with his fingertips, ever so gently. “You could watch them hang me.”
Madelyne felt faint as visions of Quint's lifeless body hanging from a gallows flashed before her eyes. God above! She could never do that, never lose him, no matter what he did. The bitter irony of the situation did not escape her as she whispered in a choked voice, ”I could never wish you dead, Quint, politics be damned!”
He continued holding her face and lowered his mouth to claim hers in a fierce, possessive kiss, as if sealing their bargain.
When they broke apart, both shaken, she said, “So now you're forced to trust me at last—because you have no choice. Perhaps I have no choice either,” she added, reaching up to close her smaller hand around his as it held her face. She tiptoed up and let her lips brush his, gently this time.
Quint's eyes were troubled as he released her. ”I have to take these dispatches to South Carolina.”
“How long will you be gone, Quint? It's dangerous on the roads. If the Creek learn you're a patriot…” She shuddered.
He smiled grimly. I’m still Devon Blackthorne's cousin. Perhaps that might count for something. Then, again, perhaps he'd turn me over to them.” His eyes were filled with pain now.
“You hate deceiving him, don't you?”
“Yes, above all, that. I dread the day he learns the truth of my allegiance, as someday he must.” He released her and began to gather up the papers, then turned to her and said, “The only one on Blackthorne Hill who knows about my work is Toby. You can trust him. Speak of this with no one else. Will you swear your silence, Madelyne?”
Please, trust me. I love you, God help me, I love you. Her thoughts were in chaos as he stared at her with those piercing green eyes, but all she answered was, ”I swear, Quint.”
Chapter Eleven
July, 1780, The Georgia Interior
Lady Barbara Caruthers had never been so miserable in her life. Soaked, bruised, and nearly drowned in the briny Atlantic, then abducted by an insolent half-caste and his frightening savage cousin. She supposed it was a miracle that she was alive. Her misery was intensified during the night, when she tried to slip one of Devon's pistols from his side. He rolled over and seized her wrist in a bone-crushing grasp as he pulled her to lie on his prone body.
Their faces were inches apart as he whispered low, “Don't ever try that again. I'm a very light sleeper, and Pig Sticker never sleeps.” He glanced up to where the tall savage suddenly materialized from the shadows of a tree.
She looked at the Indian's impassive face, then down at his hand, resting lightly on the hilt of a wicked-looking hatchet. Her eyes quickly returned to Devon.
“Do you even know how to prime a pistol?” he asked.
‘I've never touched one of the wretched things in my life. I only wanted to make you see common sense and take me to Savannah.”
He laughed, enjoying her embarrassment as she lay sprawled atop him. “Best get some sleep, Lady Barbara. You'll need your strength tomorrow.”
Then he had the audacity to toss her away from him and roll over, turning his back to her as if she were a doxy dismissed after he'd made use of her services!
Furiously, she'd crawled back into her blanket under Pig Sticker's baleful stare and tried to sleep. Morning came all too soon. Barbara rolled over and every muscle of her body screamed in protest. The ground, which had seemed so swampy and soft beneath the horses' hooves, felt entirely different when used as a bed. She clawed her way free of the mosquito netting and sat up, wincing with every movement.
A survey of her dismal surroundings did little to revive her spirits. The countryside was a flat, barren wilderness of scrub pines and tall weeds. She thought it so desolate that no creature could inhabit the hellish place, until Devon identified the track of a panther and mentioned she'd be wise not to stray far from their camp! They traveled at a breakneck pace all day, pausing only long enough for Pig Sticker to examine the marshy ground for signs of their prey.
By the time Devon Blackthorne called a halt for the night, it was full dark. Although she'd had to relieve herself since early afternoon, Barbara resolutely refused to ask her captors for the humiliating favor. Exhausted and starving, she straggled behind a copse of buckthorn trees to perform nature's functions, then huddled before a small campfire to devour a stone-hard biscuit and some stringy salted meat. She hadn't even bothered to ask what it was.
The second night, she made no attempt to wrest a pistol from Devon, but slept like the dead.
The following morning, Barbara awakened in even more misery, if such was possible. ”Lud, I ache in places I didn't know I had!” She sat up gingerly and looked around for Devon, but saw only the savage. “Not that the white one was much better,” she sniffed to herself. Of course if Pig Sticker was his cousin, he couldn't really be a white man, could he?
She watched the Indian as he prepared a foul-smelling potion in a small tin cup. It seemed to be a ritual of some sort, for he stirred it reverently, held the cup aloft toward the rising sun, then drank it down in several swift gulps. Almost at once he doubled over and then walked toward a patch of tall grass where he calmly vo
mited it up.
Revolting! Barbara turned her head, battling her own rebellious stomach. Then she heard Devon's approach from behind a copse of pines. He exchanged a few words in their guttural dialect with the Indian, as the savage calmly peeled off his adornments and then his buckskin leggings. As naked as at the moment of his birth, Pig Sticker walked down the slight incline to the sluggish creek that meandered by their campsite. He dived in and began to vigorously scrub his body.
“Care to join us?” Devon said with a grin. He, too, was peeling off his clothes.
Barbara had thought herself a complete sophisticate two years after her come-out in London society, but this was making her face flame as if she were a schoolgirl. “Certainly not! You're as barbarous as that—that Pig Sticker person.” Her eyes were locked on the flickering flames of the small fire. She would not look at him.
“You don't have to purge yourself with the Black Drink. I only do that myself on special occasions, but the Muskogee bathe every morning. A custom white civilization would do well to adopt.”
“I take my ablutions in private, indoors,” she said, her eyes never wavering.
“You'll be some time out in the heat before we see any indoor facilities, but suit yourself,” he replied with a shrug. “When you begin to smell too bad, I'll make you walk—or dunk you myself.”
She glared at him. “You wouldn't dare.”
He grinned back at her. “Wait and see, your ladyship.” With that he strolled into the water, giving her a splendid view of his backside.
She watched, fascinated in spite of her fury and chagrin. Although not as dark as the full-blooded Indian, he was bronzed from head to toe, including the lean, muscular cheeks of his buttocks. His lower legs were covered with pinkish-looking scars, as if the injury were recent. What am I doing? She quickly tore her eyes away lest he turn and give her another of those teasing winks.
Each movement was misery as she arose, crusted with itchy salt over every inch of her skin. At least her own discomfort kept her from stealing any further admiring glances at that golden-haired Indian! Her clothes, or what was left of them, hung in stiff tatters. ”I feel like that bloody meat we ate last night,” she said beneath her breath. What besides that horrendous black brew was there for breakfast?
She visited the bushes, then approached the campfire. What looked to be a large, dirty white rodent lay beside the fire, pierced with a single shot cleanly in the head. She shuddered. Surely this was not to be eaten? Devon and Pig Sticker returned from their morning ablutions and donned their clothes with no regard for modesty. She refused to watch, only listened as they continued to talk in that heathenish dialect. “Can you at least be courteous enough to speak English?”
Devon looked up, shaking droplets of water from his dark gold hair, an expression of annoyance on his face. “My cousin has bad news, I'm afraid,” he said to her. “The man we're pursuing has obviously missed his rendezvous with a ship because of the storm. He's headed cross country with his loot—for New Orleans.”
“New Orleans? Isn't that all the way into French territory? Surely you don't expect to drag an English subject there? We're at war with France and Spain.”
He looked ruefully at the insignia of the King's Rangers on his buckskins. “That information is not news to me, your ladyship, I assure you, but you're the one who's blundered into the war. I'm only a humble soldier, under orders to catch a thief who absconded with a fortune in trade goods bound for the lower Muskogee towns. We should catch McGilvey in a few days. You've nothing to fear from the French.”
“But more than a little to fear from you, I'll warrant,” she muttered low. “Do you plan to starve me or are there more of those sumptuous biscuits? The tooth surgeons in London would get rich if I introduced them as a new colonial delicacy.”
Devon laughed as he squatted by the fire. “I'm afraid we've run out of biscuits.” He unsheathed a long, sharp knife from his belt and looked up at Pig Sticker, then over to Barbara. ”I don't suppose you've ever cooked a possum...or anything else,” he said glumly as he began to skin the dead animal. “We needed some fresh meat, and this was the first thing that ran across my sights.”
“Surely you don't eat rats?” She choked, her earlier hunger forgotten.
“This isn't a rat. It's a possum. A little on the greasy side, but we don't have time to waste hunting.”
She watched in horror as he methodically skinned and gutted the creature, then carved the carcass into several large hunks which he took to the stream and washed. Upon returning, he skewered them on small green sapling branches, which Pig Sticker had carefully peeled, then placed them over the flames to roast. As the fatty meat dripped into the fire, it gave off a sickly sweetish odor, rather like rancid mutton.
“If you'll forgive me, I think I'll forego your...possum roast,” she said when Devon tore one of the chunks of meat apart and offered her a piece.
“You should've held on to those biscuits you threw at me the other day,” he said with a grin, tearing into the fatty meat with strong white teeth.
When they finished the meal, Pig Sticker packed up the remaining meat. All Barbara consumed was some sour watered wine that Devon had in his canteen. Soon that, too, would be gone. Then he approached her with a small gourd from which he removed a stopper.
“Here, rub your face and all other exposed areas of your skin with this.”
She smelled the stuff, a strange pungent oil of some sort. “What is it?”
”A special preparation my mother makes for fair-skinned women—to prevent sunburn.”
“I'd not be risking sunburn if you'd take me to Savannah.” She shoved the gourd back into his lean brown hands. How white hers seemed by comparison.
He looked at her as if she were a spoiled, halfwitted child. “If you spend another day beneath this sun, you'll be blistered and feverish. People die of that in the southern colonies, your ladyship, and I've no time or inclination to nurse you back to porcelain-pink perfection.” He advanced on her with the gourd. “Either you do it or I will.”
“How dare you, you bloody loutish bastard!”
“My, my, the gently born are possessed of such refined vocabularies,” Devon said, shaking his head. “Hold her, Pig Sticker, while I perform the task.”
The big savage clamped his hand over her wrists and held them in one large hand. As she kicked, cursed and bit, he used his other hand to grab a fistful of silvery hair, yanking on it until tears of pain welled up in her eyes and she relented, immobilized by the stinging pull on her scalp.
Devon began with her face, smearing the oil over the delicate bones and silky white skin. “This would've been easier if you'd bathed the salt away first.” When she spat an oath at him, he ignored it and continued stroking the oil down her slender throat with his fingertips.
He felt her pulse racing. In fury? Fear? Or something else? When he spread the oil across her collarbone and down near the swell of her generous breasts, he could see the tautening of her nipples through the thin fabric. Yes, definitely something else, he mused as he lifted her chin knowingly and her defiant blue eyes met his dark brown ones.
When she felt the shocking tingle of his callused fingers caressing her skin so intimately, Barbara wanted desperately to hate him, to despise his crude commoner's touch, but she could not. Many men had touched her, even kissed her and handled her, but their soft, pale hands never made her burn like this. It was as if she and Devon Blackthorne were alone. The brutish savage who held her was forgotten. She could not will the hot flush staining her cheeks to abate any more than she could prevent her breasts from tautening and the nipples from growing hard. I can't find this half-caste desirable! When he looked into her eyes, she held her head coolly aloof, returning his stare brazenly.
He knelt and lifted one long slim leg, rubbing the oil everywhere her petticoats had been torn away—even higher, up to her knees. “Astride the horse you'll bare more of your leg,” he murmured, returning his attention to the sleek curve o
f her calf and shapely turn of ankle. Even filthy and bedraggled, she was magnificent.
When he'd completed the task, he stood up and nodded to Pig Sticker, who released her. ”I think we can go now,” he said quietly.
Barbara said nothing, just waited until he mounted his big bay and pulled her up in front of him.
They rode all day, carefully tracking the crafty McGilvey. Several times Pig Sticker rode ahead, scouting to the left and right of them. Once they shifted course because he had made a discovery about the fugitive's trail.
“Who is this McGilvey fellow and what has he done?’’ she asked, trying desperately to take her mind off the heat, hunger, and thirst that plagued her—not to mention the half-caste's hard body, molded so closely to hers.
Devon grunted. “McGilvey's a crafty devil. Slipped into the compound outside St. Augustine and used a forged pass to take a half dozen pack mules loaded with muskets, powder, flints and steel, and a big cache of rum. Once he was licensed to trade with the Creek Confederacy, but Governor Tonyn caught him stealing from the Indians and dismissed him. Then he pulled this trick—and at a crucial time, just when we need these presents for the lower towns to keep them from going over to the rebels' cause.”
“How long have you been a ranger?”
“Not very long. I used to be a trader with the Muskogee myself,” he replied.
“But I thought you lived with the sav—” She stopped in mid-sentence, feeling his body stiffen in the saddle behind her.
“Savages? Yes, to your eyes—and to most white settlers, the Muskogee seem savage. But I've seen things done by supposedly civilized men in this war that would equal or surpass the actions of the Muskogee. Men become animals in a civil war. They steal, rape, butcher, wantonly destroy homes, crops, lives—their neighbors' homes, crops, and lives.”