Tongues of flame licked vertically along the wall, sprouting through the cracks, consuming everything in their path. Escape would be impossible once it reached the roof.
They had no time to lose. They had to get out. But how?
Both entrances were a veritable wall of flame, and the windows, set high in the walls, were too narrow for Jackson to squeeze through, and Reagan would not leave him.
“There must be another way,” she said, battling the growing sense of impending doom that crowded close about her. “I’m not about to turn up my toes and die so easily, and by the saints, neither are you. You hear me, Broussard?” she shouted, grasping his shirt with both fists. “You can’t just lie there and die!”
A deep, racking cough. Another groan. A wheezed reply. “I hear.”
Reagan touched his scarred cheek lovingly, watching as his eyelids fluttered, then opened. “Try to stay with me. We can’t stay here. Do you understand?”
He nodded once; then, taking a deep breath, he rolled to his side and pushed to his knees, where he wavered drunkenly.
At least he was upright and lucid.
Reagan felt her heart swell with emotion, and for an instant she feared it would burst. “You look terrible,” she said.
“And you look ripe for a change of scenery,” he said harshly. “A circumstance we shall discuss at length the moment we get out of here. Come, help me with this board, but stay low.”
He crawled to the far side of the cabin, opposite the hearth, and, levering his fingertips into the widest crack, pried at one of the boards that comprised the wall while Reagan helped him. He pulled and strained until the sweat ran in runnels down his cheeks, until Reagan’s fingers were raw, yet the board refused to budge.
“It’s no use,” Jackson said. “We’ll have to find another way. Come. I’ll hoist you up and through the window.”
Reagan shook her head adamantly. “I’m not leavin’ here without you.”
Jackson bent, seizing Reagan by the arms, dragging her up so that they knelt close together, their faces inches apart, and their gazes locked. “You must!” he said in a snarl. “It’s the only way!”
Before she could reply, a portion of the floor slowly lifted, and a cold draft of fresh night air swept through the cabin, stirring the smoke and whipping the flames into a fiery tempest.
Reagan pressed her knuckles into one eye, certain she was hallucinating. Then the small hatch fell back and Whiskey Joe, looking rather frazzled and minus his beaver hat, gestured to them from the opening. “Hurry, Jack Broussar’,” he said as the sparks rained down around them.
Making a motion with his hand, he turned, disappearing beneath the floorboards of the shack once again. Jackson pushed Reagan toward the opening. She crawled on her hands and knees for several yards, her lungs crying out for air, her strength rapidly waning. Then, as the roof overhead burst into flames, her trembling limbs gave way and she fell to the floor.
She was going to die. She could feel it in her bones, sense it deep in her soul, and she would never see the green hills of Kentucky, or Jackson, or Josephine ever again. Just when she had given up, Jackson was there, dragging her into his arms, lurching through the gaping black maw in the floorboards with Reagan in his arms.
Their wizened guide led the way through a labyrinth of underground tunnels, the pierced tin lantern he carried a feeble beacon in the blackness. The caverns were a miracle of nature, proof that at times perseverance won out over formidable strength. Dripping, running, coursing water, gentle and unobtrusive, had insinuated its way into the natural crevices in the impenetrable limestone through countless millennia, carving the passages they now traversed into the rock on its relentless push to the sea.
Joe turned long enough to beckon them onward. “This way, Jack Broussar’. This way. Bad men no find now.”
They emerged on the banks of a creek, a few hundred yards into the woods. Their horses were tied to a low-hanging branch. Jackson found them readily; Whiskey Joe was another matter altogether. Having saved them from a fiery death, the Peoria had done what he seemingly did best, and simply disappeared. As a result, Jackson once again found himself facing myriad questions for which he had no answers. Only this time, he thought as he turned to face Reagan, he was not alone. She was crouched at the water’s edge, bathing the soot from her face. “Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded jerkily. “I’m a little shaky, but it’ll pass.”
“Good. Now, perhaps you would care to explain what the hell you are doing abroad in the night, garbed in those dreaded rags and mounted on my father’s favorite mare?”
“They aren’t rags,” she said with an indignant sniff. “They’re my travelin’ clothes.”
It was said with a touch of defiance; Jackson felt his temper flare. “Precisely where were you traveling to?” he demanded, then just as quickly raised a hand to stem her swift response. “Never mind. This is neither the time nor the place to discuss it, and I’ve little doubt it will keep until I get you safely home.”
They made their way back to Belle Riviere in stilted silence, Reagan withdrawn, distant, Jackson seething. Questions bounced around in his aching brain, flinging themselves against his skull like frenzied birds trying to escape through a windowpane.
Where had Joe gotten to?
Why had he fled?
Who had been there in the cabin when he arrived?
Why in hell had the intruder tried to kill him?
Was it all some macabre coincidence, or was there a connection between the incident and Clay’s murder?
And even more important, why had Reagan tried to run away?
There was no mistaking her actions.
He’d turned his back, and she’d taken flight. The only question was why, and he could wait no longer for her answer. Reining Euripides in before the manse, he dismounted and helped Reagan down, looping the stallion’s reins around the post ring outside the wrought-iron gate, tying off the mare. Josephine, impatient to prowl the garden, streaked past him as he opened the gate. The feline’s mistress did not escape him so handily, however, for he laid a hand upon her arm as she made to move past him.
Her gray eyes were huge in a face liberally streaked with water and soot, and all Jackson could think of was how close he had come to losing her. The knowledge made him desperate, drove him beyond the boundaries of his control, far beyond all semblance of wisdom.
The danger was past, and his mood considerably darker.
“Mother of God, what were you thinking?” he demanded, when in reality he had no right to demand anything from her at all. “Stealing off in the dead of night, risking life and limb, your virtue, your all—”
Her reply was soft, but he could sense her underlying fury. “If it’s all the same to you, I would rather not talk about my virtue. It’s something of a sore subject with me at present.”
“You might have been killed,” Jackson pressed on, unwilling, unable, just to let it go.
She flinched from his grasp, straightening her spine, lifting her chin in an unmistakable show of defiance. “What was I thinking? I wasn’t the one out nosin’ around where I ought not to be, gettin’ set on by some miscreant. I’m the one with a right to be angry. If not for you I might have made a clean break.” The words cut him like a whip. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to wash up. It’s been a long damn day.”
Reaching out, Jackson closed his hands over her shoulders, holding her immobile when she would have fled. “You must be desperate indeed to make such a gamble... desperate to escape me. Why, Kaintuck?”
In that instant, her tightly kept composure slipped a notch, then crumbled completely. “Because I had no choice!” she shot back, her voice an angry snarl. “Because I could not stay and keep my self-respect!”
“I offered you the world,” he said. "My world! Why is it not enough?”
She wrenched free from his grasp and stood, rubbing one shoulder. “Your world, yes... and I finally realized I’ve got no plac
e in it. It just can’t work, Jackson. I’ve tried, but I don’t fit into your life, any more than you could fit into mine. It’s more than time to admit defeat. It’s time to let it go... to let me go.”
“I cannot,” Jackson said, and the words sounded strangled, forced as they were from his throat. “Not like this.”
He was watching her intently, and he saw her shoulders slump the smallest bit, as if she had just waged and lost a fierce inward battle. Reaching out again, he touched her cheek, wanting so much more, wanting to tell her what was in his heart. But the words stuck in his throat, lodging just beneath his Adam’s apple.
What if it wasn’t enough? he thought wildly.
What if the love he felt for her was not the most enduring kind?
What if he faltered, or could not convince her of his sincerity? She refused to accept the diamonds he had bestowed upon her; could she not reject the offer of his heart as well?
And if that happened, how would he weather her rejection, accept it?
How would he ever survive it?
How ridiculous he felt, how helpless! A womanizing rake with nerves of steel when it came to facing down an adversary, and he trembled like a child at the thought of telling her what was in his heart.
“Time,” he murmured. “I need time to work this out, time to clear my throbbing head.” An hour or two, he thought, a day, perhaps a week, and the words would leap forth of their own accord.
But Reagan was already shaking her head. “Delaying won’t solve anything! I can’t change, and you won’t. You’ll still be bent on killin’ yourself a month from now, and I’m of no mind to hang around and watch.”
Before Jackson could answer, Bessie stuck her head out the front door and peered in their direction. “Miz Reagan? Is that you?”
Jackson grabbed her hand, commandingly, beseechingly. “Say nothing. We need to talk about this—about us!”
Reagan glanced from his shadowed face to that of the kindly old woman. It was dangerous, so dangerous, to linger in his presence. Especially when she was feeling so vulnerable. Another moment, and she might forget her determination to leave, might abandon her resolve to begin her life anew without him. Another glance at his handsome features, so taut with emotion, and she would fall into his arms, into his bed, under his dark, hypnotic spell....
She wet her lips and answered quickly, “Yes’m, it’s me.”
Bessie frowned. “Girl, what are you doin’ out there all alone in the dark?”
Her ploy had worked; the spell was broken, the tension that had sizzled dangerously between them lessened, yet it never died away completely, and Reagan knew that it would be there, lying dormant just beneath the surface, ready to leap to life the next time they were alone together, a circumstance she must steadfastly avoid. “I’m not alone,” Reagan called out as Jackson softly swore. “Mr. Jackson is with me, and he’s been hurt. Would you send Kevin Murphy for the doctor? I think he may be leakin’ brains or somethin’.”
“Murphy is to remain where he is!” Jackson shouted. “There will be no physician! Now leave us!”
Bessie closed the door, muttering to herself.
Fixing him with a look, Reagan tried to snatch free of his grasp, but Jackson would not allow it. “This discussion is not over yet.”
“It’s not a discussion,” she countered. “It’s an argument upon which we can never agree!” She sighed, breathing deeply, deliberately forcing herself to be calm, to distance herself from her roiling emotions, from him. “Lord, Jackson, I’m so tired of fighting.”
The tic worked furiously in his scarred cheek. His aspect was fierce, his voice taut with strain. “Three days. It’s all I ask. Three days and three nights in which to convince you that you belong here with me, in which to change your mind. Unless, of course, you are afraid to risk it... afraid that you will no longer wish to go.”
Reagan closed her eyes, fighting against the impulse to leap upon his challenge. It was a way to save face, to stay with him a little while longer, but would it solve anything in the long run?
She could never reconcile herself to the idea of being his mistress, not in a hundred lifetimes. And he would never willingly make a commitment.
She wasn’t even sure he had it in him.
A dull throb blossomed behind her eyes. She’d told the truth. She was weary of struggling. She didn’t want to argue; she could not give in. More than anything she wanted to wash the soot from her skin and her hair, and she wanted to sleep. Jackson just wanted his way.
He was so hardheaded, so focused, so determined to have his head in everything. She could not change his mind or soften his stance. She knew that from experience, but she could change the subject. “We should talk about tonight, about Whiskey Joe’s place.”
“I would rather talk about us,” he said softly.
“You nearly died, Jackson. We both did. I have a right to know what is going on.”
‘‘I remembered something,” he admitted with a sigh, ‘‘about the night Clay was killed. A sound—a rustling sound back between the bales, a sound like someone settling down to sleep. It led me to believe that someone else was there that night, that someone had witnessed the argument, and perhaps, just perhaps, what came after.”
“And that someone was Whiskey Joe.”
He frowned, massaging the back of his neck with the fingers of his right hand, giving an openhanded Gallic flourish with his left. “The pieces fit. He often slept there when sodden with drink. I let him in myself countless times, rather than have him stumble all the way out to his cabin. Yet the last time I took him to the warehouse, he refused to go near the place.”
“When was that?”
“The night Malcolm Heath was killed. I was chasing Heath down the waterfront and stumbled into Joe. By the time I got my bearings again, Heath was gone, and Joe was acting strangely. He said it was a bad place, and scurried off into the fog.”
“So you went there tonight intending to question him?”
“I was close, so damnably close to finding out what happened that night! I could feel it. But as soon as I stepped over the threshold, I knew that I was not alone. And there was something else,” he said, struggling to recall what had occurred. “An odd smell—like smoking tallow and bear grease. As I turned toward the shadows by the door, I was grabbed from behind, and that’s all that I remember. I must have lost consciousness and hit my head when I fell.”
He paused, massaging the knot at his temple. “The next thing I knew, I was waking to the sound of your voice. I suppose that in a sense I am fortunate you decided to leave. If you had not been passing by when you did, there would be no need for us to have this discussion, and nothing to hold you here.”
“I wasn’t passing by, exactly,” Reagan said, unsure just how much to tell him, how much to hold back. “I was headed for the ferry when I thought I heard your voice, and decided to investigate.” She paused, moistening lips suddenly gone dry with a flick of her tongue. “It was your uncle I heard. He was standing over the dark silhouette of a man lying in the doorway of Whiskey Joe’s cabin.”
“Uncle Navarre?” he said, his voice full of incredulity. “That’s impossible. Had he stumbled across me, he would have stayed to help. If there is one thing in my life that is a constant—the only thing of which I can be certain—it is my uncle’s sense of familial loyalty. He plucked me from the rain-washed gutter the night Papa laid me low, and thereby saved my life. He would never harm me, of all people, Reagan. He simply is not capable.”
“That’s not all,” she informed him. “Navarre wasn’t alone. The big ape who grabbed you was Abe McFarland. From the sounds of things, I’d say they’re in league with one another. Abe set fire to Joe’s cabin, and your uncle watched it bum.”
“There must be some mistake,” Jackson said, “some reasonable explanation. Why would Uncle Navarre have dealings with Crazy Abe? And why would he want to harm either of us? What could he possibly have to gain by your demise?”
�
�Silence,” Reagan supplied. “Anonymity.” She shook her head. ‘‘He saw me spyin’ on him from the bushes, and knew that he’d been caught. I don’t know his motives for having truck with Abe, but I know what I saw, and what I heard, and your uncle’s up to his eyeballs in this thing.”
He made no further comment, no argument on his uncle’s behalf, yet she could tell from his deepening frown that he was not prepared to believe Navarre Broussard a villain.
“I really should be going in,” Reagan said. “Annette will have drawn my bath by now.”
She turned to go, but he called her back. “Wait, please, there is something else I must say.”
There was something in his voice that swept the anger and the worry and the frustration from her. Suddenly filled with a strange sense of anticipation, she raised her gaze to his, and felt the force of their connection.
It was electric, and physical, and oh, so much deeper than that. The pull she felt toward Jackson was unlike anything she had ever known or experienced, or perhaps ever would again. The silken threads that bound them were entangled around her very essence, a bond neither time nor distance could ever break.
He sensed it, too.
She could see it in his face, in his fathomless green gaze, and perhaps that was the reason he fought it so hard. Men liked to keep things simple, and what was happening between them was anything but.
“Kaintuck, I—”
“Yes?”
Lifting a smoke-darkened hand, he brushed at a smudge on her cheek, then bent and brushed her lips with his, a promise of a kiss. “I think... well, actually I’m certain that I. ...” Reagan strained toward Jackson, who sighed and, ignoring the throbbing in his skull, lowered his head to take her lips.
This was the moment he’d been waiting for, his moment, the moment when he would bare his soul to the rustic temptress who’d stolen his heart. The deciding moment in their relationship... and after it was done, there would be no looking back.
Despite his earlier difficulties, the words welled up inside him, barging their way past his Adam’s apple, crowding together on the back of his tongue... but before he broke the kiss, before he had the chance to give voice to his thoughts, a shout rang out behind them, underscored by a clatter of hooves and the rattle of coach wheels on the cobbles somewhere in the distance.
Bride of the Shining Mountains (The St. Claire Men) Page 25
