Captured (21 page)

Devon smiled and handed him back the miniature. “No wonder you want to marry her.”

Emmett nodded happily and settled back into the hay. “It ain’t just because of her looks or her cookin’ neither. Sally Ann’s a lady, through and through. Just like you, ma’am. A lady, through and through.”

Cole saw Devon stiffen, regret flashing over her delicate features. “I don’t think Sally Ann would appreciate the comparison.”

“Why not? You’re a fine lady, ma’am, one of the finest I’ve ever met. You don’t put on airs the way some do, but I can see you’re a lady, just the same.”

Devon paused, then lifted the mare’s dark tail, which she’d brushed to a high glossy sheen. “If you were to call a tail a leg, Emmett, how many legs would a horse have?”

Emmett frowned. “Well, if you call a tail a leg, then I reckon a horse would have five legs.”

Devon shook her head. “A horse only has four legs. Just because you call a tail a leg, it doesn’t make it so.”

Cole felt his chest tighten at her words. All her insistence at being called a lady was nothing but a cover for a vulnerability that he never would have suspected. A title that she obviously didn’t feel she deserved. And he’d done nothing but make it abundantly clear that he agreed.

Something must have given his presence away, for Devon straightened and turned, her soft green eyes locking on his. She murmured a few words to Emmett, set down the grooming brush, then moved directly toward Cole. “I need to speak to you,” he said simply.

Her gaze ran over his face, her eyes inquisitive, but she asked no questions. For the first time since he’d known her, the confrontational edge was missing, as if both had agreed to an unspoken truce. But there was still something in the air between them, a primitive tension that was part wary unease with the shift that had taken place in their relationship, part sensual undercurrent.

They walked out of the barn, away from the main house and toward a small fishing pond on the outer edge of the property. The grass surrounding it was tall, lush, and inviting, but they were both too restless to sit. Devon leaned back against a tree, watching the slaves who toiled in a nearby garden. “I’d never actually seen a slave before, not until yesterday,” she mused. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Are they free now, or does General Brader own them all?”

“No. The general never would. The ones that come to us are considered contraband, like any other property the Union Army confiscates.”

She frowned. “Then they’re still not free.”

Cole shook his head. “We don’t have that authority. There’s talk that Lincoln is working on an emancipation act, but so far nothing’s come of it. At this point, we’re simply fighting to keep the Union together.”

A commotion in the yard of the main house caused them both to turn. General Brader stood out front, issuing orders to his men as they mounted up. The soldiers split into groups of five, gave a few rowdy war whoops, then took off, galloping in different directions. Scouting parties, Cole presumed, probably being sent out to nearby camps to validate the rumors that had been circulating since daybreak.

He turned back to Devon. Unable to devise a smooth way to ease into the topic that was foremost on his mind, he asked bluntly, “How did you come to be involved with Jonas Sharpe? You said before that you weren’t working for him directly. Was he blackmailing you somehow?”

“No, he wasn’t.” She must have anticipated the question, for she didn’t appear the least bit surprised by it. “Surely you of all people know how hard it is to force me into doing something against my will.”

“Then how—”

“There’s no point in discussing this again. Prescott is dead, Sharpe is gone‌—‌I don’t know where‌—‌and I was put on trial and found guilty for all of it.”

Cole silently studied her for a moment. She wasn’t just being obstinate, he realized. She was nervous, frightened, and doing everything she could to avoid any discussion of either herself or Jonas Sharpe. Just as she’d done from the very beginning. “Devon,” he said quietly, “I’m sorry I didn’t listen before, but I’m listening now. I can’t help you until I know what happened.”

“You’re right, you can’t help me.”

Cole stepped forward, closing the distance between them. He waited until she lifted her gaze to his. “Do you trust me, Devon?”

She took a deep breath, looking as though that were the most complicated question in the world. “I don’t know if I can,” she finally admitted.

He frowned. Did she feel that he wasn’t worthy of her trust? Or was she simply saying that she wasn’t capable of trusting anyone? Either way, he didn’t like her answer. “Will you try?”

“It would be easier for both of us if you just let me escape.”

“Perhaps, but I’ve never been a man to do something just because it was easier.”

“No, I suppose not,” she said, sounding utterly defeated. She searched his face, then sighed. “You’re a man who does what’s right.”

Cole stared at her, stunned by the reluctant‌—‌and entirely undeserved‌—‌compliment. If that were true, he thought in disgust, he would have listened to her days ago, rather than let himself be blinded by his thirst for revenge. If he were so damned honorable, he wouldn’t be thinking right now about how much he’d like to take her into his arms and make love to her. How much he wanted to slowly undress her, lay her down in the soft grass, and spend the rest of the day getting to know every inch of her beautiful little body.

“Start at the beginning,” he said. “How did you go from living at the children’s asylum to becoming involved with a man like Jonas Sharpe?”

Her eyes widened. “I told you about the asylum?”

“With a little coaxing from a bottle of brandy.”

“What else did I say?”

Cole shrugged. “Not much. You told me that you have a brother named Billy. And that Uncle Monty isn’t really your uncle.”

Devon stared out over the pond as though lost in thought. “It’s not a very interesting story,” she warned.

“I’d like to hear it anyway.”

She nodded. Slowly, as if resigning herself for the worst, she began, “When I was fifteen and Billy was nine, we ran away from the asylum. At first, everything was fine. It was springtime and the days and nights were warm, and we didn’t need much to get by. We were actually happier than we’d ever been at the asylum.”

“How did you live?”

“Oh, there are ways,” she answered with a light shrug. “We assisted peddlers in the marketplace, and collected rags and bones to sell to the junkmen.”

Cole considered her bleak existence, amazed that out of that had emerged the strong, passionate woman that Devon Blake had become. “What happened?”

“Winter came.”

“Where did you live then?”

She gave a vague shrug. “Nowhere and everywhere. I should have taken Billy back to Mrs. Honeychurch’s, but I was too proud. And I didn’t want Billy to be there. It wasn’t a very…” she hesitated, as though searching for the right word. “It wasn’t a very nice place to be,” she concluded, in what Cole imagined was a profound understatement.

Devon shook her head. “That was a mistake. Billy was so young, and he wasn’t strong like I was. I thought I was smart enough to figure something out, to earn enough money to build a better life for both of us. But the days grew short, and there wasn’t much time to work. After a while, I quit trying. I spent my time stealing food, blankets, wood for our fire. I did whatever I had to do to get by.”

Devon glanced up at him, as though expecting to see cold disdain or silent condemnation. When she found neither, she shrugged and continued talking. She seemed strangely remote, as though she’d learned long ago to detach herself from the memories. “But in the end, Billy caught a fever, and he never got better. After he died, I couldn’t think of what to do. You see, for so long, if I got up on a bitterly cold morning, it was for Billy. If I went out to find, steal, or beg for food, it was for Billy. Finding a warm place to sleep at night was for Billy. When he died, none of it seemed to matter anymore. It didn’t matter whether I got up, or whether I ate, or anything that happened to me. I remember just wandering the streets: as people rushed by, hurrying to get out of the cold, like they couldn’t even see me, like I didn’t exist. That was the worst part, feeling so alone. Then one day I came to a river, its banks covered with ice and snow. I thought about just walking into it and letting it sweep me away, how cool and inviting it looked…”

Horror shot through Cole at the thought of Devon as a young girl staring into the icy banks of a river, contemplating ending her life.

“Then, the next thing I knew,” she continued, “a great bear of a man was there at my side. He began talking to me, very gently, about such silly things. What was my favorite flower? My favorite food? Did I know any songs? We stood there all afternoon, even after it began to snow, just talking. Like we had all the time in the world.” She paused and looked up at him, her eyes shining with a soft light that held him enthralled. “Do you believe in angels, Cole?”

Cole started, so wrapped up in her story that her question caught him completely off-guard. “I‌—‌well, I suppose I’ve never thought about it.”

“Hmmm.” She nodded pensively, as if pondering his reply. “This will sound silly to you, then, but when I was a little girl, my mother used to tell me stories about guardian angels. How each of us has an angel that protects us and watches over us. And for a minute, I thought that this man was mine. A great big, roly-poly guardian angel. He appeared out of nowhere and somehow kept me from walking into that river, as if he knew what I was thinking and was sent to stop me, to tell me that even though I’d lost Billy, there were other things ahead for me, other reasons to go on. Somehow he convinced me that laughter and love still existed in the world and that one day I’d be lucky enough to find them again. Isn’t that exactly what an angel would do?”

It took Cole a minute to find his voice. “Yes,” he agreed hoarsely, suddenly aching to touch her, to pull her into his arms. “That’s exactly what an angel would do.”

Devon smiled, her face alight with a soft glow as she shook her head. “I’m afraid it was purely fanciful thinking on my part, however, for there’s absolutely nothing angelic about Uncle Monty.”

Once again, she’d managed to shock him to the soles of his boots. “Your guardian angel was Uncle Monty?”

She nodded. “He introduced himself, told me his name was Montgomery Persons, but that I could call him Uncle Monty. Then he asked me my name, and about the little boy he usually saw me with. When I told him that Billy had died, he just stared at me for the longest time, then he asked me if I wanted to come home with him. Just like that. I looked from him to the river, and suddenly the river didn’t look like such a wonderful place to be anymore. Suddenly it just looked cold and dark. So I let him take my hand and lead me home.”

A feeling of dread crept over Cole as a dark suspicion attached itself to his mind. He wondered if Monty was in fact a man with a predilection for preying on young girls. “What happened once you arrived there?” he asked carefully, but Devon’s next words put him at ease.

“He sent a maid to give me a hot bath, fed me the best meal I’d had in years, then showed me to a warm bed to sleep in. The same thing happened the day after that, and the day after that. He’d talk with me about a book I was reading, or whatever I’d done that day, but that was it. He never demanded anything, or made me feel in any way uncomfortable. I don’t think either of us expected it to last, but I suppose we enjoyed each other’s company, for we settled into a sort of routine without even thinking about it. After a couple of weeks, he showed me a few card tricks, and then a few other tricks, and the next thing I knew, he and I were in business.”

Cole let out his breath, feeling shaken, relieved, and a host of other emotions that rushed through him too quickly to even identify. Devon had been lucky. Damned lucky. He considered what could have happened to her, then quickly pushed the grim thought away. “I thought you said that wasn’t a very interesting story.”

“Well, perhaps interesting,” she acknowledged with a shrug, “but it’s certainly not flattering. At least not to me.”

Cole studied the petite beauty standing next to him, thinking of the way she’d stood up to him from the very beginning, refusing to allow herself to be bullied or threatened. She’d wrestled with the difficulties life had thrown her, obstacles that would have sent grown men crashing to their knees. But not Devon. She’d fought back, and done it with an inner strength and conviction that amazed him.

“There is a point to my telling you all this,” she said, looking determined to finish and get it over with, as though revealing this much about herself had been an incredibly distasteful chore.

“All right,” Cole said slowly, watching her.

“The point is, everything you said about me before was true. I’ll lie, cheat, steal, do whatever I have to do to get by—”

“Devon,” he interrupted, hating himself for what he’d said, for how quick he’d been to judge and condemn her.

“No, let me finish. We both know that it’s true, so there’s no sense pretending we don’t. That’s what I am. But I wanted you to know why‌—‌not that it makes what’s wrong, right. It doesn’t.” She paused, then drew herself up, tilting back her chin to look him straight in the eye. “I’m a crook, a liar, and a thief. But I’m not a murderer. I didn’t kill that man.”

Cole heard it again, that combination of fear and nervousness skimming just below the surface, belying the bravado of her words. Telling him there was still something he was missing, something he hadn’t quite grasped. When it finally hit him, he was furious at himself for not having seen it sooner. “But you know who did, don’t you?”

Devon stared at him for a long moment, something that looked like sadness or regret flashing through her beautiful green eyes. Finally she nodded. “Yes.”

“Who?”

“My fiancé.”

Cole wasn’t taking the news well at all. Which was too bad, considering how he’d been able to accept everything else she’d told him without too much difficulty. She’d been afraid she’d see scorn or contempt‌—‌or worse still, pity‌—‌etched on his rugged features as she revealed her past, but she hadn’t. Instead he’d listened with a tolerance that amazed her, as if he truly understood. But this, the fact that her fiancé was a murderer, this seemed to bother him.