Maverick Heart (29 page)

Miles suddenly noticed the new cut under Rand’s eye and the shirttail where he had wiped off the worst of the blood. He reached out to check the wound, but Rand stepped out of his reach.

“What happened?” Miles asked.

“Freddy and I were working in the south pasture stringing barbed wire when Tom showed up out of nowhere. I didn’t have time to reach for my rifle before he had a gun on me.

“He swore he’d shoot me dead if I got in his way. I would have resisted, but I was afraid Freddy might end up catching a stray bullet.” He gestured toward the cut. “Tom used his gun barrel to do this, then hit me on the back of the head and knocked me out.

“I don’t think I was out very long. I figured together we’d have a better chance of catching up to
him before anything happened to Freddy. That’s why I was in such a damned hurry to find you,” he finished, his voice rife with hostility and tinged with sarcasm.

Miles was already heading to the bedroom to finish dressing. He talked loud enough to be heard in the other room. “Could you tell which way Tom was headed?”

“South. Ow, Mother, leave me alone,” Rand protested as Verity checked the goose egg behind his ear.

“Maybe Tom has friends in Cheyenne he thinks will help him hide her,” Miles reasoned aloud from the bedroom. “We’ve got to catch him before he gets there.”

“I’m going with you,” Verity said, starting to pack a bag with food—salted pork, dried beans, flour, and canned peaches—for the three of them.

“You’d only be in the way,” Miles said from the bedroom doorway, where he stood tucking in his shirt and stomping his feet into the cowboy boots he wore in colder weather.

“You can’t leave me here to wonder what’s happening,” she said. “I’d go mad. Besides, I don’t trust the two of you alone together.”

“Mother—”

“Don’t argue with her, Rand. You won’t change her mind,” Miles said.

Rand shot him a virulent look. “Don’t tell me how to speak to my mother. Who do you think you are—”

“That’s enough, Rand,” Verity interrupted. “I’m
going. That’s final. The sooner we leave, the sooner we’ll find Freddy.”

“You’ll both have to borrow coats from the men,” Miles said. “And bring along wool blankets to roll up with your ground cloths behind the saddle.”

“What for?” Rand said. “It’s warm outside.”

“It’s also the end of September. We could get a snowstorm this afternoon and be plowing through six-foot drifts tomorrow. You don’t travel out here without planning for the worst.”

Miles debated whether to bring some of his men along. He decided against it for several reasons. First, he wasn’t sure he could control them when they caught up to Tom, and he didn’t want to be part of a lynch mob. Second, he wanted the time alone with Rand. Third, he didn’t believe it was necessary. He was certain that two against one was sufficient odds to defeat Tom Grimes. A man who would kidnap a woman—and pistol-whip an unarmed man who had defeated him in a fair fight—was a coward at heart.

He would order his men to stay behind, and they would heed him because he was the boss. A man who rode for the brand did what he was told, whether he liked it or not. It was one more part of the unwritten code that ordered life in a land where there was no civil law, no authority other than the boss, for miles in any direction.

Once they were on their way, Rand rode ahead of Miles and his mother, nursing his anger and hiding his fear. He wondered if there was anything
he could have done to prevent Freddy’s abduction. It was his fault for paying so much attention to her and not enough to what was happening around him.

It had been hard not to watch her when she bent over in those skin-hugging jeans. Hard not to notice how the sun caught in her auburn curls and gave them the sheen of russet leaves in an English autumn. Difficult even to breathe when she slipped open a button and waved the two halves of her shirt, trying to catch the breeze and cool her milk-white skin.

Was it any wonder he had set the wire cutters aside and reached out to cup her chin in his hand? Any wonder he had watched in fascination while those vivid green eyes of hers turned heavy-lidded as they gazed up at him. Any wonder he had been utterly lost as his lips gently touched hers.

Gently, because he had a cut at the right corner of his mouth. She had drawn back hesitantly, looked at his mouth, then caressed the hurt with her tongue. When she slipped her tongue into his mouth, his body had hardened instantly and completely.

He had ached to pull her close but resisted the urge. “Freddy,” he murmured. “Freddy, love.”

“Yes, Rand,” she said. “What is it?” She looked up at him with liquid eyes, pools of emerald green that drew him into their depths. Surely that was love he saw.

“Freddy, let me hold you close, please,” he begged.

Her lids lowered to hide her eyes, but she took a step closer. His arms curled around her, slowly, carefully, for his own battered body’s sake as well as in consideration for the tenderness of hers.

He felt the pebbled tips of her breasts against his chest, and he knew. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. It surprised him, and he realized it probably embarrassed her. That was why she hadn’t been able to meet his gaze. That was why her eyes were lowered even now.

He tipped her chin up. “Look at me, Freddy.” He wanted to see the truth. He wanted to see the desire in her eyes. And the love.

Her green eyes flashed at him almost defiantly.

It was there. The passion. The need to equal his. Lips that were full and ready for his kisses. But the love? He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t be sure.

“I’m a sorry sight for those beautiful eyes, love,” he murmured against her lips.

“The bruises will fade, Rand,” she said, grazing his face with her fingertips. “The cuts will heal.” She smiled, and the warmth spread to those green pools. “You’ll have quite a roguish scar on your cheek, I’m afraid.”

“As long as you don’t mind, Freddy.”

“I don’t mind.”

He widened his stance, put his hands firmly on her waist, and pulled her into the cradle of his thighs. He would never have dared such a familiarity if he had thought there was any chance they would not become man and wife. But that issue had been settled in his mind on the night they had
spent alone together in the Indian camp. She belonged to him. And he belonged to her.

She caught her breath and stared up at him, her eyes luminous.

He slid his hands around to her back, lowered them to her buttocks, and pulled her tight against him, so she could feel his arousal. He waited for the fear to rise on her face, or any sign of rejection. He saw nothing but excitement, anticipation, and trust. That caused a momentary qualm. She was putting her welfare in his hands. It was his duty to care for her. Because he had worn the label of bastard, he knew the consequences for a child born out of wedlock.

But it was hard to let her go.

“Feel how much I need you, Freddy,” he murmured against her temple. “How much I want you.”

“I want you, too, Rand,” she admitted in a small voice. “But—”

“But we aren’t married yet,” he said with a resigned sigh and a rueful smile. “Let’s go to Fort Laramie, Freddy. We could be married today.”

“I love you, Rand. Truly, I do.”

He cut her off with a quick, hard kiss.

She broke away and put her palms flat against his chest. “I planned to say yes if you asked me again to marry you, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I’m not sure it’s what I should do. It wouldn’t be very fair to you.”

Rand forced himself to hear the entire message.
She loved him. But she didn’t think she should
marry him
. That was not a yes, unless one wished to delude oneself, which he did not.

He gripped her shoulders to keep her from escaping him. “If you love me, why shouldn’t you marry me?” he asked.

“I’m not the kind of wife you need,” she said miserably. “You need someone who can work by your side, who can help you build a new life here. I’m not that person. I’m spoiled and willful and obstinate.” She held out her soft, lovely hands, without a blister or a callus on them. “I won’t be any help at all. In fact, I’ll just c-cause a lot of t-trouble.” She said the last almost as a wail.

He stared at her stunned for a moment and broke out laughing. “Do you really believe all that rubbish?”

“It isn’t rubbish!” Her eyes flashed at him with something very like the spoiled willfulness she had just ascribed to herself. “I’m trying to do something unselfish for once in my life,” she said. “I’m thinking of your happiness when I say I would be a bad bargain as a wife.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

She proved her obstinacy by replying, “No, you won’t. I think I know myself better than you do.”

Rand frowned at her, perplexed. “Let me see if I understand you correctly. You won’t marry me because you don’t have calluses on your hands?”

She flushed a ruddy color that wasn’t entirely unbecoming. “Don’t make fun of me, Rand. Not when this is so hard for me.”

“I only want to understand what’s going on
here. You love me enough to give me up to some other—much better—woman?”

Her eyes brimmed with tears. “Oh, yes. That much.”

He felt a thickness in his throat, a swelling of emotion, that was foreign to him. She was very young. And very naive. And he loved her very, very much. “Oh, sweetheart. Don’t you see? If I love you … and you love me … nothing else matters.”

“Oh, Rand,” she cried. “You just don’t understand.”

“I’m trying very hard, sweetheart. Can you help me?”

But he had never heard her explanation. Tom had appeared and cut short their conversation.

Perhaps she didn’t love him after all, Rand thought. Maybe she had been looking for a way to ease their separation. Maybe he should have taken her word for it that she was the wrong woman for him. The devil of it was, a perfect woman wouldn’t have suited him at all. He was too far from perfect himself.

He would find her, and he would make her explain herself. And he would kill Tom Grimes for daring to lay hands on her again.

With Rand ahead of them leading the way, Miles and Verity were left alone with a great deal of silence between them.

“I haven’t been having much luck making friends with my son,” Miles said at last. “I realize
now I should have told him everything as soon as he was well enough to listen. Maybe if he knew all the forces that were against us all those years ago, he could understand why I brought you here and accept our marriage.”

Verity glanced sideways at Miles, who was staring straight ahead at Rand. “The question is, when he knows everything, will he blame me for it?”

“He has no right to condemn you.”

She smiled sadly. “I was the one responsible for keeping him in the dark about his real father.”

“He can handle the truth, Verity.”

“What is the truth?”

“We were star-crossed lovers. We should have spent our lives together. But circumstances … the fates …”

“And Chester Talbot …”

“And Chester Talbot,” he repeated in a quiet voice, “kept us apart.”

“Oh, Miles. It sounds impossibly romantic. And so very tragic. Is that really what happened to us?”

He sought out her eyes. “We’ve found each other at last.”

“But we lost love somewhere along the way.”

Verity had thought, if she let herself think about it at all, that Miles would tell Rand everything the instant they stopped for the night. She hoped Rand would realize Miles was no dragon that needed to be slain. The monster was already dead.

But they didn’t stop that first night, not until the small hours of the morning. They were all so tired they rolled up in their blankets and were
asleep almost instantly. When they awoke, they ate some canned peaches, but Rand was too impatient to cook a hot meal, and Verity wasn’t about to let him go off ahead of them alone.

Miles and Rand discussed the best course of action and followed it through the next day. Verity saw that, whether the two men realized it or not, they were forming a bond on this journey that would stand them in good stead when the truth was told. She also realized that Miles had no intention of saddling Rand with any more problems until Freddy had been rescued. His son’s needs took precedence over his own.

When they found the camp where Tom had spent the night, they knew they were on the right trail. But it appeared he hadn’t taken any more of a leisurely rest than they had. There were no ashes from a fire, only a large area where the grass had been pressed down by two bodies lying close together.

Verity saw how Rand’s mouth tightened and noticed the narrowing of Miles’s eyes. She could read what they were thinking on their faces. Had Tom taken the time to ravish Freddy? Or had the fear of imminent pursuit kept him from taking what he wanted before he was completely safe? They wouldn’t know the answer until they caught up to him.

They continued south for another day and another night before the trail disappeared.

Rand was off his horse and down on one knee, trying to figure out what had happened. “Buffalo
carne through here after them,” he said when Miles joined him.

“We can take the chance they’re still headed south and keep going. Likely the sign’ll show up again,” Miles said, searching for movement on the southern horizon.

“I think he might have changed his mind about going to Cheyenne,” Rand said.

“What makes you say that?”

“Freddy will convince Tom that he’s a dead man the instant he shows up in a crowd with her. She’s got a sharp tongue and a brain, and she’s not averse to using either.”

“He could have gagged her,” Miles said.

“I’d like to see him try.”

Miles knew Rand had to make himself believe Freddy was unhurt, or he wouldn’t be able to function. Privately, he was less optimistic about finding Freddy untouched. There had been signs of a struggle in the grass where Tom and Freddy had spent the night. He wondered whether it made sense to prepare Rand for what he would probably find or keep his thoughts to himself.

“When I find him, I’m going to kill him,” Rand said.

Miles realized then that Rand knew the truth. Whether he could deal with it when he caught up to Tom was another matter. “Just don’t make the mistake of underestimating him.”