Catalina's Caress (30 page)

"No. There are a few people I want you to meet," he replied casually, knowing she was thinking the worst and allowing her to do so.

"You want me to meet... You mean you want to display your new conquest?" she said bitterly.

"One does not acquire a mistress like you every day, my pet." He chuckled. "Do you blame me for wanting to show you off a bit?"

He heard her soft intake of breath as she twisted to look up into his eyes, shock and disbelief on her face.

"You wouldn't dare,'' she groaned. "I won't be displayed like some ... some..."

"It goes along with the bargain, love," he replied, and she could not mistake the taunting humor in his voice. "What good is it to have the loveliest mistress on the Mississippi if one cannot see envy in other men's eyes?"

"I won't do it! I won't!"

"All right, no argument," he agreed amiably. "We'll just forget the whole thing right now."

She knew he was deliberately pushing her to the limit to see how far she would go.

Did she have the courage to face his friends with only her pride as a shield? Did she have the daring and the wit to allow him to claim her while she was silently claiming him? Could she turn the game to her advantage, make him see that she was woman enough to belong at his side?

For a long moment her pride refused to allow her to think of such a thing. Then a subtle thought came to her. She could envision his surprise when his arrogance was tossed back in his face. The price was high, but the reward she had already tasted; and it would be heady wine if she could bring him to her side as... her husband.

To his surprise, she nestled close to him, laying her head against his chest and drawing one leg across his lower body while her fingers slowly threaded through the mat of hair on his chest.

"You are right again, Marc. A bargain is a bargain. I won't back down."

He raised himself on one elbow and looked into her eyes, knowing some devious thought was spinning in her mind. But her expression was wide-eyed and innocent—too innocent.

"You continue to surprise me, Cat."

"I." She laughed softly. "How can I surprise you? There is little you do not know about me now."

"I think," he said quietly, "that there is little that I do know about you."

"You make me sound so mysterious."

"Yes," he said thoughtfully, "mysterious is the word. You are a mystery, but one I intend to solve before we reach Memphis."

"Solving this mystery might prove more difficult than you think."

"Is that a threat, love?" He smiled and his eyes glittered with wicked humor. Then his arms slid about her and drew her to him as his mouth hovered close to hers. "If it is a threat, let me remind you that I don't frighten easily and difficult things usually prove to be intriguing and definitely challenging"

"You like challenges, don't you?"

"If they are as lovely as you, most certainly. What an entrancing creature you are when your eyes light up with anger like that," he teased, but his smile faded as his eyes lingered on her mouth.

Catalina could feel the heat of his gaze tingle through her, and she shivered suddenly as if she were cold.

"Yes," he whispered, as his mouth brushed lightly against hers, "you are deliriously exciting and if you're a threat, love, you are the most exciting threat I've known."

His arms tightened about her, and no protest on her part could have stopped the kiss that swept away her breath.

Her coldness turned to warmth and then to heat, which spread from the center of her being throughout her body, turning it into a cauldron of renewed desire.

The night was long and they were both lost to all but the pulsing pleasure that touched them both again and yet again... until the gray light of dawn touched the day and they slept in sated exhaustion and utter contentment.

I
n its surging passage from Memphis to the gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi came to a high, sun-splashed hill. To the west, the green alluvial lowlands of Louisiana stretched mistily toward the horizon. To the east rose two hundred feet of red-brown bluff, crowned by vines of wild grape, magnificent magnolias, and the sweep of oak. Here, the river became a wide crescent of lakelike tranquility; then it turned to glide, silver and yellow, into the distance, away from Natchez.

Natchez! The name came from an Indian nation, an offshoot of the Aztecs. The fields about the city were whitening with cotton, for Natchez was the capital of the cotton empire. On the bluff and beyond, the planters lived a secure life, while on a table of muddy ground lay Natchez-under-the-hill—a violent place where anyone could get away with anything if he was strong enough.

As the
Belle
docked, Catalina and Marc stood at the rail. The sun was just above the horizon, but it was bright enough to reveal the colorful scene before them.

Marc was amused when Catalina's eyes glowed with excitement as she watched this tableau. In this moment he knew she had been pampered and protected all her life. He paid no heed to the fact that he felt a distinct urge to treat her in the same way. Natchez-under-the-hill was the kind of place in which he had intended to desert Catalina Carrington. What good would the Carrington arrogance do her there?

But that would come later, when their bargain was finished and he was done with her, when her kiss no longer excited him and her body had lost the magic that made him desire her as he did even at this moment.

Watching her lips part in breathless excitement, seeing her cheeks pinken in the breeze and her golden eyes glow with an enthusiasm that was contagious, he was shaken by the fact that he wanted to crush her in his arms and hear her call to him in passion.

Damn! he thought. He had tired of most women after a few tussles on the sheets, but this one seemed to have a new magic each time he looked at her. Something about her made his limbs grow weak and his body heat with desire. Her sable hair was rich and luxuriant, and he had to restrain the urge to reach out and touch it. Her skin was flawless and blooming with color, and her features seemed perfect, fine boned.

He knew, if she turned to him, her eyes would be unfathomable as always, filled with some mystery he would have the renewed urge to explore. He was reasonably sure it would take quite a long time to tire of her lush charms.

Catalina, unaware of the intensity of his gaze, bubbled with pleasure as she watched the milling crowds.

The colorful sight before them, vibrant with life, would be a magnet to any onlooker who had not tasted the brutality beneath the facade. Knowing this, Marc moved closer to Catalina without even realizing he had done so. The current of her excitement drew him to her.

"I'm going to send a few messages, but I'd like to leave the boat in an hour or so. Can you be ready?"

"Oh, yes. Will we be spending the night in a hotel?"

Marc laughed outright "A hotel! In Natchez-under-the-hill? My dear Cat, unless you intend to share your delightful charms with every man jack in Natchez we will make our way past this den of hell." He pointed to the cliffs above the city. "We'll be going up there as soon as a carriage can be brought for us. A closed one." He chuckled. "For I'd never be able to hold you on a ride through the city. I don't have enough guns to do it. You're a beauty and there is not much beauty in Natchez-under-the-hill."

Her lips parted as she gazed up at him in surprise.

"Believe me, Cat"—his voice gentled without his realizing it—"I'd kill to keep you right now, and that's what I'd have to do to keep you if you were to show that lovely face and that delicious little body to the degenerate scum in Natchez."

Her eyes sparkled, but she turned back to the bustle below her. She had heard, in his voice, things he would deny. Why would a man with a very temporary mistress protect her—vow to kill to protect her—if he had no feeling for her? It was a spark, and she fervently wished it could be induced to grow into a fire.

"It seems so ... so small to have such a reputation," Catalina said.

"For the size of it, there is not a more profligate place in the world. It's a drinking place, a fighting place, and a killing place."

"How do you come to know Natchez so well?"

"As a rought and unruly boy, I spent a great deal of time here," Marc replied. He didn't want Catalina to know that the house in which he had been born and raised stood in magnificent splendor atop the bluff and its gleaming white columns could be seen in the distance.

The Garrison home was a serene place perched in the clouds. When mist settled on the river, the house looked as if it were suspended in nothingness, riding a gray ocean. It was the first sight of upper Natchez that greeted visitors, and the last. The clean white pillars supported a hipped roof, and an immaculate captain's walk.

To the side and behind the house were smaller buildings, set amid the gardens and off the bordered paths that followed the curve of the hill.

At the bluffs edge, benches were placed so those visiting Garrison Hall might inspect the river and landscape below. And when one sat in the gardens beneath the trees, the tall pillars of the house seemed a challenge to time and man.

He couldn't tell her that as a boy and a young man he had been as wild and untamed as many others in Natchez, nor that his prowess in bed could be traced to the more elite local whores. And he was held momentarily silent as he realized he had a deep desire to share his life with her. It annoyed him.

He turned his gaze up to his home, and for a moment he was caught in a mixture of emotions, some violent, some poignantly beautiful. They tugged at his senses. He thought of the comfort of the place, of how it had been years ago. Then his mind drifted to the day he had set out on his present course.

He had gotten the house back, had returned to it with his sister and had then told her that she would have to remain there alone until he got some satisfaction for what had nearly destroyed them both. She had wept and pleaded with him to forget the past, to help her, to build a new life. He remembered-----

"One day we'll both marry, Marc. We'll have children and well rebuild. We'll make this house all that Mama and Papa wanted. We'll make it a memorial to them.''

"A monument you mean," he had growled in bitter anger. "A monument is more like a tombstone. I can't let it go like that, Lorelei. I have to clear father's name, and clear my own before I can give it to any woman ... or to sons."

"I don't want you hurt, Marc," she had whispered through her tears. "Worse yet, I don't want you to hurt someone else."

"I'll only hurt those that are guilty, only the guilty-----"

He was drawn back abruptly to the present.

"... guilty of some of the things you were telling me about," Catalina was saying.

"What?"

"I said I hope you're not guilty ..."

"Now or when I was a younger man?" he asked with a chuckle.

She laughed softly, and her eyes appraised him with a look that shook his already fragile control.

"I can see you as a devilish little boy, even as a wayward young man, but..."

"But what?"

"But I can't see you as a gambler, a rake, or..."

"And how do you see me, my little kitten?" he said gently, as he reached to brush aside stray strands of hair the wind had blown against her cheek.

"I don't know. It's as if I'm only seeing a part of you ... as if I were looking out a window when it's raining. Everything is vague and uncertain ... almost unreal."

"Well, this is real enough for both of us," he said softly as he bent to touch her mouth with his, so lightly his lips were like a whisper of wind.

"Go below and pack a few things—enough for a day or so—and please bring that beautiful green gown you wore the other night. We will be entertaining guests later and I want them to get a good look at the most beautiful woman from New Orleans to Memphis."

"Marc, I—"

"Shh, love, I want you to meet another young woman who is very special to me. You two will get on famously. Now I have some messages to send."

"I'll stay here and watch a few more minutes; then I will go to my—your—cabin and pack."

He knew she was annoyed that he would deliberately flaunt her, but he couldn't seem to resist bringing Catalina and Lorelei face to face.

"Good girl. I'll come back to get you after the midday meal."

She nodded, hurt by his deliberate disregard of her emotions, and Marc left her stewing silently. He could not suppress a grin of satisfaction, and it became a broad smile when he saw Travis coming his way, distaste clearly written on his face.

"Good morning, Travis," Marc said pleasantly.

"The amenities are hardly appropriate," Travis growled. "Where is Catalina?"

"Catalina," Marc said innocently. "Why, I believe the last I saw her she was standing on deck watching the boat dock. Natchez seems to have quite an attraction for her."

"Well, we won't be staying here long. I know this hellhole. Cat is not going to disembark here. We'll stay on board until it's time to leave tomorrow night. I have plans for the two of us for this evening, and they do not include anyone else. Do I make myself clear?"

He moved away from Marc, who remained still for a moment watching him. Then Marc's eyes narrowed and his mouth twitched in a controlled smile. "We shall see, my friend, just how easy it will be to change your plans."

Marc went to China's cabin, where he found her and Shawna.

"We're docking now," he said. "Can you get someone to carry some letters for me?"

"Jacob?"

"All right. Shawna, run and get him, will you?"

Shawna left immediately, and Marc dropped into a chair and propped his boots on a nearby table. He folded his hands behind his head and grinned amiably at China, who laughed softly in return.

"When you look like that I know you are very satisfied with yourself," she said. "I also know you've been up to something that is either illegal or immoral."

"China, you wound me," he replied, a hurt expression on his face. "You've a very suspicious nature."

"Hardly, I just know you. What are you up to now, Marc?"

"I'm going home for a day or so," he said quietly.

She looked at him levelly for a few minutes. "I take it you are not going home alone?"

"I'm taking Catalina with me."

"And Travis Sherman is just going to let you walk off this boat with her? I hardly think so."

"You have no faith, China my girl. Mr. Sherman is going to be busy—extremely busy. In fact, he is going to be so busy he just might not make it back before the
Belle
leaves. Yes ... I think he's going to have a long eventful stay in Natchez."

Before China could speak again, Shawna opened the door and Jacob followed her into the room.

Marc swung his feet to the floor and reached inside the breast pocket of his jacket, withdrawing two sealed envelopes.

"Jacob, I want you to take these to Mrs. Thatcher."

"Yassuh," Jacob replied. He took the letters and stuffed them inside his shirt.

"You remember my sister well, Jacob. I don't want them in anyone's hands but hers. She'll send a closed carriage and you will ride back with it."

"Yassuh."

"And, Jacob, I don't want you to talk to anyone. That slip with Miss Carrington was a mistake. Just remember what I told you about keeping the past a secret."

"Yassuh, I 'members. I makes one mistake wif da young miss, but I doan do it nebber again. I keeps ma mouf shut, yassuh, I keeps it shut from now on."

"Thanks, Jacob. Now get going. I want that carriage back soon."

Jacob left, and Marc turned back to Shawna and China. "I know you're putting Willie ashore and that Nina will be leaving the boat. And I don't want Travis to find his way back to the
Belle
."

"I'm quite sure Charlene will be glad to help you there." China smiled. "She is more than pleased with Mr. Sherman."

"Good. Give her a good price and tell her to make damn certain the
Belle
sails tomorrow night without him."

"Shawna," China said, "go and tell Charlene to come to my cabin in a half-hour."

When Shawna was gone, China turned again to Marc who knew she wanted to speak with him, alone.

"Your sister will not be pleased."

"She won't say anything," Marc replied. "She's always a lady, barring her tempers of course. She may not like it, but she won^j do anything to harm me."

"Why are you doing this, Marc? You can accomplish your goal without taking her to your home. You could leave her in Natchez-under-the-hill. Surely"—China's voice softened—"she would pay dearly, in one night there, all the debts you imagine the Carringtons owe."

Marc looked momentarily into China's eyes, then away. How could he tell her that the thought of leaving Catalina in Natchez-under-the-hill was repugnant to him? How could he tell her that he had a driving urge to show Catalina his home, to have her in his bed. To make love to her in a place he loved, in a place where he had spent happy hours. He couldn't, so he said nothing.