Blaze (54 page)

And suddenly Hazard wanted his child raised here with his people, with him. Not in Boston, where he deplored the grey, soot-coated snow in winter, the houses jammed one against the other, where you could never see a sunset slip below the horizon like liquid fire. He didn't want his child reared in a Beacon Hill pile of stone filled with servants and no love, by a mother whose words were only coldly calculating business devices. The thought suddenly of his child raised in the teeming grey city made his skin crawl.

So against all sensible argument, against the logic that had kept him firmly in Montana for weeks, against the rationale developed as a result of the three curt sentences in Blaze's note, he walked back to his lodge and started packing.

"In a hurry somewhere?" Rising Wolf asked from the sun-drenched doorway.

"Boston."

"Need help?"

Hazard tied his saddlebag shut with two quick jerks, snapping them forcefully. "No thanks," he said. "I know how to handle her." Then, straightening, he reached for his Colts and transferred them to the holsters belted on his hips.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing? Remember your—"

The icy rage wasn't meant for him, but it stopped Rising Wolf midsentence. Hazard had the rancor under control by the next heartbeat and smiled an apology for his lapse. "I think it's about time," he explained coolly, a lazy arrogance nicely prominent, "Miss Venetia Brad-dock finds out that even millionaires' daughters can feel the cut of the bit. She's had her head long enough. I want my child."

"What if Blue Flower—"

"She'll do as she's told." His voice was curt. "One impertinent bitch a year is about my limit. See you in a month or so."

"With your child?"

The smile cutting Hazard's lean face was wolfish. "In a manner of speaking."

HE TOOK the stage from Diamond City two days later, the fastest mode of transportation; they traveled around the clock. If he'd ridden himself, he would have had to stop and rest. As it was, he slept most of the way, slouched in the corner of the stage to protect his still tender arm, his hat pulled down over his face. He wasn't in the mood for conversation and simply didn't reply when addressed. Passengers didn't press a second sentence on the dark-skinned man dressed in black. He only moved noticeably once on the long miles to the rail line. Road agents held up the stage the third day east of Salt Lake City, and Hazard, his automatic response to violence swift and sure, shot them—all three—in less time than the human eye could follow. The five other passengers only saw him slip his smoking revolvers into their holster as easily as if he were putting away his change, pull his hat a little lower on his brow, and shut his eyes again. When the driver shouted his thanks down, Hazard grunted something inaudible. After that display of marksmanship, the passengers afforded him an even wider berth, but he heard the whispers: "Hired gun."

He reached Boston in record time—ten days, six hours, and thirty-two minutes.

YANCY only told Blaze his plans an hour before he escorted her down the stairway to the waiting carriage.

"I won't," she said, sharply combative. "You can't make me."

"You don't realize how many reluctant young women pass through Madame Restell's," Yancy smoothly drawled. "Parental pressure is quite common. You'll be just another in a long line of young women who've unwisely chosen to love below their station in life. You'll do it," he bluntly said, all pretense of politeness gone, "if I have to tie you down to the table myself. And Madame Restell won't ask any questions when I offer to double her fee."

"I'll tell her about you."

"She won't believe you. All you young darlings get hysterical when you can't marry your dancing instructor or groom or gamekeeper. And even if your story's a bit different, she's not in the counseling business. She hasn't built the grandest mansion on Fifth Avenue by turning lucrative business away. We leave in an hour, so don't waste your breath."

Realizing argument was useless, Blaze acquiesced.

She at least would be out of her locked room, and escape was more probable than in her current circumstances.

She dressed carefully. Since she was in mourning, her string of black pearls wouldn't attract notice. She would have liked to empty her jewel case into her reticule, but didn't dare. Yancy was very likely to search its contents, and if she was carrying a fortune in jewelry out of the house, he'd dash her chrysalis plans. Today was the first time in three weeks she'd been allowed out of her room, the first time there was even a remote possibility of escaping.

The black pearls drew no undue notice against the black silk of her gown; she had simply chosen the most appropriate jewelry for her mourning. She had also chosen the most costly of her jewels, for in their rarity black pearls exceeded any other gem. And their value, appropriately dear, was about to buy her freedom. If Madame Restell was the businesswoman Yancy said she was, Blaze was certain she could be persuaded to let Blaze escape Yancy.

Not only Yancy, Blaze discovered on approaching the carriage, but two hired thugs as well. Two burly, beefy men towered over her, one on either side of the carriage door, as she stepped into the curtained brougham. Her expression remained suitably contrite on the trip to the station and on the train ride into New York, but her mind was busily contemplating the myriad details of her flight. The time required for an abortion should allow her at least a modest head start before Yancy discovered the deception. If she could reach her father's bank in New York, she could draw out funds for her trip west from her trust. Best avoid the train stations, she decided. She'd hire a carriage and driver for the first two or three days and board at Baltimore or Washington. No one would be expecting her to head south.

MlLLICENT Braddock looked every inch the upper-class lady. She wore a plum silk mourning dress with only two strands of small matched pearls. Her light hair was immaculate in a ribboned chignon, her posture upright, her hands gracefully clasped in front of her. She had just set aside her first cup of tea and was standing at the window admiring the late roses in the small garden adjacent to her writing room.

The door swung open sharply and she turned irritably to chastise the servant imprudent enough to enter without first knocking.

"Where is she?" It was an order in a tone that disregarded entirely her position and the ambiance of a stately thirty-room mansion on Beacon Street.

For long enough to appear rude, she didn't answer. "I beg your pardon," she finally said. "Who do you think you are barging in here?" He only looked at her with a withering glance. "She doesn't want to see you," Milli-cent acidly declared.

"Get her down here."

"She doesn't want to see you." The repeated phrase was haughty and dismissive.

"I'm going up."

"She isn't there," she blandly said.

He stopped halfway to the door and spun around. "Then where is she?"

"Away," said the mistress of 12 Beacon Street, sweet contempt in her voice.

"Obviously. Where?"

"It's hardly your business."

"Don't push your luck, Millicent. Where is she?"

"I'll have you thrown out. I will not tolerate this flagrant violation of my home. If you do not leave instantly—"

"Cut the affronted southern belle. Do you think I give a damn what you want?" He shook his head almost imperceptibly. "Besides, you and I both know there's no one here that can throw me out. Now. You have exactly ten seconds to tell me where Blaze is or I'm going to strangle you right where you stand."

"Haven't you done enough to her already?" Total iciness. The prospect of being strangled in broad daylight in one's home could be discredited as mere rhetoric.

He looked up from the heavy gold watch he'd pulled from his vest pocket. "She told you that?"

"She did."

"Then we differ on the particulars of who did what to whom," said Hazard levelly. "Five seconds."

"You can't intimidate me, you rude savage!" Her grey eyes were icy pits of cold outrage.

"Three." A cabochon gem of some price on the hand holding the watch caught the sunlight and flashed a subtle green prism.

"You won't get another word out of me."

"Pity. Two."

Malevolent and assured, Millicent said, "Yancy will kill you when he returns."

A quick glance up to assimilate that interesting fact.

Yancy was gone. He hadn't been sure. His eyes returned to the watch held in his large, steady palm. "One. That's it. Say your prayers." Snapping the case shut, Hazard pocketed the engraved gold watch and moved across the room with astonishing speed. She tried to run, but he was firmly blocking her path.

"New York!" Millicent squealed, raw reality shockingly apparent when Hazard reached out toward her.

"Big city," he casually said, slipping his slender fingers around her neck and dragging her toward him. Their faces were so close she could feel the heat from his skin.

"Madame Restell's," she whispered, his grip leaving marks on her pale neck, stark fear crumbling her patina of arrogance.

The name made Hazard sick with despair and he was overcome by nausea. "When did they leave?" he asked, very low.

"An hour ago," she managed to croak, with the vise-like fingers unconsciously tightening.

A cold sweat covered Hazard's body. He might be too late. Desolation swept over him and for a long, terrible moment he relived the horrors of the past. It was the odd choking sound that brought him back. He dropped his hands and ran. He ran faster than he'd ever run before.

WHEN they reached Madame Restell's four-story brownstone on Fifth Avenue, Blaze was whisked through the side entrance on Fifty-second Street and shown to a richly decorated bedroom by an attendant while Yancy met with Madame Restell in her ground floor office. The two hired guns guarded the marble foyer like prison wardens.

Let Yancy talk all he wanted, Blaze thought, looking around the room draped with a baby-blue brocade that she thought put a strain on good taste. I'll have the final bid. And no one, she knew, could afford to turn down $100,000 for not performing an abortion. She heard the door open and prepared to meet the most notorious woman in New York City.

"You're looking well, Miss Braddock," a deep, familiar voice she hadn't heard in seven weeks said. It was

Hazard's rich and drowsy tone. Hazard's accent. Hazard's beauty of cadence. Impossible.

Blaze whirled, clutching the heavy black pearls. He stood half in shadow, impeccably dressed in dark wool, the velvet collar on his topcoat lush in the dim light, his hair ordered and gleaming. His eyes accusing.

Her immeasurable joy wilted under the cold dark eyes and guilt overwhelmed her. How had he found her? What must he think? Her heart was thudding. "How did you know I was here?" she whispered. It was the worst possible choice of first words to him.

Hazard fractionally lifted his brows at the unexpected candor and then remembered it was typical of her type—selfishly self-centered. In Boston that afternoon, Millicent had information Hazard badly wanted, and her well-honed sense of preservation and the deadly look in Hazard's eyes warned her she'd best not withhold it. His reply omitted the less subtle details of garroting. "Millicent is easily persuaded," he smoothly said, in a voice as sharp as a knife blade. He was leaning against the door favoring one shoulder. A relaxed, casual pose, an odd contrast to his sudden ghostlike appearance.

"How did you find it?" Blaze's hands fell from the pearls and tightened on the heavy black silk of her skirt as if the stiff fabric would hold her upright. Astonishment, wonder, colored her breathy voice. He misread it from his jaundiced point of view. Ruffled resentment, he thought, and misjudged her clenched fists as well.