Love A Rebel...Love A Rogue (Blackthorne Trilogy)

by Henke, Shirl

  “Well be on our way now, Dev, Polly, Lady Barbara,” Quintin said, trying to avoid Dev's accusing eyes. But just before he placed the gag in Devon's mouth, his cousin had the last word.

  “The next time we meet, Quint, I'll be shooting.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  As they rode toward Savannah from the Golden Swan, Barbara wanted Devon to say something to break the bleak silence, but he remained uncommunicative and brooding. Oh, Dev, what's going to happen to us? Would he just leave her with Monty and walk away without a backward glance?

  She knew she had asked for nothing more that first time when she had come to him, but during the weeks of their trek back to civilization, they had repeatedly made love. She had grown accustomed to sleeping next to him and waking up in his arms. And now after a scant few weeks, her time with Dev was over.

  Unwilling to break her word and plead with him to stay, Barbara ended the silence between them by asking, “Are you still thinking about your cousin?”

  The look on Dev's face reflected his sense of pain and betrayal for a fleeting moment. Then he said, “We grew up together. Quint is more my brother than Andrew. All this time he deceived me—ever since this accursed rebellion began. Damn him! The next time we meet, one of us will kill the other.” His voice was as grim as the threatening gray skies overhead.

  ”I don't think he'll kill you, nor you him, no matter your politics. He left us bound so Mistress Bloor's servants quickly found us. And yet you did not pursue him.”

  Devon snorted in disgust. “We both grew up among the Muskogee. Quint's spent nearly as much time as I in the swamps and back country. No one can find him if he wants to hide.”

  That subject was obviously closed. As they rode on, Barbara mentally rehearsed the story they had arranged for Monty. Dev had coached her. Polly had outfitted her suitably in simple garments such as a fisherman's wife might wear. Gathering her courage, she offered, “Are you certain you don't want to come into the house with me and meet Monty? I know he'd be grateful that you saved my life. He needn't know about the rest.” Her voice ended on a breathless note.

  Devon turned to her with a scowl on his face. “We've been over this already, Barbara. As a quarter-breed Muskogee I'm not socially acceptable in the better circles of Savannah. And how would we explain your being alone with me for more than a month since the Hyperion wrecked? Your brother, being a gentleman, would be obliged to call me out. And, not being a gentleman, I'd be obliged to kill him,” he added, his mood lightening for a brief moment. “No, tis best to say you were rescued by a simple fisherman and his family, who nursed you back to health and then brought you to Savannah.”

  “Where they were too noble to remain and ask for any reward.” She parroted the ending to the story they'd concocted, hating every syllable of it. “Dev, I don't know if I can do this—deceive Monty.”

  “You can do it to save your reputation. People believe what they want to believe. Look at the way Quint deceived me. I believed he was as loyal an Englishman as I am.”

  Barbara lapsed into silence. There was nothing to reply. The outlying shanties of Savannah were past them now, and elegant houses of brick had come into sight. Soon he would leave her to make her way to the assembly house on Reynolds Square. She had memorized the directions.

  Dev, I love you.

  Her only answer was the wind blowing off the Atlantic.

  * * * *

  When Barbara reached the assembly house, General Prevost himself was there for a meeting with Governor Wright. Both men, solicitous over her ordeal and delighted at her miraculous rescue and recovery, had sent her on her way to her brother with a young lieutenant as escort. She silently prayed she could retell her fanciful tale one more time.

  After the lieutenant helped her dismount in front of an elegant, two-story brick house on Oglethorpe Square, he explained that it had belonged a rebel family forced to flee the city.

  Barbara was trembling, fearful of convincing Monty with her story, but more than anything, she was bereft at losing Devon. He had ridden away without looking back. She turned her attention to the house, where a flash of red appeared at the door. Then Monty ran swiftly to greet her.

  Sweeping her up in his arms, he said, “Barbara, is it truly you! Lud, I was certain you were dead when I received word of the Hyperion’s wreck.” He looked at the coarse, barleycorn skirt and linen bodice she wore, then inspected her sun-darkened face. “What has happened to you?”

  “More like what has happened to you?” she responded. One eye was blackened and his jaw swollen and discolored. He waved away her question and repeated his. Quickly, she recounted her story again as he led her into the house, where a visitor—tall and thin, with light brown hair and cold eyes—waited. He was expensively dressed, obviously a gentleman, and he had overheard almost all of her explanation to Monty. Barbara smiled uncertainly. Something about the stranger made her uncomfortable, as if he alone knew she had fabricated her tale of shipwreck and rescue.

  “Barbara, may I present one of my closest friends, Andrew Blackthorne. Andrew, this is my sister Barbara, whom we all feared was dead.” Monty was beaming with excitement, his pale face flushed with delight in spite of his bruises.

  As Andrew took her hand and saluted it lightly, Barbara felt a peculiar thrill of revulsion course through her. So this is Dev's half brother, who's ashamed of his Muskogee blood. She saw no resemblance and decided that Andrew must take after his mother, since Dev had already told her that he was cut in Alastair Blackthorne's very image. She curtsied as Blackthorne spoke.

  “I”m enchanted to meet such a beautiful mermaid rescued from the cruel clutches of the sea.”

  Forcing herself to smile at him, she asked, “How have you come to be such fast friends with my brother?”

  “London, m'dear,” Monty replied. ”I was posted home back in '74. Andrew here had come over on business. The Blackthornes own one of the largest mercantile houses in the colonies.”

  “But of course, Lady Barbara, you were just a child in the schoolroom so many years ago. How old and stodgy any man past thirty must seem to a fresh and lovely woman such as you.”

  She inclined her head at the compliment but forbore to correct his description of himself. “You are too kind, sir.”

  Monty summoned an array of servants and set them to drawing bathwater, preparing food, and securing more suitable clothing for her, then turned back to his sister. “Of course you'll need to have a whole new wardrobe. We have some excellent dressmakers here in the city, I'm given to understand, and as I recall, there's nothing you love more than shopping. Well have to get you outfitted before the Habershams' ball. Blast, I have to be at Fort Halifax all day tomorrow.” He cast an embarrassed look at Andrew. “We've just had a spy escape and must plan to counter any damage he might do.”

  “I'd be honored if you'd allow me to escort you shopping tomorrow, my lady,” Andrew volunteered.

  His odd light eyes seemed brown one moment, then almost colorless, like a chameleon's. Barbara smiled woodenly. ”I should be delighted, Mr. Blackthorne.” But you're the wrong Mr. Blackthorne. Dev! Will I ever see you again?

  * * * *

  Quintin stood outside the city house, looking up at his bedroom window from the darkness of the courtyard. It was midnight and every candle had been doused. The house was shrouded in silence. Did Madelyne sleep alone in his big wide bed?

  “How inconsiderate of me not to die when her little trap was sprung,” he muttered beneath his breath. He was a fool to have sneaked back into the city after seeing Solomon safely on his way to Charles Town. ”I should be searching for Marion in the South Carolina swamps.” But he had to see her one last time.

  As a boy, Quintin had often climbed the oak behind the house to escape when Robert locked him in his room as a punishment. He climbed up its spreading branches and entered the rear hall by an open window. Although autumn beckoned, the nights were still balmy. Silently he made his way down the dark hall to his room and open
ed the door.

  Moonlight bathed the room and spilled across the wide bed, filtering through the filmy gauze of the mosquito netting. Madelyne's slim body lay curled beneath a sheet, her dark hair spilling across the snowy pillows.

  Quint closed the door and moved to the bed, pulling the netting aside. She slept as innocently as a newborn. A bitter smile curved his lips. How deceiving appearances could be. He knelt on the bed and placed one hand over her mouth as he secured her wrists with the other.

  “Scream and I'll crush that slender white throat, wife,” he whispered in her ear.

  Madelyne came awake instantly, her eyes wide with shock as she stared up into Quintin's face. Again, she was struck by his cold beauty. A fallen angel.

  “Surprised to see me alive? Or did Major Caruthers explain how I escaped? No? Perhaps dear cousin Andrew, his good friend, broke the sad news to you.” He eased his hand from her mouth to her throat, daring her to try to cry out.

  “As God is my witness, Quint, I did not betray you.”

  “Then who did?” he snarled. “No one but you and Toby knew I was going to free Solomon Torres.”

  “All the men who rode with you knew. It must have been—”

  “My men are loyal—some of them are dead, thanks to you!”

  “Quint, I'm your wife. I pledged my loyalty to you.”

  His low, husky laugh had a hard edge to it. “So did my mother to my father. Odd, I realized when I returned to the Hill yesterday, Robert Blackthorne and I are more alike than ever I imagined. Both of us bound to the land—and cursed with faithless wives. Did you know Anne haunts him still? He's obsessed with the woman he hates. But I'll not carry your memory with me that way. I'm going to exorcise you from my mind and body, for whatever time remains in my life.” He yanked down the sheet and his eyes

  raked her slender figure, revealed clearly through the sheer lawn of her sleeping shift.

  “No, Quint, not this way—”

  “If you cry out, I swear you’ll have cause to regret it,” he said with silky menace in his voice.

  Madelyne watched, frozen in silence as he pulled off his boots and stockings, then shed his dark shirt and tossed it on the floor. His buckskin pants quickly followed onto the pile. She was hurt and angry, but more than that, she was afraid—for Quint, for his life which hung by a thread, and for their marriage. Always on shifting sand, it would not survive if he believed she could plot to send him to his death.

  Did simple revenge bring him back here to take her one last time in a hurtful parody of the passion to which he had introduced her? He must feel more than hatred for me, to do this. As he stood before her in splendid nakedness, his physical desire was clearly evident. She felt an answering response sing through her body. Listen for what I do, Quint, for what it means, for how I truly feel. She willed him to understand as she opened her arms to him.

  Quint expected her to resist, hoped she would so he could inflict a measure of pain on her to match the agony that squeezed his chest every time he thought of her betrayal. Yet she welcomed him, damn her! Even in this final act of their travesty of a marriage, she was besting him. Roughly, he pulled her into his embrace and savaged her mouth with a rapacious kiss, plunging his tongue deeply inside, foreshadowing what was to come.

  Madelyne could feel the raw hurt and anger inside him as he ravaged her with kisses. His lips traveled from her mouth down her cheek to her neck. She dug her nails into his shoulders and threw back her head, giving him full access to her throat and then her breasts. He ripped the sheer gown from her shoulders. She helped him by sliding it from her arms and shoving it below her hips.

  Quintin wanted to take her quickly with no preliminary lovemaking, to touch her delicate body as cruelly as she'd touched his soul. But once he felt her insidious softness, smelled her honeysuckle fragrance, he was lost. All thoughts of betrayal and punishment evaporated like fog at sunrise on the river. He cupped one breast in his hand, and she thrust it eagerly against his palm. His mouth followed where his hands led, hot and seeking.

  Moaning her pleasure as he suckled her nipples into hard, aching points, Madelyne ran her fingers through his hair, pulling his head to her wildly beating heart. Feel what I feel, Quint. Love me!

  They tumbled to their sides and rolled across the wide bed, locked in an embrace neither would relinquish. When she reached down and took his hard, smooth staff in her hands, his hips bucked against her. He let out a muffled oath of pleasure and anguish melded together and pulled the frothy gown from her lower body.

  As she guided him deep inside her and wrapped her legs around his hips, Madelyne thought she heard his murmur, “Damn you, damn you,” but she was not certain. The same surge of ecstasy that gripped him also held her prisoner as they arched and thrust in a fierce dance of passion. Quickly their breathing grew labored, their bodies sheened with perspiration in the warm night air.

  Quint rolled atop her and gazed at the delicate perfection of her breasts and belly. His hand caressed her nipples, then skimmed over her flat abdomen and touched her navel. When he looked at her, expecting to see triumph, he found instead that she, too, was caught in the web of ecstasy. Her hair spilled like ink across the white pillows, tangling as she tossed her head back and forth, writhing and grinding her body to the rhythm he set. Her eyes were closed in intense concentration, which he had learned meant she was on the edge of fulfillment. I should pull away, leave her empty and aching. But he could not. With a shudder that blinded him, he joined her.

  Madelyne felt the wave cresting, but as the contractions began, he slammed into her, harder and faster, his member swelling and stretching her. He gasped loudly and was dimly aware that she had placed her hand over his mouth as he stiffened, his whole body convulsing while he poured his seed deeply inside her womb.

  She clutched his hips tightly as she felt his release blend with her own. Please, Quint, give me a child. Let us create, not destroy.

  He collapsed on her, panting and spent. When his awareness returned, he realized how tightly she held him and at once pulled away, unwilling to gaze into those fathomless amber eyes, glowing in the moonlight, seeing into his soul. He rolled from the bed and began to dress quickly.

  Madelyne sat up in bed, dreading what would come next. Even expecting the worst, she flinched when he spoke.

  “Whatever charm it is about you that makes men behave like stags in rut, you have my leave to exercise it. Perhaps my cousin Andrew already has sampled it. God knows he's sniffed about you long enough. Now that you've seen to putting a price on my head, I'll not trouble you for some time...perhaps never, the way this endless war drags on.”

  She swallowed bitter bile and clutched her discarded nightgown to her body like protective armor. “Where will you go?” was all she could think to say.

  His glacial green eyes mocked her. “Considering how well you keep a confidence, dear wife, it would ill behoove me to tell you. Suffice it to say I'll join the American army in some capacity less despicable than spying. Not that Dev will forgive me any sooner than you or Robert.”

  Her eyes widened in shock. “Dev? He's returned and found out you're a rebel? I know how bitterly that must have hurt you both.”

  “The world is filled with hurt, Madelyne. It always has been. I've grown used to it, but I never relished inflicting it on my cousin.”

  “Only on me. You want to hurt me, don't you, Quint? For sins I've never committed.”

  “Beautiful liar,” he whispered, then vanished into the darkness, closing the door solidly behind him as she sat hunched in the center of the big, lonely bed.

  * * * *

  Barbara sat next to her brother, struggling to concentrate on the sermon being delivered by the rector of Christ Church. Useless. She let her eyes stray surreptitiously around the crowded church. By the standard of St. Paul's, it was a simple edifice, yet it had taken years to construct and had a splendid pipe organ. The gallery provided an excellent viewing area from which parishioners could watch the pries
t and various socially prominent members, who sat in their reserved pews down front.

  The Blackthorne family owned the most prominent pew, directly facing the altar. From Monty's pew across to the left she could see old Robert Blackthorne, ravaged by illness,yet sitting ramrod straight as if defying anyone to impugn his honor because his son had turned traitor.

  Andrew had told them at dinner last evening that the old man came from his plantation to the city just to make that fact irrefutably clear. The Blackthorne name had been besmirched with his son's treachery, but no one would accuse Robert Blackthorne of disloyalty or cowardice. Andrew sat at the opposite end of the pew with the chillingly beautiful Widow Fallowfield, whom Barbara had met at several social gatherings.

  Serena did not interest Barbara. It was the small, slim woman sitting between Robert and Andrew who caught her attention—Quintin's wife, Madelyne. How must she feel, being socially ostracized and whispered about behind her back? Everyone wondered if she had known about her husband's crimes. Barbara studied her delicate profile and pale, haunted eyes. Madelyne had entered the church with dignity and a certain stubborn pride that Barbara had admired.

  Barbara's speculations were interrupted when the rector closed his sermon and everyone knelt for prayers. When the worship concluded, she took Monty's arm and they waited their turn to file out of the church. That was when she heard a woman behind her murmur to her companion.

  “She has gall, I'll give her that. Sitting up front as bold as if her husband wasn't riding with an enemy army.”

  “Theirs was an arranged marriage, you know. Everyone said that wild young Quintin would never marry. There was no love lost between him and his Charles Town bride.”

  “Maybe soon she'll be a widow. I think young Andrew would fancy that. He's buzzed about her ever since she came to Georgia to wed his cousin.”