Love and Adventure Collection - Part 1 (Love and Adventure Boxed Sets)

by Jennifer Blake

  “No,” he said with finality, staring up at them. “I will not be dragged along, a helpless burden. I am a man, no slave of yours, no responsibility of yours, Rafael Navarro, and I will be my own saviour.”

  “And if you are not, how will I forgive myself?” Rafe asked.

  “I forgive you, here, now.”

  “It isn’t enough.”

  “Then think of Madame Catherine and of how little rest I shall have in paradise if I have brought her here to die, as we all surely will if we go on in this way.”

  Their calm voices touched off a spark of irritation. “But your leg,” Catherine cried, “you’ll bleed to death.”

  “That may be. But not now. I have my turban to wrap it in. And better, I have a reason for surviving. I have seen the face of the man who caused my India’s death. He is here — and will stay until he realizes the thing he has started. Then he will run — or perhaps he will not, if I play nemesis well enough.”

  “Ali—”

  But the man would not be swayed by an undertone of pleading.

  “I have my mission, Monsieur Rafe, and you have yours. Someone must go for the militia to contain the jackals. Don’t! Don’t get down. I could not shoot you, you know that, and I would be most reluctant to kill myself before I taste vengeance, but I will. Would you trouble to save my corpse?”

  In the waiting quiet the horse snorted his impatience. The wind swept down the open road. She felt the dampness of misting rain on lips and lashes. In the back of her mind a question echoed. Why? Why must these things be? But she knew there was no answer.

  Rafael squared his shoulders. “I will wish you good hunting then — mon ami.”

  Swinging his horse around he rode away. Catherine, clearing her eyes with the back of first one hand and then the other, looked behind them before the road curved. The dirt track with its middle of dry grass and broom sedge was empty.

  ~ ~ ~

  They could not keep to the road; they knew that, but every mile closer to New Orleans was important. Eventually they must return to the river, but not yet. It was too soon, too near Alhambra.

  Under the double weight, the gelding flagged quickly. So did Catherine. Her gown, thick and serviceable, was still not made for riding astride. It was rucked up well above her knees. The wide cloak spread around her preserved modesty, but it did nothing for the insides of her legs. Encased only in silk stockings, they were chafed by horsehair, the back of the saddle, and a pair of bulging saddle pouches. Her husband gave no sign that he was aware of her behind him, still she did not like to cling too closely. The effort to sit erect and stay firmly in place slowly exhausted what strength she possessed. Her main concern became to keep the trembling of her strained muscles from him. She thought she had succeeded, until he swerved into the bordering woods behind a tangled bank of blackberry vines and feather-brown heads of frost-killed goldenrod.

  Rafe dismounted, then led the horse deeper into a thicket of magenta sumac, sassafras, and young oaks. The taller trees among them were black about their bases as if the area had burned not too many years before. The scorched earth had been covered again by a deep carpet of blowing leaves. Black walnuts and hickory nuts lay underfoot, but where they stopped an ancient hickory towered, stubbornly holding the last of its nuts, tiny black balls, against the darkening gray of the sky. The damp air was heavy with the mustiness of decaying leaves and the sour reek of the swamp which began a half mile’s distance away through the trees.

  Catherine allowed herself to be swung down without protest. They had come a good distance, but there was still far to go and it was better to slow their progress than to hinder it altogether. Besides, until Rafe said otherwise she could always pretend it was the horse who was in need of rest.

  “When did you eat last?” Rafe asked abruptly.

  “When? I — yesterday, at luncheon, I think.”

  “I expected as much.” With economic movements, her husband unbuckled a saddle pouch and handed her a piece of smoked beef and a thick chunk of bread wrapped in a napkin.

  Catherine accepted it in wordless gratitude. From the saliva released at the smell of the food, she realized a good portion of her weakness was from hunger. Scrupulously fair, she waited until Rafe had taken out his own packet before she began. She caught a glimpse of sardonic humor in his dark eyes as she bit into the meat with sharp teeth, but she was too hungry to care.

  “You must have left New Orleans in a hurry.”

  “Yes,” Catherine answered. “It seems I’m not as good at planning for sudden departures as you.”

  “Practice should remedy that,” he commented, a bleak look flitting across his face. “What puzzles me is your reasons for coming — and the diabolical logic you used to persuade Ali to bring you.”

  Catherine swallowed with difficulty. “You regret both, I suppose, since without my interference Ali might be with you now, sharing this meal as he was meant to do?”

  “It pleases you to be an enigma,” he answered slowly.

  “While you, of course, may be understood with ease?”

  “I thought so. It may be I was wrong. But I will contract to answer clearly all you wish to know, if you will do the same.”

  It sounded simple. It was. And yet, the truth could be a trap. Might it not also be a shield?

  Before she could answer a frown drew his black brows together. Thunder rumbled overhead, soft winter thunder without the harsh power of a spring storm. As if glad of the distraction, Rafe swept the sky with a narrow gaze. Then he went still.

  Following the direction of his eyes, Catherine saw the flicker of torchlight through the trees. In that instant of time while fear was suspended, she recognized in the brightness of the brands an indication of how unnaturally dark it was growing.

  Rafe moved quickly to the horse’s head, ready to prevent it from neighing a greeting. Catherine barely breathed, following the progress of the laughing, talking band with eyes and ears. There was an exultant, uncontrolled sound to their voices that reminded Catherine of the yodeling of drunken river boatmen, but whether these slaves were drunk on rebellion or the contents of some planter’s wine cellar, she could not tell.

  Rafe, after long minutes of waiting, began to make his way deeper into the forest skirting the swamp. Catherine did not question; she only followed.

  It had not been a wet winter. The swamp therefore was not the endless mosquito-ridden bog it could become. It was a place of meandering bayous whose black-stained waters had to be crossed time and time again, a place of flat, dank land where only cypresses towered above the dense mat of tree branches that choked out the sun. Alligators rested sluggishly, buried in mud, along the bayous. Opossums and raccoons and squirrels made their homes in the tops of the trees, while the open floor beneath was left to wildcats, panthers, and bears.

  Treading its primeval sanctity in this eerie half-light was bad enough, Catherine thought. What would it be like at night? Would the sound of drums have drowned the panther’s scream, the bear’s growl, or alligator’s hoarse bellow?

  Southward. How Rafe kept the direction, she could not have said, but he made no more of it than finding his way about the Vieux Carré. For the most part, their path was the middle ground, that narrow stretch of wood between the river, and the river road, on the left, and the swamp on the right. They rode, rested, walked in a constant cycle, though after a time Rafe refused to allow Catherine to go on foot

  The rain, constantly threatening, held off until midafternoon when the fine, vaporous mist grew heavier, then, without warning, turned into a deluge. The wind swept the steel-gray mantle of rain toward them, enveloping them in its wet, sightless folds that had the sting of sleet.

  Catherine closed her eyes against the drops pelting into her face. When she opened them the horse was moving beneath the thick spreading branches of an enormous magnolia. The sound of the rain turned to a clattering clash against the hard evergreen surface of the broad leaves above her. The undersides of the leaves were rust-
colored. Looking up at them was looking at the inside of a lined umbrella. It was not completely dry, the rain penetrated in spatters and unexpected drops, but the improvement was great.

  Without waiting for help, Catherine slid from the horse. She landed ankle-deep in a litter of dry, rust-brown leaves and old, blackened seed pods. Clinging to the pods were the pulpy red seeds which shone like drops of blood in the dimness.

  Rafe unsaddled the gelding and set saddle and blanket near the base of the tree where it was driest. From the saddle pouch he took one of their napkins and began to rub down the horse. Catherine watched for a moment watched the rainwater, tinted red, running from the clumsy bandage slipping over his brow. She tossed back the hood of her cloak and went to kneel beside the saddle where she busied herself tearing the other napkin into strips and knotting them together.

  She did not speak until he was done, and then she made her voice flat, emotionless. “Come,” she said, indicating the length of white in her hand. “Let me see to your head.”

  His stance was wary as he stared at her. Catherine wondered for an instant if he had understood her above the rattling of the driven rain. Then he gave a last firm pat to the horse and came toward her.

  He dropped to one knee on the saddle blanket, resting his forearm on the other. Panic flared along her nerves at his nearness. She wanted to draw away, and at the same time, to move closer, to feel the warm strength of his arms about her. She did neither. Schooling her features to unconcern, she removed the scarf, using it to wipe away the trickling of rain-diluted blood before throwing the soggy cloth aside.

  The wound was not pretty, but it was not as bad as she had expected. The ball had torn a groove along his scalp that would, no doubt, always be an extra part. The bleeding had stopped, however, except for a slow ooze at the deepest point near the temple, and she thought that was probably from being wet.

  “Does your head ache?” she asked, taking up the strip of bandaging and pad she had made. He was so long in answering that she glanced up, and found his gaze resting on her face, speculation hovering in its black depths.

  “No,” he said hurriedly, “at least, not enough to worry about.”

  That was good, the skull was not damaged.

  “Do you remember the night you embroidered my side?”

  Catherine’s chin tilted, but she kept her attention on the task in hand, placing the pad over his temple, carefully winding the cloth about his head so it would stay. The soft black wave of his hair persisted in falling over the strip and she pushed it gently out of the way.

  “Do you?” he insisted.

  “Yes.” She was proud of the steadiness of her voice.

  “You wore that same look of determined concentration. I think—”

  It was her turn to insist. “You think what?”

  He shook his head, dislodging her handiwork, and she frowned.

  “Why did you send Giles away?”

  “Does it matter?” she asked, tying a flat knot over his ear with tremendous care.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “Let us say — curiosity,” he answered, his eyes intent on her flushed face as she settled back on her heels.

  “I would have thought my reasons were obvious.”

  “But then,” he said quietly, “I have grown to mistrust the obvious.”

  Catherine stared past his shoulder at the rain battering the ground, forming muddy runnels, miniature cataracts, among the fallen leaves. The wind shook the topmost branches of the magnolia. A large drop spattered down upon Rafael’s shoulder, but he did not notice.

  “I — sent him away because — I had no wish for a divorce,” she said at last, forcing the words through a throat constricted by the high beating of her heart.

  With mesmerizing slowness, his hand moved to the fastening of her cloak. It fell away behind her, and his fingers cupped her neck, drawing her toward him. She could see the dancing brightness of desire in his eyes, feel the leap of yearning within herself to meet it, still she put her hand on his chest, an unspoken question in her eyes.

  “My — curiosity,” he whispered against her mouth, “is not — satisfied.”

  Catherine abandoned pretense, pride, resistance. That it left her vulnerable could not be helped. She needed Rafael Navarro with a tearful and steadily rising desperation, needed the touch of his lips, the enclosing haven of his arms, the merging sensation of lying close against him. No one else could soothe this pain of loving, no one else give her the release from mental anguish that she thought of as heart’s ease.

  “Catherine — sweet Catherine.” His voice caught on the words. He laid her down upon the stinging wool of the horse blanket, covering her nakedness with her cloak. Softness, hardness, they sought each other, pressing close, their blood running warm and wild. The rain and the madness of the world were things apart, as nothing compared to this encompassing ecstasy. Bodies fitted, mingling, they strove soaring into the crystalline gray sky, mounting higher until they crashed against the glass dome and fell back among endless shards of softly sparkling mica.

  In the shuddering aftermath Catherine turned her face blindly into the hollow of his throat. Close held, she could feel beneath the palm of her hand the smooth working muscles under the scarred skin of his back as he stroked her hair back from the dampness of her neck. His lips brushed the top of her head. His hand moved, smoothing down her shoulder, tracing the indention of her waist, and back up to gently cup her breast. Catherine was dimly conscious of the tickle of the hairs on his chest, and of the burning where his beard had scoured her face. Neither required comment, even if she had been able to summon the effort. This, then, was the peace she had been seeking. There was no other.

  The rain slackened to a drizzle. The horse was saddled. Rafe clasped Catherine’s cloak about her, kissed the tremulous corner of her mouth, and lifted her to the back of the gelding. Mounting behind, he encircled her with his arms, drawing her back to rest against his chest.

  Later in the afternoon they left the woods and paralleled the river, cantering along a grassy trace, all that remained, in this section, of the river road. Rounding a curve, a watery sun broke through the leaden clouds. Its pale yellow light outlined in stark clarity the low shape of a weathered flatboat. Smoke rose in lazy curls from the chimney and the smell of frying fish lay upon the heavy, damp air.

  It was the flatboat of Aunt Em and Jonathan. Tied to its front railing, gently bobbing with the current, was a snub-nosed keelboat.

  25

  The essential are few when survival is threatened. The fire was doused, food, bedding, clothing loaded, and the boat maneuvered into the mainstream of the river almost before the echoes of Rafe’s hallo had died away.

  Aunt Em was persuaded to abandon her floating home, for what she persisted in calling an undersized Noah’s Ark, with more difficulty than the others. She might not have agreed at all but for her new granddaughter-in-law who refused to leave without her. The old woman could not bear the thought of endangering her prospective great-grandchild. Jonathan, without too much delay, had married the buxom daughter of the keelboatman who had ferried them all to Natchez. He was to become a father in the late spring or early summer, and in token of the event, had joined his wife’s family in their freighting business. His in-laws were, of course, aboard. In addition there was the crew of twenty men, who, once they were started downstream, had little to do except take their ease, lying about the deck or on top the cargo box. Despite Ali’s confident words earlier, it did not look to be a comfortable trip, though Catherine was ready to admit its advantages over a horse.

  It was Rafe who took the tiller. Jonathan, after a long, considering look from Catherine to his wife, joined him there. From the scraps of conversation that drifted to her, Catherine thought they were discussing the possibilities for freight in the new steam-powered boat Fulton was building in Pittsburgh.

  There were rumors it would be churning the waters of the Mis
sissippi by fall.

  Setting aside her weariness, she made an effort to engage Jonathan’s wife in conversation. The girl was in an odd humor, however. She had sought Catherine out where she stood in the bow, but she replied to all ploys with monosyllables. She made much of her discomforts although her waistline had only just begun to thicken, and, when Aunt Em joined them, she insisted on sighing after first one item and then another that had been left behind in their hurried departure. Committed to the trip downriver, she began to wonder aloud if it was really necessary, if they might not have been left alone in their isolation, if the danger had not been exaggerated. Aunt Em’s frowns did not deter her; it took a sharp set-down from the old woman to do that. It also relieved them of her presence. The girl flounced off in search of her husband whom she took to one side in order to confide her treatment.

  “Don’t think too hard of her,” Aunt Em said, watching the pair. “She’s always been jealous, I expect because my fool of a boy never made a secret of the feeling he had for you. It doesn’t help to have you turn up looking blooming just when she’s feeling, if not looking, her worst.”

  A frown between her eyes, Catherine looked at the older woman. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why should you be? It’s not your fault. Jonathan loves his wife in a way that’s sound, long-lasting. It’s real, not a young man’s dream of what love and a woman should be. They’ll be all right.”

  Catherine, bearing the confidence in the soft tones, wished someone could say as much for herself. It had not been an idle whim which had taken her to the front of the boat. The air was fresher there, untainted by the smell of fried fish and raw wild onion being laid out for supper. It was not that she scorned such simple fare, the odors simply made her ill, as did the pervasive smell of horse clinging to her clothes. With the example of Jonathan’s wife before her, the cause was not hard to find.