by Barbara Mack
He had lost twenty pounds at least, and his face was haggard and unshaven. His whiskers grew in patchy fuzz, some of the hair gray, the rest of it brown. His clothes not only hung on him, they were filthy and encrusted with what looked like the dirt of weeks. His eyes had a hunted expression that had never been there before, darting here and there, never lighting very long on any one place. He could not be physically still either, his fingers playing with the frayed edges of his coat, tugging at his collar, pinching at his whiskers.
He was nowhere near the intimidating sight that he used to be, and Maggie realized with a shock that she was not really afraid of him anymore. Oh, she was afraid of what he might do, she was afraid of his physical violence, but he did not strike the abject terror into her that just the very glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye used to do. He was a pathetic specimen of a man altogether, and confidence suddenly surged into Maggie, bringing reserves of strength with it. She felt hope rising in her, and she felt almost peaceful all of a sudden, as if a warm hand had reached out and clasped her shoulder.
This man was not the monster of her dreams.
He was just a man, a rather paltry one at that . . . and men, unlike monsters, could be defeated.
She was not the same girl that he had married. Maggie had turned into a woman in the months that she had been away from his spurious influence . . . and she was strong. Strong enough and smart enough to get away from him as long as she stayed alert and luck was with her.
“Finish untying me, David,” she said now, calmly. “I cannot feel my hands and we need to get a fire started. You do have flint to start a fire with, do not you?”
He gaped at her. She held out her wrists to him, shaking them impatiently, raising her eyebrows imperiously. He scurried over to cut the rest of the ropes from both her hands and her feet, and Maggie remembered how he had always bowed down to the people who had treated him like dirt.
She pulled off her one remaining glove and rubbed the circulation back into her wrists and ankles while looking around. They were in some abandoned outbuilding, one that obviously had not seen occupation for a long, long time. A pile of waist-high, nearly rotten wood lay in one corner, and she put out her hand for David to help her up, concealing both her distaste at touching him and the pain that she felt in her side. The room spun crazily for a moment, then righted itself as she stood upright with difficulty.
All of the wood was not too rotten to use, she informed him in a haughty voice once she had inspected it. He hunkered down and put the knife he had used to cut her free by his foot, striking sparks off the flint he retrieved from his saddlebags and catching the ultra-dry wood on fire just as it lay, without moving any of it.
Maggie tried to disguise her amazement. Dear God, that pile of wood came nearly to her waist! He was going to burn the building down around their heads.
She looked at him closely as he muttered to himself and warmed his hands to the rapidly burning blaze. He had picked up the knife again, dropping the flint to the floor and leaving it there where it lay. He tilted the knife back and forth, studying the way the fire made light dance off of its sharp edge. He appeared as if he had gone past some point that, once advanced beyond, could not be returned to. He looked up at her, over the flames now nearly as high as Maggie’s head, and the red light flickered over his features, making him appear to be the devil he always was in Maggie’s dreams.
“Things changed after you left, Maggie,” he said, getting to his feet. “I could not explain where my wife had gone, and one of the servants sent the police around a couple of weeks later. They all hated me and I know that was your fault, too. The policemen found all that blood in the parlor, because the stain never quite came up, you know. That is something else you will have to pay for, my dear.”
Maggie inched away, toward the door. If she could just reach one of the horses . . . He had not even unsaddled the poor beasts, or taken their bridles off, but that could work to her advantage now.
“They asked me all these questions about where you were, and of course I could not answer them. I had told everyone that you had gone to stay with my aunt, but there was no aunt. When I could not produce you, Maggie, they got very suspicious, but they could not prove anything because they did not have a body. But that did not stop the gossip, and I could not get work anymore, Maggie. Everywhere I went, people whispered that I had killed my wife, and no one wanted to pay a murderer to take care of their finances. I lost the house when the bank called in all my notes. I had borrowed pretty heavily, you see.”
Maggie felt insane laughter bubble up inside her. All this time, while she thought she had killed him, he had been alive and living in St. Louis. While she was terrified of hanging for his murder, people had been whispering that he had murdered her. David smiled benignly at her now, but Maggie was not fooled. He’d had the same beatific expression on his face many times as he had beaten her into unconsciousness.
“I was going through my old papers about a month ago, looking for a client’s address who had a nasty little secret. I intended to get a little working capital from him, and that is when I found your uncle’s address. I had thought it lost forever. You had taken all his letters with you, you see, and I thought I had gotten rid of everything else. I am so very glad about my inefficiency in this case, else I never could have found him again. I knew that is where you would go. I used to read his letters and laugh sometimes. He was so sincere, and so loving, and I found it so amusing to know that I made you both so miserable by keeping you apart.”
David gave a tittering little laugh and leaned forward avidly, perilously close to the
growing conflagration. “Oh, dear, I am sorry. But just the thought of that common little man, perhaps lying in his bed at night and shedding a tear at the thought of you and your regrettable mental instability that kept you so tragically apart. . . It is just too, too amusing.”
Maggie felt a cleansing rage rise up inside her at his words. He was a monster that fed off the pain of others and he would not receive any pleasure from seeing one iota of anguish cross her features, not this time.
“I was the one who shot him, you know. Too bad he did not die–he would have, if not for that three-legged hell hound that attacked me. I had to flee before I could finish the job, I am afraid. Maybe he will die of complications instead. One can only hope.”
With a roar of fury, Maggie snapped. She had taken so much from this man; he had beaten and degraded her for three long years. She had lived in a hell of his making, existing in a pervasive fog of perpetual fear. She grabbed a burning branch from the fire and attacked him with it, heedless of the knife that he held and of the fire that licked at her skirts. She screamed out her wrath and hatred as she struck him hard across the chest with the flaming end of the bough. David dropped his knife and scrambled back away from her blows, cowering.
Maggie felt the rage cleanse her soul as she beat him backwards, toward the door. He had caused one too many hurts, pushed the knife in one too many times . . . this time, he would pay.
One of the horses whinnied in fright as they came too close, and Maggie’s attention wavered just long enough for David to jump up and grab her.
“I will kill you now,” he spat into her face as he grappled with her. Maggie dropped her makeshift weapon when he twisted her wrist, hard. “I really will kill you this time.”
Maggie knew that he meant it, and she did the only thing that she could think of. He was dragging her slowly, inexorably toward the knife on the floor and she knew what he meant to do with it when he got there.
She bit him, viciously, feeling sick as he screamed, but still she would not let go until he knocked her to the ground. Even as she went down, she spat at him and felt a weird kind of triumph, though she knew he was going to kill her. She had not given in to the fear this time. She had fought him all the way.
Howling, David put his hands up to his wounded neck and then pulled them back, staring in disbelief at the blood over them. He backed a
way from where she lay on the cold ground. He recoiled even further when she smiled at him.
“You have scarred me for life,” he said, and backed farther away. Maggie bit back a warning as he backed right over the smoldering branch she had hit him with, and fell toward the gargantuan fire.
His arms windmilling, he tried desperately to keep from going into the flames, to no avail. Maggie watched in horror as his clothing caught on fire. He ran out the dilapidated door of the building, into the snow, the fire feeding off the oxygen he provided it with his panicked run and burning higher and harder. She watched through the open door until he fell to the ground and moved no more, still screaming, his body continuing to burn. When the screams stopped, Maggie finally backed away and retched out all her sickness before she staggered away and fell to the ground.
She lay back, closing her eyes, no longer able to stay conscious now that the danger had passed, and that is how Duncan and Nick found her, unconscious beside a fire that had now nearly reached the dry ceiling of the old barn. Nick had her scarf wrapped around his hand. They had forced their horses into a hard gallop after they had found it; they knew now that they were on the right track, and they could already smell the smoke.
Right in front of the deserted barn, they had passed the still sizzling, blackened body, and they had both looked in revulsion upon the thing that had once been a man. No one had
to tell them that this was the body of the man who had taken Maggie, and they did not stop for more than a moment. Duncan, who could smell the evil of the man even through the stench of burning flesh, spat on him as they turned away, and a bright yellow flame shot up where the liquid had hit, then flickered away.
Nick held her tenderly on his lap as Duncan looked Maggie over and checked her out. Nick looked upon the bloodstained, beautiful face of his lover. She was a fire in his blood, and in his heart, and in his soul and he knew that if she had died, part of him would die with her.
“I love you,” he murmured to her. “I love you, love you, and love you, Maggie.”
“She has got a couple broken ribs, looks like she took a couple of real hard knocks to the head, but other than that she is fine,” Duncan said quietly, his long fingers finished probing Maggie’s body, for the moment.
“I am going to see if something cannot be done about this fire before it burns down the barn,” Duncan said quietly. “I will be right back.”
Nick never took his eyes from Maggie’s face, and he nearly sobbed aloud when she slowly opened her beautiful green eyes. He pressed kisses all over her face, on her eyelids, on her nose, on her soft mouth.
“Nick,” she whispered. “I did not think I would ever see you again.”
“Me, too, darling,” he whispered back, unashamed of the silver tears glittering in his eyes and on the ends of his long black lashes.
“I have got to tell you something,” she whispered, taking short, sharp breaths because of the pain in her ribs. “I . . . I have been keeping secrets from you, because I was so afraid. I thought that you would hate me if you knew.”
“I would never hate you, never,” Nick said passionately. “I love you, Maggie. Whatever it is, I do not care. I will fix it, or I will find someone who can. Marry me, love. I adore you. My life was dull and lusterless before you came to me. Marry me, Maggie. I need you so,” he sobbed, pressing his face to hers. "I need you so." He pecked wild little kisses all over her face, then held her and rocked her back and forth as one would a child. It was as much to comfort him as her, for now that the danger had passed, the storm of emotion that he had felt for the last few hours had left him as weak as an injured child.
Maggie looked into his eyes and saw that he meant it, that it really did not matter to him what had gone before. He truly loved her, and though she was more tired and sore than she could ever remember being before, she felt a shaft of joy sing through her whole body. She raised herself up despite the pain and wrapped her arms around his neck, weeping.
“I love you, too,” she said between the kisses they shared. “I love you, Nick. I have loved you for so long.”
Duncan cleared his throat from his position over by the door. He held a rusted bucket in one hand.
“I hate to interrupt this, folks, but I need to talk to you about this fire. Do you think that we should try and put it out, or should we just let it burn itself out?”
“What fire?” Nick said, and went back to kissing Maggie, their passion radiating almost as much heat as the inferno behind them.
"I am the luckiest woman alive," Maggie whispered to Nick as she pressed her lips to his.
Duncan smiled wryly and went to make sure that the fire did not spread to the forest.
Epilogue
Nick stared down into the cradle at his sleeping son. Full of milk and content for the moment, the downy-haired infant snuggled into the warmth of the blankets his adoring father had tucked around him. Maggie slid her arms around him from behind, a smile curving her lips as she watched Nick with their son. He turned, his eyes misty with love for them both, and his arms crept around her as she laid her head against his chest.
“Hi, there,” she whispered. “Come with me, lover. Ned’s coming up to spoil his great-nephew and we’ve got at least two hours before we have to be back. Kathleen packed us a picnic, and I have a toasty warm blanket. We’ve got a sunset to chase.”
“Maggie, it is the middle of January,” he protested laughingly as she pulled him from the room and down the stairs. “It is too cold. We are going to freeze to death if we go outside in this weather.”
She slanted a shrewd look his way, those beautiful emerald eyes gleaming with humor, and with some other emotion that made his heart beat just a little faster. Well, maybe a whole lot faster.
“I know an excellent way to get warm, love,” she purred, and headed for the front door. "Hurry up and I’ll show you."
Nick followed that seductive walk and those swishing skirts with a big grin on his face, his heart full to nearly bursting with love and pride.
He was the luckiest man alive.
If you enjoyed this book by Barbara Mack, please check out her other books:
Dreaming of You
Kathleen Donaldson is proud, 26 years old and unmarried. She's a woman of power and strength; some even might call her sharp-tongued and bossy. That makes her an oddity in the 1800's. No matter what others think, Kathleen has adapted to her life, and most of the time she feels fulfilled and happy. But Kathleen has a secret and keeping it hidden is becoming increasingly hard to do.
Then Dr. Duncan Murdoch arrives in town. He's attractive and exotic and Kathleen feels an immediate fascination. Before she knows it, he's discovered her secret, and tells her she needs to 'spend some time with him' if she wants him to keep quiet. Kathleen knows what that means, and she's determined to find some way out of this predicament. No matter how much her own mother throws her at the gorgeous Doctor's head...or how irresistible she finds him.
Easy, Fabulous Bread Making: A collection of quick, no-knead, homemade bread recipes
Close your eyes and imagine the smell of fresh bread wafting under your nose. Are you smiling yet? One of life's greatest pleasures is sinking your teeth into a buttery slice of crusty bread, still warm from the oven.
And yet there is, especially in the United States, almost a universal carelessness about the quality and taste of the bread that we eat on a daily basis. People eat the most appalling trash imaginable, and accept it as a matter of course. The normal bread in an American household is a pasty white bread that is more air than food, devoid of nutrients, and stuffed with chemicals so it has a longer shelf life. And it tastes bad.
The recipes in this book make homemade bread with complex flavor, no harsh yeast taste, and they require no kneading or hard work. You can have fresh, delicious bread every day, without fuss or muss.
