A Most Unusual Match (20 page)

D
ev…Devlin. He had rescued her after all. Joy filled Thea's heart until pain from the knife puncture shrieked through her body. The joy and pain wrapped around her in blinding whorls of gold and scarlet. Sobbing, she drifted toward a fog of semiconsciousness while Devlin settled her sideways in front of him, his hard muscled arms on either side holding her in a safe protective cage.

“I've got you, love,” his voice murmured in her ear. “You're safe, Thea.”

He spoke to the horse, and a moment later the animal slowed to an easy walk, nostrils blowing hard but as quiescent as a purring kitten. Down the road, Fane and the buckboard carriage flew around the corner and out of sight. “Whoa, boy,” Devlin said, bringing the horse to a standstill. He slipped to the ground, then reached to haul Thea down.

“You crazy little fool! You almost died!” His voice broke and he abruptly wrapped her in a smothering embrace, his arms shaking. “Thea…Thea…Thank You, God. You're alive. Lord, thank You…”

“Amen,” Thea breathed waveringly before her legs collapsed beneath her. “Devlin…sorry. Had to come. Found
out your secret.” His face turned gray as the Spanish moss and she tried to lift her hand to soothe him. “Don't care. Love you…”

“Thea, I wanted to tell you, but I didn't know how. I—hey! What's this?” He grabbed her hand and stared. “This is blood. Did that monster hurt you?”

“'fraid so.” She could feel herself sliding back down a slippery slope into darkness. “Knife. Left side. Then he gave me a handkerchief. He doesn't like blood….”

Before she finished the sentence Devlin had her stretched out on the path, his jacket under her head while he ripped open her shirtwaist with scant ceremony. “I see it. All right, sweetheart, you're all right. It's actually not too bad, only a couple of inches deep. Still bleeding a bit but it's starting to clot. You'll need stitches but—you'll live.”

A single shuddering breath escaped before he shrugged out of his shirt, then tugged a flannel undershirt over his head. In a few swift tugs he ripped off the three-quarter sleeves and tied them together. After folding the shirt into a wad he carefully covered the wound, then used the tied-together sleeves to wrap around Thea's side to hold the makeshift bandage in place. Edgar's blood-soaked handkerchief was hurled into the undergrowth.

Then he was covering Thea's face with desperate kisses. “Don't ever do this to me again. I love you. I never should have kept my profession a secret. I never want to keep sec—”

A loud scream ripped the air, then was silenced with the abruptness of a snuffed candle. A pall of stunned, absolute silence quivered in the twilight.

Devlin sprang to his feet, standing literally over Thea in a protective stance that moved her to tears. Yet his reaction awakened in her a longing wide and deep as the ocean to
cover
his
face with kisses. When he knelt beside her once more, she fumbled for his hand, holding it against her wet cheek. “Go find out what happened,” she told him. “I'll be fine.”

Devlin shook his head. “I'm not leaving you alone in the darkness. If I hold you, can you stay on the horse?”

“Absolutely. I'll even ride astride. The pain's much better.”

“Liar.” He covered her mouth in one brief, hard kiss, then stroked his index finger down her cheek. “I love you for your bravery. But no more secrets or lies between us, all right?”

“All right. But I do feel much better. You're here.”

Gently, he lifted her into his arms, settled her on the horse. After mounting with a breathtaking display of masculine strength, they set off down the road at a smooth, controlled canter. When they reached the bend in the road Devlin pulled the horse to a walk, and used the shadows of a thick grove of live oak to conceal their presence as much as possible.

A dozen yards into the bend, they saw the two livery horses standing near the side of the road, heads drooped, sides heaving, globs of white foam coating their flanks. The empty buckboard carriage was tipped sideways over the branches of a fallen tree which protruded halfway across the road.

Edgar Fane was nowhere in sight.

“Can you stay on the horse by yourself?” Devlin began urgently, just as the sound of a low groan reached their ears, followed by a garbled string of illegible words, then silence.

Thea passed her tongue around lips gone numb and sand dry. “Be careful. Please. He still has the knife.”

“I'll be careful. Thea…”

“Don't worry about me, Devlin. I've discovered I've a knack for horses. Lancer and me, we'll be fine.”

The stormy blue-gray eyes lit up for a moment, then he melted into the shadows, using the screen of the buckboard to shield him from sight. Thea sat still, basking in the afterglow of that expression. She might be sitting astride a lathered horse, her side might be on fire and shivers still racking her body, but nothing could dim the wonder of this moment. Devlin was here, alive. She was very much alive despite Edgar Fane's evil intentions.

Amazing, how love could transform a knife wound to a pinprick.

Devlin returned quickly. “It's not a trap. Thea…” He paused, then added simply, “Fane was thrown from the buggy. He broke his neck. Right now, he only has a few moments to live. He asked for you.”

“He—what?” She couldn't absorb the words, couldn't grasp their significance.

“Hold on to Lancer's mane, love. I'll take you to him. It'll be faster if I don't try to carry you myself.”

Fane lay without moving in a patch of dry weeds, his head twisted at an unnatural angle, inches away from the trunk of the fallen tree. The last beam of burnt-orange light streamed over his body in macabre illumination. Silently Devlin lifted Thea into his arms and carried her over; she knelt beside Edgar.

His eyes were open, watching Devlin. He spoke with difficulty. “Not just…Southern farmer. Secret Service?”

Dev nodded. “But I'm also a Southern farmer.”

“Would have made a good jockey. Looks like…you win…this race, after all, Stone.” The opaque gaze drifted over Thea. “Will she live?”

“Yes,” Thea answered. “God willing, for a very long time. Long enough to learn how to forgive you, I hope.”

“Ah.” A rattling breath struggled to escape from his throat. “Always did like…straightforward women.” A strange baffled look drifted across his face. “Can't feel anything. Can't move…tell Simpson…sorry, about Cynthia. I was wro—” The final confession sighed out unfinished as Edgar Fane breathed his last.

C
lean, milk-white skies and mild winter sunshine greeted Thea the next morning. Stitched up and sore, her body squawked in protest the entire walk to the clubhouse from the infirmary, where the compound doctor had insisted she spend the night. Thea didn't mind the discomfort; she and Devlin were both alive, and safe.
Thank You, Lord.
The grateful prayer winged upward with surprising naturalness.

When she opened the door to the office, the first voice she heard was her father's. “One villain dead, the other captured. You've certainly earned a gold star for your ‘Secret Service,' Operative Stone.”

“That's one way of looking at it.” Devlin's back was to Thea and she couldn't see his expression, but he responded to the light sarcasm in a deceptively lazy Southern drawl.

Another Secret Service operative, the “reporter” Mr. Lawlor, lounged against a desk. No difficulty reading the contempt in his expression, she thought sadly. But then, her father deserved it. Neither the Club superintendent nor Miss Schuppan were anywhere in sight. Feeling like
a trespasser herself, Thea awkwardly cleared her throat. “Good morning,” she said.

Devlin swiftly turned and started toward her. “Thea! We didn't expect you much before noon.”

He said something else but she didn't hear because she had just seen the handcuffs around her father's wrists. For an instant time telescoped backward, and she felt the cold heavy manacles around her own wrists. Remembered the hopelessness inside that barren cell.
Every member of her family…
Blindly she focused on Devlin.

He reached her side in two long steps, filling her vision, calming her senses. “You're still pale. Did you sleep? Did the doctor give permission for you to leave?” The intensity of his loving perusal mitigated the churning in Thea's stomach. His anxiety made her want to wrap him in a hug.

And yet, her father's hands were shackled together. “I slept. The doctor grumbled but gave in. I'm stiff. Sore. Grateful to be alive…Devlin? Why is Richard…why is my father handcuffed?”

“Mr. Langston,” Mr. Lawlor said, answering for Devlin, “is under arrest for aiding and abetting a notorious counterfeiter guilty of abduction and committing bodily harm, who may or may not also be guilty of the crime of murder.” For some reason he scowled at Devlin, then walked over to stand with folded arms in front of the door.

“Don't fret, Theodora,” Richard said. “It was inevitable from the moment I followed Edgar out the door of an Atlantic City casino. The arm of the law is long and unrelenting. Unfortunately, so was Edgar Fane. At least I'm still alive.” A corner of his mouth curved. “As are you.”

And Edgar Fane lay covered in a shroud on his yacht. The men who would have killed Richard and tossed Thea overboard had been taken to the jail in Brunswick.
Fane's crimes were at an end…but their consequences still remained. For a painful moment she studied the man who for almost a quarter of a century had pretended she didn't exist.

And yet… “Devlin, my father also aided and abetted
me,
knowingly put himself at risk so I could secure the evidence—for you. For the Secret Service. Doesn't that count for something? Must he be treated like a criminal?”

Deep lines furrowed Devlin's forehead, and shadows smudged the blue-gray eyes. But he allowed Thea to speak, not interrupting or defending himself. Suddenly she realized with a sharp internal click that she'd fallen back into the same toxic trap that had poisoned her spirit for much of her life. Her father had never escaped. With God's grace leveraging some spiritual muscle, Thea could.

“I'm sorry,” she said. She darted a glance at the impassive Mr. Lawlor, then stretched up and right there in front of the Lord and everyone else pressed a repentant kiss to Devlin's cheek. Beneath her lips the muscles in the hard cheekbone jerked once, then stilled. “I'm sorry.” She breathed the apology again, into his ear, and stepped back.

“You're right. You're upholding the law, and I know it's also the right thing to do. It was just…”

“You don't have to apologize. I understand.” Softly he brushed her clenched knuckles. “Mr. Lawlor?” he said without looking away from Thea. “Can we have a moment, please?”

“Why am I not surprised? Come along, Langston. You and me'll—”

“Leave Mr. Langston here, Fred.”

“Oh, all right.” The other operative winked at Thea—
winked.
“You're the boss.” He sauntered out, quietly shutting the door behind him.

“My dear man,” Richard began, “if you're needing to
assert your power over my daughter by ogling her in front of me…”

He hushed up fast when Devlin whirled around and leveled a look that could fry an egg. “You lost your rights as a father a long time ago, Langston. And this woman is going to be my wife. You will treat her with respect. I don't want to regret what I'm about to do.”

He turned back to Thea, his tone altering to the deep warm syrup drawl that flowed over Thea in a healing balm. “Your father abandoned you, robbing you of self-confidence. A year ago, another man robbed you of your inheritance, and your grandfather of his self-respect. Then the Secret Service, albeit unintentionally, robbed him of his reputation.”

He paused, searching Thea's face, regret carved like old scars in his own. “Not even God can change the past. He can only help us heal from it. But I can try to make some sort of reparation, by giving you a choice. Theodora, nobody outside the Service—except for you—knows your father was forced to become one of Fane's accomplices. Fane's dead. Simpson has sworn in an affidavit that Richard Langston was threatened with death for refusal to comply with Fane's demands, and was used with ill will as a tethered goat to lure an innocent woman to her own demise. To everyone else on Jekyll Island, Mr. Langston was just another guest. Last night, I sent another telegram to the head of the Service. His reply came fifteen minutes ago. Mr. Lawlor and I have been granted the authority to determine Richard Langston's fate. We've decided to pass that determination along…to you.”

Disbelief wrapped Thea in barbed wire suspense. Slowly she sank down into Mr. Grob's desk chair. “What are you saying, Devlin?” she managed through stiff lips.

With easy masculine grace Devlin knelt in front of her.
“I'm saying your father's fate rests entirely in your hands. I can't undo what operatives up in New York did to your grandfather last year. But Fred and I agreed we can balance the scales here, perhaps a little bit. Say the word, dear heart, and your father walks, free to choose the course of his own life.”

Blindly, she reached out, and his hands closed around hers, warm and strong and sure. “What he did was still wrong. He could have approached the Secret Service before leaving Atlantic City. He could have appealed to someone here.”

“He could have turned you over to Fane,” Devlin murmured. “But he gave you the keys, which allowed you to collect the evidence we needed—knowing the gesture would probably cost him his life. So. Judgment or grace, Theodora? The choice is yours.”

Thea looked over Devlin's sturdy shoulder to her father, who stood in profile gazing out the window, his face expressionless, his posture relaxed. The shackles holding his wrists together might have been a figment of Thea's imagination.
What am I supposed to do here, Lord? What?
When she stirred, Devlin helped her to her feet, tucked a tendril of dangling hair behind her ear, then stepped aside so she could approach the man who had given her life, yet who she knew in her heart still wanted nothing to do with her.

“If you're free, what will you do?”

“If he decides to take up counterfeiting as well as gambling for a profession,” Devlin put in smoothly, “he'll be hunted down without mercy.”

Richard shrugged. “I'm too old to pretend in the game of life any longer, Theodora. Fane did teach me something, though. In the future, I won't gamble with money I don't have, and haven't legitimately won. As for the rest,
Operative Stone, your warning is duly noted.” The chains rattled as he made a restless move with his hands. “Charles did a good job with you, Theodora. You might look like your mother, but you're nothing like her at all.” He laughed a light, bitter laugh. “An upstanding professional government agent with a heart wins over a professional gambler without one, every time. Though in my opinion, any man willing to toss away his career for a woman is gambling more than he ought.”