Alana (26 page)

“Good. I was afraid I’d have to steal you away.”

“You did,” she whispered, “on September twenty-sixth, eighteen sixty-five. The day you walked up to Riverbend and into my life.”

He drew up the arm that was around her shoulders until his hand cupped the back of her uptilted head. Then, very slowly, he brought her face toward his.

Just when their lips met, the carriage came to a jarring halt. Alana was thrown across the carriage and, as Rafe reached out to help her, the door flew open and a dark object flashed through the air.

A dull thud echoed. Alana watched in horror as Rafe slumped to the floor and three men rushed into the carriage.

Everything
happened so fast that by the time Alana opened her mouth to scream, one man had a pistol pointed at Rafe’s head, another was aimed at her, and the third spoke as carriage started up again.

“So this is the man for whom you would turn me down?” Ledoque asked. “Bitch!” he spat, his hand snaking out to strike her even as he spoke the word.

Alana’s cheek exploded with pain. Orange flashes danced before her eyes. She fought wildly to hold on to her senses. As she tasted her own blood on the inside of her mouth, Ledoque roared at her again.

“Watch him! See how your lover dies!” Ledoque nodded to the man holding the gun at Rafe’s head.

“No!” Alana shrieked, launching herself blindly at the gunman. Before she could reach him, the second man grabbed her by her hair and yanked her harshly back.

“You want him to live?” Ledoque asked, his face partially hidden by the dark shadows of the carriage’s interior.

Alana nodded her head quickly. Blood pooled in her mouth, but she ignored the pain in her cheek and the hand holding her hair as she glared her hatred at Ledoque.

“Then you will be mine from now on, won’t you?”

“Pig!” she cried, spitting a mouthful of blood at him.

Ledoque slowly wiped his face. “Shoot him.”

“No!” Alana pleaded again.

Ledoque held out his hand. The gunman waited. “You are the price for his life. Will you pay it?”

Frozen within this terrible moment of time, she stared at Ledoque, her mind reeling. Then she looked down at Rafe. Her heart thudded loudly when she realized that his eyes were open.

Galvanizing her mind into action, she glared at Ledoque. “You bastard!” she shouted, launching herself at him in an effort to draw attention away from Rafe.

Her ploy failed. The man next to her held her fast, and the other gunman pressed the barrel into the side of Rafe’s neck when he tried to rise.

Ledoque laughed while she looked on helplessly. “I’m still waiting for your answer, my dear.”

“No!” Rafe yelled suddenly, fighting to push himself up. Before he could, his captor whipped the pistol into the air and smashed the barrel into the side of his head. Blackness claimed him instantly.

In the confines of the carriage, Alana saw the flowing dark stain of blood spread across Rafe’s face. “Answer me!” Ledoque demanded.

Her mind twisted painfully in an effort to understand how Rafe could be lying on the carriage floor and Ledoque sitting across from her. She could not.

She spoke without taking her eyes from Rafe’s unconscious form. Her voice sounded far away and foreign to her ears. “Whatever the price, I’ll pay it. Do not kill him.”

Behind her blue eyes, a spark of defiance flared, but she quickly hid it before Ledoque saw it.
I will pay the price,
she repeated silently to herself,
but not so great a one as will you, even I have to chase you to hell and back!

Ledoque lifted his walking stick, the same dark smooth object that had struck Rafe the first time, and rapped on the carriage roof. A moment later the carriage stopped.

When the door opened, two more men looked in. Ledoque grabbed Alana and pushed her from the carriage into their waiting arms. Then, when he stood on the street next to Alana, he called to the driver. “Take him away.”

Alana tried to twist free of her captors, but she could not. “What are you going to do with him?”

“He won’t be killed. That’s all you have to know.” With that, the first carriage rolled away and a second came up to them.

Alana, held fast by the men, watched her carriage leave and saw that Chaco was nowhere in sight. Then the men picked her up again and shoved into Ledoque’s carriage. A moment later, Ledoque joined her. This time, there were only the two of them.

When the carriage started forward, Alana stared at Ledoque. “Where are we going?” she asked, making her mind function and willing herself not to give in to fear.

“You shall see. And Alana, I would advise against your trying to run away from me. Think of Montgomery before you do anything foolish.”

Alana glared at him, but she knew she was helpless to do anything–yet.

~~~~~

Chaco had spent most of his life enduring pain, and he did not give in to it now. Images of Crystal and Alana raced through his mind. He knew he could not let them down. He had been hit from behind on the head, but even as his body had rolled to a stop on the cobblestones, his feet had been under him and he had been up and racing after the carriage. He hadn’t had time to see whether the driver, lying in the gutter, was alive or dead–he couldn’t take the chance of letting the carriage out of his sight.

Another carriage had fallen in behind Alana’s. Ignoring the throbbing in his head and the sharp pain from the scraped and cut skin on his legs from the cobblestones, Chaco had continued to follow the carriages, never once letting them out of his sight.

When both carriages had come to a halt in the center of a dimly lit street, Chaco had slipped into a doorway to watch and to wait for an opportunity to help.

He had tensed when Alana was pushed out of her carriage, but he knew that he could not yet free her. He waited to see what would happen and to see what Rafe would do. All too soon, he realized his wait was in vain, for the carriage started off again with Rafe still inside.

As Alana and the men walked toward the second carriage, the light of the gas streetlamp illuminated their features. Chaco’s breath caught when he recognized Ledoque. Only then did Chaco know that he could not follow the carriage with Rafe but must stay with Alana.

Ledoque and Alana disappeared inside the carriage, and the two other men took their protective positions, one in front with the driver, and the other in the rear. When the carriage started off, Chaco slipped out from his hiding place.

~~~~~

Rafe’s carriage came to a stop at the waterfront, where the streets were still alive with people. Sailors walked with their women, while others brawled over anything at all.

The docks and the waterfront were a beehive that was never still, and like a beehive, they functioned perfectly as long as no one bothered anyone else.

No one took notice when they acriiedRafe’s limp body along one dock; it didn’t pay to look at things too closely on the waterfront. And even those sets of eyes that marked the progress of the unconscious form knew better than to interfere.

At the edge of the dock, a stout, uniformed man waited. When the two men who carried Rafe reached him, he silently motioned to two other men behind him. They took Rafe from the others and carried him across the planks that led to the deck of the four-mast Venture. A moment later, the closing of a hatch followed the sound of a body thumping onto a wood floor.

“You may tell Mr. Ledoque that his ‘cargo’ is in the hold,” Captain Clarke said in an uncaring voice. Turning, he crossed the boarding ramp to his ship. When he stepped onto the deck, he ordered the ramp removed.

When that was done, the captain issued further instructions to the first mate and then went to his cabin to get some sleep, for this merchantman-class ship of the Allison Shipping Company would be leaving on the morning tide, not four hours from that moment.

~~~~~

Alana stood before the mirror in the large wallpapered bedroom, staring at everything, seeing nothing. She wore the same dress she had been in when Ledoque had captured her, which was now a mass of wrinkled fabric no longer outlining her smoothly curved body. Her mind was a maze of worry and concern for Rafe and not just a little fear for herself.

The sun had just gone down. A full day had passed since they’d attacked the carriage and Rafe taken from her.

When Ledoque had taken her into the townhouse, his hand had held her arm in a painful viselike grip. He had not spoken until they’d reached the third floor and he’d put her in this room. "There’s no way out of this house. The doors are barred. Don’t even think of trying to escape. Remember, I can still have Montgomery killed.”

Then he had left. The clicking of the door’s lock had told her just how much a prisoner she really was.

Alana had made herself inspect her prison. She’d gone to each window to look for a means of escape; she had found nothing. The windows weren’t sealed, but the ground was three stories below. There was only a straight drop between this building and its neighbor, twenty feet away.

Then she’d gone to the door and tried the knob. As she’d expected, the door had not budged. She’d crossed the room and opened the door on the far side. It opened into a large necessary room with no windows. But there was another door on the far side. When she’d tried the door, she’d found it too was locked.

Afraid to use the bed lest Ledoque return and find her in it, Alana had spent a long, sleepless night sitting in the single chair in the bedroom, trying vainly to make herself believe that Rafe was all right and that she would find a way to escape.

Whenever her fear of the unknown rose to taunt her, she fought it back, thinking of Rafe’s strength and her own. She thought of Crystal, and what her friend had done to survive, and she realized that she could do no less. There was too much at stake. Too many lives depended on her ability to beat Ledoque.

She’d thought of Rafe’s last words to her, and realized if Ledoque had not done this horrible thing, she and Rafe would have been married by now.

Anger had flared with the thought. Dark rage had suffused her mind, adding to the strength of purpose that was still growing within her.

The puzzle of Ledoque’s surprising presence in New York and his kidnapping of her had worried at her mind for most of the night. To help keep her wits about her, she’d tried to figure out why he had done this. Had he been following her in his efforts to ruin herself and Crystal?
Could Ledoque be one of the people Rafe was after? Was that really possible, or was she stretching credulity and coincidence to help make herself less fearful?
These and other unanswerable questions had paraded through her mind during the long night.

Morning had found her still in the chair, thinking. The only thing she had been able to decide was that she would do whatever was necessary to please Ledoque. First, she must learn Rafe’s whereabouts; then she would find a means of escape.

Shortly after reaching this decision, she’d heard the lock on the door click. One of the men who had been with Ledoque the previous night had entered. He’d brought in a serving tray and had set it on the dressing table. Without a word, he’d left, locking the door behind him.

Although Alana hadn’t been hungry, she’d known she must eat in order to keep up her strength. When she’d finished the meal, she’d finally lain down on the bed and, as her eyes had grown heavy, fallen asleep.

When she’d awakened, the sun was setting. Sorrowfully, Alana had gone to the window to watch the sun depart from the sky.

“I will find you, Rafe. As God is my witness, I will find you!”

After the sun had set, Alana had left the window.

How will I do it
? she’d asked herself, shivering at the thought of Ledoque’s hands on her body. Pushing that fear aside, she’d gone to the mirror to stare at her image in the darkened, blue-papered room.

Now Alana remembered the talks she and Crystal had been so fond of and the admission Crystal had made about her lack of desire.

“I make my mind a blank. I do what is necessary to please my customer. He never suspects my feelings, for I never allow them to show. When it is over, I control myself and I control the man.”

I must not think of anything when he touches me, Alana told herself. While she tried to build her determination to see this through, she once again found herself waiting as the night grew darker and the world more silent.

She was afraid that she had once again lost Rafe and might never find him again.
No
, she commanded herself.
Don’t think of that
. But, she could not help her thoughts, any more than she could slow the frantic beating of her heart as the fear of the known–and the unknown–attacked her.

“Damn you, Ledoque, get it over with,” she whispered. As if in response to her words, she heard the lock click for the first time since the man had brought her the morning tray.

Whirling at the sound, Alana’s breath caught. The door opened slowly; Alana saw nothing. Then a young woman wearing the uniform of a maid entered, pulling a tub on wheels filled with steaming water.

Once inside, and closing the door on the man whom Alana had seen that morning stand guard, the maid lit the gas lamps, then handed Alana a lace and silk nightgown.

“After your bath,” the maid said, “you are to put this on.” With that, the woman left and the man relocked the door.

Alana stared at the hot water for several seconds before her trembling fingers went to the bodice of her dress.

Alana looked at her reflection in the mirror, trying not to see the way every inch of her body showed beneath the sheer material of the silk nightgown. The dark circles of her nipples were clearly visible, as was the darker triangular shading above the joining of her thighs.

The nightgown’s bodice was low cut, exposing more than an ample amount of her breasts. Beneath the sheer fabric, the rest of their rounded fullness was only slightly less visible. From her breasts, the material hung smooth and straight to the floor. There was no need for the dress to hug her contours, not the way it showed her body beneath it.