Patricia Potter (16 page)

“You would be the last to achieve it,” she replied acidly, not caring that her words carried.

“Perhaps,” he said tauntingly, and then turned to Gil MacIntosh. “Tomorrow?”

Gil looked curiously from Meredith to Devereux. Her actions were odd, he thought. He had never seen her take such an open dislike to anyone before. Still, he had already said he would see the man, and he could not break his word. But he decided he would ask Robert Seaton more about him before committing to any business arrangement. He nodded, unhappily seeing Meredith’s fixed expression.

When Devereux disappeared through the doors of the ballroom, he turned to Meredith. “Why do you dislike him so?”

“He…he tried to take advantage on the trip up here from New Orleans,” she said, remembering the hard taste of Devereux’s lips.

“The devil you say,” Gil said. “Well, I’ll hear him out and send him on his way.”

“I haven’t said anything to Robert.”

“Then I won’t either, if you wish.”

She smiled, and Gil thought how pretty she could be. If only someone would help her with her clothes and hair, he mused. But she had had no mother, and precious little attention from her father and brother.

“Thank you,” she said softly before fluttering her fan nervously. “I do think his presence has given me a headache. Would you think me terribly rude if I excused myself?”

“Of course not,” Gil said. “I just hope you’ll feel better.”

Meredith fluttered her eyelashes. When
he’s
gone, she thought with frustration. But she just nodded and put her hand on his sleeve affectionately. And then she fled.

She stopped by Daphne’s small room off the kitchen, but the girl was not there, and the other house servants were all very busy. She knew she would need help with her buttons. More than anything she wanted the ugly dress off, along with the corset and petticoats and hoops that held her prisoner.

She paused in the hallway leading to the ballroom, and looked for Quinn Devereux, but he was gone. Something started pecking away at her mind. Could Daphne be in danger?

Meredith slipped out the back door. She would check the barn.

Cam kept his arm around Daphne. She felt so right there. So small and soft and trusting.

He hadn’t missed the light in her eyes when they had met in the kitchen. She had been fetching something for her mistress, and he had been ordered by the captain to add his strong back to other servants’. It was a necessary part of the role he played, and he did not resent it.

Daphne’s coffee brown eyes, which were so large and so expressive, had told him how much she had missed him. She had nodded eagerly when he whispered for her to meet him later, during the dance, at the barn. He knew the stablehands would be busy tending the horses lined up in front, and there was a small protected shed in the back. He had already scouted it well.

Now, as he tightened his hold on her, he sensed her fear. He knew that fear only too well, and he wondered if Daphne had the courage to escape. Even if Meredith Seaton was the kindest mistress, she was still that—a mistress who had to be obeyed in the smallest and greatest of all matters.

“I was afraid I would never see you again,” Daphne said hesitantly.

“Would that ha’ mattered?”

“Oh yes,” she said innocently, and he smiled slowly. It was a gesture that was coming easier to him these days.

He felt her tremble and wondered why. Had she been mistreated here? He felt every muscle in his body tense.

“Are you all right?” he asked gently.

She nodded.

“And Briarwood?”

She lay in his arms feeling a safety she hadn’t felt since that time on the boat. “Like any plantation, I suppose.”

“No one’s pesterin’ you?”

She shook her head, and he felt vast relief. That had been his greatest fear, that the master of the plantation would try to take her to bed. She was so pretty.

“Miz Seaton?” he persisted. “Is she hard?”

“No,” Daphne said. “She doesn’t use me nearly as much as my other young missus. She gets impatient but never angry. And she looks at me in a strange way sometimes.”

“How do you mean strange?”

“I don’t know, like she’s looking for something.”

Cam felt a sudden disquiet. He didn’t like the notion of Miz Seaton taking a special interest in Daphne. He knew Quinn was going to try to buy her again. “Do you think you could escape if there were someone to help?”

She turned wide eyes on him. “Who?”

“Jest someone. Would you?”

Daphne hesitated. She had never had much courage. And more than anything else she was afraid of a whipping. She didn’t think she could stand that. She recalled the scars on Cam’s back and she wondered how anyone could have borne what he had. But ever since she had first met him and talked to him, she had started to think of being free. Of being free with him.

“Would
you
go?” she asked in return. Perhaps if she were with him, she could hold her fear in check.

His great arms, the muscles straining the cheap cotton shirt he wore, tightened around her. How could he tell her no, that he had to stay with Captain Devereux, that he wouldn’t be free until they were all free?

“Not right away,” he said softly, “but I could make sure you’re safe…and join you later.”

She tensed at his words. Alone. She would be all alone. And yet the idea of freedom had somehow taken root. She hadn’t thought about it until she had met Cam, until their conversation on the steamboat. But now she could think of little else.

Daphne hesitated only a moment longer, then nodded.

“Someone will be in touch with you,” Cam said. “If you hear the words, ‘Freedom’s light,’ you’ll know it’s a friend.”

“I’m scared.”

“I know,” he said softly. “But it will be worth it, I promise.” He wanted to tell her about the captain’s plan to purchase her, that perhaps this would all be unnecessary and that she wouldn’t have to follow the Underground Railroad. If only…

Why did Miz Seaton want Daphne so badly?

He lowered his lips and kissed her gently, trying not to scare her. He could feel the fear in her, taste its acrid bite on her mouth. He didn’t quite understand his overwhelming need to protect her, to touch her in tender ways, to smooth away the trembling that made him ache inside.

He heard Quinn’s voice. “Where’s that black bastard of mine?” and he felt Daphne flinch in his arms. He put a finger to her mouth, warning her to be quiet. “Stay here until I’m gone,” he whispered.

He stood and stepped out of the shadows into the lantern’s light. “I’m here, Capt’n. Jest making sure the horses are okay.”

“Well, get on to the house. They need help in the kitchen.”

“Yessuh,” Cam said lazily, and Daphne feared for him, but then the barn door opened and closed. She had started to move when she heard Captain Devereux’s voice. He was soothing his horse, and she wondered how someone could treat an animal so gently and a man so cruelly. She hated him. She hated him more than she had ever hated anyone before. She wanted to strike out at him, to kill him, but she had no weapon. Or courage. With desperate angry tears in her eyes, she waited until she heard the door open and close again. Several minutes later, she crept out.

Quinn’s dark eyes swept the lawn. Carriages were lined up along the road, their horses’ needs being tended to by the Seatons’ groomsmen. Chinese lanterns spread flickering light everywhere, and the great house itself was majestic in the moonlight. Music and conversation seemed to burst from the windows and doors, all of which were open to allow the air to circulate. There were couples under several trees, their heads bent close together in intimate conversation, while an occasional trill of laughter added to the symphony of sound.

He surveyed it all, the cynicism in him deploring the extravagance built on slave labor, the loneliness in him envying the carefree banter between courting couples. The party was far from over, but when he had seen Meredith leave, he was afraid she would be looking for Daphne. He had known that Cam was to meet the girl tonight and it would do Cam, and himself, little good to be linked with a slave who would soon, hopefully, escape North.

So he had gone to warn Cam. He had meant to leave with Cam, but his horse had recognized his scent and whinnied for attention. Knowing that Daphne must be waiting in frightened silence, he quickly quieted the horse and left.

He leaned against a great magnolia tree, its leaves still thick and green although the rich white petals were long gone. He couldn’t see the Mississippi from here, but he knew it was less than half a mile away. He longed for it now, for its honest complexity. Quinn closed his eyes, relieved for the moment to be free of people, of pretending. Pretense was becoming so much a part of him now that he sometimes wondered if he was becoming the person he feigned to be—a reckless gambler who cared nothing about others. It was a frightening thought. But perhaps the fact that he worried about it made doubtful the possibility.

Quinn opened his eyes, and he saw Meredith Seaton standing beside the house…alone. He wondered how long she had been there and whether she had seen Daphne or Cam or himself, for that matter, leave the barn. He couldn’t quite see the expression in her eyes, but she was standing stiffly in the atrocious yellow gown. With an unhurried grace, he walked over to her.

“Miss Seaton. I feared you might be ill again.” There was the usual baiting amusement in his voice.

In the combined light of the lanterns and the moon, he could see amber flashes in her golden brown eyes. And indignation. A great deal of indignation.

“I came out for a breath of air,” she said tightly. “And you, Mr. Devereux? What did you find so fascinatin’ all by your little ol’ self? I thought you were bein’ well entertained inside.”

Quinn’s mouth turned up in a wry smile. “I’m flattered by your attention, Miss Meredith. It’s too much for a poor disreputable gambler like myself.” He managed to speak the last word as disdainfully as she had in the ballroom.

Meredith blushed. Damn the man. He always made her seem the fool. And she couldn’t fight back, not without exposing more of herself than she wanted him to see. “I look after all our guests, Captain, even the…well…more undesirable ones.” She puckered her lips in distaste and looked unbearably prissy.

His grin spread wider but there was no amusement in his eyes. “How noble, Miss Seaton,” he drawled in that brandy-mellow voice of his, which warmed her insides like the real thing. Even knowing what she did, even after seeing him emerge from the barn, followed several seconds later by Daphne, she couldn’t control the reactions of her body to him. Her blood felt like liquid fire, her bones seemed to melt, and a deep ache of need blazed inside her, its flames spreading through every part of her.

She lowered her eyelashes so he wouldn’t see the need in her eyes. She had trained herself to hide her emotions, but she had never encountered anyone like Quinn Devereux before. “Yes,” she finally said defiantly. “It is rather…gracious of me, isn’t it?” She hoped she sounded as silly and haughty as she intended. Perhaps he would leave her alone.

But he didn’t. He stood there like a statue, his eyes searching her face before he replied, “Let’s see how gracious.” And before she could react, his lips were on hers.

It was an angry punishing kiss, the retribution he had silently promised himself for her earlier public insult. She fought to get free, her hands pummeling a chest whose hard strength seemed totally immune to her efforts.

The kiss deepened, gentling slightly, and the fire between them flashed. Her hands faltered, and her lips, of their own volition, started to respond to him, to the warm pressure of his mouth, to the sudden unexpected power of the contact. As on the
Lucky Lady,
she was again defenseless, her body, her tongue, her hands succumbing in the most elementary way. Unconsciously her body leaned toward his, fitting itself to the hard lean angles, and her hands crawled upward to his neck, her fingers winding in the thick dark hair. Her tongue took on a life of its own, welcoming his every probe, his every challenge.

Her mind cried no, but her body wouldn’t heed the warning. It was too caught up in the exquisite feelings he was creating in her.

He had probably tried to seduce Daphne…or even taken her, uncaring, unheeding of her feelings. As he was of hers. He didn’t care about her. He only wanted to punish. And he was doing it. Dear Lord, how he was doing it.

She jerked herself free with such force that she stumbled, and his hand went out to steady her. His face, now bare of mockery, was filled instead with bafflement. They stood there in the shadows, in the deep of night, staring at each other, Meredith with hatred that he had ravaged her well-protected defenses, and Quinn with more confusion than ever at the fire in her, at the response that had awakened something fierce inside him. More than anything, he wanted to taste those lips again, feed the hunger in them.

“You…you blackguard,” she said, wanting badly to say something stronger.

The words broke the spell on Quinn. He leaned against the side of the house and laughed. He put a finger to her chin and lifted it, demanding that she look at him. “I didn’t expect so much fire, Miss Seaton.”