by Rainbow
Cam laughed, and he didn’t have to pretend the bitterness in it.
“Twice,” he replied. “The first time brought me a whippin’. The second time, they cut a tendon in my ankle, so I couldn’t run again.”
“Him!” Daphne exclaimed with horror, again referring to the steamboat captain.
Cam shrugged. He disliked seeing the hatred in her eyes for the only friend he had ever had, but there was no help for it now. Later, she would know. Later when it was safe.
“Will you…try again?”
Again, Cam hesitated. How much to say? He wanted to prepare her for the day the captain could make arrangements. At the same time, he didn’t want her to do anything on her own. It was too damned dangerous.
“Not without help,” he said finally.
“Is there…help?”
“I hear talk of it.”
Her eyes grew large. “How do you find them?”
“Keep your ears open, little one. It’s called the Underground Railroad. They say they will help you all the way to Canada.”
“White folk?” she asked with disbelief.
“White people and freemen,” he said.
“If you know so much, why don’t you go?” Daphne said, hesitant to believe.
Cam smiled to himself. She was a bright little thing. “I haven’t found the right people yet. But I will,” he promised.
“White folk?” she repeated in amazement.
“There are some who don’t like slavery,” Cam said slowly.
“I don’t believe it.” Her words were filled with sorrow. “How can you? After what they’ve done to you?”
“I have to,” he replied simply.
Daphne didn’t understand how anyone could feel that way. All she felt were defeat and hopelessness. She lowered her eyes, glancing away from the strength of his face, the fire in his eyes.
“You have to have hope,” he said in a low voice that carried conviction.
“I don’t know how,” she whispered.
He bent down and lightly touched his lips to her forehead. So lightly that Daphne was surprised at the waves of emotion that surged out of control within her.
“Trust me,” he said.
“I don’t know how,” Daphne repeated, as she fled once more. She tripped on a rope and started to fall, but suddenly strong arms were around her. For the first time in her life, she felt protected.
But there was no protection outside of his embrace, she thought bleakly. “Let me go,” she said desperately, afraid to believe his words, to believe in anything because to do so would be to know bitter disappointment. Better not to hope. Better not to feel. “Let me go,” she said again, twisting away from him and running into Miss Meredith.
Meredith had come up for some air when she saw Daphne run from behind some bales as if the very devil were after her. Captain Devereux? But then she saw a large black man come after her. It was Devereux’s man.
“Leave her alone!” she shouted in anger.
Cam stopped abruptly, carefully reestablishing his pose of servitude. “Yes ma’am.”
Meredith looked at Daphne. “Did he hurt you?”
Stunned, Daphne could only shake her head. Had her mistress heard any of the conversation?
“Are you sure? You don’t have to be afraid.”
“No ma’am,” Daphne said. “I just…I just saw a rat, and it scared me. He just kept me from falling, that’s all.”
Meredith saw the girl’s shoulders shaking, and she looked sharply at the large servant. He obviously took after his master, thinking he could take with masculine strength what he couldn’t win with persuasion.
The man lowered his eyes, but Meredith didn’t fail to see the flare of hatred in them, the spark of rebellion against being docile. She thought about reporting him to the captain, but she neither wanted to see the arrogant rogue again nor did she really want to see this man receive any more punishment. Quinn Devereux obviously had a vicious streak if this man’s back were any indication.
“What’s your name?” she said sharply.
“Cam.”
“I won’t say anything,” she said, “unless I see you near Daphne again. If I do, I’ll see you punished.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said softly, but Meredith noted his hands balling with suppressed rage.
She stared at him until his eyes fell once more, and then she turned to Daphne, her voice gentling. “Come, Daphne. We both need some sleep.”
When they arrived at the cabin, Meredith lit the oil lamp and saw the dried tears on Daphne’s face. The girl looked so incredibly forlorn. “He did do something,” she accused.
“No ma’am,” Daphne said.
“Then what?”
Tears that Daphne couldn’t stop rolled down her face.
“I will talk to Captain Devereux,” Meredith decided out loud, wondering if the words would prompt more information from the girl.
“You mustn’t,” Daphne cried. “Captain Devereux will…he’ll…”
“He’ll do what?”
“Something terrible,” Daphne said. “He already had him crippled.” Daphne hadn’t meant to say it, but the words spilled out, her fear for Cam overcoming her fear of Meredith.
Meredith stood still, horrified. She had heard of such a thing although it had never been done at her plantation. And she had noticed his servant’s limp. But she never thought a person could actually order such a punishment. She remembered her response to Captain Devereux’s kiss and felt sick. Nausea rose up in her, and she had to sit down.
“You won’t say anything, will you, Miss Meredith?” Daphne pleaded. “He was just trying to be kind.”
“No,” Meredith said. She felt dirty, violated, and she knew a swell of hate against the man who could be so cruel. How could she have felt any kind of attraction? Any feeling?
Thank God she would never see him again.
Quinn wasn’t playing well. His famed concentration was gone. He looked at the damned cards, but his mind was on soft lips and eyes that flashed golden fire. She had responded to that kiss and with a passion he never would have expected. It stirred a want so deep and so painful within him that he could barely breathe.
He was astounded. During his eight years in British prisons and chain gangs, he had gone without the pleasure or comfort of a woman, and since his return he had felt little need for more than quick physical relief, certainly nothing close to what was bedeviling his loins now.
After losing steadily for two hours, he left the table and went to his cabin. He took out a bottle of good scotch whiskey and poured a large amount into a glass. He didn’t savor it, as he usually did, but just swallowed, wanting the oblivion it used to bring.
Brown eyes. Blue eyes. Green eyes. Damn, they were all the same. Traitorous and deceptive.
He remembered Morgana’s. They had been blue. As blue as the midsummer sky. Her lips had been like fresh berries with the same tangy sweetness.
And she had cost him eight years and three lives. He would never let another woman do that.
Quinn gulped another glass of whiskey, knowing it would take more than this bottle to forget. He threw it against the wall of the cabin, realizing that this would be another night he wouldn’t sleep.
The Lucky Lady docked at Vicksburg early the next morning. The day was bright and clear and the sky a deep rich shade of blue. There was music in the air; the boat’s musicians often played on deck as they reached a major landing. This added a certain gaiety to the occasion.
Quinn stood on the highest point, near the pilot’s house, and looked on as the passengers disembarked. Among the first were Opal Frazier, Miss Seaton, and Daphne. He felt Cam’s presence before he heard him, and simply nodded to him as they both watched the Seaton party approach a buggy. The luggage was loaded and the ladies were helped aboard.
Daphne’s face turned back to the steamboat, her eyes searching until they found Cam. Misery was written all over her face before she looked ahead once more. The buggy was
well down the main street before Miss Seaton also turned. Her back arched up and her chin tilted upward. Quinn couldn’t see her expression due to a fussy hat that shielded most of her face.
His lips moved into a half smile. “We’re not through yet, Meredith Seaton,” he murmured. “Not by half.”
Chapter 5
BROWN EYES. Blue eyes. Morgana’s had been as blue as the midsummer sky.
Quinn had been immediately intrigued with Lady Morgana Stafford, and not a little flattered when the lady seemed to prefer his attention to that of the heir and only son of the Earl of Sethwyck. Quinn had been in London two months after touring the continent and was using the last of his funds to rent a townhouse in the most fashionable part of London.
He was in no hurry to go home to America. The bank awaited him in New Orleans, and the bank was duty and responsibility. He was not ready to lock himself in a cubicle and parcel out loans to people who had no need of them. If they had, they would not get them, he thought cynically. Instead loans went to the rich to make them richer and were denied to the poor who needed them to get ahead. He sneered at the hypocrisy of it, but was not ready to take it upon himself to change it. At the moment, his only concern was milking every moment of this freedom, exacting every second of pleasure.
And pleasure lay in the rooms of Lady Morgana.
She was spectacularly beautiful: ash-blond hair flowing to her waist, large clear blue eyes, skin the color of rich ivory, and wide full lips that knew every trick to bedevil a man. He was a most willing pupil.
He had been warned. His friends told him she was private property, that she belonged to young George Dunn, only son of Sethwyck, that she was only using him to make Dunn jealous and force him into a proposal. But Quinn was in love by then, madly, crazily, blindly in love, especially when he experienced the joys of her bed.
Until the night Dunn burst in on them with several of his friends. The young lord had slapped Morgana, and Quinn had gone after him, beating him badly. Dunn demanded satisfaction, and Quinn’s pride and anger made him accept.
The duel took place in a field outside London. As the challenged party, Quinn had the choice of weapons and he selected pistols.
It was dawn, a pretty day for late in the year in London. A pink and persimmon glow lit the sky, and the birds sang happy songs…until the shots rang out. Quinn was nicked by a premature shot. The next shot was his. He aimed to the right of Dunn, but just as he pulled the trigger, George Dunn sought to avoid the bullet and moved straight into its path.
It was the first time Quinn had ever shot a human being. He watched disbelievingly as the young lord crumpled to the ground, blood spreading over his chest. Then there was a flurry of activity as a group of horsemen pounded down on them. Two dismounted and grabbed his arms while the third, an older man, leaned over the fallen heir. When he looked up at Quinn, his face held a mixture of grief and fury. “You’ll pay for this…I’ll make you wish for hell…”
“Wish for hell.”
And Sethwyck had, Quinn thought.
Blue eyes. Brown eyes. Stay away from them all.
Quinn had told himself that each moment for the past week, ever since they had left Vicksburg. What confused him most was that Meredith Seaton was not even pretty, except possibly for those eyes and hair, and she certainly wasn’t the type of woman who had ever appealed to him before.
Perhaps, he told himself, his desire was only the result of abstinence. Any woman with two eyes, two hands and two legs would look good to him. Or perhaps the growing hunger in him was for something more, for the soft touch of a woman who wouldn’t care about his past, or even his present. Few southern women, he knew, would forgive his current activities. In the South, a slave stealer was worse than a thief; he was a danger to a whole way of life.
But the ache in his loins was more insistent than it had ever been, and he knew he had to have some relief. Perhaps it would take his mind away from the woman who was the very embodiment of everything he had come to detest. If only he hadn’t seen her that morning against the rainbow. It had put fantasies in his head, and he had no room for them there.
He heard the loud clanging of the boat’s bell and knew they were approaching Cairo. In minutes the band would start playing, and there would be a cacophony of sound: steam hissing, bells ringing, musical instruments blaring. He felt the familiar tension build within him, although he knew neither his face nor stance indicated it. Cairo was probably the most precarious station along the Railroad.
There were two routes leading from Cairo, one heading north up the Mississippi to Minnesota, the other east over the Ohio River and along the border of Illinois and into Ohio, and finally Canada. This particular shipment was to go the second route, and the transfer was risky. Because of Cairo’s position on the border between slave and free states, it attracted a fair number of slave hunters and marshals, and they paid particular attention to boat traffic.
As the Lucky Lady inched up to the wharf, Quinn’s eyes searched and found the Carroll brothers, both of whom were on deck, their own eyes weighing every passenger preparing to leave. Quinn’s eyes then went down to the people on the wharf below. His stomach tightened as he noticed two wore badges.
With a nod, he summoned Cam, who quickly responded, understanding his message without words being spoken. Quinn knew he would fill the empty crates with the bolts of cotton they kept in the hold for just such a purpose and warn the fugitives to stay very still in the hidden room.
Quinn turned back to the Carroll brothers. He couldn’t help but notice the furtive looks of the two slave catchers. They were very definitely searching for something or someone. Perhaps, he mused, they were seeking to recoup a portion of the small fortune they had lost to him on this trip. It had probably not been wise to pull their tail that way, yet he had been unable to resist the temptation, particularly when he had earmarked those funds for the Railroad. Levi Coffin, the reputed leader of the Railroad and a member of the Society of Friends, would not approve, he knew, but still it made the game a bit more interesting.
Sometimes too interesting, he rebuked himself. He should not risk others for his own sometimes whimsical desires.
He continued to watch as the gangplank lowered, and the roustabouts lifted sacks of sugar and dye destined for the Northeast. At another nod of his head the roustabouts quickly ran down the gangplank, preventing anyone from coming aboard. Quinn smiled at the frustrated looks of the marshals below.
Finally, the two men elbowed their way up, cursing as they came, and made their way to Quinn. They knew him well and had even shared a few drinks with him in the saloon.
“There’s been a spate of runaways reported,” one said curtly, annoyed at the delay. “We have orders to search all riverboats.”
“Of course,” Quinn said easily. “I can just about guarantee you won’t find anything. Everyone knows the way I feel about runaways.”
“Yes sir, Captain,” the second man said, “but we’re checking every boat, packet or barge going upriver. We’ve been getting a lot of pressure, damned abolitionists stirring everyone up.”
Quinn shrugged. “Go ahead. They’d be damned fools to try the river, but you’re welcome to look.”
“We also have to see the papers of your crew,” the second man said, his tone more agreeable. Most captains weren’t as accommodating as Captain Devereux. And he knew he and his partner could expect a damn good brandy afterward. Captain Devereux was a gentleman. He didn’t get testy like the others.
“You’ll find them all in order,” Quinn said with a disarming grin. “I see to that.”
But the harmony ended when the Carroll brothers approached. They were obviously known to the two marshals who, equally as obvious, didn’t like them. It was an attitude Quinn had seen and used frequently. The lawmen, while not a bit loath to do their duty in apprehending fugitives or those aiding fugitives, despised those who did it for money alone.
Their eyes, which had lost their annoyance with Quinn, now f
ocused on the Carrolls with hostility.
Completely oblivious to the sudden strain, Ted Carroll addressed the marshals. “We’ve heard rumors about this boat. We want you to search it and check some of those crates.”
One of the marshals turned an icy expression on him. “Lost some money, did you?” His question was directed more at Quinn than Carroll, and Quinn merely shrugged easily while the Carrolls flushed angrily. All their grateful cordiality of the first night on the Lucky Lady was gone, lost in the succeeding nights of card losses.
The marshals looked at Quinn. “Go ahead,” he said and called a man over to fetch some tools. When they arrived, he took them and looked inquiringly at the Carrolls. The fugitives were always the last to be unloaded, remaining in their hiding place until Quinn believed it completely safe.
The Carrolls eyed the various crates, then pointed to three in separate locations. Quinn handed the tools to them. “You want to look, you do the work. And be sure to nail them back securely again.”
He leaned nonchalantly against the boat railing as the Carrolls pried open the crates and looked through them, finally giving up in disgust. They started to walk away, but one of the marshals stopped them. “You heard the captain. Nail them shut again.”
“We want to see below deck too,” Ted Carroll said, his face full of frustration as his brother started nailing the crates back together.
“Of course,” Quinn said. “I want you fully satisfied. But while you’re repairing the damage, I’ll show these two gentlemen the crew’s papers.” He stressed the word “gentlemen,” and remembered fleetingly how Meredith Seaton had excluded him from such company days ago. Why in the devil did he keep thinking about her?
Quinn led the way to the office he and Jamison shared and took out the papers, then offered the marshals a glass of brandy. They accepted without hesitation and downed two glasses each as they slowly perused the papers. As on most riverboats, each roustabout and deckhand was a freeman, except for Captain Devereux’s large black. The marshals had never understood why the captain kept the man around; he looked and acted rebellious and dangerous. Upon being asked, Devereux had merely laughed and said it was a personal whim and challenge to break the man’s spirit. There were no more questions. It seemed entirely within character of the mercurial gambler.
