Dark Torment (22 page)

The pounding of Malahky’s hooves echoed in her ears. Only a
little farther now, and she could scream a warning. . . . Suddenly Sarah
realized that the thudding hoofbeats did not all belong to Malahky. There were
too many. . . . Turning around, she saw that three riders were bearing down on
her from behind, formless black shapes swooping like bats out of hell.

“Go, Malahky!” Sarah screamed, kicking the horse again
and lashing at him with her makeshift reins. The big bay responded with a truly
heroic effort; he surged forward, flying over the uneven ground, galloping
toward the homestead and safety while the three dark riders pounded close
behind.

“Uprising!” Sarah shrieked as Malahky sped toward the
house. The stable had burned to the ground, she saw; only a single wall
remained standing amid the blackened ruins. She was afraid to look behind her,
afraid the riders were right on her tail. Leaning low over the horse’s
neck, she screamed her warning again. Malahky, panicked anew by the terror in
her voice and by the horses closing in behind him, leaped forward wildly, out
of control. Sarah didn’t care. It was the only chance she had of warning
the homestead.

“Uprising!” She was nearly in the yard now; she dared
a glance over her shoulder. The riders were almost upon her. Behind them she
could see the mob surging down the rise toward Lowella, their sputtering
torches trailing dark streams of smoke as they ran. They were no longer silent;
the clash of metal from their makeshift weapons mingled with hoarse shouts and
the thud of running feet. Sarah kicked Malahky one more time, and felt his
muscles bunching beneath her as he gave her all he had.

“Uprising!” The house was strangely dark, Sarah
noticed, puzzling at it. Surely, in the aftermath of the fire, they would be
prepared for trouble. Then the dreadful thought occurred: What if the men had
not yet returned from the sheep barns, and the women were alone in the house?
Horrified at the implications, as she hurtled through the yard she screamed the
warning at the top of her lungs. It should not have been necessary now. The
roars of the mob behind her reverberated like thunder.

Without warning, men seemed to burst from the house and the
outbuildings. Rifles at the ready, they ran to form an uneven line between the
buildings and the oncoming mob. Sarah practically cheered—and wondered
why they waited to open fire. . . .

“Get out of the way, Sarah!” her father bellowed from
near the house. And Sarah knew why they were waiting. She couldn’t have
stopped Malahky if she had tried, and she wasn’t trying. Now she hauled
hard on the reins, dragging his head to the right. . . . Suddenly they were no
longer between Lowella’s defenders and the mob. Malahky was still running
as the defenders opened fire.

Safe at last, Sarah began to saw rhythmically on the makeshift
reins, trying to convey to Malahky that the danger was past. Gradually he
responded, slowing.

Suddenly behind her a hard arm swooped around her waist and lifted
her clear up off Malahky’s back. Sarah screamed as she was flung face
down across the saddle of another galloping horse, one that raced right by
Malahky and kept going.

They galloped into the night for what seemed like hours. To Sarah,
who was held ruthlessly across the saddle bow by a man’s hand bunched in
the loose folds of her nightrail, the nightmarish ride was endless. At first
she fought, kicking and screaming in an effort to writhe free. That earned her
nothing but her own exhaustion; her captor continued to ride as if she were no
more than a squirming pup. Finally she surrendered to the inevitable and lay
still. At least, her body was still. Her mind seethed with fright and fury.
Fortunately, the indignity of her position, to say nothing of the pain of it,
gave fury the upper hand. How she would like to get her hands on the vile
creature who dared to use her in such a way, she fumed. She would get a great
deal of satisfaction from clawing out his eyes.

Focusing her anger on her silent captor helped to keep her mind
off the exigencies of her situation. Sprawled uncomfortably across his saddle,
with his hard thighs pressing into her hip and shoulder, she was very much at
the nameless marauder’s mercy, and she knew it. Sarah preferred not to
think of the spectacle she must present, her masses of tawny hair dragged from
its braid by the wind to stream against the man’s knee and the
horse’s dark side, her long bare legs and white-clad arms jouncing
ludicrously as the horse galloped over the uneven ground, her nightrail twisted
tightly around her body by the man’s fist. She also refused to think
about how very nearly naked she was. Except for the thin
nightrail—rendered almost useless as a covering by her captor’s
grip on it—she was unclothed. With her new knowledge of men and their
lusts, Sarah was conscious of a pang of terror at inciting such an emotion in
the man—men—who had abducted her. Would he—they—rape
her? She shuddered at the very word. The act itself—she could hardly bear
to think about it. It had been shameful enough with Gallagher, who at least, as
much as she hated to admit it, had appealed to her senses and given her
pleasure. With strangers—hard, uncaring strangers who would glory in her
degradation and find their enjoyment in brutalizing and humiliating
her—it would be unspeakably horrible. She had felt the hardness of this
man’s hand when he had shifted her position by clasping her backside
through the thin layer of cloth that was all that shielded her skin from his
touch. Was he even now plotting how he would use her when at last they stopped?
Sarah felt sickened at the thought. Resolutely she forced it from her mind. It
was possible that she would be raped, and just as possible that she would be
killed. Giving way to panic would do her no good. She had to think, use her
wits to save herself. Undoubtedly the man who held her captive expected his
poor little female victim to be mindless with terror. Well, she would not be.
She would wait for the opportunity, and when it came she would do whatever she
had to to escape. And if her chances were remote, well, she wouldn’t
dwell on that either. She would escape, because she had to.

When at last the horse slowed to a trot, then a walk, and finally
stopped, Sarah would have breathed a sigh of relief, if she hadn’t been
so frightened. What would happen to her now? Her captor dismounted, swinging
easily down from the saddle and reaching up to catch her around her waist and
drag her down too. Sarah’s every instinct screamed for her to attack him,
to fight, to claw and kick and bite in a desperate bid for freedom. But she
forced herself to go limp, feigning a faint. Maybe, if he thought she had
fainted, he would put her down on the ground and leave her alone. . . . He
pulled her off the saddle, one hard arm sliding under her waist to support her
as she drooped forward, her hair and fingers and toes brushing the ground.
Grunting, he shifted her from one arm to the other, then turned her so that she
was facing upward. Sarah concentrated on being a dead weight, on keeping her
eyes closed and her breathing regular, but shallow and fast as Liza’s was
when she had swooned. A long-fingered, callused-palmed hand closed over one
small breast. Sarah shot upright, her eyes flying open, her arms flailing as
she knocked away the too-intimate hand.

“You . . . !” She gasped out a string of insults, not
even aware of what she was saying as she went for him, teeth bared, fingers
curved into claws. His hands closed over her upper arms, pushing her away from
him before she had inflicted any but minor damage. Sarah glared her hatred at
the grimy bandanna that concealed the lower part of his face while darkness
veiled the rest of him as he towered over her. His hands tightened ruthlessly,
painfully, around the soft flesh of her upper arms. Sarah moaned and abruptly
quit fighting. His grip on her arms eased, but he did not release her.

“Best tie the vixen up. Or strangle her,” one of her
captor’s companions suggested, not without a touch of enjoyment. Sarah
saw that the two other riders were masked like the man whose hands still held
her prisoner. Only one man remained mounted. It was he who had spoken, tossing
her captor a coiled length of rope as he did so. The grip on one of her arms
was abruptly released as her captor lifted a hand to catch the rope; then he
was holding her again, turning her. . . .

Sarah struggled, but without any real expectation of success. His
grip on her arms tightened again, not hurting her this time but reminding her
that he could if he wished. Facing outward, Sarah saw that the moon had risen
high overhead, a perfect semicircle against the darkness of the sky,
occasionally veiled by a drifting wisp of cloud. The barren, pockmarked
landscape stretched flat around them, broken only by a solitary ghost gum and a
few isolated outcroppings of brush. The land, bathed in shimmering moonlight,
was deserted except for herself and the three men. There was no help to be had;
Sarah could not even help herself as her hands were deftly tied behind her
back.

“Ahh.” It was a satisfied sound from the other man on
the ground. Sarah frowned, trying to puzzle out what had occasioned it, as her
captor put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to face him. Then
the bleating sound of sheep floated to her from the way they had come. Sarah
twisted to look over her shoulder. A pale, shifting blur in the distance
resolved itself into more riders driving what could only he a herd of her
father’s prized merinos. As the milling flock approached, the sounds grew
louder.

“Rustlers!” Sarah gasped, understanding suddenly what
had lain behind tonight’s unprecedented attack on Lowella.
Bushrangers—the bandits who terrorized this part of New South
Wales—had evidently banded together to make off with her father’s
prize sheep. The unprecedented convict uprising—there had never been such
a thing before on Lowella—had doubtless been carefully orchestrated by
the bushrangers to provide a diversion. That would explain why some had been
mounted, while the majority had been on foot. The convicts who had attacked the
homestead armed with shovels and torches and pick axes had been left behind to
be slaughtered while this small group of outlaws made off with their booty.

“Keep her quiet!” growled the man who had spoken
before. Sarah could not discern his expression, but his tone was angry.

Her captor ignored the other man; his hands slid from her arms to
fasten around her waist preparatory to lifting her into the saddle. With her
hands tied behind her, to say nothing of the raw power of the tall male body
looming so menacingly close, struggling would have been useless. Sarah
permitted him to lift her off the ground because she could think of no
alternative that would not worsen her present situation, and obediently
straddled the saddle, trying not to think of the length of slender pale leg
left bare by her immodest posture. Her captor was swinging himself into the
saddle behind her when it occurred to her that he had not, during the entire
operation, said a word. Was he mute, or merely taciturn, or . . . ? The lithe
movements, the height and breadth of him, and the hard muscular strength of the
body now settling close behind her in the saddle struck a hideous chord of
familiarity. Eyes widening, Sarah turned around in the saddle just as the horse
surged into an effortless canter in the wake of the others, who had moved out
to join the band herding the sheep. The grimy kerchief still obscured his
features, and a dusty, wide-brimmed black hat was pulled low over his forehead,
hiding his hair, but even in the moonshot darkness there was no mistaking the
Irish blue eyes.

“Gallagher!” Sarah stared at him, unable to believe
what she was seeing. His eyes glinted tauntingly down at her.

“You sound surprised. Did you think I was dead?”
Despite the muffling mask, she would have recognized that distinctive lilt
anywhere. No wonder he hadn’t spoken! She would have known him at once.

“Yes,” Sarah answered, because she had thought he was
dead. His eyes narrowed, grew hard. The arm around her waist tightened, holding
her in place in the saddle.

“Nasty little bitch, aren’t you?” he remarked
almost casually.

Sarah stared at him, taken aback by his hostility. Upon
discovering his identity, she had felt a tremendous sense of relief as it
occurred to her that either or both of the dreadful fates she had feared were
extremely unlikely to befall her. But now, suddenly, she wasn’t so sure.
He sounded as if he hated her, though why, Sarah couldn’t fathom. She had
done nothing to him. Indeed, it was the other way around.

“Are you any kin to the black widow spider, I wonder?”
he continued, the laziness of his voice failing to mask its hard undertone.
“They devour their lovers after a single mating, you know. But, unlike
you, at least they have the courage to do their own dirty work.”

“What are you talking about?” Sarah looked at him
uncomprehendingly. His eyes seemed to lance into her soul.

“You know damned well what I’m talking about,”
he said tightly. “You may as well forget about playing innocent. I
won’t believe it—and you’re liable to make me angry.”

“You’re mad!” Sarah said with conviction, still
twisted around so that she could see him. “I don’t know why you
should get angry—you’re the one in the wrong.
You
ran
away,
you
abducted me, and
you
are helping to steal my
father’s sheep.”

“And
you
ran squalling to your papa. Tell me
something,
Miss
Sarah: Just how did you explain our love-making? Did
you tell him that I forced myself on you, or were you honest enough to admit
that you asked for everything you got? Your overseer—a hard man with a
whip, that—never said, and I wasn’t in a position to do any
asking.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never
told my father anything.” At his blatant reference to what had taken
place between them, Sarah’s eyes dropped away from his. She didn’t
realize it, but her downcast eyes made her look the picture of guilt. His
breath hissed through his teeth and his eyes grew harder.