A shriek rose in her throat as there was a sudden painful thrust within her—but the shriek was lost when his mouth gripped hers. The sob that shook her body seemed not to move him at all as he thrust again, draining her of strength. She lay back weakly, her consciousness fading partly from pain and partly from lack of air, for his gasping mouth had nearly cut off her breathing.
Philip, holding her quivering body so firmly in his grasp, having her welded to him as it were, ran a hand lightly down her spine and she felt it tingle the length of her. A pulsing rhythm thudded against her senses as he thrust hard and thrust again. To her amazement, out of the near-swooning and the pain, something new was happening. A kind of awakening, a keening of the senses. That magic she had only glimpsed before was winking at her now, beckoning her onward. The brushing of his muscular body against her own was a kind of gentle fire, and the hard wild motion within was arousing strange passions she had not known she possessed.
With a strangled gasp, she surged upward toward him and his long body jerked in surprise at the suddenness of her onslaught. Then low laughter rippled deep inside him and he held her not quite so tightly, no longer fearing she would pull away. He let her slender body move sensuously and sway beneath him, enjoying her as she herself was transported to heights of joy, wild pleasures she had only half-imagined.
At last he was spent and lay panting beside her.
“By God, you’re wonderful, Lorraine,” he murmured, reaching over to fondle her breasts, feeling the sensitive nipples harden to passion under his touch.
“Take me with you,” she entreated, turning toward him and flinging herself half over his body so that her young breasts were crushed against his chest and her face was only a breath away from his own. “Oh, Philip, take me with you! I’ll not complain, I’ll share whatever hardships you must endure, I’ll help you escape—only take me with you.”
Her entreaty seemed to stir something in him, for he was silent for a while and then without answering he took her again—took her fiercely, as if to make up for something he’d missed. She moved beneath him, pliant and willing, her heart burgeoning with joy, for she thought that by his body he was giving his consent—he was going to take her with him! He was so strong, so masculine—and she would manage to mend that wild unreasoning jealousy that drove him.
“I’ve always loved you, Philip,” she murmured. “I always will.”
A kind of muscular spasm went through him—she guessed it to be triumph that she had admitted her love at last. But why should she not admit it? She had given him everything else!
Her sudden soft-voiced confession seemed to madden him, to spur him on. His hands upon her roughened, his grip was so tight she felt her ribs would break beneath it, his breath rasped in his throat as he strained to possess her the more fully, bruising her tender flesh. Finally he left her with a strangled snarl that was almost a sob.
Bewildered by his lack of tenderness, Lorraine reached out tentative fingers and touched his body, was amazed that he jerked away from her. “Philip—” she began.
“You’re a witch,” he mumbled. “You’d take my strength—like Delilah!”
She understood then, and a soft laugh rippled through her. His strength—of course, he would need his strength tonight to make his escape. She lay back with a little sigh of contentment and began to imagine her new status. She and Philip would make their escape downriver to Providence—he would have to stop by his home perhaps for money but they would be gone in the morning mist—they would take ship to some place far away and on board the vessel that was carrying them to all her heart desired, they would be married.
A lovely daydream with her naked hip now pressed against the man she loved, beside her.
But escape was something that must be more than thought on—it must be carried out. Tentatively, she said, “ ’Tis quiet downstairs now. Oddsbud and his wife must have gone to sleep. Should we let the ladder down quietly and make our escape now?”
Philip mumbled something and pressed a kiss on a trembling nipple before he rose and began to dress. She could hardly see him in the darkness but she began to dress as well—in her other dress. There was not much difference between them, to be sure—both were russet, both were worn, but at least this one, while much mended, did not have a bad rip in it. She wished she had something better to wear, for both these homespun gowns represented her status as a bound girl and they were part of all the unhappiness she was leaving behind her.
“Wait here until I’ve cleared the door,” he murmured. “Then after a moment you can come down.”
She waited quietly for several minutes, then crept over and peered down into the dim empty room below. It was almost daylight, and as she moved to lower herself, she realized that the ladder was gone. Philip must have thoughtlessly removed it.
Then it struck her with shock: Philip meant to leave without her! He was not going to subject her to the dangers of his escape—he was going to run for it alone! Oh, no, he must not!
She lowered herself through the hole in the low ceiling, and dropped catlike to the hard-packed earthen floor below.
Before her the inn door stood open, and to her surprise, Oddsbud came through it carrying an armload of wood for the fire. She had not known he was up and wondered fearfully if he had seen Philip. But his words were for her.
“Lorraine!” he exclaimed. “Up already?” He gave her a surprised look, for Lorraine usually had to be roused by much calling and pounding on the ceiling.
“I . . she choked, no good explanation coming to her.
At a noise behind him, Oddsbud’s attention was diverted. But Lorraine’s eyes dilated as, through the doorway behind him, young Bob swaggered in wearing the stranger’s blue coat. The tavernkeeper, standing stock-still with the load of firewood clutched in his beefy arms, stared at those silver buttons, those dark blue velvet cuffs. “Where did you get that coat?” he whispered hoarsely. “Don’t tell me there was murder done here last night?”
Bob shrugged and laughed. “Of course not,” he scoffed. “I diced the fellow for it and won. Like the fit?”
“It hangs on you. That fellow’s shoulders were inches wider,” said Oddsbud, eyeing the sky-blue coat in alarm. He added slowly, “ ’Tis folly for you to wear it, Bob, for many saw him wearing it last night.”
Bob laughed again. He had a pleased and reckless air about him, and he went over and sat down. “Bring me a tankard of ale, old fuss-box, and stop your whining. No harm’s been done that will overset you!” Shaking his head, Oddsbud turned to Lorraine. “Bring the lad his ale.”
Lorraine hesitated. She wanted to run after Philip, but wouldn’t that give away the fact that he’d been here? she asked herself guiltily. She’d done enough to him already! As she stood uncertainly, through the door erupted a frightening sight.
A man with a bloodied dark head and a torn cambric shirt stained with mud, his gray eyes bloodshot and blazing like seven devils in his white face, burst through the door and was upon Bob before he could even rise from his seat. The man’s hard fist smashed into Bob’s surprised and frightened mouth, bloodying his nose and sending him back hard against the wall. A blow from the left and one from the right rocked Bob’s head from side to side.
“And now,” the man said in a low deadly voice, “I’ll relieve you of that coat, you thieving swine. And if you so much as crease it when you take it off, you’ll get a ball between your ribs!”
Terrified, Bob saw that he was looking down the barrel of a large pistol held in a very steady hand. “I only borrowed the coat,” he choked, his dazed eyes staring in fascination at the pistol. “You’d not yet come to and I thought you’d not miss it for a while. I meant to bring it back!”
There was a growl of disbelief from the man before him. Lorraine and Oddsbud stood transfixed.
Bob was sweating now, and terror shone in his eyes. “I didn’t mean to hit you so hard with that stick of wood last night!”
“Came at me from behind, you did,
while your friend took a shot at me!”
Bob swallowed. “Philip never even pointed his gun at you—he fired up into the trees!” He struggled out of the coat as he spoke. “ ’Twas but a game. We were only funning—”
“Fun!” Cameron roared as he reached over with a rough hand, and seizing young Bob by his shirt, shook him so hard his teeth rattled in his head. “I heard your fancy friend and that clod in buckskins planning outside how they would start a fight and lure the girl out—and make her think Buckskins was dead to gain her sympathy—and then into the woods with her so Satin Coat could bed her! And now I’ve no doubt I was the ‘corpse’ that was used to hoodwink her!”
Lorraine’s eyes grew wide with comprehension and horror. She felt the strength leave her limbs and almost crumpled to the floor.
“Does a wager mean so much to you rustics that you would jump a man from behind?” Cameron snatched his coat and stuck his gun back in his belt. “By God, I’ll teach you manners!” Raile roared. In fury, he drew back his arm and delivered such a blow as sent the quaking young man across the room to end up stretched senseless over a table.
“A good job, that,” said the tavernkeeper in a pleased voice. He studied Bob’s fallen form admiringly. “And something I’ve often yearned to do myself.”
“A . . . wager? Did you say a wager?” asked Lorraine in a voice that shook.
“Aye, the satin-coated dandy planned to bed you by a ruse.” Raile swung around to see her swaying, whitefaced, against the doorjamb, her hemp-pale hair a tumbled mass, her face such a picture of woe that it wrenched his heart. “And from the look of you, I see he managed it.”
Lorraine nodded in misery. Her slight form seemed to shrink as she leaned against the doorway staring out into the morning mist where Philip had gone—without her. She was fighting for control but her body felt spent and used. Her lips moved tremulously as she fought back tears.
“If you’ll but point out where the tall laddie is, I’ll punish him for you, lass,” Raile added grimly.
Lorraine opened her mouth to answer him but no sound came out. The weight of the world seemed suddenly to have fallen onto her slender shoulders, and had the very ground dropped away from beneath her feet at that moment, she would have taken no notice. Swallowing, she moistened her lips and tried again to answer the stranger.
“He is gone,” she mumbled. She peered outside, feeling numb. “I suppose he must have gone home. He told me he must fly for he had killed you. That as you fought you had pulled out a pistol and he had whipped out his own and shot you, unthinking. I felt ... I felt it was my fault—that he had killed you out of jealousy over me and would most likely die for it.” She covered her white face with her hands and rocked in silent misery.
“So he played on your tender sympathies,” muttered Raile in disgust.
“Fool of a wench!” Oddsbud turned from admiring Bob’s fallen form and spat. “Ye must have known young Philip’s been courting Lavinia Todd down Providence way?”
Lorraine hadn’t known, and a spasmodic shudder went through her body.
Raile swung a bloodshot gaze toward Oddsbud, who fell silent—till he thought of business. “You’re forgetting!” he cried indignantly. “You can’t leave! You owe me for last night’s ale and supper!”
The tavernkeeper’s sharp voice brought Raile’s lowering attention onto him again. “ ’Tis pay you want, is it, landlord? For letting your patrons be set upon in your establishment and half-killed and left out in the trees by your woodpile to die? Well, here’s for the ale and the supper!” He threw a coin on the table so hard it bounced off and rolled across the hard-packed earthen floor, turned contemptuously, and went out, brushing by Lorraine, who sagged in the doorway.
He untied his horse and mounted, a stern figure in his sky-blue coat and muddied boots and trousers.
As he wheeled about, prepared to make off into the morning mist, he caught sight again of the girl, trembling with wordless grief in the doorway.
“Ride with me and I’ll take you out of here, Lorraine,” he said evenly. “You’ve only to climb up, and we’re off.”
Lorraine dropped her hands and looked up, caught a wavering vision through her tears of a tall grim man astride a big brown horse.
Ride with me!
He offered her escape! And how could she stay here and face them, all those men, Oddsbud’s patrons, with their sly grins, their catcalls, their covert pinches, their guffaws, and see the knowledge writ plain across their smirking faces that Philip—Philip, whom she’d loved with all her heart and had believed loved her too—had bedded her, not for love, but on a wager!
Oh God, she could not face Philip!
Lorraine gave no thought to the future. At that moment she cared not if the tall man on the big brown horse was the devil himself. He had offered her escape and she would take it! Without a word she ran toward him and he swung her up before him on the saddle.
“Ho there!” roared the landlord, erupting wrathfully after them out of the tavern. “You can’t take the wench with you! Lorraine’s indentured to me for another year!”
The Scot, who cared not overmuch for the law, had nevertheless a fine feeling for liberty—his own and others’. His sinewy arm was locked about the girl’s slender waist and he felt the swift thud of her heart, felt her young breasts bounce as she started fearfully at the tavernkeeper’s wrathful cry.
“I’ve just loosed her bonds!” Raile wheeled his big horse about, sending Oddsbud scurrying back. “She’ll have a taste of freedom with me!”
“I’ll have the law on you!” shouted Oddsbud, shaking his fat fist but staying well back from the armed stranger.
“Be damned to your laws!” Raile called back over his shoulder. “I’m taking the girl with me—for shame that you’d hold a woman’s body in bondage!” He nudged his horse with his knee and they were off in the morning mist.
“After them, Oddsbud!” cried his wife, who had come out in time to hear this last exchange of words.
Irresolutely Oddsbud turned to go inside for his musket. Then he paused to look after the wild pair, flying down the road on a fast horse. The last he saw of them was the girl’s pale hair streaming back in the wind and Raile’s broad shoulders as they disappeared from view.
“Hurry!” bawled his wife, shaking him frantically by the shoulder. “Can’t you see they’re getting away, you fool?”
Oddsbud shook her off. Some tattered shreds of gallantry were still left in him. In his heart he felt reluctant admiration for the durable stranger who had after all been struck down at Oddsbud’s establishment and left for dead.
As for Lorraine, he’d miss the sight of her pretty face and figure flying about, bringing sunshine into the dim smoky recesses of his tavern. His wife would miss her hard work too, for all she’d complained about the little wench! But it was true the girl’s beauty had brought out the devil in the wild bunch hereabouts.' There’d be less breakage with her gone, fewer dented tankards and broken heads! And hadn’t she as much as admitted that young Philip—a lad whose people had influence in these parts—had had his way with her?
Suppose she claimed it was rape? What would the community say about that? Could be he’d be brought up for keeping a bawdy house if the girl pressed charges! Anyway, he wished the little wench well—damned if he’d publish her as an escaped bondservant, whatever his shrewish wife demanded.
“Get inside,” he growled. “You’ve food to prepare this day.”
“You’ve been witched by Lorraine’s pretty face same as the others!” scolded his wife, giving him a clout as she flounced away. “It was an evil day we took her into the tavern!”
“Well, the evil day’s over,” Oddsbud muttered. “For she’s gone, and from the look of her as she went, she’ll not be back.”
He followed his wife in and began moving barrels. Still thinking about Lorraine, he paused and leaned upon one of them. It was true he’d been bilked of the wench’s services. That in itself was enough to put a
n angry gleam in his eye.
But suddenly his face cleared and he struck his thigh and rent the tavern’s musty air with a loud peal of laughter.
There was a way out of this situation that would leave him with both a chuckle and a profit. Ever since young Philip Dedwinton had returned from that long visit in Providence, the impudent young buck had been after Oddsbud to sell the girl to him. Oddsbud had hung back, knowing too well Philip’s plans for her. Well, Philip had no way of knowing she’d run off. This very day he’d journey over to the Dedwinton farm and sell the girl’s articles of indenture to Master Philip, giving as his reason that she was a bad influence at the inn, always causing fights and ruckuses of every kind!
And when Philip came over to claim her, he’d clap the lad commiseratingly on the back and tell him Lorraine had learned about the wager and had run way in a huff. He’d not be out of pocket—Phillip would! A good day’s work indeed!
Oddsbud leaned against the barrel and shook with laughter.
CHAPTER 5
THEY HAD NOT gone far when Raile brought the horse to a halt. Lorraine realized that the Scot was turning the horse around and heading back toward the Light Horse Tavern.
Until that moment Lorraine had been content to slump against him in her misery. But now she sat up abruptly.
“Why have we changed direction?” she demanded in alarm. And more wildly, before he could answer, “Oh, you haven’t changed your mind? You’re not . . . oh, you’re not taking me back?”
The tall Scot gazed down on her in some wonder. “Faith,” he opined ruefully, “if you but knew me better, you’d know that I rarely change my mind. I’m not the kind of man who goes back. Once gone, I stay gone.”
She felt bewildered. “Then why—”
“So your late employer will be seeking us in the wrong direction,” he cut in. “Lass, d’you know the roads hereabout?”
To Love a Rogue Page 6
