Without bothering to search through the gloom for another saddle, Cass snatched a bridle down from its peg. The animal started at the sound of her voice, and tried to back away when she opened the stall door and moved inside.
“All right, my friend,” she whispered, stroking the dirty muzzle, patting the neck that had once been sleek and powerful. “Take it slow, take it slow.” She ran her hand over the roan’s back, caressed its haunches, held a fistful of hay to its mouth, and let it feed as she slipped on the bridle, positioned the bit and led the horse into the open air. Again she called out several times, scanning the yard and back of the house for signs of Eric or the old woman; when there was no answer, she wove her fingers into the roan’s mane and threw herself onto its back. It was not the first time she had ridden without a saddle, but her dangling left leg throbbed without the lifting support of a stirrup. She shifted as best she could to ease the discomfort, then wheeled the roan about and kicked it into a slow canter along a path that led through the trees, and a few minutes later, into a broad expanse of brown field.
She reined in immediately and searched as best she could for something that would lead her to her goal. But there was no one, and nothing. Nothing but a handful of coasting birds high overhead, a faintly moist breeze that gilded in from the clouds moving over the hilled horizon, and the remains of a tobacco crop long since rotted, baked, and slumped to the earth. Stout poles rose bleakly above the ground, poles that would have held the cloth protecting the fragile leaves, now more like dying plants themselves. In the distance on her right stood a curing barn, with another directly beside it, the latter partially destroyed by fire.
She rode through the field without calling out, the only sound the hard thump of the roan’s hooves on the dusty earth. From her brow fell rivulets of perspiration, blinding her no matter how often she wiped them away with her sleeve. Yet she would gladly have been riding at midnight if only to be spared the heartbreaking sight of the plantation’s desolation.
She rode through another barrier of trees, then, and into yet another field. This time, however, when she squinted through the shimmering heat, she saw a dark figure standing beside a horse in the center of the open space. Hesitant, fearful that it might be Lambert again, she angled away from it cautiously, keeping to the shadows of the trees until she recognized Eric’s clothes and, when a hand lifted to touch the horse, his black glove.
Buoyed instantly, she cast aside reservation and dug her heels into the roan’s flanks. At the sound of the approach, Eric looked up quickly, then threw himself to one side and was gone, crouching among the dead plants of his crop. His mount skittered away as Cass called out, waving one arm wildly. When she suddenly realized that Eric considered her a threat, she fumbled behind her neck and loosened the bun, freeing her hair to stream in the air about her, still waving, still praying that he would check first before shooting, and scolding herself harshly for behaving like such a damned fool. And when at last he rose from the ground, a rifle clamped tightly under one arm, she slowed, sagged, and cantered directly toward him.
“You could have been shot, Cassandra,” he said sharply when she pulled up in front of him. “Haven’t you learned never to come up on a man like that? Do you want to get killed?”
Bristling unreasonably, and forgetting the scolding she had just given herself, she slid off the horse and stood with hands on her hips. “I thought I had some important news for you,” she said angrily. “The next time, I’ll be sure to bring a brass band with me.”
“Damn it, woman, I could have put a ball through your head.”
“I didn’t know you were that good a shot.”
“I am.”
She nodded once, briskly, and in the ensuing silence could not help but work at a grin to mirror his own.
Both of them were fools, both acting like children, and as she shook her head in mute apology, she noticed a shallow hole at Eric’s feet, and in it a small wooden chest banded in iron. Eric followed her gaze, reached down, and pulled the chest out, tucking it under his arm.
“The house is not safe for valuables anymore,” he explained as he slid his rifle into its saddle sheath.
“Money for my passage, and a few papers poor Harry is going to need when he wraps up this ghastly business.”
He brushed away the clods of dirt and bits of root still clinging to the wood. “Not much to show for so many years, would you say? This,” and he tapped at the chest, “and this.” He held the black glove in front of his face.
Then be looked up at the sky, now islanded with clouds, blinking rapidly and scowling. “It’s never good, Cassandra, to end something without having something to begin next. Otherwise you do nothing but drift. Like a feather. And like a feather, you’re just as useless.”
She moved to stand less than a hand’s breadth from his arm, impulsively reaching for his hand and taking it in both of hers. She said nothing. She dared not. And she dared not pay any mind to the sudden thundering of her blood in her ears.
A crow squawked overhead. A great gray cloud moved in on the sun, its shadow darkening the trees on the far hills like some night-stalking beast fresh from its lair. A light breeze puffed at her hair, pushed it like a veil over her shoulders and across her face. She tossed her head to fling it away, but Eric stopped her with a touch to her cheek.
“It’s lovely, you know,” he said softly.
“Eric, I have to tell you—Lambert came to the house just a few minutes ago. I tried to find you but you were gone.”
“If you only knew how many times I stood by that damned bed,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard, “waiting for that damned fever to break. I thought you were going to die, Cassandra. I thought you were going to die.”
“I looked for Sara, but she’s gone. I don’t know where she is. Lambert—” She saw the look on his face but could not turn away. Why wasn’t he listening? After all this time, didn’t he understand the kind of danger he was in?
“I thought while I looked at you that in all of London or—” and his smile was wry, “—the colonies, there couldn’t possibly be a more beautiful woman.”
“Damn it, Eric, listen to me! What is Lambert after? If he still wants Riverrun, why don’t you just give it to him and be done with it? You’re leaving, giving it up, so why not just let him have it so he’ll leave you in peace?” She was babbling and she knew it. But the force of those gray eyes, the touch of his hand moving from cheek to neck made her lose what strength she had, and the heat that gusted before the approaching storm made her dizzy. Suddenly, the chest toppled from Eric’s grip and his hands were on her arms. A short-lived burst of fear—as she remembered Josh and Cal and Bobbie and their assault—tensed her, left her, and she struggled only a moment before he drew her to himself and gently placed his lips over her mouth. Sweetly. Dryly. The pressure increasing against her teeth until, without thinking, she parted her lips and admitted his tongue, probing, then sweeping, while his fingers roamed over her back and burrowed warmly in the thicket of her hair.
A part of her mind told her it was the lingering trace of fever that made her feel so weak, but the protest died easily, and she gave herself abruptly to the tingling of her flesh as his hands pulled the shirt from her waistband and insinuated themselves beneath the trousers to cup at her buttocks, massaging the muscles that jumped at his touch. Pulling until she was pressed tightly against him, her breasts aching. She grabbed the back of his neck and yanked his head down, hard, thrusting herself to him, ignoring the faint pains that were reborn in her injured leg.
Insane, she thought giddily as the cloud pulled behind it a gray darkness from the horizon and blotted out the sun; what would Geoff think if he could— But Geoff was dead a hundred years, and she, thank God, was still alive.
She relaxed her knees and her weight pulled them both slowly to the ground. Still gripping at his hair, his neck, she groaned and licked at her lips when his gloved hand fumbled over her shirtfront, releasing the buttons and pulling her breasts free of their confinement. Her nipples rose to his touch, strained when his lips and warm breath brushed over them and the leaping firmness of her stomach. Then he straightened and, while one hand still kneaded and pressed, his other worked at his belt buckle, yanked at his trousers. Suddenly, he hesitated as he realized through his passion that she was not wearing a skirt for him to raise. Cass opened her eyes at the interruption, choked and laughed at the stunned expression on his face. At first he was angry and she was afraid he would leave her. She pouted quickly, shook her shoulders to redirect his attention and laughed again, delightedly, doing his work for him before tilting her head back to stare at the stormy sky as finally, at last, with a long, low moan of pleasure, he rose and entered her, mulling her own cries with a moist and lengthy kiss. She grabbed at his back and pressed down with her nails, urging him to move slowly … slowly … she wanted it perfect, for just when the storm broke; and as she twisted her fingers into claws and slammed him hard down against her, the first drops of cool rain splashed down on her face.
F
inally, after sheltering the horses in their barely adequate stable, they retreated to the kitchen where, laughing and drenched, Eric set the logs in the fireplace ablaze while calling out lustily for Sara to attend them. Cass wandered as though in a daze, and eventually found herself standing over the pot on the stove. Curious, she lifted the heavy lid and peered in at the soup the old woman had been making. She frowned, picked up a wide wooden spoon, and stirred the broth, her eyes blinking as steam rose warmly into her face. She tasted the liquid after a moment and grimaced, turned to speak to Eric and saw him staring at her, admiration unabashed in his dark gray eyes. Startled, she felt herself flush, then smile, before she nodded toward the pot.
“I can’t understand where Sara is,” she said. “This will burn if she doesn’t tend to it soon. It’s not like her, is it?”
“Ach, let it burn and well feed it to the chickens—if we had any chickens to feed it to,” he laughed, crossing the room and scooping her into his arms. “You and I, lass, will dine on the stars if we have to.”
She laughed when a grumble of thunder echoed through the empty house, and pushed at him until he released her. “I’m afraid there’ll be no stars tonight, Mr. Martingale,” she said. “But I still wish I knew what’s happened to Sara.”
Eric scowled, and for a moment she saw something flash across his face that she had never seen before, something unnamed but decidedly unpleasant. It chilled her, but it passed, and she gave him her broadest grin.
“All right, then,” he said. “I’ll take a quick run through the place to see where she’s hiding. I’ll not be surprised, though, if she’s sleeping like a log in one of the back rooms. She’s like that, you know. She does too much work for someone her age, and it all catches up with her, just like that,” and he snapped his fingers under her nose.
“I believe you,” she said, taking his wrist and turning him around. “But just check, will you? For me? I don’t like to think of her being alone with this storm.”
And when she was alone, she stepped up onto the brick hearth and stood as close to the fire as she dared, staring at the tall, wavering flames that defied the cold wind shoving at the rafters far above her. A spark drifted and died into ash at her feet. Her boot crushed it.
Slowly she ran her hands down her thighs, remembering every detail of her recent lovemaking. Oddly, in spite of what she had been taught, she had felt no guilt during the act or afterward, only a sense of enormous tension gladly released. And despite her mother’s dark Biblical warnings, she had enjoyed it. Eric had too, she knew. He had been simultaneously rough and gentle, and in frantic haste, as though he could barely contain himself from adding his own cries of joy to her own.
But … love? She doubted it, though she had no real gauge by which to measure what she felt; it was too soon, and she had too recently recovered from much pain. And if it was not love … then was it wrong? Her background insisted she give herself only to her husband, but there were no illusions here, no romantic dreams of Eric and marriage. Yet, by the same token, she could not equate herself with the whores she had seen, selling their bodies for something less than pleasure in order to have something more than starvation. They’d repulsed her, with their brassy hair and thick rouge, high-blown bosoms and tightly pinched waists. Not a wife, then, and definitely not a whore.
A woman. Yes, a woman, she decided as a log split and died in a shower of sparks; and a woman who needed no apology forgiving freely of what she had to give.
She plucked at her drying clothes with her fingers. She wished suddenly for a brush to comb her hair dry, but had to settle for fanning it over her chest while she pulled at it thoughtfully and waited for Eric to return. The heat from the fire made her drowsy.
She found herself dozing, blinked herself awake just as the kitchen door was kicked open and Eric stood just inside the room. His hands were clenched in white-knuckled anger at his sides, his pale face wet with rain, his lips working soundlessly. There was the sharp crackling of a lightning bolt, and the crash of answering thunder. Shadows from the flames cast a demonic mask over his features
“What, Eric?” she said. She came down from the hearth and gripped the edge of the table. “What’s wrong?”
He pressed a palm to his face, hiding his eyes, his chest heaving as though he had just run a hundred miles.
“Eric?” She stumbled around the table and took his hands. They were cold, and she chafed them. “Eric, my God!” Too many images raced through her mind for her to give voice to just one, but the anxiety in her tone opened his eyes and he looked down at her, and through her as though she were a ghost.
“She was on the porch,” he said. “She must have been coming inside from the well out front. It’s the only one Lambert hasn’t poisoned.”
“Was?”
She pushed him aside violently and raced through the door and down the corridor into the front hall. The doors were open to the wind and the rain, and she slid on the slick floorboards as she passed over the threshold. She stopped, looked wildly from side to side, and in a lingering flash of lightning saw the old woman, sitting in the same throne-like chair Cass had used that morning. Her eyes were open, but she saw nothing; her lips were slack, but she would never say another word. From between her withered breasts protruded the silvered hilt of a dagger, and the dark stains of flowing blood had already dried down the front of her threadbare dress.