Patricia Potter (26 page)

“Merry,” he whispered now. “Merry.”

The name was like a cold blast of air, a splash of freezing water. The name was associated with so many memories of Lissa. Lissa was the only one who called her Merry. Lissa and the Parson.

She was betraying both of them right now.

He
was the enemy. And she could help no one as long as he held her captive, either with bonds or with kisses that deadened her conscience and her good sense.

Her gaze found the water pitcher, and without letting herself think, without letting herself feel, she reached out her right hand as her left hand continued to play with his neck. Feeling as desolate, as empty, as miserable as she ever had in her life, she swung it against his head.

C
hapter 14

QUINN SAW
the quick movement and tried to move away, but he was too late.

Meredith heard the sickening thud as the pitcher hit the side of his head, splashing water over both of them. He dropped heavily across her with a groan.

She struggled to push him off her, trying at the same time to banish the even heavier burden of guilt she felt as he lay there silent.

She had done it for a good cause, she told herself.

Friend Elias would say there was never a good reason for violence, although she thought the Parson would approve. The Parson often contended the end justified the means. If, she amended truthfully to herself, the means weren’t too extreme.

He lay there so still, so very still.

Go, she told herself.

What if you hit him harder than you thought?
The possibility was like a blow to her stomach.

She stared at the crumpled form. He was facing her, a wet lock of black hair falling over his forehead, which still dripped with water. Without those magnetic eyes piercing her, he looked uncharacteristically restful, that seemingly endless energy quieted. Then she saw blood seeping from a wound at the side of his head. What if she really had hurt him badly? she thought.

It was no more than what he did to you,
another part of her said. But that justification did not help now. She had seen the blood and she felt chilled to the bone with sudden fear. She couldn’t leave him here like this and walk away, not knowing how badly he was hurt. She kneeled beside the bed, seeking to hear his soft breathing, relaxing only slightly when she did.

She took a piece of the torn cloth he had used to bind her and wiped the water from his face, then the blood, knowing she was a fool for not escaping when she could. The regular breathing told her he would be all right, that it would probably be only seconds before he woke. Yet she could not resist one last touch, her finger softly touching the cleft in his chin.

Her hand jerked back when she heard a sudden rap on the door, and the cloth fell from her hand. The knock came again, and she felt nailed to the floor. “Go away,” she prayed, hoping the absolute silence in the cabin would turn away the visitor. With horror, she saw the knob of the door turn and the door open.

From her position on the floor, the black man seemed enormous as he looked within, then entered, closing the door behind him.

Meredith looked frantically at the pistol still on the table.

He saw it too and, without a word, walked over, picked it up and tucked it in his trousers before moving over to the bed and leaning down over his master. As Meredith had done earlier, he put his head close to Quinn’s mouth, listening for his breathing, his dark harsh features closed and unreadable.

Meredith had never known such fear in her life. And it was mystifying to realize it wasn’t for herself. It was for the unconscious man. She had seen the slave’s back, the limp, the flashes of rebellion. Now he had a gun. She unconsciously reached out her hand in supplication.

Cam straightened up, his eyes taking in the entire scene, including her position and the bloody cloth on the floor. At least the captain seemed all right. He looked down at the broken pieces of pottery on the floor, at the drops of water on the captain, on the woman and the bed, and a smile started at the corner of his mouth. It appeared Quinn Devereux had met his match.

The slight smile was enough to bring Meredith to her senses. She suddenly, instinctively, sensed the black slave was no danger to the man on the bed. She scrambled up, her eyes fixed on the door.

“No,” the black man said simply, and Meredith turned and stared at him, amazed that a slave would say such a word to a white woman.

“I’ll pay you…enough that you can buy your freedom. Just let me go.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Seaton,” he said, and she stared at him in shock. There was nothing now of the servile slave she had seen before. His words were as well pronounced as his master’s, his eyes as determined, his stance as proud. There was even a semblance of the same arrogance.

Meredith felt as if she were in a dream, a wildly absurd nightmare. None of this could be happening. None of it made sense. “But why? You don’t have to be afraid…. I’ll help you—”

His eyes bored into hers, and they were suddenly as secretive and mysterious as Devereux’s had been. But there was no mistaking his intent. He bent down and uprighted the chair, which had fallen moments earlier, placing it in a corner of the room near the bed. “Sit there, Miss Seaton.” His voice hardened as she hesitated. “Please.” But it was no request and she knew it. It was an order.

Meredith looked at the door once more. “Let me leave,” she whispered.

“I can’t do that.”

“Are you afraid to let me go?”

“No,” he said again with a simplicity that belied the enormity of implications behind that single word. She wanted him to say more, but it was obvious he was not going to accommodate her. In any way. There was a surprising air of authority about him, and it didn’t go with being a slave. Her fear battled with fascination. Nothing was as it appeared.

She looked wistfully at the door.

“No, Miss Seaton,” he repeated regretfully, but the regret did not extend to eyes that moved to the chair and commanded her to do what he ordered.

She sat.

He nodded, as if her obedience had never been a question, then knelt next to Devereux, picking up the cloth she had dropped. Meredith watched with astonishment as huge hands gently finished the job of wiping the still-running blood from Devereux’s wound. The face of the slave, or whatever he was, was inscrutable but the care he provided was not. He cared about the man he was doctoring. And cared deeply.

She bit her lip as she saw Captain Devereux stir and groan. She wasn’t quite sure how he would retaliate, but retaliate he would. She did not doubt it for a moment.

“Capt’n?” The black man’s voice was surprisingly soft.

“Cam?” There was a hesitation, a confusion in Devereux’s voice that Meredith had never heard before. “What…in the devil…?”

“It seems you were hit with a water pitcher.”

Another sound came from the figure on the bed as he moved, and the groan became a long stream of Irish curses. Meredith winced, then flushed and looked away as Cam’s eyes found her. His usually sullen mouth curved into a slight smile.

“You have an audience, Capt’n,” he said in that same quiet voice that had ordered her to the chair with such authority.

Quinn sat up suddenly, groaning again. “She’s still here?”

Cam nodded his head toward the corner behind him.

The sudden move made Quinn’s head spin, and he went still for a moment, trying to stop the ringing in his ears. His clothes were damp from the spilled water, his head hurt infernally, and he tasted the sour flavor of disgust at his own stupid carelessness.

It was the second time in his life he had allowed a woman to make a fool of him. With so much at stake, he had allowed his physical needs to outweigh every lesson he had so painfully learned. His eyes narrowed now, his facial muscles tensing as he turned slowly and looked at the figure in the chair.

There was apprehension in her face, but also defiance. Her chin went up with stubborn mutinous pride, and he heard Cam’s rare chuckle.

He turned back to Cam, the question on his face. He was too chagrined at himself to voice the words.

“She was kneeling beside you when I came in. She dropped a cloth with blood on it. I think she might have had second thoughts about embarking you on a long dark journey.” Cam grinned at the startled pained look on Quinn’s face.

“What time is it?” Quinn’s question was sharp.

“Another two hours before we leave.”

“The cargo?”

“Loaded.”

“At least that’s something,” Quinn replied bitterly.

Cam shrugged. “What are you going to do?”

“Get some answers. Leave us alone, Cam.”

“You sure you’ll be safe?” The question was dryly impudent.

Meredith heard the exchange with both dread and wonder. The black man’s tone was anything but that of a slave to a master. It was challenging and impertinent and even teasing. Almost as if they were friends. And equals.

“No,” the riverboat captain replied in the same affectionate tone. There was even the barest touch of sheepish amusement in it, although the captain’s eyes, as they fastened on her, were chilling. Her hand trembled slightly in her lap.

She tried to think of something else, anything else. What kind of relationship was there between these two men? She forced her mind back to that first dinner with Quinn Devereux when he had intimated all too clearly that he had caused Cam’s injuries.

But did he actually say so? Remember, Meredith, she told herself. It could be important. And then she did. She remembered every word of the conversation.

“And you’re risking taking him up North?” one of the slave hunters had questioned him.

“…he tried to run once. He won’t do it again,” came Devereux’s answer.

And she had assumed…what he had wanted them all to assume, she realized suddenly.

Barely aware now that Devereux was painfully walking with Cam to the door, she looked again at her painting on the wall. Dear Lord, she thought. It couldn’t be. The Parson would have said something. He would have told her.

She knew there was someone on the river who transported slaves, but there were hundreds of boats plying the Mississippi. The odds against it being the
Lucky Lady
were ridiculously high.

But why else would he be so concerned about finding her near Elias’s warehouse? Unless, as she suspected before, he was in league with slave hunters. And if so, how to explain his easy relationship with the huge black man who, all of a sudden, had dropped the slave dialect and spoken as well as both of them?

It was as if a decision had been made between the man called Cam and Captain Devereux, one that conceded it no longer mattered that they maintain a pretense in front of her.

The implication was a chilling one. No one knew she was here. No one at all. They could easily kill her and dump her in the Mississippi in the dark of night. She suddenly shivered as the door closed and was locked, the key dropped in Devereux’s pocket.

She watched, her eyes never leaving him as he ignored her and went to the mirror and investigated the wound on his face. It was still bleeding slightly.

Meredith felt her stomach turn over. The cut looked deep, and guilty anguish replaced part, if not all, of her apprehension. She had never so much as bothered a bug if she could help it; she certainly had never inflicted bodily harm on anyone before, except, she reluctantly admitted to herself, for the slap she had given him weeks earlier on this very same steamboat.

What was it about him that inspired her to such uncharacteristic violence?

Self-preservation, she told herself. Freedom for numbers of people. But now as she looked at the gash at the side of his head, neither reason comforted her.

She started to rise, meaning to go to him, to try to help in some way, but his voice, hard and grim, stopped her. “Sit back down and stay there, Miss Seaton.” It startled her for she didn’t know he had even been looking at her. She winced at the formal address. So they were back to that. It boded no good. She sank obediently back into the chair.

“I just thought I could help,” she said.

“Ha,” he said ruefully. “I’d rather have a wildcat help me. It would be safer and not nearly so treacherous, I think.” There was, oddly enough, a strained, even wounded, note in his voice.

The remark cut her to the quick. She considered herself devious in her Underground activities but never treacherous. The anguish dug deeper in her marrow. “I’m sorry,” she said, and there was no mistaking the sincere misery behind the words.

But he was thinking of Morgana, and what a fine actress she’d been. “Sorry about hitting me or getting caught doing it?” His voice was weighted with cynicism.

“Both,” she blurted out honestly.

The frank answer astonished him. He turned slightly and fastened those hard, startlingly dark blue eyes on her. The corner of his mouth started to turn up in a grin and this time, she noted with shock, the corners around his eyes crinkled and the cleft in his chin seemed to deepen once more. Lord save her, she had never seen a more devastatingly handsome face. Her hands clutched the chair.