Race to World's End (Rowan and Ella Book 3) (22 page)

Daisy swallowed
past a large lump in her throat.
 
She didn’t need to ask if he was serious.
Half the men on the wharfs seemed ready to kill for a lot less provocation. “You
know I don’t have any money, Georgie,” she said.

“I know, girl, I
know. That’s not what I need from you.”

Daisy’s back
stiffened. It suddenly seemed very clear to her what he
did
need from her. She’d been a fool to allow him his way with her.
Now he thought she was a whore. He was asking her to let his creditors take
their money out of her body. Her fingers felt numb and cold and she didn’t
speak.

“Daisy? Can you
help me, girl?”

She stood and
realized her knees were weak. She locked them to hold her upright. “I’m sorry
for your trouble, Georgie,” she said, not looking at him. “But I’m no trollop.
I’m sorry you thought I was.” She turned to go but he shot a hand out and
stopped her.

“No, Daisy,
never!” he said. “Never, my love. I’d die first.”

She turned to him
and her heart softened at the sight of his obvious despair.

“But…if I have no
money,” she said, “and it’s not my body, how can I help you?” She sat back down
and he took her hand and held it in both of his.

“I need you to…”
He shook his head and started again, his voice pitched low. “These fellows I
owe, they want the judge’s daughter.”

Daisy started.
“Miss Adele?”

“Shhh! Mind your
tone, Daisy. The walls have ears, so they do.”

“
Kidnapping
is a hanging offense. What
you’re asking me to do is worth my life.”

“I know. And I’m
sorry. But if you don’t do it. If you won’t help me…help them take her…they’ll
kill me, Daisy.”

Daisy sat perfectly
still, her hand snug in Georgie’s, the only man—the only person—who
had ever treated her gently, who had ever professed to love her. And an image
came to mind of Adele slapping her, accusing her of stealing, threatening to
have her arrested, sold into slavery even though she was white. Yes, she hated
the little bitch and whatever these bad men had in mind for her wouldn’t bother
Daisy one bit.

She tried to
imagine her life without Adele Morton in it. Surely, the judge would let her
stay on. She could cook and clean as she did now. Likely he would even let her
marry one day, maybe even give her a cottage out back on the place to live.

She looked at
Georgie, who was looking at the door of the pub. When she followed his gaze,
she saw two men standing there now looking back at them. One was tall and black
with a menacing scar that traveled from his chin to disappear into his
hairline. The other was short with long greasy hair held back by a scarf. Even
from this distance she could see the evil in him, the pleasure inflicting pain
gave him.

She squeezed
Georgie’s hand but he didn’t look away from the men.

“I’ll do it,” she
whispered. Instantly she watched the unspoken message get relayed to the two
men who nodded and entered the pub.

When Georgie
turned back to her, he drew her into his arms and held her. Daisy leaned her
cheek against his chest, feeling his shoulders shake, and felt the joy and the
power of the gift she had given him.

***

Although the sun
was blistering hot, Ella spent the entire morning in the garden. It was cooler
in the shade, but mostly she was there because Lawrence was not. She’d managed
to avoid him at breakfast and was determined to slip back into her room for a
bath—
good Lord it was hot in the Keys
with no air conditioning!—
without running into him.

The garden by day
was a pleasant and orderly refuge full of
ficus trees, traveller’s palms, and
ginger blooms
. The scent of
a working fireplace made her look skyward to see that some madman had a fire
going somewhere in the house.
Unbelievable!
It was so hot you could fry clams on the cobblestones out front.
 

Deciding she would
never get used to how the people in 1825 behaved, Ella couldn’t help think that
she’d been optimistic to believe she could stay the rest of the week in the house.
After her bath, she’d go check out what 1825 Key West had in the way of hotels.

Then she would
put her mind to getting back to her own time, although how she was going to
begin to do
that
she had no clue. A
finger of fear traced down her spine at the thought of remaining in 1825. Was
Adele right? Would they really lock her up for being different?

She shook the
pessimistic thought from her head. She needed to set her mind to addressing her
problem of getting back home—not clutter it up with fears that may be
groundless. And as far as she could remember, home was Atlanta.

If I’ve done it once, surely it can be done again.
Her best bet seemed to be to track down
a shaman or witch doctor of some kind—she had heard Adele talking about a
fortune-teller who worked the harbor—who might be able to give her some enlightenment.

She wasn’t at all
sure it was possible but she had to do
something
.

She opened the
back door that led from the garden to the house and peered inside. She could
see the maid, Daisy, dusting something in the hallway, but there were no other
sounds. The judge was probably still in town at his office. Both Lawrence and
Adele should be in the far library, which they used for her lessons.

Ella crept inside
and gently closed the door behind her. The maid turned at the sound, her duster
held high and smiled at Ella as if they were friends.

Which is very weird when you consider she’s the only likely
candidate for whoever has been lurking around outside my bedroom door in the
middle of the night,
Ella thought, as she hurried up the narrow wooden stairs to the bedrooms.

As she approached
her room, she saw that the door was open.
If
Daisy is downstairs dusting, then who is in my bedroom?
In two steps, she
stood in the doorway and watched as Lawrence stood with his back to her tossing
the contents of her valise into the fire he’d made in her bedroom fireplace.

“What the hell
are you doing?” She gasped as she ran into the room and grabbed the valise from
his hands. It was empty. “What have you done with my things?” She looked into
the fireplace in time to see the photo of the woman and baby curl up and
dissolve into flames.

“It’s for the
best, my love,” Lawrence said. But he backed away from her all the same.

She turned on
him, her eyes blazing. “What have you done with my jewels, you bastard?”

“Ella, dearest,
please mind your lang—”

She reached out
and slapped his face as hard as she could. “My letters? The dog tags? What have
you done with them?”

“I…the little
beaded tag necklace I assume to which you refer I threw into the harbor. No one
will be buying you adornments except me. The letters and photographs were
inducements to remember another life, which was making it difficult for you to
adjust to this one.”

“And my jewels?
Were my
jewels
making it easy for me
to adjust to life without
you
?”

“Adele advised
me, my dear, and I must say it made absolute sense.”

“Absolute sense
because without them I can’t leave, you mean?”

“I…well...but
it’s for your own good. We are engaged.”

“We are
bullshit,
and what you have done is
against the law.”

“It isn’t,
actually. As your fiancé, I have every right to control your finances, not to
mention your state of mind—which the Morton’s family doctor can
confirm—is not stable.”

Ella stared at
the smoldering fireplace, her passport and photos now ash. She didn’t see the
jewels, but if he’d thrown the dog tags away earlier he probably didn’t have
the gems on him now. She was trembling with rage and knew that was a state
where she did not do her best thinking.

She turned and
left the room, the sound of him calling her name ringing in her ears and ran
down the stairs and out the front door. She had no hat, no purse, no money and
nowhere to go. Blinded by the fury of what Lawrence had done, she ran without
thinking in the direction that Adele had once warned her about.

The heat pounded
her uncovered head, prompting a solid, unrelenting headache before she had walked
ten minutes. When she calmed enough to look around, she was satisfied that
Lawrence wouldn’t think to have gone this direction to find her.

The next thought
came into her brain like a searing lightning bolt. It was accompanied by an
excruciating longing that made her stop and grasp the side of a brick walkway
that bordered the road.

Somewhere in this
world, she had a child.

The thought came
to her from the depths of her anger and shot to brain central as accurately as
her next breath.

She was someone’s
mother. She leaned against the brick and her hand went to her abdomen. There was
no physical way of detecting the difference. Somewhere in the back of her mind,
she
thought
her breasts were a little
larger than they had been. But in the whirling vortex of all her new
experiences, she hadn’t spent much time thinking about it.

Now, without any
evidence to support it other than her own undeniable belief, she
knew
she had a child.

So what am I doing in 1825? Is the baby back in 2013? Is he
… A smile came unbidden to her lips.
It’s a boy. I have a little boy. How I know
that I don’t know, but I know it
. She wrapped her arms around herself and
rocked with the joy and wonder of her new knowledge.

I’m a mother!

She took two more
steps and thought,
the photo in the
valise
. And then the anger returned because Lawrence had destroyed the
photo—her only picture of her child. When she realized that, she thought
for a moment that she might be able to go back to the house and murder him. She
took a long steadying breath and set her shoulders.

I’m never going back. There’s nothing for me there now but
ashes.

She walked toward
the harbor, as it was now clear this was where the street was leading. The
gulls were closer, and the topmasts of the ships in the harbor were visible
over the clapboard and brick houses that lined the street.

Where am I going? No money. No friends. No idea of how to
get home. No idea of where home is…

“Oy, matey, take
a look at ‘is one! Here’s one don’t look like she’s had too much!”

“I seen her
first! Hullo, luv. We ain’t got money but we can promise ye a long hard ride!”

Ella slowed her
steps as she approached the men. There were two on one side of the street and
one on the other. They looked rough, dirty and scarred. The one nearest her had
most of his teeth missing.

“Take ‘er in the
alley. Us three first. Grab ‘er! She looks like she can run fast!”

Ella swiveled to
dash back the way she’d come. One of the men had already started to run for her
and she feared his arms were long enough to snag the tail of her skirt, but it
was either run or—

She slammed to a
stop to avoid the two men who had been creeping up behind her. Now there were
five. Before she could think which way to bolt, she felt a strong arm snake
around her waist from behind and jerk her off her feet. She arched her back to
try to break his hold and reached behind to grab for anything she
could—eyes, hair, nose. He jerked his head away from her and swung her
over his hip where she could do no damage.

 
“Back off, mates,” he said firmly. “This
one’s mine.”

It was the voice
more than anything. As soon as she heard him speak, a once-familiar image came
charging through the mists of confusion and fear and the adrenalin-charged
jumble of terror. She twisted around to see his face, but she knew before she
laid eyes on him that it was him.

 
“Rowan!”

21

Ella fought to
get to her feet and see his face. She was aware of the other men—only minutes
before insidious menaces to her—now crowding around the two of them like
they were at a family reunion.

“Oy, matey, is
that ‘er, then?”

“Arrr, she’s a
looker,
mkubwa
. Well done, lad!”

Ella felt herself
trembling as images and memories came crashing back to her in swift seconds.
Her baby! Halima! Cairo! And her dearest Rowan…who had been lost and was now
holding her in his arms, his eyes devouring her with a hunger that matched her
own.

 
He looked like he’d aged ten years. His
face was bronze-dark, his blue eyes bright and snapping. His hair was long and
he looked as thin as she’d ever seen him—wiry and hard. What was there
was all muscle.

“Rowan,” she said
again as he crushed her into his arms, holding her so tightly she found herself
fighting for breath. “It’s you. It’s really you.”

“How can it be
that you’re here?” he whispered into her hair, his hands roaming her back and
shoulders as if to prove to himself she was no phantom. “You came after me?”

“If you’d asked
me that five minutes ago,” Ella said, laughing in spite of herself, “I couldn’t
have told you.” She pulled away and looked into his eyes. “Oh, Rowan,” she
said. “I forgot I even lost you and now I’ve found you.”

“God’s teeth,
mkubwa
, go on and take the room over the
Lime and Pistol
. We’re heading back
to the ship.”

Rowan waved to
the men, his eyes never leaving Ella’s. “How did you know I was here? How the
hell did you find me?”

“Long story.
Let’s get off the street and I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

He reached down
to grab her legs and swung her into his arms. “I’m not letting you out of my
sight for even a minute,” he said, “in case this is all a dream.”

Ella wrapped her
arms around his neck. She didn’t look at her surroundings as Rowan strode down
the street and slipped into a back alley. She didn’t question how he knew where
he was going.
 
Or care. She was safe
and they were together and nothing else mattered now. She clutched him and
buried her face in his stained and ripped shirt, the smell of him reviving her
senses all over again until she could no longer hold the tears back.

Rowan bounded up
the rickety, wooden, outdoor stairs with her still in his arms and kicked open
the door. The one-eyed Tunisian, Argo, sat on the floor, a hookah pipe in his
hands. He looked up in confusion.

“Out, Argo. Now,”
Rowan said.

“Cor, that’s
something desperate, mate.”

“
Now
.” Rowan set Ella down on her feet
and the shipmate, barely as tall as Ella, gathered up his pipe and hat and
slipped out the door. Rowan shut the door and wedged a chair under the handle.
Before he took the two steps back to her, she was in his arms. She felt him
lift her up, his arms hard and powerful under her bottom. Their lips met
hungrily as if this were the true identification process.

Ella felt the
room swirl around her as Rowan carried her to the bed and eased her down onto
her back.

“Talk later,” he
rasped hoarsely, his eyes glazed with want.

He thinks this isn’t real
, Ella thought as she jerked his shirt open across his
chest.
He thinks I’m going to disappear
.
She slid her hand into the front of his pants and wrapped her fingers around
his cock, hard and ready. He groaned.

“I’m real,
Rowan,” she whispered into his ear.

He reacted
immediately, wrenching her skirts up and ripping her underclothes down her legs.
She parted her thighs as he rammed into her, taking her with all the force and
power of ownership. She came in uncontrollable spasms on the second thrust arching
her back and letting the waves of ecstasy radiate from her core and ripple
through her body. She wrapped her legs around his back as he rode her to his
own finish crying out in raw triumph as he did. After it was over, she held him
tightly with her legs and arms and felt him tremble.

“You’re home,
babe,” she said. “You’re finally home.”

***

An hour later,
he’d taken her two more times and each time Ella felt his power and control
build until he collapsed on top of her spent but not shaking. She kissed his
face and squirmed out from under him, looking at her surroundings for the first
time.

“You live
here
?” she asked, glancing at the rough
wooden walls and worn rug on the floor.

“No, I live on a
boat,” he said, his voice gravelly and low. His eyes were closed.

“Is that a
pirate
boat? Were those…friends of
yours…pirates?”

He opened one
eye. “How do you know about that?”

“I was in
Casablanca looking for you. I was told you were taken captive by a pirate named
Sully.”

“You were in
Casablanca in 1825?”

“I was.”

“You left the
baby?”

“I had to. Oh,
wait! What’s today’s date?”

“I must have left
my Day-Timer in my other suit.”

“No, it’s
important. I’ve been seriously out of it for the last week but I have a death
certificate back in Cairo that says you die on November 1.”

Rowan opened both
eyes. “Okay, we need to find a calendar. How do I die?”

“I don’t know.”

They didn’t speak
for several moments and it was when she heard the soft burr of his snore that she
realized, even with the knowledge of imminent death, Rowan had fallen asleep.
She watched his face, relaxed but newly lined in sleep. He looked exhausted and
weathered. Of course he would after crossing the Atlantic in a four-month sail
through every kind of weather. Imagining him on the pirate boat—as she
had done many times before arriving in Key West—her heart filled with
pride and love…and anxiety. She leaned over and kissed his full lips.

How she had
longed to see this face. How desperately she had prayed to feel his strong arms
around her. She kissed him again, her heart full of the grace she felt
showering down upon her.

Now if we can just get back to 1925 Cairo.

She closed her
eyes with the sound of his rhythmic breathing in her ear, so familiar, so reassuring.
She didn’t know how long she slept, but she awakened to the feeling of Rowan’s fingers
slipping into the slick wetness between her legs. She gasped, still half
asleep, as he thrust his fingers, thick and hard inside her and she felt
herself falling into the rhythm of what he was doing to her. Her body responded
immediately. She groaned until she felt the tip of his cock, rock hard and
insistent, poised between her legs and she angled her hips up and spread her
legs to receive him.

His breath was
warm and scented against her cheek. “Tell me it’s really you,” he whispered
hoarsely.”

“It’s really me,”
she gasped, “needing you
in
me,
now
.”

He rolled them
both over so that Ella was on top. She grabbed his cock and slipped him inside
of her, her head flung back to enjoy every inch of the slide. She groaned and
began to move up and down on him, at first languorously and then urgently.
Rowan clapped his hands on her hips to keep her in motion on him as she began
to lose control.

When she came,
emitting a low series of whimpers that pushed Rowan over the edge, he roared
his own release until she collapsed on him.

When she had the
energy, she lifted her head to look into his eyes. He smiled and gave her naked
bottom a squeeze. “You sure I don’t die in bed?” he said.

“That’s not
funny, Rowan.”

“I know.” He
pulled himself up to a sitting position and leaned in to kiss her. “I love you
so much, El,” he said. “A part of me still can’t believe you’re here.”

“I know,” she
said, returning his kiss. She leaned back against the rough clapboard wall that
the bed was jammed up against. “How did you fall off the ship going to London?”

Rowan shook his
head and his eyes looked around the room as if trying to find his clothes. “I
don’t even know. One minute I’m on board exploring the ship and the next I’m
waking up in a lifeboat with a splitting headache.”

“I guess we’ll
never know.”

“What about you?
Where are you staying? When did you get here?”

Suddenly Ella
remembered Lawrence. She realized that the bastard totally took advantage of
her memory loss. She felt a flush of anger.

“Babe?”

She saw Rowan was
dressing, and from the dying light outside they’d been there for several hours.

“It doesn’t
matter,” she said. “When I crossed over to 1825 I lost my memory. I didn’t
remember you or Tater or Egypt or anything.”

“Holy shit.”

“Olna said it
might happen. It was because I traveled too recently.”

“When you went to
Casablanca.”

“Which I had to
do or else I wouldn’t know where you’d been taken. But I’m not going to be able
to go back immediately.”

Rowan was nodding
as if thinking. “Do you have any money?”

“I did but…I lost
it.”

“You were
robbed?”

“You could say
that.”

“I don’t suppose
you brought something for me to travel back with?”

Her anger at
Lawrence erupted into a barely suppressed rage when she had to tell Rowan she’d
lost his dog tags, too. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“No worries,” he
said, looking nonetheless worried. “I got something that’ll work back on
Die Hard
.”

When Ella gave
him a questioning look, he said, “That bastard Sully took my wedding ring and
my lighter. You remember, the one you gave me?”

“Of course. And you
think he still has it?”

“I don’t know but
it’s all I’ve got. A mate told me he sold the ring in Nassau.”

“Does he even
know what the lighter is?”

“That’s just it.
There’s something about the guy that makes me think he might be, you know, a
traveler like us.”

“Really? Do you
think he knows about you?”

“I don’t know. If
he did, he wasn’t interested in swapping stories. He had me flayed alive about
three months ago—”

“Rowan!”

“And he gave the
order to lop off my left hand.”

Ella grabbed for
his hand and pressed it to her breast. Her eyes filled with tears at the
thought of all that he had endured.

“A command,
which, as you can see, was changed at the last minute in the light of the
increased amount of work he could get out of me if he kept me able-bodied. And
while I’m glad to have my hand, I’ll never forget those three minutes as they
strapped my arm down when I expected to lose it. Oh, and did I mention he sold
me into slavery?”

“He’s a monster,”
Ella whispered as she pulled Rowan back down to the bed. She wrapped her arms
around him and buried her face in his chest. He smelled like lemons and soap.
Even in a filthy backwater loft with stained linens and a privy bucket in the
corner of the room, the scent of his body—male and so familiar—filled
her with love and longing for him. She reveled in the nearness of him again and
to feel him, real and whole in her arms after so many weeks of fear and
separation.

She knew what he
had lived through on the pirate ship had changed him. She could see that. She
knew he had experienced unimaginable tortures during an elongated stretch of
helplessness that was foreign to whom he was fundamentally.

She also knew
without a doubt his main intention was not just to retrieve his lighter, but to
put a bullet in Sully’s brain.

***

Adele put her
French book down and watched the clouds fill and luff through her window and
then scuttle away. Ella had been gone for over six hours now and Adele was sure
she wasn’t dressed for the change in weather. The poor thing didn’t even have a
bonnet on as far as Adele knew, let alone protection against the coming storm.

“Where the blazes
could she have gone?”

She directed her
attention back to where Lawrence sat in her father’s favorite wingback chair
next to the cold fireplace. He was gnawing on his fingers, something she had to
say she didn’t find at all attractive. His own textbook lay unopened in his
lap.

Lessons had
suffered this morning as a result of Ella Pierce’s selfish and unladylike
behavior.

“She’ll come home
soon,” Adele said for what she was sure was the hundredth time. “There’s no
place for her to go.”

“What if she is
accosted? She has absolutely no sense, you know.”

Adele did indeed
know. Ella acted as mad and irrational as she was now convinced she was. She
had no trouble believing at all that the silly cow had gone to the wharfs or
any place else a sane, normal person would never dream of going.