Now and Forever (84 page)

"Join me, madam. This is a comfortable bed. You will rest easy here."

"I'd rest easier on a bed of nails," she muttered.

"You are alone," he continued, "as am I. We should take our comfort where we can."

This isn't funny, Devane. I'm not a charity case.
Unexpected tears burned behind her lids and she prayed she wouldn't start to cry. Crying would show him she was vulnerable, and that was the last thing she wanted him to know. "I will find all the comfort I desire when I rejoin my friends."

"These friends of yours," he said slowly, arms crossed behind his head. "Could it be they do not exist?"

"Believe what you will," she managed to say with as much dignity as she could muster. "It is of no concern to me."

He met her eyes. "A man and woman were found dead this morning," he said in a tone of voice much softer than any he had used before.

The room began to spin and she clutched the bedpost for support.

"They were near to Morristown," he said, watching her closely. "A man of some two score and ten and a woman of the same years. Are they the pair for whom you search?"

She lowered her head as a powerful wave of relief rocked through her body. "They are not my friends," she said after a moment, "but I thank you for the information."

He inclined his head, an absurdly formal response from a man stretched out on a feather mattress like a
Playgirl
centerfold. A few less-than-innocent fantasies played themselves out as heat gathered inside her chest. She was shocked that desire was so close to the surface.

"Abigail is waiting for me to repair Lucy," Dakota said, aware that she was suddenly babbling like a fool. "She must be wondering what is taking me so long."

"Cook called the child to her midday meal."

"Unless it's a ten-course feast, she must be finished by now." His eyes narrowed, and instantly she regretted her flip tone and sharp-edged words. If she ever made it back to her own time, she was going to write a handbook on how to hook a man, and the first rule would be, "Smart-mouthed dames need not apply."

She started toward the door as fast as her dainty size eights would carry her.

Before she knew what he was about, Patrick reached out and encircled her narrow wrist with his fingers. Again he was struck by the softness of her skin, and he willed himself to ignore the perfumed sweetness that rose up from her person to ensnare him. He had known women far more beautiful than this odd, dark-tressed creature, but something about the woman reached deep into his black soul and touched his heart in a way he did not understand and, most assuredly, did not want.

She met his eyes. Another woman would have recognized the moment and used her feminine charms to dissuade him from his purpose. At the very least, he would have seen a spark of recognition that they were a man and a woman alone together with all the possibilities such a combination entailed.

Not Dakota Wylie. He saw fear in the ebony depths of her eyes, and he saw something else, as well: strength of character—a sense of resolve—that he had believed to be solely the province of men. For a moment he hesitated. He had lived so long amidst liars that perhaps he had lost the ability to recognize truth when he heard it spoken. Was it possible she was indeed the grieving widow of her story, a good wife with a heart that yearned for the husband she had lost to the capricious whims of fate?

Or had he finally lost his mind?

Chapter Twelve

They said position in life was everything, and for the first time in her life Dakota agreed. The world looked entirely different from her position underneath Patrick Devane.

One minute she'd been striding toward the door, Lucy in hand, and the next she was on the feather bed with Lucy lying near the door. It occurred to her that maybe she should have put up some kind of struggle, that surrender really wasn't a viable option for a twentieth-century woman, not even one who'd found herself living and breathing in 1779. She was smart enough to know better, but there was something deeply pleasurable about the idea, something dark and dangerous and so compelling that twenty-six years of independent thought were in danger of going up in a haze of erotic smoke.

He cupped her face in his hands. "How long has it been, Dakota Wylie, since a man held you like this?"

All my life,
she thought. No one had ever looked at her with such intensity before, as if he could see her heart beating beneath her skin. Drawing in a breath became a supreme act of will.

He stroked her cheek with the pad of his thumb. His fingers were callused from riding. The roughened skin sent a thrill of excitement rippling up her spine and she shivered involuntarily. She met his eyes but could read nothing in his expression.

"Don't," she whispered, sounding painfully vulnerable to her own ears. She heard the loneliness beneath the words, the aching need, and she closed her eyes, praying he wouldn't know the effect his touch was having upon her.

"Be still," he said, spreading his hands along the base of her throat, her collarbones. "You are a woman. You need the touch of a man."

Inflammatory sexist claptrap, she thought, but sadly, painfully true. His touch made her feel dizzy, as if she'd climbed to the top of the tallest tree and was falling, falling through sweet green leaves.

"Beautiful eyes," he murmured, caressing her shoulders, her upper arms. "I have never seen a color such as that before."

"It's called brown," she said, trying to remember that this wasn't real. He wasn't her friend and he wasn't her lover. He wasn't anything to her but the man who stood between her and the world she'd left behind. If she believed it was real for even a moment, she would be lost.

"Midnight black," he said. "Dark as ebony."

"Ebony?" She had to be dreaming. Didn't he know she wasn't the kind of woman a man whispered insincere compliments to?

"It is as if you hear the words for the first time," he mused, cupping her elbows in a way that was illegal, or should be. "Your husband must have told you these things."

She struggled to remember her fictional husband, old what's-his-name. "H-he was a man of few words."

Those few words had barely escaped her lips when he lowered his head, bringing his mouth closer to hers, then closer still. He had a beautiful mouth, full and perfectly formed. She couldn't believe that mouth was only inches from hers.

"No more words," he said, eyes glittering dangerously.

"But—"

He claimed her mouth as if she'd given him the right, as if everything that had ever happened in her life had given him that right. His touch was gentle at first, his lips moving against hers with a subtle, coaxing motion that weakened what remained of her defenses. She exhaled on a long sigh and as her lips parted, he deepened the kiss.

Nothing mattered but the feel of his mouth on hers. He tasted of oranges and cherry tobacco and some sweet, sweet narcotic that was slipping into her bloodstream in a flood of heat, making her forget how she had come to be there in his arms.

#

She yielded to him with an eagerness that was almost his undoing. He grew hard and he made no attempt to disguise the desire he felt for her. Everything about her person pleased him. Her soft skin. The scent of flowers that surrounded her. The gentle curves of her woman's body as she lay beneath him. He could imagine her naked, skin gleaming in the firelight, as she welcomed him into the haven of her arms.

Were she not a liar and a spy sent to thwart his cause, he might have pressed his advantage, but Patrick Devane had had enough prevarication to last him his lifetime. He had made a costly mistake with Susannah. He would not make another one now when there was so much to lose.

"The grieving widow," he murmured, breaking the kiss. "I think it is not for your husband that you grieve, madam, I think it is for your freedom."

Her ebony eyes fluttered open and she met his gaze with a forthrightness that once again surprised him. "I—I don't know what you're talking about."

He kissed her again, hard and long, and she arched against him. "That is not the response of a good wife who mourns the passing of her husband."

"You know nothing of my response," she snapped in a voice of surprising vigor. "A man who must entrap a woman for his own amusement is not one to judge the quality of her kiss."

Had he imagined the heat of her response? There was nothing of the supplicant in either her voice or her manner.

Irritated, he gathered her wrists in one hand and pinned them over her head. He placed his other hand at her throat where her pulse beat heavily against his palm.

"There is no dead husband, is there,
Mistress
Wylie? No beloved companions whose loss you mourn."

"I have told you my intentions," she said, neither flinching nor looking away. "As soon as the storm ends, I will be on my way to find my friends."

"And I will find the truth," he warned, his grip on her wrists tightening. "Better to unburden yourself now than to risk my anger later on."

"How courageous," she said, her tone heavy with irony. "You threaten a mere woman but refuse to take up arms against the enemy." Her eyes narrowed as she looked ever deeper into his soul. "Or is it that you're having trouble deciding which side you're on?"

#

So that's a glower,
Dakota thought as his expression darkened. She'd always wanted to see one somewhere besides a comic strip. The man had a quicksilver temper. Sooner or later he was going to explode like Mount St. Helens, and she didn't want to be around when it happened.

He straddled her, knees pressing against her hips. She wondered if he'd believe she padded her petticoats the same way she boosted her bodice. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. To think she'd believed for even one second that they had some chemistry going between them. He was about as attracted to her as she was to "Beavis and Butthead," and it was time she remembered that.

"Get off me!" she ordered.

"Tell me the names of the friends for whom you search and I'll do as you ask."

"I already told you their names."

"I grow forgetful. Tell me again."

She could do what she did the last time, toss out the names Ronald and Nancy Reagan and be done with it, but she no longer felt either flip or funny. Andrew and Shannon were out there somewhere in that storm and she knew if she didn't find them soon, she'd be trapped there forever.

She could be walking straight into the jaws of a trap, but it was a risk she had to take.

"Whitney," she said after a moment. "Shannon Whitney."

"'Tis an odd name."

Not where I come from.
"She is traveling with a man named Andrew." If Devane's dubious loyalties lay with the British, betraying Andrew McVie's identity could compromise his safety, and Shannon's as well. "I do not know his family name."

"He is your friend and yet you do not know his full name?"

"Shannon is my friend. Andrew is her companion." She struggled for the properly archaic way to express herself. "I have only recently made his acquaintanceship."

"Andrew." He seemed thoughtful, almost pensive. "No," he said, more to himself than to her. "It is not possible."

"What is not possible?" she asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

He parried with a question of his own. "This Andrew you speak of –what is his association with Shannon Whitney?"

"They're lovers, not that it's any of your business."

To her amazement, his cheeks reddened and she was reminded once again of the differences between her world and his.
So you're human after all,
she thought. Who would have imagined a man like Patrick Devane had sensibilities? Her innocent words must have sounded shockingly blunt to him, and she couldn't quite hide her smile.

"You find humor in the situation?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, meeting his eyes. "I'm afraid I do."

Their gazes held while the room did a slow fade until there was nothing but the big feather bed and the ragged sound of their breathing.

"You are a puzzle to me, madam. I know beyond doubt that you weave a fabric of lies, but still I find myself unable to determine clearly if you are friend or foe."