The Temptress

by Jude Deveraux

  Pilar lay beside her and looked as surprised to see Chris.

  The man removed her gag. “What are you doing here?” she managed to gasp. “What is this?”

  “Cut the noise,” the big man said. The other captor was tall and thin. “We don’t want to hear you. You want some water or not?”

  Greedily, Chris’s shaky hands took the dirty tin mug the man offered.

  “Who are you?” she asked the man. “What do you want?”

  “You want the ropes on you again?”

  Chris started to reply but she felt Pilar’s hand on her arm. Looking at the dark woman, she saw Pilar shake her head slightly. Chris turned away but she said nothing more. Minutes later, the big man hauled Chris to her feet and tossed her into the saddle.

  “I don’t like talkative women,” he said into her ear. “You keep your mouth shut and we’ll get along fine. You open it and I’ll have to shut it. You understand?”

  She saw him throw the hood on the ground but she didn’t twist around to look at him; she was too busy trying to keep her seat on the horse and to avoid the man’s hands that were beginning to creep over her body.

  “Chris and I are leaving in less than an hour,” Tynan said to Asher, his mouth in a straight line, his eyes angry.

  “Wait a minute, I want to talk to you.”

  “I don’t have time,” Tynan said, starting to walk away. “You can come with us or not, your choice.”

  Asher caught his arm. “I want to know what happened last night. Where were you two all night? And what do you mean by shooting so close to my head? I ought to—”

  “What, Prescott? You ought to what?”

  Asher took a step backward. “Look, I’m in this as much as you are. Mathison hired you to take me to Chris, and you were to help me win her for my wife. So far all you’ve done is keep her to yourself. And now you spend the night with her doing only God knows what.”

  “That’s right, only God knows because I’m sure as hell not going to tell you. Now I’ll tell you again: Chris and I are leaving in one hour and you can go or stay, it’s up to you.”

  “I’ll be there,” Asher said, “don’t you worry about that.”

  With anger on his face, Asher made his way back up the stairs to the room he shared with Chris. Damn! but that man could be highhanded. He was a good man to have on a trail but there were times when he overstepped himself.

  He tried to regain his composure before he went to Chris. He’d hated locking her inside, but he knew it was the only way he could keep her from doing something stupid.

  Very quietly, he unlocked the door to the bedroom. She’d damn well better marry him after all she’d put him through—and all he’d done in an attempt to please her. Right away, he saw that she wasn’t there. His first thought was that she’d climbed out the window, but one glance out there, at the impossibly small ledge, showed him that she couldn’t have gone out that way.

  He didn’t even think about his argument or his anger with Tynan, but he ran down the stairs, out through the garden and to the little cottage where Tynan was staying. The dark man was removing tools from a shed at the back of the cottage.

  “She’s gone. I was afraid she’d do something stupid so I locked her in the room, but she got out. She was really worried about that kid.”

  Even as Asher was talking, Tynan was pushing past him and heading for the house, stopping only long enough to strap on his gun. He took the stairs two at a time.

  “I wish she wouldn’t do things like this,” Asher was saying. “It’s bad enough that she spends the entire night with a—” He broke off as he realized what he was saying. Tynan was now examining the window ledge. “Do you see anything? How could she have gone out there?”

  “Believe me, she could have. There’s been a ladder here recently, the paint’s scraped.” He walked back toward the bed, looking at the covers thoughtfully. The sheets were torn off the bed, the spread was on the floor. “Where’s Hamilton?”

  “I’m not sure. I think he’s upstairs. Do you think he’s seen Chris? I would imagine that she’s the last person he’d want to see.” He was following Ty out the door. “Did she tell you what she overheard, that Hamilton was going to kill his nephew? Not that I believed her, I mean, I just came along on this so I could pretend to be her husband. I think a man should take advantage of what he can.”

  Tynan stopped on the staircase. “If you keep flapping your gums, I’m going to apply some force to that spot.” He turned on his heel and started up again.

  Owen Hamilton was sitting in his office looking over papers on his desk. Tynan shut the door behind him, locked it, then very calmly walked to the window and tossed the key to the ground below.

  Asher plastered his back to the door and held his breath but Owen just looked up with eyebrows raised. “To what do I owe this little charade? Have the aphids been too much for you?”

  “Where is she?” Tynan asked in a low, husky voice.

  “I have no idea who you mean,” Owen answered, a study in unconcern as he shuffled the papers on his desk. “If you think that wife of yours and I—”

  He didn’t finish the sentence because Ty grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up across the desk. “I want to know where she is and I don’t want to play games. Either you tell me right now or you start losing parts of your body, bit by slow bit.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Chris!” Asher said. “I mean, Diana. Where is she? She isn’t in her room where I left her.”

  “Who’s Chris?” Owen asked.

  Tynan slapped the man across the face. “I don’t know how much you know but I suspect it’s a great deal. I’ve already turned that extra set of books of yours over to an accountant friend of mine. I think he’ll find out how much you’ve stolen from that nephew of yours.”

  “Books, what books?”

  Tynan hit him again, this time making the corner of his mouth bleed. “I’m tired of your lies. I didn’t much care what you did within your own family but that little girl is my responsibility and I want to know where she is.”

  “Who is she? Diana Eskridge was killed.”

  Ty’s grip on his throat tightened. “By you, no doubt, but I’ll leave that up to the law. Where is Chris?”

  When Hamilton didn’t answer, Ty struck him again, then drew his gun and held it to the man’s head. “What do you want to lose first? A hand or a foot? I think I can keep you from bleeding to death long enough for you to answer me. Now, one last time, where is she?”

  “Dysan took her.”

  Tynan was obviously surprised by this, so much so that his grip on Hamilton lessened. “What does Dysan want with her?”

  “I don’t know. He came here because of a cousin of his”—Owen’s eyes shifted to one side—“and he decided he wanted the woman pretending to be Diana.” He looked back at Tynan. “He had your wife taken too.”

  “Pilar?” Ty asked. “Who is this man?”

  Ty’s grip had relaxed so much that Owen was able to pull away and begin rubbing his bruised throat while applying a handkerchief to his bleeding mouth. “He’s somebody you don’t want to deal with. I don’t know much about him. He’s very mysterious about where he lives, who he is or anything else about himself. He comes here once a year and buys lumber and horses from me, then disappears. I’ve never dared ask him much about himself.”

  “Yet he took Chris,” Asher said. “Do you think he plans to hold her for ransom?”

  “Ransom?” Hamilton exploded. “Who is she?”

  “Del Mathison’s daughter,” Tynan said under his breath.

  “Oh Lord,” Owen gasped and sat down heavily in the chair. “I thought she was a two-bit actress trying to get what she could.” He looked at Ty. “How did you find my other books?”

  Tynan didn’t bother answering him. “I want to know all there is to tell about Dysan. I want to know where to find him.”

  “I told you that I know nothing. He just app
ears and disappears. He said he wanted the two women and it was all right with me. All of you were trying to play me for a fool anyway, following me, searching my office, pretending to be related to me. What did I care what he did to the women? If he wanted them, it was fine with me. I had no idea she was Mathison’s daughter. If that man finds out…” He trailed off.

  “Open the cash box,” Ty said. “We’re going after them and we’ll need capital.”

  “I don’t intend to be part of a robbery,” Asher said.

  “No one asked you to be. Hamilton, I wouldn’t try my patience if I were you. Get the cash.”

  Owen hurried to obey him, unlocking a small safe behind a picture behind the desk. “You’ll never be able to find him. You aren’t in Dysan’s league. He chews cheap outlaws like you up for breakfast.”

  Ty took the thick stack of cash. “Then he’ll get the worst case of indigestion he’s ever had. Now, take off your belt.”

  Tynan took the handkerchief from the desk and tied it around Hamilton’s mouth, then wrapped the belt about his hands, using the holed end to suspend him from a hook he drove into the ceiling. “That should keep you for a few hours. The accountant will report to the attorneys handling Lionel’s affairs. I have a feeling that the books you show to them aren’t the same ones that I found. And, too, there’s the small matter of the murder of the Eskridges.”

  Owen struggled against the leather that was holding him, his feet barely touching the floor.

  “I’m also having Unity take the boy down to Mathison’s until this is cleared up. I thought I was going with her but it doesn’t look like I will be. I sure do hope that somebody comes along soon to let you out of there. You could be in real pain in a couple of hours if they don’t.”

  Asher stepped away from the door as Tynan started toward it and, to the blond man’s surprise, Tynan took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, locking it again when they were on the other side.

  “But I thought that—”

  “Don’t always believe what you see or hear,” Ty said as he went down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  Unity, her face white, her eyes filled with fear, was sitting in the kitchen, Lionel standing beside her.

  “I don’t want to go,” Lionel said. “This is my place and I plan to stay here. You cannot make me leave.”

  Ty didn’t say a word but took the boy about the waist and carried him outside to where a wagon and two horses waited. “You’ll go and, what’s more, you’ll help Unity. Prescott will go with you and see that you’re safe on the journey. I’m sorry but I can’t go with you.”

  Asher touched Ty’s arm. “I want to go with you.”

  “Absolutely not. I don’t need someone fighting me and, besides,” he said with contempt, “I need someone who knows which end of a gun to point.”

  “May I?” Asher said, nodding toward Ty’s gun.

  Ty handed it to him.

  Asher took the weapon and, in the flash of an eye, turned and removed a thin tree branch by half inches, using all the bullets in Ty’s gun. He handed the firearm back to Tynan. “There are other reasons I was hired by Mathison to go after his daughter. I’ve handled every gun made today. I can shoot tail feathers off sparrows with a rifle. I may not have the experience you have but I do know how to shoot.”

  Tynan very calmly reloaded his gun then looked up at Unity. Lionel was sitting on the wagon seat with his mouth hanging open. “Prescott is going with me. Is there anyone else who can travel with you?”

  “I…I don’t know who I can trust anymore,” she said, on the verge of tears. “But my brother lives about ten miles from here. Maybe he can—” She stopped as Ty took a wad of bills from his pocket.

  “Hire him. When you get to Mathison, tell him all of it. He may want to send someone back here but leave it up to him. Tell him I’ve gone after his daughter and if I don’t return with her it’ll be because I’m dead—nothing else will stop me. And tell him to worry about her, to worry plenty.” He looked at Lionel. “And if I so much as hear a word of complaint about you, you’ll answer to me. When you get to Mathison’s you can act up all you want. Mathison will take care of you. Now, get out of here.” He slapped a horse on the rump and they were gone.

  Ty turned and looked at Asher, shaking his head for a moment. “I hope I haven’t made a mistake. If you have a gun, go get it. I’ll meet you by the stables with two of Hamilton’s best horses.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  For three days, the men dragged Chris and Pilar across the country. They were fed little, given no privacy, and allowed no rest. At night the men tied the women’s hands, raised them above their heads and fastened the ropes around trees, making it impossible to sleep. Nor were the women allowed to talk to each other. Each morning, they continued to head northeast, the women still bound and now riding together on a horse one of the men had suddenly appeared with—Chris wondered if he’d stolen it.

  In spite of her weariness, she tried to keep the direction they were traveling in her head. But on the second day, the men blindfolded her, leaving Pilar to watch the direction, seeing when the horse was about to step into a hole so she could hold Chris into the saddle. Then they removed Chris’s blindfold and covered Pilar’s eyes.

  Although the women never talked to each other, they began to depend upon one another for protection. At first Chris was very hostile to Pilar, not wanting her help, resenting her touch, resenting her very presence.

  Pilar seemed to understand and left Chris alone—until once Chris nearly fell off the horse and had to grab the other woman to keep steady.

  “We’ll fare better if we’re not enemies,” Pilar whispered and was struck across the face by one of the men for daring to speak.

  After that, Chris’s hostility began to leave her. What did she have to be angry about anyway? Tynan was the only common bond she had with this woman and he’d made it abundantly clear that he wanted nothing to do with Chris. If Tynan wanted Pilar, then he was free to choose.

  It was late on the third night when the men finally stopped the horses and pulled the two exhausted women to the ground, grabbing their wrists and leading them inside the doorway of a dark house that Chris couldn’t see. The men pulled them upstairs and when Pilar’s arm knocked against the bannister, they just jerked her harder.

  “We can walk!” Chris said, putting out her hand to steady Pilar.

  The man holding her didn’t say a word, just shoved her up three flights of stairs to the fourth floor. Pilar’s captor grabbed a ring of keys off the wall, opened a door that looked to be constructed of several inches of solid oak and pushed the two women inside.

  There wasn’t any light in the room, but Chris’s eyes adjusted to the darkness fairly soon after she heard the heavy door slam behind them. She began to make out the outlines of a large, soft bed in the middle of the floor.

  With a gasp of disbelief and tears in her eyes, she stumbled forward, Pilar close behind her, and fell onto the bed. She was asleep instantly.

  The sun was already low in the sky when Chris woke the next day, showing that it was afternoon. For a moment, she lay there, looking out one of the tiny windows, flexing each muscle, trying to ascertain what was sore and what seemed to be damaged beyond repair. Holding her arms up, she saw that they were scratched, some of the wounds scabbing, some covered with dried blood, and there were several fierce mosquito bites on them as well.

  She moved her head and looked at Pilar who was still sleeping, on her stomach, and Chris wondered if she looked as bad. Pilar was dirty, there were deep dark circles beneath her eyes, and what could be seen of her body protruding from her filthy clothes was disgustingly scratched and raw-looking.

  Pilar opened one eye. “Go away,” she muttered and turned over.

  Chris lay still, waited and, a moment later, Pilar turned to face her again.

  “It can’t be true,” she said. “I thought it was all a terrible dream.” Pilar tried to raise herself on her arms but groaned at the
pain and collapsed back on the bed. “Where are we? More important, why are we wherever we are? And do you think there’s a chamber pot around here?”

  Chris sat up on her arms, then moved her head in a circle, trying to relieve the cramped muscles. “There’s a screen over there, maybe it’s behind that.”

  “I guess this is something I have to do for myself,” she said, moving slowly to get out of bed.

  Chris also got out, taking moments to steady herself enough to stand up. “I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.”

  It was a round room, with three windows along the wall across from the bed, a door to the right, a screen to the left and no other furniture in the room.

  Chris slowly made her way over to one of the windows. Outside, she saw nothing but thick forest, trees that had never been cut. Looking down, she could see that the room was at least four stories above the ground.

  “I can tell this is going to be easy to escape,” Pilar said with a grimace, coming around the screen and looking at the treetops outside the windows. She stopped at the window next to Chris, then turned her head. “Do I look as bad as you?”

  “Much worse,” Chris said quite seriously.

  Pilar gave a sigh of resignation and went back to bed, pulling a pillow under her head. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

  “None,” Chris called from behind the screen. “I was hoping you’d know something. Did anyone say anything when they took you?”

  Pilar waited until Chris was back in the center of the room. “I think you know more than I do. Tynan had some reason for being Hamilton’s gardener and I was never told what it was.”

  “Oh? You just moved in with him when he crooked his little finger?”

  “I owed him a favor, several favors if it comes to that. Look, are we going to play cat games or are we going to work together on this? I’d like to figure out what’s going on but if you want to fight over a man, let me know so I can bow out.”