Cates, Kimberly (7 page)

"Oh, it's loaded, that I promise you. Pistolballs were stored underneath your nightshirt; the powder flask was tucked into the toe of a boot."

Gavin froze, his gut clenching. "Son of a bitch! You didn't—"

"Load it?" she enunciated with grim pleasure. "I most certainly did."

"Gunpowder isn't a plaything, woman!" Real horror jolted through Gavin—horror that had nothing to do with saving his own skin. "God's wounds, put that gun down! If you didn't load it right, the blasted thing could explode right in your face! It's dangerous—"

"I suppose the
Cowardly Villain Handbook
didn't warn you not to leave a dangerous weapon lying about."

"This isn't a goddamn joke!" Gavin snapped. "The slightest twitch of your finger on that trigger could blow you all the way to England! Now, give that pistol to me!"

"I think not." Her eyes snapped fire. "I intend to keep it as a trophy to show my betrothed when I return home."

Gavin's jaw tightened at the mere mention of Wells. "Give it to me before you hurt yourself." He moved toward her.

"No! Stay right there. If you take another step, I'll shoot." Any other woman would have been making a hysterical threat. Rachel de Lacey's voice was cold steel. "One more step and you're dead. There's nothing I'd like better than to put a bullet through your cowardly heart!"

She was doing it again—jabbing at his temper. "From your past escapades, I know exactly what a bloodthirsty little creature you are, Mistress de Lacey, but you will give me that gun before somebody gets hurt." His eyes clashed with hers, his hand reaching up, closing on the German silver barrel.

"Stop! Don't—" A howl of feminine rage mingled with his own guttural cry of surprise as the pistol spit fire. Pain seared into Gavin's side, the explosion reverberating through the Glen Lyon's cave.

CHAPTER 5

The recoil of the pistol vibrated up Rachel's arm, a thick wave of horror spilling in its wake as the Glen Lyon staggered backward, scarlet blossoming on his gray coat. Her nostrils filled with the stench of sulfur and burnt powder and the sickly sweetness of blood.

"You shot me!" he said in incredulous accusation. He staggered to the cave wall, bracing his lean frame against it. His fingers groped for his left side.

"I didn't do any such thing!" She flung the weapon away as if it had suddenly turned into a snake. "You grabbed the gun and it went off! This is your fault, all your fault!"

She rushed toward him, outrage and panic mingling inside her. "I was never going to shoot you, you infernal blockhead!" she raged, comforted by the fact that he would scarce be standing if he were badly injured. "A hostage is no good to anyone once he's bleeding all over the place." She reached for his jacket, intending to bare the wound, but he shoved her hands away. She was sickened by the slippery feel of his blood on her skin.

"Leave it alone, for Christ's sake!" he snarled. "Haven't you done enough damage?"

She grabbed up a wad of petticoat from the jumble of garments stuffed in a nearby basket and jabbed the cloth in the vicinity of his wound none too gently.

"Ouch, blast it!" he snapped. "What? Shooting me wasn't... enough? You have to find new ways of causing me... pain?"

"You're supposed to apply pressure to stanch the flow of blood!"

"I know!" He jerked away, clamping his arm tightly over the bunched cloth.

"I hope you are satisfied!" she shouted, clinging to her fury. "My escape is ruined. Completely ruined."

An oath slipped from between the rebel's clenched teeth. "That bullet didn't... do much for... my jacket, either." Long artist's fingers snagged in the charred holes that the bullet had made as it entered and exited. "More goddamn mending." He groaned. "You should've aimed for my heart. Nice, clean bullet... over in... an instant. But I suppose... I should be grateful you... didn't blow... the whole cave to kingdom come."

"That pistol was loaded perfectly! I've been shooting since I was eight years old! If I wanted to wound you, Master Cowardly, you wouldn't be suffering from some—some paltry gash."

"Well, pardon me for... not being wounded in a more... dramatically satisfactory way.
And
for mucking up your great escape." He attempted to lever himself away from the wall, but he sagged back against the rough stone, his teeth clenched. "Sorry I didn't play my part to your... high standards of... excellence."

A rumble of shouts echoed from the other part of the cave, the oaken door slamming open with a force that should have brought the cave roof tumbling in on their heads.

"What's happening? I heard a shot!" a masculine voice shouted. "Did that cur Dunstan dis- cover—" The sentence ended in a roar of pure fury. "What the devil!"

Rachel turned to see Adam, pistol in hand, his face as feral as a bear's and twice as frightening.

"Damn you, woman," Adam roared as he charged her. "If you've hurt him, I swear I'll—"

Rough fingers closed on her shoulder, and she expected to be flung to the far corners of the cave by this terrifying giant of a man, but the Glen Lyon intervened by merely raising one hand.

"Stop, Adam. This is my... fault."

Those quiet words stopped Adam when Rachel was certain the very hand of God could not have.

She gaped at the Glen Lyon. The man leaned against the wall in a manner almost—well, casual— as if he were shot every day of the week. Astonishment bolted through her as she gazed into gray eyes brimming with wry humor, despite his grimace of pain.

"Damnation, I'll go stark raving mad if you go defending the wench out of some misguided notion of chivalry!" Adam jammed his pistol back into the waistband of his breeches and charged toward the rebel leader. "She may be a woman, but they can be accursed vipers."

She knew the instant Adam saw the blood. Pain darted into those warrior features—far more pain, Rachel was certain, than if the big man had been wounded himself.

The Glen Lyon must have glimpsed his expression as well, for he pushed himself away from the wall, and took a few unsteady steps to his chair. He sank down on it, his wounded side hidden by the desk. What in the name of heaven was he doing?

"I have it on Mistress de Lacey's authority that this is nothing but a paltry gash," the Glen Lyon said with a forced laugh.

"Wonderful!" Adam snapped. "Did you inform her royal highness that if the pistolball had been a few inches over, God Himself couldn't have saved you?"

The notion that she might have killed a man sickened Rachel until her head swam. She buried her hands in the folds of her robes, but the smear of red left on the dusty fabric made her stomach pitch. "I didn't mean to shoot him. I never intended to—"

"Mama Fee," the giant called over one shoulder. "Get me some water—hot and clean. And some fresh linen."

"It was my... own clumsiness that caused this," the Glen Lyon insisted. "Tried to grab my gun."

"The little witch tried to grab your gun? Hellfire! You should've knocked her over the head with it! No doubt you were trying to be
gentle."

"No... you don't understand." The Glen Lyon grasped the side of the desk, and Rachel wondered if she was the only one who noticed how white his knuckles were. "She had the... gun when I came into the room.
I
tried to... get it from
her."

"Don't be ridiculous!" Adam cast a glare at the German silver pistol that lay at the foot of the desk. His brow furrowed. His eyes clouded, a befuddled haze drifting over them. "How the devil could she have your gun?" Adam snorted. "You were carrying it when we met with Sir Dunstan."

The Glen Lyon raised his eyes to the stormy face of Adam, and Rachel could see his chest begin to shake—shake with suppressed... dear God, could it be
laughter?

"Thunder in heaven," Adam cursed, thunderstruck. "Tell me you didn't forget your pistol!"

"Damn it... don't look at me like... that," the Glen Lyon choked out, but tears of mirth were welling in the corners of his eyes. "Hurts to... laugh."

Rachel gaped at him. Mad—he had to be mad, laughing with a bullet wound in his side, defending her when she had just shot him.

Adam slammed his fist against the desk top, curse words raining out of him in a hail that echoed off the cave's walls. "Damn you to hell! It would serve you right if I left you to Mistress Hellcat's tender mercy! Blast it, but you deserve each other!" He kicked the basket of garments, the thing spinning wildly across the cave floor, spilling out clothes that scandalized Rachel.

Garish garments fit only for courtesans tumbled out in tawdry array, crushed beneath Adam's hulking boots as he stalked the chamber.

"P-please. If you have any... mercy in your heart, Mistress de Lacey, you'll... tend my wound," the Glen Lyon implored, his face pale, drawn, his eyes still shining with laughter. "I fear if my brother gets too... close... he may finish... the job your... pistolball started."

"Damn well serve you right if I did!" Adam blustered, flexing his massive fists. "Hellfire and damnation! What if Wells had drawn fire on you? What if—"

"I suppose I'd be... in approximately the same condition I am now, only I'd be feeling... a damn sight more... foolish." Those pale lips gave an ironic twist.
"If
that is p-possible."

"Lads, lads! You stop this squabbling at once!" An old woman came bustling in, a bowl in her hands. Rachel looked up, hoping to find some semblance of sanity in this madness.

"Now, you tell Mama Fee what is amiss this instant!"

"She
shot him!" Adam roared, stabbing an accusatory finger in Rachel's direction, "and he doesn't have the bloody sense to give a damn!"

"Don't be absurd," the woman's laugh rang out, crystalline, lovely. "Why would Miss Rachel shoot our boy? She has the eye for him, she does—going to marry him, don't ye know."

"M-marry...
him?"
Rachel felt as if the woman had dumped the bowl of water over her head. "Are you insane?"

She felt a gentle hand on her wrist—the Glen Lyon's fingers, warm and insistent. There was a plea in his eyes, one that struck her silent.

"Mama Fee, now if you keep talking thus, you'll be scaring her... off. I thought it was our secret that I was... to woo her."

"Woo her? Of all the—By God, Gavin—" But Adam stilled as well, silenced by the expression on the Glen Lyon's face.

"Gavin," Rachel gasped. Was that the rebel lord's real name?

"How else is Mama Fee to get the grandbabies she wants so badly?" the rebel lord asked in such a reasonable tone Rachel wanted to scuttle to the far end of the cave.

"B-babies!" Rachel sputtered. "You promised... promised you wouldn't ravish me!"

"Mama Fee." Glen Lyon gestured to the old woman. "Could you do me a favor and... take Adam out of here? You know how clumsy he is with the... ladies. He'll have her... running back to her mama before he's done."

The woman nodded sagely, one hand stealing out in a tender caress to smooth the dark-gold tangle of hair back from the Glen Lyon's brow. Rachel wondered how the woman failed to notice how pale that brow was.

"Adam," the Scotswoman called over her shoulder, "be takin' yerself out o' here afore I chase ye out with a broom! For shame, troublin' my dear Gavin so."

"Somebody has to take care of that wound!" Adam protested. "Look at him! He's bleeding—"

For the first time the old woman's gaze strayed to where the Glen Lyon held the cloth clamped to his side, the crimson of his own blood staining his fingers. A darkness threatened to engulf her eyes, a void so vast that it terrified Rachel. The woman's lovely face seemed to become even more brittle, fragile as porcelain ages old.

Rachel saw the Glen Lyon reach out surreptitiously with the toe of his boot, nudging the fallen pistol out of sight beneath the tangle of clothes.

"It's only the tiniest scratch, Mama Fee," he said, dismissing his wound. "I was cleaning my pistol and the blasted thing went off. I suppose it was to be expected since... I was dreaming about the lady instead of paying attention," the rebel leader confided with a self-deprecating grin, only the merest shadows of his pain still visible on his face. "Let my... sweetheart tend me. You know how the ladies love to... play angel of mercy."

"I'm not—" Rachel started to protest, but at that moment, the Glen Lyon levered himself to his feet. One hand tangled in the waves of her hair. A cry was trapped in her throat as he pulled her toward him, his mouth capturing hers in a hard kiss. He was leaning on her, heavily, as if without her support, he'd crumple to the floor. But she couldn't have moved if the fate of England depended on it.

The Glen Lyon's mouth burned hers—insistent, hot—searing itself onto the soft curves of her mouth. Even her outrage was trapped in her throat.

"Please." One word, for her ears alone, he whispered as he drew away.

"Oh for God's sake!" Adam roared. But he bit off a curse as a smile wavered on the older woman's lips— tentative, fragile as the finest spindle of glass— quieting them both.

"It's all right, Adam," the Glen Lyon insisted, sinking back down into the chair. "Trust me."

"Trust you?
Trust you!
Last time I did so, you all but got yourself killed!"

Rachel expected the giant of a man to stand his ground against the Glen Lyon, but after one last mutinous glare, he only growled. "If anything—
anything
happens to this man, Mistress de Lacey, I know a hundred people who would slit your throat— be damned that you're a woman. And I promise you, I would be the first in line!" With that, Adam stormed out, leaving Rachel shaken.

She caught a glimpse of Mama Fee and was appalled to see the older woman close the space between them. Rachel stiffened as arms enfolded her in a butterfly-gentle embrace. "Take care of him," she whispered in Rachel's ear. "He's tender of heart, my boy is, yet stronger than ye can imagine."

"I... we... he's not..." she started to stammer a denial, but the words tangled on her tongue, until she stood there like an absolute dolt, watching while the old woman made her way out of the chamber. At the door, the Scotswoman paused to cast them a grin. "I'll be closin' the door to give ye sweetings some privacy. Mind ye be a gentleman, now, my dearling."