Katherine O’Neal (56 page)

He groaned against her skin. He began to
touch her more insistently, as if he suddenly couldn’t help
himself. His hands gripped at her breasts so hard they hurt. She
cried out beneath her gag, but he didn’t seem to hear. He shifted
and moved on top of her with his clothes on, the roughness of them
scratching at her sensitive skin.

She groaned vigorously, trying to convey to
him through her gag that she wanted him to slow down.

He ignored her completely, reaching between
them and hurriedly unbuckling his belt. Was he just going to take
her, with no preparation, no—

All at once, her heart froze. This wasn’t
like Mace. Even at his most dominant in bed, he’d always geared
himself toward her pleasure first. It had, in fact, been a
challenge to him to prove to her that here was a man who could
satisfy her as no one else ever had. But this frantic grappling
with clothes... as if hurrying before he was interrupted... was
more like rape than—

She understood in that moment a horrifying
truth. She struggled wildly, fighting to break the bonds that bound
her helplessly beneath him. Using every ounce of strength she
possessed, she fought like a wildcat to push him from her.

To no avail.

Suddenly, she heard the doorknob turn. It
must be locked, for someone was pounding frantically on the door.
She heard a series of hard thuds as the man on top of her began to
laugh. The laugh of a ghost. She could feel him against her like a
spear, ready to enter her. Even as he moved toward her, the door
crashed open.

The gas lamp flared and fizzled as someone
turned the knob to its highest setting with a sudden jerk. She
hardly had time to let out a muffled scream when the intruder
staggered into the room. Blood flowing from a gash in his head, it
was Mace!

The man on top of her raised his head, and
she found herself staring into the lifeless, deformed eye of a dead
man.

Lance Blackwood was doing his best to reenact
that long-ago rape.

Lance was alive
. Cackling as he had
that awful night. Bringing it all back to her in stark detail. The
flames leaping around them. Her mother’s screams. Her beloved
father, banging on the door, trying frantically to find a way out
before the smoke choked them to death. And all the while that crazy
laughter sounding in her ears... just as it was now.

She didn’t realize she was screaming. All she
knew was that, one moment she was staring into that hated face, and
the next he was ripped from her by a force so violent, it seemed to
sweep through the room like a hurricane. Lance was thrown up
against the wall so hard the wind was knocked from him. And Mace
stood before him, his breath heaving in his chest.

“You son of a bitch,” Mace growled.

“Don’t lose yer temper, mate. I thought you
left her there fer me. A present, like. Fer comin’ back from the
dead, eh? Ain’t it lucky yer
wife
is such a poor aim. Grazed
me head, that bullet did. Left me with another scar, but wot’s
another one, eh?”

For once, Mace seemed completely caught
off-guard, as startled as Saranda by this turn of events. He looked
so shaken, as if for once in his life, he couldn’t think what to
do. “You had me called away,” he said between ragged breaths, “and
clubbed on the head, so you could—”

“Have me revenge? Ye wouldn’t expect less of
a Blackwood, would ye now? She may have fancy-talked ye into
thinkin’ she was good enough to marry, but she almost killed yer
baby brother. Would have, too, if I hadn’t washed up against a
nearby boat and been fished out of the drink. I’ve been watchin’
you, the happy couple. Waitin’ to make me move. Never realizing
the—entertainment that was in store.” The last was said with a
contemptuous glance at Saranda, who was struggling to get free.

Mace glanced at her and saw the panic in her
eyes. Stepping over to her, he slipped the gag from her mouth,
tossed a cover over her, and asked, “Are you all right?”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“For God’s sake, Mace, kill him!”

Lance assumed a cocky sneer. “Yer goin’ to
kill
me
, Mace? Tyke a look at me eye, brother. A good look.
I got that because of you. Or mayhap ye don’t recall the vow ye
made? To protect yer baby brother till the day I die?”

For a moment, the room was silent as Mace
glanced at Lance and back again at Saranda. Saranda wasn’t sure
he’d ever make a move, but she did know one thing: Lance had no
intention of letting them out of here alive. She could see it in
his eyes.

Caught unawares, and with a wicked blow to
his head, Mace had been robbed of his customary control. Blood from
his wound dripped into his eye. He swiped it away as if he were in
a daze. Not since the tornado had she seen him look so helpless, so
at risk of losing against an unbeatable foe. Except that his foe
this time was his love for his brother. On the heels of wishing him
alive, how could he now bring himself to end his brother’s
life?

He saw the sudden despair in her eyes and
turned back to Lance.

“The day you die?” he repeated dully. “That
day has come, Lance. You’ve caused enough misery for one
lifetime.”

“You and yer blasted tongue, Mace. You talked
yer way into everything I wanted and couldn’t have. When I think of
all the times I begged fer yer help—”

“When did I refuse you my help?”

“When I went to you and asked ye to leave
Pilar. I was sufferin’ right enough. All I asked was wot one
brother should expect from another. But no, ye had to stay with
that bitch while yer only brother starved. That’s why I turned her
in. She was turnin’ yer head, she was. I knew once you got shy of
her, you’d come to yer senses and go back on the flam with me. But
what did ye do? Joined up with the Van Slykes. Never offered to cut
me in on the action. All ye had to do was make me a part of their
con. Share and share alike, eh, brother? Ain’t that wot ye promised
me all those years ago?”

By now, Mace was shaking with visible
fury.

“We’ve shared one thing, we have,” Lance went
on. “This little Sherwin piece. Wot do ye say we bury the hatchet
and have a go together?”

Mace closed his eyes. Then he reached into
his coat pocket and slowly withdrew his pistol.

“You goin’ to shoot me, brother? Look in me
eye and tell me ye can go through with it. No girl on earth’s worth
a brother’s love. And ye
do
love me. Y’said ye did.”

Mace looked into the bad eye of his
brother—the eye that had caused him so much guilt over the years.
He made himself look, forced himself to face the truth. That Lance
would have been this way even without the beating. That he’d been
protecting a madman. That it had to end. He faced it squarely.
“Love?” he spat. “You took my love and turned it into something
vile. You never knew the meaning of the word.”

He took a breath and, like a man putting an
end to the suffering of a dying beast, pulled the trigger.

The shot exploded in the confines of the
room. Lance’s cocky countenance changed to one of utter shock.
Blood spurted from his chest, where Mace had shot him through the
heart. Stunned, he stumbled across the room and out the shattered
front door as if running from a retribution he’d never thought
would come. He clutched at the rail, only to lose consciousness and
fall with a splash into the river.

“My aim isn’t faulty,” Mace muttered, staring
after him. “This time there’ll be no returning from the dead.”

Footsteps sounded outside. Shaking himself to
his senses, Mace dropped the gun and moved to swiftly untie Saranda
and hand her a robe. Gasps and screams were heard from the deck. He
hurriedly went to join the people on the rail.

With the robe tight about her, Saranda joined
them just in time to see Lance’s body drift into the paddle wheel
to be crushed against the side of the boat. Sickened, she leaned
against Mace, turning her head away.

Pandemonium had broken out all around them.
But through it all, she was aware of a great stillness in Mace. He
didn’t move. He didn’t seem to breathe. She looked up to find him
looking down at her with a deep sadness in his eyes.

Most of the night was spent answering the
captain’s questions as to why and how Lance Blackwood had been
shot. After this makeshift inquiry, Mace was exonerated of any
wrongdoing. They were given another cabin, and Mace’s head was
cleaned where Lance had hit him from behind, but he refused a
bandage. He still hadn’t come to bed when Saranda finally fell
asleep.

She slept most of the morning, too
emotionally exhausted to do anything else. When she awoke in the
afternoon, she found Mace sprawled in a chair, sleeping.

She dressed silently and crept out the door
to stand by the rail. Even while they were answering the barrage of
questions, an unearthly stillness had settled about them. They’d
avoided each other’s eyes, as if it was too soon to give voice to
what must be said. Saranda knew now that she’d been wrong about
Mace. But she didn’t know what that meant or how it would affect
their future. Had Mace been feeling as betrayed by her as she’d
been lately feeling about him?

She wished, looking out at the banks of the
river, that they could just put it all behind them. That they
didn’t even have to say the words. That they could just look at one
another and know what the other was thinking. That it could be free
and easy.

But when had it been free and easy between
them? Only in those days when they’d been running for their
lives.

She felt his presence beside her. Looking at
him, she saw a heartbreakingly handsome man dressed in the
expensively tailored clothing of a publishing magnate. He looked
sleek and elegant, as he had when she’d first seen him in New York.
The only things that belied his aura of respectability were the
wild black curls, the wolfish mouth, and his Gypsy eyes. Otherwise,
he was a shining example of New York sophistication. She knew she
looked equally conventional in Paris silk. She couldn’t help
recalling what he’d looked like in the Tennessee farmer’s clothes,
two sizes too small, with the bulge of his groin so noticeable,
he’d had to pull out the shirttail to hide it from view.

She smiled tenderly at the memory.

“Why are you smiling?” he asked—the first
words he’d spoken to her since Lance’s shooting.

“Oh, I was just remembering how you looked in
that farmer’s clothes. Just wishing—”

“What?”

“That we were back there, wearing those
clothes again.”

It wasn’t all she wished, but it was all she
could bring herself to say.

He put his elbows on the rail and leaned over
the side to study the landscape. “Funny you should think of that
now. We must be close to Memphis.”

His words settled on the breeze. Again the
stillness descended.

“Mace...” she said presently.

“Let’s not talk about it now, shall we?”

She sighed and looked back at the riverbank.
He didn’t want to talk any more than she did. But what were they to
do now? Where were they to go from here? She knew what she wished
would happen. She wanted nothing more than to be off this boat and
away from the remaining memories of Lance.

Minutes later, the terrain began to look
familiar. She was seized by an eerie sense of
déjà vu
. As if
she’d done this before. Thought these same desperate thoughts while
looking out on the same terrain. They rounded a bend in the river,
and she stood up straight. There, before them, was the huge jutting
rock where the farmer had kept his raft.

Her gaze flew to Mace. He was looking at her
with the same sudden awareness in his eyes. His teeth flashed in
his prominent mouth. What a glorious smile he has, she thought,
answering it in kind—with a hell-bent-for-leather grin.

It was as if a single thought flashed from
his mind to hers and back again. They didn’t bother to ask each
other, Can we really do this? There was no time for questions, or
even rational thought. As one, they began to tear off their clothes
and drop them to the deck. His city hat he tossed into the river.
His expensive dark suit lay in a heap at his feet. The traditional
dark blue frock she’d spent hours having fitted was kicked aside in
a pile of petticoats.

By now, they were laughing, feeling as
carefree as children, as full of anticipation as if this were their
first day on earth. They stood, as one, on top of the rail,
tottered for a moment, then dived, together, into the rushing
current of the muddy Mississippi.

Before they’d swum far, people called to them
from the rails, believing they were in need of help. But when they
looked back and waved, laughing all the while, the would-be
rescuers shook their heads. Perhaps, they whispered, after the
shock of the night before, the newlyweds had completely lost their
heads.

“Where are we going?” she called to him as
they swam.

“Does it matter? So long as it’s away from
here?”

She shook her head, shaking the water from
her eyes. The current was strong, but she didn’t care. She felt
wonderful suddenly, bathed clean of memories and that awful
punishing silence. It was good to move, to stretch her muscles, to
feel alive.

“The farmer’s family did, after all, win that
contest,” she called. “Ten thousand dollars of McLeod’s money,
wasn’t it? We could always drop by and give them the happy
news.”

He was grinning. “And we never really saw New
Orleans. Certainly not in its best light.”

“Who cares where we go?” she called to the
winds. “As long as we’re—”

She paused. In one last moment of
uncertainty, she cast a shy glance his way.

“Together,” he finished.

He swam to her, took hold of her waist, and
kissed her hard. The water dripping from her eyes mingled with her
tears. “Can you ever forgive me?” she asked.