Treasure of the Sun (21 page)

Red specks began a slow promenade before Katherine's eyes.

"You don't understand."

"I can take all night to slice you up." That voice warmed with pleasure. "I can make shallow cuts all over, just barely slicing the skin. You'll bleed, but you won't die for a long time. When you do, your corpse will be mutilated."

Katherine pulled in a deep breath to scream but the point pressed against her skin at her windpipe and she exhaled slowly and carefully. A buzzing started in her ears and increased to a rhythmic pounding.

"The gold."

That voice spoke right beside her on the pillow, and the threat beat at her like nails being hammered into her coffin. Katherine whispered, "I'm telling you-" Pressure increased; the point was so sharp, she wasn't sure if it penetrated. "Please ... "

It penetrated. Deliberately, the thin point of pain slid around her throat. She felt the blood trickle down her neck. Her stomach heaved. She cried out, a piteous scream of appeal.

The bed rocked beneath Katherine. She'd never felt so ill. If she opened her eyes, she would vomit. If she kept them closed, the world might disappear.

Her eyes sprang open to see a giant brown blob descending on her.

She screamed, and the blob was snatched away. It resolved itself into a washrag, held in two narrow, veined hands. They hovered over her forehead, and a thin feminine voice said in English, "Poor gal, she's hysterical. I can't blame her. To think that such a thing should happen. And in my boarding-house, under my very nose."

A face inserted itself into Katherine's field of vision. "Catriona? You're awake?"

The sight of Damian's face sent a jolt through Katherine's tattered system. Here was the man she'd feared, wanted, longed for. The deep timbre of his tone, the quirk of his eyebrows portrayed concern. His hands held hers close to his chest and chafed them.

"Of course," she answered. The pain surprised her; the act of speech hurt her neck. She swallowed carefully; that hurt, too. Her hands explored the linen bandage wrapped all the way around her neck. It confirmed the violence she thought she'd dreamed. She fought the nausea, but the lacerated skin protested. She relaxed; that helped the pain and in turn the sickness.

"How do you feel?"

She could see the rope marks on her wrists. She twisted them from side to side, experiencing the pain of compressed bones and raw skin. Surely that would dispel the weakness of wanting to fling herself onto Damian's chest.

Sidelong, she examined Damian. Probably he'd torn his coat off, for his shirt was untucked and the collar had popped half off. Two of his buttons dangled by a thread, another two were gone. His dark hair looked windblown, and she asked, "Where did you come from?"

"I just rode in from the hacienda. I would have been here sooner, but my horse cast a shoe and I had to borrow an ill- broken stallion. I arrived in time to hear you scream my name."

"I didn't scream your name." She whispered, but whispering didn't seem to help. Nothing seemed to help. The throbbing in her throat grew as she struggled to subdue it.

"Yes, you did, Mrs. Maxwell," the woman inserted. "Woke me clear in my bedroom."

Katherine looked at him, and he nodded in soothing agreement. "How do you feel?" he repeated.

If he'd been angry, pointing out the folly of her flight and its bleak conclusion, she'd have dissolved into tears. Instead, his sympathy caused a contrary reaction in her. Her spine stiffened and she brushed away his compassion. "I'm fine."

"Fine!" The landlady settled the cool rag on Katherine's forehead. "As if a gently bred woman could be fine after such an ordeal. Her room is broken into, her clothing ravaged, she's bound with rope so tightly her hands and feet are blue, her throat is almost cut in two--"

Damian's eyes rested on Katherine's face when he suggested to Mrs. Zollman, "You might want to wait outside for the alcalde to arrive."

"This poor girl needs a woman's care. Look at how pale she is. Why, she looks as if she could faint this minute. Probably just the realization of how close she came to having her throat sliced from ear to ear-"

He looked up at Mrs. Zollman. "Alcalde Diaz will need to hear every detail you can remember."

"That's true." Mrs. Zollman clucked. "He'll want to hear about all that blood, dripping onto the pillow."

His hand grasped Mrs. Zollman's wrist and turned her toward the door. "Yes, he'll want the story from someone who was here at the time."

"Don Damian, if you'd arrived only a few minutes later, it would have been too late. Of course, I still can't approve of you kicking in the door."

Ushering the gregarious woman through the gaping door, he assured her, "It's only the leather latch that's torn. I'll have it fixed in the morning. For tonight I'll prop it closed so Dona Katherina can have her rest."

Mrs. Zollman halted abruptly. "I can't leave Mrs. Maxwell here. It's not proper to leave a lady alone with such a handsome devil." She grinned, displaying a few teeth among the red gums. "Not at this time of the night."

"She needs my care. My very special care." He smiled with such tender meaning, he put such a loving eloquence into the words, Mrs. Zollman couldn't help but understand.

"Oh! It's that way, is it?" Like a cow with a cud, Mrs. Zollman chewed with open mouth. Nothing was there. Katherine could see nothing was there, yet the old lady chewed until she pronounced, "I heard rumors that that's the way it is. Well, it's your business, but I think you ought to marry the gal. Keep her safe, you know?" Mrs. Zollman winked, an exaggerated drop of the eye and wiggle of the brow.

Elbowing Damian, she shuffled down the hall, leaving him with a half smile and Katherine well enough to sputter, "What a nosy old bat."

"She's a smart woman. You should listen to her." He tossed her a persuasive glance and went to work on the door. Swinging on loosened hinges, the dark heavy wood was tattered where the leather latch had been. "If Senora Zollman used better hardware, you'd be dead right now."

Her hands beside her hips, Katherine pulled herself up. The room did one quick rotation, then settled back to normal. Her nausea, she noted with relief, had subsided. "You don't want Mrs. Zollman to frighten me, but you don't mind doing it yourself."

His white teeth flashed in his dark face. "Exactly."

As he tinkered with the torn leather, she saw that his hands shook, that he frowned. He looked like a man vacillating between two powerful emotions, between anger and fear. She'd never doubted he would be angry when he discovered she had fled; nor could she doubt his deep apprehension for her life. In his way, he cared for her. She knew it, and even if she feared the emotion, she could appreciate it, too.

He scooted two of her empty carpetbags to block the door. "That won't keep anyone out," she observed.

"No one will disturb us. Senora Zollman will tell them you are devastated, and the officials will leave us in peace."

"What about any-" her voice rose as she spoke and deliberately she lowered it "-intruders?"

His big strides brought him to the bedside. "I will protect you."

"I know."

He towered over her, but she refused to say anything else.

Instead she fussed with the pillow, turning it so the spill of blood was hidden, pulling it behind her and plumping it to support her back. She made a show of relaxing against it, until one roughened hand tapped her cheek. She turned her face around to his.

"You know?"

"Yes, I know you'll protect me." She refused to give in to the tenderness she saw hovering behind his concern, preferring to pull up the sheet, arranging it to cover her shoulders.

"How does this feel?" His fingers stroked her throat and she leaped away. "Tender, I see."

"It aches," she admitted. She couldn't seem to keep her hands away from it; it confirmed the violence she thought she'd dreamed.

"Tell-me what happened."

"I woke up, and there was someone in here with me in the dark."

"Did you yell?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Offended by both the query and his censorious tone, she said,

"I'm not one of those women who screams at every little thing."

"Of course. What a foolish question on my part. Tell me-" He was going to be sarcastic, she could tell.

"Tell me, just what do you consider enough of an emergency that you'll open those rosy lips and scream?"

"If I had realized the seriousness of this situation-"

"Never mind." He waved her to silence. His hands clasped behind his back, he paced away and paced back. "How did this intruder get in?"

"I ... through the window, I suppose." She waited for the inevitable pointed comment, but he visibly restrained himself. Relief eased the tension of her limbs, and that made her impatient. Why should she care about Damian's opinion of her mental powers? He meant nothing to her.

"What did he look like?"

She rubbed her hands over her ears. Something wasn't right, something niggled at her mind. What did she want to say about her intruder?

Damian insisted, "Don't tell me you can't remember this, either."

"Either?" she asked, startled.

"You don't remember who slashed Tobias's throat, but you have to remember what this man looked like!'

"You make me sound like an idiot."

"An idiot? For running away from people who care for you, for running away from safety and straight into danger?"

His eyes flashed with fury, and her indignation rose to meet his. "I wouldn't still be here to have my throat slashed if you hadn't bribed the captain of my vessel to keep me here."

"I didn't even know you had left the hacienda. How could I? I was off risking my life against a braggart from your country who threatens war and then sneaks off. Sneaks off like another American I could mention."

"I did not sneak."

He lifted a brow; she snapped her mouth closed. How could she utter such a falsehood when he stood amid the result of her sneaking?

Scornfully, he said, "You did what you thought best. Isn't that the trait you admire? I've certainly heard you use that phrase to excuse every imprudent escapade you've embarked on.”

"I do not have escapades. I am not imprudent."

"Oh, no. You don't even close your windows in the very town where your husband was killed."

His index finger shook before her face as his censure bit deep into her pride. "Should I stifle myself in an airless room when you assured me that I was safe? You said I'd been the unwitting bait in a trap to catch the killer of Tobias, and as bait I'd been ignored."

"In my home," he reminded her. "You were bait in my home.

There's a vast difference in being protected by the vaqueros and being a helpless victim in a boarding-house where no one can protect you."

"I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was being sensible. "

"For a woman who worships at the altar of logic, you do incredibly stupid things."

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

One look at her shocked, indignant face called forth a bark of his laughter.

She burned with humiliation. "You dare to call me stupid?

You are man who worships at the altar of passionate commitment, yet lets an imaginary boundary between countries decide your loyalties?"

"You're right. I have been stupid."

His quiet admission took the wind from her sails; she glanced at him, and his indignation had vanished. He brushed his mustache with his fingers in the gesture she'd come to recognize as thoughtfulness and stared into the distance.

"It was stupid of me not to possess you when I had created the occasion." He stripped his shirt off and grimaced at its condition. Wadding it into a ball, he tossed it into the corner. "I should have known that you would create an impenetrable defense."

"I did nothing. I simply pointed out-"

"You pointed out so many things so logically, I found I didn't have the stomach for such cold-blooded loving." He sat on the bed and wrestled his boots off. "It took this attack for me to realize my mistake."

Dazed by his implacability, she asked, "What mistake?" "You'll have to have my passion and loyalty proved to you, over and over. You won't believe it until the body of evidence has grown so large there is no other argument you can make." He looked at her, and in his calm amusement she found reason for alarm. "We'll prove it in trial, hmm?"