Authors: Jill Marie Landis
Payson Bond came to mind, and Darcy felt his lip curl almost involuntarily. He tried to recall any similarity between the slight, tired-eyed farmer and Olivia’s vibrant, flashing beauty. Thankfully, there was none. How could she really want to live a life of such bare existence, working herself to the bone, growing old before her time like her stepmother? It was beyond him.
Looking at her now, he could see that her hair wanted trimming; her chafed, reddened hands and feet needed to be manicured and rubbed with perfumed lotions and oils. How long had it been since she’d had a sensuous soak in a steaming, scented bath?
He had rescued her none too soon.
He shifted on the hard ground, propping his head on his hand. She glanced up and he caught a flash of emerald eyes before she dropped her gaze and her lashes swept her cheeks. His loins tightened, his pulse jumped. He began to reconsider waiting. Maybe he would have her before they returned to the Palace and he cleaned her up.
“What is it you want from me, Olivia? Say the word and I’ll give it to you.” The offer escaped him on its own. Since he could not call it back, he watched and waited to see what she would say.
Except for an almost imperceptible shiver, she did not respond at all.
“How about a miserable cabin in the dirt? Countless tubs of laundry to wash?” He thought back to the two little urchins he had seen at her father’s place, the two towheads with traces of sticky candy around their mouths, with muddy feet and matted hair. He remembered having seen them in town before he found Olivia, although back then he had not even known they were her kin. Both of them had been sucking on penny candy, licking it off their dirty hands, laughing and rolling around outside the dry goods store.
“Did you have your heart set on a passel of children? Years of poverty?”
No response.
“If that’s what you want, Olivia, I’m truly sorry that you will have to suffer with the best money can buy instead.”
Finally, her head shot up and she glared at him, wild, beautiful rage on her face at long last. Anything, he thought. Anything to replace the resignation, the lethargy.
“The best money can buy for as long as you keep me for your pet, Darcy? Afterward you will set me up in my own little room and make me service, oh, how many men a night? Just to line your pockets?”
“And your own.”
She laughed, a cold bitter laugh, and shook her head. “As if that were important. I won’t be able to buy my soul back with tainted money.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Or what I have lost.”
He swung his legs under him, sat up and leaned close to the fire. “And what is it you think you have lost, Olivia? Your one-eyed, half-breed watchdog?”
The thought of the scarred half-breed putting his filthy hands all over her, putting himself inside her, made his blood boil.
“Don’t tell me you
loved
him?” He laughed and the sound echoed off the walls of the cave. “Is that what you want? Love? Would that make it all better, Olivia? Would that make it worth it? Do you expect me to
love
you, to keep you with me forever instead of turning you into a whore like the others?”
He had been thinking the same thing lately, considering keeping her for himself, for always. He had gone through enough trouble to get her back, more than he would have done for any of the other girls. Those he would have given up without a chase. Olivia, he could not forget.
She shook her head, setting her dark, glistening curls rippling over her shoulders and down her back. He could almost feel her hair enveloping him. His hands itched to touch her, but he chose to torment himself with verbal foreplay, to stoke his need a while longer.
“Maybe,” he mused, lowering his voice, hoping to stroke her, calm her, “maybe I do love you, Olivia, but I just don’t know it. Maybe that’s why I’m so obsessed with having you. Maybe that’s why I never gave up and continued to track you down all these months.”
“You don’t know what love is, Darcy. If you did, I wouldn’t be here.”
“What is
that
supposed to mean?”
She irritated him by giving him a cool, small, knowing smile. “If you loved me, you would not force me to do anything. You would let me go.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” He laughed and the sound echoed off the cave walls.
“Of course it is, to someone like you.”
The deep overwhelming sadness in her eyes caused him an intense tug of emotion that he had never felt before, one so foreign that he reacted to it with anger.
The memory of those grubby boys in the cabin flashed into his mind again, but it was quickly replaced with one of Olivia moving close to the half-breed, cozying up beneath the shelter of his arm on the street. Now, as he sat there staring at her, he watched Olivia slip back into her own private thoughts as she watched the fire.
What
did
he know of love? Some quirk of fate had led his mother to keep him when she found herself with child. He was raised at the Palace, coddled and nurtured by a bevy of whores. They dressed him up in velvet, in satin pants and top coats, clapped and laughed and gave him pennies and treats whenever he sang or danced or flashed his dimpled smile for them.
They were the only family he had ever known, those soft-skinned, fancy women of every hue who lived surrounded by clouds of perfume, powdered and painted, draped in loose silk and satin.
Olivia was right, of course. There was no way he could understand the kind of devotional, familial love she was talking about, the kind of love that would keep a man tied to the life he had glimpsed last night in Payson Bond’s cabin.
Why would any man want that kind of life? Or any woman, for that matter?
As the firelight played off the soft turn of her cheek, bounced back off the highlights in her hair, shadowed the contours of her chin, her long throat, Darcy silently had to agree with her. If that was love, then indeed, he was ignorant of it.
He did not know that kind of love. Nor did he care to.
“
If you loved me you would let me go
.”
Of one thing he was certain. To love was to possess, to control, to own. In that way, he did care for her. More than any woman he had ever known.
The night was clear, the moon full, casting shadows on the water as Noah alternately steered and then paddled his way down the Ohio. He was alone in a dugout canoe for which he traded his hat and Payson’s newly acquired horse to an old, toothless Shawnee who was fishing along the shore a few miles south of Shawneetown.
Navigating the river at night was not only foolhardy, it was dangerous, even under the full moon. There wasn’t another craft on the water large or small; still, he was careful to keep the canoe close to the bank of the river where the shadows from the trees darkened the water. Whenever he passed a smaller settlement or homestead near the water, he would lift the paddle to make certain no one heard him drift by—not that anyone in his right mind would be expecting someone to be on the water at night.
The harmonic voices whispering in the water were back, murmuring to him, guiding him, telling him where to turn, when to drift with the current, what places to avoid. The stars shining above and the moonlight glistening off the water added magic to the hushed sounds that filled his head. Even more curious than the voices was an imprint on the water, one that he could feel rather than see, one that convinced him that Olivia had passed this way earlier. After the first hour on the water he was sure the river was guiding him to her. The water whispered her name.
As he came around a wide bend in the river, an inner knowing tugged at him, urging him to pull in to shore. Just to be certain, he let the canoe drift on past the spot for a quarter mile until the feeling that Olivia had been this way slowly faded. He stopped, turned the canoe back upstream, and hugged the bank where the water was shallow and the current weak. He waited, puzzling over the odd sensations.
Should he trust the voices or was he only losing his mind? He paddled back upstream until the feeling hit him again. Olivia was near. Olivia had definitely come ashore here. He beached the canoe, stepped out, and pulled it up across the muddy riverbank, hiding it beneath some overhanging branches. Standing there beside the river, he looked around. The land rolled gently upward and ended at a high sandstone bluff. There were no tracks in the moonlight and now that he stood on solid ground, the voices were still.
He closed his eye and took a deep breath. A slight, hardly detectable scent of smoke came to him on the still night air. Hiking a few yards away from the water, he headed toward the bluff until he found what he was looking for. There, almost disembodied in the face of the bluff he saw the faint, far off glow of a campfire. The moon was so bright that it was almost impossible to distinguish the firelight or the trail of smoke.
Cave in Rock. Of course
.
It was the perfect hiding place, a natural cave in the sandstone bluff. Most recently, bands of river pirates had used it to lure unsuspecting emigrants to shore. It was a fitting place for the gambler and whoremonger to spend the night, but not with Olivia.
Noah began to climb with a purpose. How long had they been there, he wondered?
What had Olivia already endured?
“
Darcy is a far more experienced lover
.”
He stopped to take a deep breath, to adjust the second red headband he had torn from his quickly vanishing shirt-tails and fought back the lingering hint of doubt that had not left him all day.
Susanna had told him that Olivia had left with Darcy to save him, to save her family, but the words Olivia had said after the heat of their passion had branded themselves indelibly on his heart. Didn’t she
know
he could save himself? That he didn’t need her to sacrifice herself to Lankanal for him? With such soft hands and fair skin, with such perfect, handsome features, Lankanal had probably never fought another man in his life. He was not the type to dirty his own hands fighting or killing. He would have someone else do it for him.
Lankanal, in and of himself, was no threat.
But how was Olivia to have known?
Noah realized she truly believed she was protecting him and her family. There had to be only one reason she would make such a sacrifice. She loved him as much as she did Payson, Susanna, and the boys.
Noah tightened his grip on his rifle and began to jog across the sandy soil, weaving his way through the trees, hoping he was not too late.
Olivia sat huddled with her legs drawn up and her arms wrapped around her knees, watching the firelight flicker on the walls of the cave, trying to shake the haunting sense of having been here before. Darcy lay across the fire ring, striking a casual pose that was marred every time he looked at the ground around him in disgust and made certain his clothes were not touching the dirt.
After the sleepless night before and the emotional upheaval of lying to Noah and her family, Olivia was so exhausted now that she could barely keep her eyes open.
For whatever reason, Darcy had chosen to verbally toy with her, prolonging the inevitable. She did not even dare to hope that this night would pass without his taking her on the floor of the cave.
Suddenly it came to her with aching clarity that she had seen this same scene before in a dream, a dream that had begun as a nightmare the night that she and Noah first made love in his cabin high over the swamp. That night she had dreamed of being enclosed in the stone walls of a cavern with firelight writhing on the walls just the way it was now. A tall, broad shouldered man had come to her, a dark angel who had taken away the fear and the pain. The angel had gently loved her, had given of himself, brought her joy and light. Noah. She had awakened in his arms and discovered that her dream had become reality.
But that was almost a summer ago, a lifetime. There would be no dark angel this time. She had banished him from her life, sent him home without her; the only consolation was knowing that he was safe.
“Thinking of your half-breed lover?”
Darcy’s voice startled her. She gazed over at him, tried to pin him with a cool, even stare.
“Actually, I was.” She watched him blanch. Anger hardened his perfect features, but he no longer inspired fear. There was nothing he could do to her that he had not already done before, aside from kill her, and she was beginning to think that death might be a welcome escape. In fact, Olivia thought, as she stared back into his cynical blue eyes, perhaps ending her life and taking Darcy with her might be a way to save a number of other young girls from suffering the same fate at his hands.
“What were you thinking about him?” Darcy’s voice was low, even, deadly.
“I was just comparing the two of you, and you come up wanting, Darcy. You aren’t even fit to walk the ground he’s walked on.”
She expected him to come up off the blanket, to explode in a rage. Instead he only looked into her eyes and laughed.
“Fine talk coming from a whore.”
“I never said that I was worthy of him.” She propped her chin on her knees. Unwilling to take her eyes off of him, she was ready for him to quit toying with her and pounce. “In fact, I had to spend most of the summer convincing him that I was not good enough for him. That’s what made it easier to give him up and leave with you, Darcy. You see, I love him. I would do
anything
to see him safe, even stay with the likes of you.”
She had struck one chord too many. He was on his feet, rounding the fire, on her in an instant. His fingers bit into her upper arms as he grabbed her and pulled her up. She yelped in pain when her hair became tangled beneath his grasping hands. The pressure on her arms let up when he released them, but he found purchase at the neckline of her calico gown. She grabbed his wrists, but was no match for his strength.
The fabric tore with a ragged sound, exposing her only piece of underclothing, a light muslin chemise.
“God, I hated that dress.” He pushed it down around her hips until it slid to the floor and pooled around her feet and ankles.
His hands closed over her breasts. He began to knead them painfully. His eyelids were half closed, his breath coming hard and fast. She had never seen him like this. He had never physically hurt her before. Olivia winced, but refused to give him the satisfaction of crying out.
She threw her head back and stared at him, willing him to open his eyes, to look into hers.
“I’ll kill you, Darcy. I swear it. Have me now and enjoy it, but be warned, I’m going to kill you one day if it’s the last thing I do.”
She knew she was well and truly lost then, that she had sunk as low as she could go. He had taken all of the good left in her, for now she could smile coldly back at him and actually think of killing him. Her soul was damned. She might just as well rid the world of the both of them.
Her feet tangled in the fabric of her gown as he began to push her back toward the stone wall behind them. When she tripped and started to fall, he jerked her up, pressing her back with one hand on her breast. With the other he grabbed a handful of her hair and wrapped it around his wrist. He pulled her head back until her face was tilted up to his and she had no recourse but to take the kiss he forced upon her.
Darcy was squeezing her breast, thrusting his tongue in her mouth, rubbing up against her. To think of Noah now was almost a sacrilege, but her mind retreated of its own volition, hiding in the memory of him, of Noah’s hands, Noah’s kiss, Noah’s gentle, healing touch.
The beautiful recollections succeeded in making Darcy’s attempts to have her, to reach her, very pitiful in comparison. Not only her body, but her mind rebelled with loathing and she began to fight him in earnest, in a way she never had before. She could not allow his touch to defile and replace Noah’s. Where once he might have eventually overcome her body, this time nothing happened. Instead of stoking her passion, he only succeeded in firing her determination to fight him off for as long as she could.
She tried to escape his hold by twisting away, but he pulled her hair so hard that she cried out against his mouth, kicked him in the shins, struck out at him with her fists. Stunned, he lifted his head. She slapped him hard across the mouth, so hard she split the corner of his lip.
“You really mean it, don’t you?” He blinked, stunned.
Swiping off blood with the back of his hand, he stared down at his ruffled white cuff and the blood that stained it.
“Damn it, Olivia.” He stared at her in shocked disbelief. “I’ve never had to rape a woman in my life. Women
love
me.”
“Forcing me is the only way you’ll have me, Darcy, because I loathe you. I’d rather sleep with the devil.”
“I don’t want it to be like this. I’ve chased across the country after you, Olivia. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Darcy, I can’t give you what you want anymore, not willingly.”
“I want you to look at me the way you looked at him.”
There was actually remorse in his tone, a hint of pleading, something that she never in her life expected to hear. He actually sounded sincere, as if he were truly sorry, as if he had no idea how to have her, or any woman, except by owning her.
Olivia shook her head, sadness swelling inside the hurt.
She whispered, “I’ll never look at you the way I looked at Noah. I loved him.”
Just then, she caught a glimpse of movement on the dark incline across the fire. One of the burning branches in the fire ring popped and split and fell into the ash, sending up sparks that swirled in the heat of the flames like minute starbursts.
She saw a figure in the deep black shadows, watched a tall, broad shape move from boulder to boulder, faster now, heading toward the light, toward her. Coming out of nowhere like an avenging angel, the man’s shape grew larger, his shadow curving upward, hugging the walls of the cavern.
“No,” she whispered. “Oh, no.” She shook her head, wincing against the tug of Darcy’s fist in her hair.
“Oh, yes,” Darcy whispered. With his back to the entrance of the cave, it was impossible for him to know what was about to befall him. “Make it easy on yourself, Olivia. I swear, I’ll make you like it as much as you used to. I promise.” He bent his head, forcing her face up to receive his kiss.
The man in the shadows stepped into the ring of light. Olivia bit her lip to keep from crying out to him, from giving his presence away. She had to keep Darcy from turning around, from seeing Noah. Her nightmare had come to pass, but this time, instead of a gentle coming together at the end of the dream, the lovemaking, the ending would be all wrong. Nothing good or true or wonderful would happen this time.
“Let her go, Lankanal.” Noah’s strong voice rang against the stone. Magnified by the curvature of the walls, it echoed around them.
Noah’s hand tightened on his rifle. The old Hawken was primed and ready to fire. All he had to do was squeeze the trigger and rid the world of Darcy Lankanal.
Behind the gambler, Olivia leaned against the stone wall, panting; her chemise was torn, exposing the swell of her breast and the purpling finger marks on her fair skin. Her hair was a wild black nimbus around her head, her eyes huge in the ivory oval of her face.
Noah had been outside climbing the hillside when he heard her cry out. Knowing it could only be Olivia’s cry, knowing Darcy had his hands on her, was hurting her, spurred him on. Afraid of what Lankanal might be forced to do if he discovered that he was trapped, Noah had stealthily entered the cave and covered the last few yards down the incline without a sound.
The cost of his silence was that he had to watch as Darcy manhandled Olivia. He had seen the gambler grab her breast, pull her hair, and humiliate her before he could reach her.
What other atrocities had she suffered? How much damage had Lankanal done before he arrived?
“Olivia.” Noah was shocked at the sound of his own voice. Emotion choked him so that he sounded rusty, like an old, old man. He cleared his throat and tried again.
“Olivia, are you all right?”
He saw her nod, watched her try to cover her breasts with her hands and arms. She slunk along the wall behind Darcy, edging away from him, moving toward the fire where her dress lay in a tangled heap of calico.
Lankanal was bleeding from a cut on his lip. Noah smiled as his finger caressed the trigger.
“I’m not armed,” Lankanal warned him. He wiped his lip with his coat sleeve, frowning at the blood spot and then at Noah.
“What chance did you give Betts before you put my knife in his chest?”
Noah heard Olivia gasp as she knelt by the fire trying to cover her near-nakedness.
“He was already dead,” Darcy told him. “Keeled over dead without any warning. All I did was use his body to make it look like you killed him.”
“You left me to hang for a murder I didn’t commit.”
Darcy shrugged as if it were nothing. “I had a feeling that if you weren’t out of the way, you would eventually come looking for Olivia and I didn’t want that.” He took a chance, glancing over at her. “She has that effect on men.” He shrugged his shoulders, straightened his swallow-tailed coat and ran his hands down the front of his shirt. “I swear to God, I didn’t kill Betts.”
Noah found himself believing the man, although he desperately wanted not to. Now that Olivia was safe, the urge to kill Darcy had ebbed away, his code of honor too great to overcome, even when faced with the likes of Darcy Lankanal. Noah looked at Olivia again. She had slipped her dress on and was holding the bodice bunched in her fist.
“Come here, Olivia,” Noah said softly.
She scooted around the fire and slowly walked up beside him. He lowered his rifle and took an instant to smile over at her, an instant of time that was long enough for Darcy to bend over and reach inside his boot.
Noah caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. Shoving Olivia out of harm’s way, he took a step toward Lankanal. There was a flash of silver. Before he could react, he realized Darcy had thrown a knife. As the weapon flew with deadly accuracy, Olivia screamed.
Pain slammed into Noah’s shoulder, pain that sent him reeling back. He squeezed the trigger a moment before dropping his rifle. The charge went off, the ball ricocheted against stone, hit no one.
“Noah!” Olivia screamed and ran toward him.
“Get out,” he yelled back. “Run to the river. I’ll meet you there.”
“No.
I’ll not
leave you,” she cried. “Not again.”
Her words lent him strength. Noah pulled out the knife, rising to his feet in time to meet Lankanal as the man launched himself at him. The weapon went flying as Noah took the brunt of the gambler’s weight on his injured shoulder and both of them fell to the ground. They were well matched in physical stature, but Noah could tell immediately that Lankanal’s life had made him soft. His own shoulder wound evened the match.
The way the gambler was carefully aiming each blow told him not to underestimate his opponent.
Olivia watched Noah and Darcy rolling and punching one another with her hand pressed to her lips to keep from crying out. In the fire’s glow, Noah’s torn red shirt could not conceal the dark, spreading stain quickly covering his shoulder and upper sleeve. The wound was bleeding fast. Noah was favoring his right side and Darcy was wise enough to aim many of his blows there. Somehow, when Darcy made it to his feet, Noah shakily rose to meet him.
With a blow to the face, Noah opened a cut over Darcy’s eye that began to bleed profusely, hampering Darcy’s vision. The leveling seemed to fuel Noah with newfound energy and he began to pound Darcy in earnest, knocking him to the ground, hammering him in the face, the jaw, the temple.
When she saw Darcy lose his grip on Noah’s shirtfront, falling to lie there senseless, Olivia knew she had to act. She ran across the cave, reached for Noah. He did not hear her, did not stop pounding Darcy with his fists. She took hold of his shirt and began to shake him.
“Stop, Noah! Don’t kill him. Please, let him go.”
Noah might as well have been swimming in deep water. He could hear Olivia calling to him but her voice was coming from somewhere far away, tugging at him, demanding attention. He tried to shrug it off, but as the tugging became more insistent, Olivia’s voice became louder until he realized they were connected, that she had knelt beside him in the dirt and was pulling on his shirt. He blinked and looked over at her, slowly surfacing, coming back to the moment, coming into himself. Shaking his head, he tried to clear his vision. Blood droplets flew, spattering her cheek. It wasn’t until he saw the bright red blood against her pale skin that he settled fully into himself and realized where he was.