Elizabeth Lane (16 page)

Sarah lay crumpled in the mud, firelight flickering on her pale, bare limbs. Aside from the awful thing they’d done to her hair, she didn’t appear physically hurt. But then, the worst hurts didn’t always show.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” he snapped. “This whole town ought to be ashamed! The law of the land says that Sarah Parker has a right to go free! Who are you to set yourselves above that law? A bunch of liquoredup, no-good—”

“You ain’t sheriff in this town, Cole!” It was MacIntyre who spoke. “We got a right to avenge our own! Ain’t no law what can take that away from us!”

“Then take this as law!” Donovan’s hands tightened on the rifle. “I’ll see to it that Sarah Parker leaves this town. I’ll even take her to Central City and put her on a stage myself. But meanwhile, any man who lays a hand on her will answer for it—to me!”

He glanced down at Sarah, who was moaning softly, her eyes still closed. Donovan’s heart twisted, but his face betrayed nothing. “Ainsworth, Thomas—you two, pick her up and get her back to her room! The rest of you buzzards, douse the fire and dump out that damned tar! You’ll thank me in the morning when you wake up sober!” His voice dropped to a menacing snarl. “Now, move it!”

He leveled the gun, eyes glaring, as the men shuffled drunkenly to obey him. Two of them lifted the halfconscious Sarah to her feet, bracing her under the arms. The sight of her, shorn and barely clothed, grimy hands supporting her body, tore at Donovan’s heart, but he dared not lower his weapon to go to her aid. He could only watch out of the corner of his eye as they dragged her toward the alley.

“Stop right there!” The thin male voice riveted everyone, including Donovan. He blinked incredulously as Amos
Satterlee, the balding storekeeper, stepped out of the shadows with a Colt .44 clutched in his trembling fist.

“You’re not taking that woman upstairs,” he declared, his strained voice cracking like a teenage boy’s. “I’m sorry, Cole. As a Canadian, I’ve tried to stay out of this ridiculous dispute. But I’ve got a business to protect. After what happened here tonight, with
her
above my store, I’m liable to be burned out. I can’t afford to let that happen.”

“Oh, for hell’s sake—” Donovan groaned his dismay. But even as he spoke, he knew the little storekeeper was right. Sarah’s old rooms were no longer safe. It would be up to him to protect her until he could get her out of town.

His eyes shifted to Sarah, where she hung between her erstwhile captors. Her shorn head dangled limply to one side. Her closed eyes were sunk in dark shadows. She was in no condition to go anywhere, he realized.

“Give her a few hours to rest, Satterlee,” he pleaded. “I’ll stay with her myself to guard your property. By sunrise, I’ll have her out of there, and your troubles will be over. You have my word on it.”

The little man’s eyes slid to one side, then the other. “I don’t know if—”

“Damn it, Satterlee,
look
at the woman! She’s been through hell! You can’t just throw her out in the night!”

The storekeeper hesitated, then lowered the pistol cautiously. “All right. But I don’t want any more trouble, Cole. This isn’t my fight, understand?”

“I understand. Just keep these yahoos covered till I get her upstairs. That’s all I’ll ask of you.”

Shouldering the rifle by its sling, he vaulted to the ground. Sarah had opened her eyes, but she scarcely seemed aware of him as he caught her in his arms and lifted her against his chest. Her underclothes were wet and muddy, her skin fearfully dry and burning with fever.

With Sarah in his arms, Donovan paused to cast a contemptuous glare at the men who huddled like whipped dogs around the smoking embers of the bonfire. Cowed and
drunk, their victim gone, they weren’t likely to cause more trouble tonight. MacIntyre would be occupied with putting up the team and wagon. The others would drift away to sleep off their lunacy.

Satterlee, the wretched little man, brandished his Colt with the bravado of a child holding a toy pistol. Damn them, Donovan thought. Damn them all.

Without a word, he turned and strode away, carrying Sarah into the alley.

“No…no, please—” Sarah cried out in her fevered sleep as her mind relived the horror. “Please don’t—”

“Shh…be still and rest.” Donovan sponged her hot face with a damp cloth, stroking gently downward along the curve of her throat. “You’re safe, Sarah. I’m here. I won’t let them hurt you again.”

She whimpered in terror, her slender limbs twitching as she dreamed. Two hours had passed since he’d carried her up to her room, stripped away her muddy underclothes and tucked her, innocently naked, into her clean, dry bed. Except for the few minutes it had taken to repair the door, he had been with her constantly, bathing her face and forcing sips of tea between her fever-flushed lips. In all that time, even when her eyes fleetingly opened, Sarah had given no sign that she recognized him.

She had been sick before the bastards took her, he realized. Too sick to run or fight. Coupled with that, the fear and shock of her ordeal had all but pushed her over the edge.

Moonlight drifted through the small bedroom window, its platinum beams falling across her sleeping face. Donovan’s heart contracted as his gaze lingered on the bruised cheek, the swollen lower lip and pain-shadowed eyes. Her once-glorious hair, pathetically shorn, curled damply around her face like a young boy’s.

Donovan’s finger traced one delicate lock where it lay along the curve of her cheek. This woman had posed as
Lydia Taggart, he reminded himself. She had used young men, his own brother among them, to betray the Confederacy. She had aided the force that destroyed his home, his family and their way of life.

Now he was looking upon his vengeance.

But he felt no satisfaction when he gazed at Sarah Parker. He felt only pity and rage, and a tenderness so deep that it shook him to the roots of his soul.

Sitting on the edge of the mattress, he lifted her head to coax a few more drops of tea into her dry mouth. She sputtered in semiconscious protest, choking a little on the warm liquid. Her eyelids flickered open, but again, her brief gaze was a stranger’s, holding no sign of recognition.

Donovan lowered her head to the pillow and replaced the chipped cup on the dresser. Glancing around the tiny room, he cursed his own helplessness. Sarah needed a doctor. She needed medicine to bring down her fever and plenty of good, hot broth to build her strength. She needed long days of rest and care.

Here, in this bitter little town she had served so well, there was no help for her.

Distracted by worry, he dipped his fingers into the washbowl and stroked them along her burning cheek. If he could get her to Central City—but no, he realized, Sarah was too sick to be moved that far. The ten-hour ride in a jarring open wagon could kill her.

There was Varina. She would be more than willing to take Sarah in. But the little cabin would be the most useless of hiding places. Worse, for their help, Varina and her children could face the same kind of ugliness Donovan had witnessed tonight. No, the whole idea was out of the question.

Donovan’s hand ruffled Sarah’s hair, his fingers tangling in the damp silk of her curls. She moaned softly, stirring in response to his touch, but her gray eyes did not open.

Impulsively he bent and brushed his lips across the bridge of her nose. “What am I going to do with you, Sarah Parker?” he whispered, amazed at the surge of emotion that simple gesture aroused. “Why can’t I just turn my back and leave you to your fate? My life would be so damned much simpler without you….”

His lips nuzzled her eyebrow and grazed the pale sunken moons of her closed eyelids. Her skin was as sweet as a child’s, satin smooth, with its own innocently sensual aroma. Aching with tenderness, Donovan ventured lower to kiss her temple, her earlobe, the exquisite little crease at the corner of her mouth. How had this happened? he wondered dizzily. How had Sarah Parker, a woman he’d professed to hate, managed to enmesh herself so deeply in the roots of his soul?

“No…” She had begun to dream again, her limbs jerking in their imagined struggle.

“Sarah…” His lips pressed her cheek and brushed the softly opened flower of her mouth. “It’s all right, Sarah. I’m here.”

“No—” A quiver knifed through her body, and suddenly she was shaking all over, her teeth clattering in an agony of chills. Donovan glanced frantically around the room for something, a blanket, anything, to add warmth to the doubled quilt that covered her trembling body, but there was nothing. Even her cloak was gone from its hook on the wall.

In desperation, he kicked off his boots and trousers, lifted the sheet and, still clad in his long underwear, slid into bed beside her.

He had half expected her to resist, but she came to him like a frightened child, nestling into his warmth as he drew her close. Tiny whimpers of need rippled through her body as she found a haven in his arms.

Donovan gasped at the first press of her sharp little hipbones through the threadbare wool. Sarah did not know
what she was doing, he reminded himself. She was delirious, out of her mind with fever.

He, unfortunately, was not. His male response was instantaneous, his awareness of it a cold stab of guilt. This was no time for lust, Donovan admonished himself. But his painfully aroused body wasn’t listening. Sarah’s fevered nakedness was a flame in his arms. Her trembling need tested him, teased him to the breaking point. He had wanted this woman for years, first as Lydia Taggart, now as Sarah Parker, and here he was in her bed. It would be so easy-But what was he thinking? To take advantage of Sarah in her present condition would be nothing short of criminal. He wanted her, yes. But he wanted her healthy and awake, her passion real, her desire igniting like wildfire with his own.

And in view of the way Sarah felt about him, those circumstances would probably never come to be.

Resigning himself to the torture, he focused his energies on keeping her as warm as possible. With his arms, he turned her over and pulled her backside tightly into the curve where he lay. His legs entangled hers so strategically that even her toes were covered. Sarah lay cocooned in the heat of his tormented body.

Even then, she continued to chill. Her flesh was dry and fiery hot, her body racked by shivers. Her labored breathing told him of the congestion welling in her lungs.

Pneumonia.

Donovan’s frantic mind leafed backward to the long months he’d spent in the wintry hell of Camp Douglas. With no medicines available, the prisoners had treated pneumonia with steam. Could he do that here, for Sarah?

She moaned as he slipped away from her and padded into the schoolroom to assess what was available. The stove was barely adequate, Sarah’s iron kettle pitifully small. But there was a full rain barrel at the foot of the stairs and a stack of wood in a corner of the classroom. It was a start.

Within minutes, he had stoked up the fire, refilled the kettle, and rigged the classroom benches to form a makeshift tent frame around the stove. When a plume of steam arose from the boiling water, he draped Sarah’s quilt over the framework and crawled underneath with her in his arms.

Time blurred into hours as Donovan staggered between feeding the fire, filling the kettle and crouching with Sarah under the steam-soaked blanket. Rivulets of sweat poured off his body as he held her, praying that the hot steam would ease her congested lungs.

He could feel the fever raging in her body, feel her struggle for life as she lay fighting for breath across his cramped knees. Her quieter moments gave other worries a chance to gnaw at his mind. What would he do if MacIntyre and his cohorts decided to pay them a return visit? And what about tomorrow? Could he buy more days from the wormy little storekeeper? Or would Satterlee hold him to his word and put Sarah out on the street?

By three in the morning, Donovan had run out of wood. As the last embers died in the stove, he carried Sarah back to the bedroom and gently dressed her in her dry gown and robe, which he’d discovered flung under the dresser. Her breathing had eased some, but she was still feverish, still drifting in and out of delirious sleep. Her head and limbs flopped like a rag doll’s as he tugged the clothes over them.

By now Sarah’s body seemed almost as familiar as his own. In the course of caring for her, he had come to know every lovely curve and hollow of her torso, every line of her lean-muscled legs, every subtle nuance of her face, with an intimacy almost as deep as if they had been lovers.

Later he would remember. And he would wonder how it might have been.

Reeling with exhaustion, he laid her on the bed, covered her with the sheet and stretched himself out beside her. He would allow himself a few hours’ rest before morning. Then he would seek out the storekeeper and plead for more time,
or pay for it in cash, if need be. The thought of dealing with Satterlee turned his stomach, but he could think of no other way to save Sarah’s life.

Donovan was just drifting off when the creak of a wooden stair outside startled him into wakefulness. Blinking his head clear, he lunged for the rifle. His ears strained in the silent darkness. Just one person, he calculated as he listened to the cautious tread mounting the steps. Whoever it was, he would be ready.

The knock at the door was light, almost hesitant. Maybe it was Satterlee, snooping around to see if Sarah was gone yet. So much the better, Donovan groused as he cocked the rifle, then raised the latch with his free hand. Too bad he couldn’t afford to let the spineless little bastard know exactly what he thought of him.

“Come in,” he rasped, backing away a few steps.

The door swung open to reveal a woman standing in the moonlight—a big woman, rawboned and fleshy, with garishly dyed red hair. One of Smitty’s girls, Donovan realized dimly as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

“Ain’t no need to point that gun at me, mister. I only come to check on Miss Sarah.”

The rifle sagged in Donovan’s hands. “You—you’re a friend of hers?”

The middle-aged whore shot him a contemptuous glance. “Miss Sarah’s been a good friend to us all. Damned Smitty locked us up, so’s we couldn’t do nothin’ when them sons o’ bitches hauled her out in the street. But Zoe heard what happened later from one o’ her reg’lars.”