Surrender (11 page)

She felt almost deliriously relieved. Jerome McKenzie was nowhere near. She could seek help from these men—Spaniards?—without having to drown herself.

The dignified, dark-haired man at the table suddenly raised his voice, looking toward the doorway to the main room. Risa was certain he saw her. She decided to wait no longer, but rushed forward and accosted the nearest man, taking his hand, entreating him as he stared up at her in surprise.

“Sir! I need your help. Please. You look like an honorable man, one who would give aid to a woman in deep distress. I’m being kept prisoner by a band of Rebels. I’m desperate to reach my own people. Please, if you could take me from here, I promise you that my father would reward you greatly—”

“Risa!” she heard.

She turned. The blond man was Michael. Her heart thundered. But then he was on his feet, alarmed with her cry for help.

“Please, sir—”

“Ah! There you are!” a deeply masculine voice boomed in interruption.

McKenzie. He was back!

He strode into the private room with a brow arched high for the still-stunned Michael. He came immediately to Risa’s side, clamping an arm around her like a steel band. She was drawn back, against his body, swept entirely off the floor.

“No, no, you let me go this instant, do you understand—” she protested.

“If only I could, if only I could!” he muttered. He’d gone daft. He said the words to her softly, speaking with a tone that was almost tender. Then he turned to the handsome dark-haired man and began to speak in a
long, steady stream of emotional Spanish. She didn’t understand a word.

The other man’s brows shot up; he stared at Risa, sweeping his dark eyes over her from head to toe.

“Whatever he said, don’t listen!” Risa told the man. “Please, you’ve got to help me—”

Jerome McKenzie broke in again with another long Spanish discourse. The other man broke into laughter, and once again, his eyes swept Risa, this time with a strange little sizzle in them. He asked Jerome a question. Jerome laughed, and as the other man studied her now, Risa felt an acute discomfort.

“What are you saying?” she demanded furiously.

He ignored her, deftly lifting her into his arms and spinning about with a speed that made her dizzy and afraid of falling. Instinctively, she slipped her arms around him, realized her folly, and tried to struggle free. Too late. By then, he was out of the private room, across the main public room, and on his way up the stairs. “Who is that man, and what did you say to him?” she cried angrily.

He looked down at her as he swiftly climbed the stairs. “His name is Garcia, he hates Yankees, and I told him that while you might be quite beautiful, you were a conniving little tart, trying now to stiff me out of the dear sum I had parted with for a night of your services. Naturally, he was interested in making a deal for your time at some later date.”

She gasped, staring at him. They reached her room. He shoved the door open with a foot, strode on in, kicked the door closed, and set her down.

She stared at him for one brief moment, feeling an overwhelming sense of fury, frustration, and humiliation.

“Bastard!” she cried, and she slapped him with all her strength. He didn’t flinch. He inclined his head toward her, blue eyes crystal in ice-hard anger. Yet despite the cold eyes, it seemed that fire radiated all around him, that sparks all but leapt from his muscled form, catching her in their burn. She stepped back despite her determination to stand her ground.

“This time, Miss Magee, I’ll let that pass.”

“This time! You’ve abducted me, you—Rebel!” she
cried, close to tears and suddenly unnerved in a way she didn’t quite understand.
“This
time! How dare you! How dare you do this to me! I swear, I’ll see you rot in old Capitol, I’ll see you hanged, I’ll—”

“One more attempt to elude my Southern hospitality, Miss Magee, and so help me God, I will retaliate! Are we understood?”

She felt like a schoolchild being chastised for some silly prank. He was keeping her prisoner!

Still, she kept her distance.

“Are we understood? I don’t know—are we? Given a chance,
any chance
, McKenzie, I’ll shoot out your kneecaps before I aim for your heart.
Are we
understood?” she demanded.

She heard his teeth grating. He inclined his head politely, but then his eyes touched hers again with their blue ice. “Perfectly,” he told her politely. He turned on his heel, and left the room.

She stared at the closed door for a moment, then realized she was shaking badly. She moved quickly to the edge of the bed and sat, her heart pounding a million miles an hour. She had won. At last she had won a battle.

Yet, even as she congratulated herself on her victory, the door was suddenly thrown open.

He was back, a towering silhouette, caught for just the fraction of a second in the doorway.

Then he strode toward her with purpose and determination. She leapt up in alarm. “No—don’t come near me, don’t—what—”

Her words were worthless. He was instantly, angrily, before her, reaching for her wrist. Even as she struggled and stuttered out further angry protests, she felt something cold against her arm—and then heard a snapping sound.

She stared down in dismay to see that he’d come with handcuffs—and he’d just locked her left wrist into one side of the steel cuffs. She quickly shoved her free hand behind her back, thinking he intended to cuff her wrists together.

“Don’t! No, don’t—” she began, but broke off in pure
horror as she realized that he did not intend to cuff both her wrists together at all.

He intended far worse.

As she stared at him in deepest dismay, he closed the second vise around his own wrist.

And she was cuffed to him.

H
aving been summoned back to Washington to be reassigned to the Army of the Potomac, Lieutenant General Angus Magee reached his home dirty, tired, and heavyhearted.

The Rebs had made it damned hard. A man called Stonewall Jackson was in the Shenandoah Valley, creating so much havoc that Lincoln dared not leave Washington undefended. McDowell’s troops were on hold to watch over D.C. McClellan, meanwhile, was demanding more troops as he struggled to find a way to attack the Southern troops around Richmond. Angus was to bring troops down to fight under McClellan—a fraction of the number McClellan wanted—demanded!—but if Washington was lost, all was lost.

Not that it mattered where he was assigned these days. Every battle he fought seemed to pit him against an old friend. Someone with whom he had fought in Mexico, or a young man he had taught as a guest lecturer at West Point. After every battle and skirmish, his aides arrived, saluted, and gave him lists of the dead, lists from the North and the South, lists that carried the names of those near and dear to him, no matter on which side of the divide they had fallen.

Coming home was going to be good. Hopefully, his wayward daughter had grown tired of seeing to the injuries and diseases of the troops occupying St. Augustine and had come home. After all, he’d never given her his blessing to leave. If she wasn’t home, however, there would be a long, soothing letter from her. She did love him, and he knew it, and he took great comfort in that fact. He was a military man, a proud man, and he served his country honorably. If called upon to lay down his
life in this great struggle, he would do so—regretfully. For Risa, his only, cherished child, he would gladly die without the least thought or hesitation.

He dismounted from his horse—a good animal, but one he’d named simply “Horse” because he’d had too many mounts shot out from beneath him to grow attached to the animals anymore. Grayson Bierce, his manservant—a free black with hair graying just as rapidly as his own, and old bones nearly as rheumatoid—came quickly down the steps from the house, pleased to greet him. Grayson’s smile was broad, teeth white against his ebony skin. Grayson, like the rest of the family, had been in the military a long time.

“General, sir! I was so pleased to receive your letter, but it’s still good to see you’re really here, home, and all in one piece!”

“All in one bone-weary piece, that’s for certain, Grayson,” Angus said. “Now, tell me, is my daughter back from that reckless jaunt she got it into her stubborn head that she had to take?”

“No, sir,” Grayson said, looking uncomfortable.

“Is there a letter for me?”

Grayson hesitated, and Angus Magee frowned, his steel-gray brows forming a hard line that had given chills to many a young man in his command.

“What is it, Grayson?”

Grayson let out a long, deep sigh, looking down at the ground as the stable boy came and led Horse away. “Well, now, one of the young fellows—Lieutenant Andy Borden is his name—came up, reassigned from St. Augustine. He was mighty upset, thought you should know Miss Risa convinced some young civilian to take her south.”

“South? South from Florida?” Angus said, perplexed.

“Yessir—south down the peninsula. Seems she just kind of disappeared in the middle of the night, anxious to find Major McKenzie’s wife for some reason.”

Angus felt a strange, strangling pain. He clasped his hand to his chest.

“Now, sir, I’m sure that Miss Risa is just fine. From what I understand, Mrs. McKenzie has herself a fine home on an island down there. No harm could come to
Miss Risa. It’s just that we haven’t got a letter yet, that’s all. You know how long communications can take.”

Angus still felt as if his heart were in a vise. His face must have been dead white. Grayson took a hold of his arm, deeply concerned. “General, sir, let me get you into the house.”

Reminded of his rank, Angus swallowed hard, and forced the pain to go away. Risa had gone sailing south down the length of the Florida peninsula? What in God’s name had happened to his levelheaded, highly intelligent daughter? Why would she risk such a thing?

Angus straightened, taking a deep breath. Fear still gripped him, but he was an officer in the United States Army! He was a crusty old fellow, admired and respected by both sides. He’d sat cool through enemy attacks that would have panicked many a lesser man. He’d never realized before just how vulnerable he was, how easily he could be broken.

Not by the enemy. But by fear for his daughter.

“So she’s deep into enemy territory,” he said gruffly. “Hell! There’s reckless, foolhardy, dangerous fellows down there, trying to break through the Federal blockade. There’s always been scavengers—salvage divers, pirates, Indians, all manner of vagabonds!”

“Miss Risa has always had a good head on her shoulders,” Grayson said at his side now as they walked into the house. “Sir, sit down, take your boots off. I’ll get you a brandy and cigar, sir, and you can plan the good scolding you’re going to give her when you get the chance. She’s got a mind of her own, you know.”

“She’s stubborn as a mule!” Angus snorted.

“Right, sir,” Grayson agreed.

“If the enemy so much as comes near her, it’s the enemy who will suffer.”

“Yessir, that’s true,” Grayson said, quickly pouring brandy from a decanter in the handsome parlor of the general’s Washington town house.

Angus accepted the brandy with an absentminded nod of thanks.

“I’m going to tan her hide, Grayson.”

“Yessir.”

“And if the enemy comes near her, if any man touches
a single hair on her head, I’ll kill him. So help me God, Grayson. I’ll kill him.”

“Yessir,” Grayson said again.

“I’ll bring half the armed forces out against him!”

“As you say, sir.”

“If she’d only married Ian! I thought that was going to happen, didn’t you, Grayson?” He looked at his servant and friend with anxious eyes. “I was so sure that was the way the wind was blowing. But then, there he ups and marries some little girl from his home state, and Risa’s her best friend and godmother to her old beau’s child!”

“Now, that’s the whole point, General. She’s with friends Down South. Probably just as close as a pea in a pod with some McKenzie relation! Happy as a lark.”

“I pray that’s so, Grayson,” Angus said. He sighed deeply. He was a military man. Matter of fact. He believed in knowledge, strategy, and statistics.

But damn! If he didn’t just have a strange, sick-gut feeling!

There was a war on.

And even as a little girl, well …

Risa just never had learned to surrender.

Morning … and she was close to a McKenzie. So close she could see the texture of his cheeks, and through the open collar of his white shirt, his chest as well.

Dark hair grew on his chest in rich sworls. It, too, was touched with a glimmer of red.

Risa was just as tired by daylight as she had been during the long night. She had barely moved. Ever since he had shackled her to himself, she had been in a raw panic. He’d just been tired. He had doused the lamps, and laid down, dragging her along with him—suggesting that she sleep.

Sleep!

With him on the narrow bed, doing her very best to see that she didn’t touch him, that she barely breathed, that her fingers didn’t brush his …

Seconds had crawled along like hours. She felt now that she had spent the entire night wide-awake, staring
at the ceiling, aware of him beside her, eyes closed, seeming to sleep as deeply as a dead man.

Yet now, as she opened her eyes and inched away from him, aware of his peace as he slept, and equally aware of his musculature and supple speed should he awaken, she wasn’t quite sure that she had managed to stay awake all night. If she had slept, she hadn’t slept much. She remained exhausted.

His eyes were still closed. She watched the steady rise and fall of his chest. She studied his features, noticing their distinctive beauty, yet shivering again at his resemblance to Ian. Ian …

Could she really remember Ian? Yes, very tall, very dark, very handsome. Principled. Loyal to the core. Honorable. And here was his cousin. The renegade. Muscled flesh very bronze against his white shirt. Features strong, and intriguing. Hair so deep a color, just touched with fire. Eyes …

Blue. Staring at her.

She stared back, swallowing, absurdly guilty at the way she had been studying him, then angry with herself for feeling so guilty. She was the wronged party in this situation.