Natchez Flame (36 page)

“Not this time.”

Sue Alice sighed. “I hope for both a’ your sakes you’re right.”

The meal that night was strained and a little too silent. Everyone seemed to sense the coming confrontation. When Priscilla declined a sherry in the drawing room with her hostess and asked for a moment with Brendan, the others politely melted away.

She took his arm and let him lead her out the French doors to the garden. The moon had begun to wane, but it still lit their way. Whale-oil lanterns along the oyster-shell path helped a little more.

“I hope your investigation is proceeding as you wished,” Priscilla said, breaking the awkward silence.

Brendan drew a small cigar from the pocket of his shirt, struck a match against the trunk of a magnolia, and lit up, blowing a puff of pungent tobacco smoke
into the air. “As a matter of fact, I think we’re very close to a solution.” “I’m glad to hear it.”

“As soon as things are cleared up, I’ll be going back to Texas.” Light blue eyes searched her face. “Will you be going with me, Silla?”

An ache rippled through her, then it was gone. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. I’ve given this a lot of thought, Brendan. It just isn’t going to work between us. I’m not cut out for the sort of life you want me to lead. I’m going back to Cincinnati, back where I belong.”

A muscle in his jaw grew taut. “Now who’s runnmg?”

Priscilla glanced away. “Maybe I am. It doesn’t really matter. My decision is made. I’m leaving sometime tomorrow.”

“I hear your voice, Priscilla. I hear you speaking, but I don’t recognize the woman who’s saying the words. I wish I understood what’s happened. If I’ve done something … if you still feel I’m responsible for Charity’s accident—”

“It isn’t that. Chris was right. What happened was an accident.”

“If there’s anything I can do, anything I can say to put things back the way they were, just tell me.” She only shook her head. “We had something special, Priscilla. Whenever we were together, whenever we made love—”

“What happened between us was a mistake. I hope you’ll try to understand.”

He took a long draw on his cigar, exhaled slowly, the smoke curling into the cool night sky, then he
dropped it on the ground and crushed it out with the heel of his boot.

“There was a time, Priscilla, when I admired you. I watched you cross that prairie and nothing seemed able to stop you. You knew nothing of the country, nothing of that way of life, and yet you kept on. You had more grit, more determination than any ten women I’d ever known. Now, I look at you and I wonder whatever gave me the idea you could help me conquer that land of mine—whatever made me think you could even survive.”

He caught her chin and roughly forced her to look at him. “I guess I was right about you in the first place. Tomorrow you get on that boat and you go back to wherever it was you came from. I don’t want you. I don’t need you. And I don’t love you—maybe I never did.”

Brendan let her go. With a look that told her exactly what he thought of her, he turned his back and strode toward the house. She watched the angry set to his broad shoulders, the movement of his narrow hips, she watched the way the muscles bunched beneath his shirt, the moonlight on his thick dark hair.

I don’t want you. I don’t need you. And I don’t love you—maybe I never did.

He disappeared inside the house, and Priscilla felt the solitude like a weight across her shoulders. She stared at the door he’d closed between them—the door she had closed—and wondered for the first time if she had done the right thing.

In minutes the door opened again and Brendan strode out, heading toward the stables in the rear.
For the first time in days, her heart did more than thud dully against her ribs. It beat with an intensity that frightened her. Her chest felt tight, tears filled her eyes and began to slip down her cheeks.

I don’t want you. I don’t need you. And I don’t love you—maybe I never did.

Priscilla sat there trembling, hurting inside and not understanding. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? It had seemed so right when she’d made her decision. In the glow of the moon she saw Brendan’s tall silhouette atop one of Chris Bannerman’s big bay horses. He pulled his hat brim down and rode off without a backward glance.

For the very first time it occurred to her just exactly what she was giving up. Brendan was the man she loved, the only man she would ever love. He was strong and loving, giving and caring, passionate and protective. For her there would never be a man who could take his place.

She had wanted home and family above all else—but she also wanted love.

Brendan had offered her those things and more, yet she had turned him away.

The lump in her throat grew so big it threatened to choke her. She
had
to go back. She wasn’t cut out for his kind of life.

I don’t want you. I don’t need you. And I don’t love you—maybe I never did.

She had meant to end their relationship in the gentlest possible way. It had never occurred to her that Brendan might be wanting an end to it, too.

Priscilla forced her feet to move ahead, forced herself to walk the lonely pathway through the garden.
As long she had thought he loved her, she’d been able to maintain control, keep her tight, protective wall around her. In a perverse way, she suddenly realized, it was the strength of Brendan’s love that made her able to give him up. Without it, she saw the truth of how lonely and bleak her life would be.

I don’t want you. I don’t need you. And I don’t love you—maybe I never did.

Never had so few words hurt so much. It should have made things easier, knowing this was what he wanted, too. Instead, a new pain lanced her heart, burning, twisting, hurting more with every step. There was no numbness now, no emptiness to shield her. During the days after the accident, she had lost him, her coldness had driven him away. It was what she had wanted—what she’d had to do in order to survive.

Now that she had achieved her goal, she wanted nothing more than a merciful end to her agony.

You’ve got to go through with this, Priscilla. You can’t live the way he does.
The voice inside her strengthened her resolve. She thought of little Charity, lying on the floor in a pool of blood, of the way she had panicked and run. She remembered the Indian she had killed, how sick and empty she had felt. She was doing the right thing.

Besides, Brendan didn’t want her—she really had no choice.

Placing one unsteady step in front of another, she had almost reached the porch when the snap of a twig underfoot drew her attention.

“Matthew?” She prayed the disturbing sound was
just the boy, playing some childish game. Instead Mace Harding stepped from the cover of a tree, his black eyes glinting with triumph. “Evenin’, Miz Egan. Time to go home.”

Merciful heavens, when will this nightmare end?
Priscilla tried to scream, but Harding’s hand clamped over her mouth.

Dave Reeves and Kyle Sturgis, two of Stuart’s henchman, stepped up beside Mace to help him still her movements, stuff a gag into her mouth, and bind her hands and feet. They dropped a canvas bag over her head, then one of them lifted her onto his shoulder.

“I’ve got an errand to run,” Mace said, dumping her roughly on the floor of a carriage. “You two can take it from here.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get her home,” one of them said. Mace’s footfalls receded, she heard the sound of horse’s hooves riding away, then the carriage started up.

How had they found her? Only the Bannermans and Brendan knew she was staying at Evergreen. And, of course, Barton Stevens, the attorney whose name would have appeared on the annulment papers.

Now that she thought about it, Stuart would have very little trouble forcing a demure little man like Stevens to talk. But why bother? She had shown Stuart clearly this time that she didn’t want to be his wife. Why didn’t he just let her go?

The carriage rolled over the cobblestones, jolting
her with every rock and pothole, but eventually came to a halt. Someone carried her into the house, which she recognized as Stuart’s when Kyle pulled the sack off her head, tearing the last of the pins from her hair. It tumbled in a riot of long dark curls around her shoulders.

“Welcome home, my dear.” Stuart stood in the foyer, looking as handsome and imposing as ever. He wore an expensive dark gray frock coat, brocade silver waistcoat, and light gray trousers, his sandy hair perfectly groomed. “Take her upstairs to her room, untie her, and lock her in.”

Sturgis lifted her into his arms, climbed the stairs, and carried her into the room she had occupied before. Using a knife he took from the sheath at his waist, he cut the ropes that bound her wrists and ankles, then untied the gag in her mouth.

“As the boss says, ‘Welcome home, ma’am.’” He gave her a look that clearly spoke disapproval, then went out and locked the door.

Priscilla sank down on the bed. “Dear Lord, what will happen to me now?”

Brendan might not be home for hours and even when he got there, considering his problems with the law and the way things stood between them, she wasn’t sure he’d involve himself in her life again. Even when Chris and Sue Alice discovered her missing, with her sporadic comings and goings of late, they wouldn’t start looking for her right away. In the meantime, what would Stuart do?

As the thought occurred, footsteps echoed in the hallway. Two men. The heavier footfalls she recognized as Stuart’s. Outside the room, a key grated in
the lock, the door swung open, and Stuart walked in. He held a brandy snifter in one hand and a glass of sherry in the other. While Priscilla stood staring, he crossed the room and extended the sherry.

“I’m not thirsty.”

“Take it.”

“I don’t want it.”

Stuart set his snifter on the bureau, carried the sherry to where she stood, clasped the back of her neck, and forced the glass against her lips. Priscilla tried to twist away, but his hold grew tighter and he held her easily. She finally gulped down a burning swallow, and he took the glass away.

“That’s better,” he said.

“I want an annulment, Stuart.” Her voice sounded shaky; she prayed he wouldn’t notice. “Surely, Mr. Stevens has made that perfectly clear.”

“Mr. Stevens has been out of town,” he said with an iron control that was only too apparent. “Or I would have located your whereabouts sooner.”

“Why are you doing this? You don’t love me, and I don’t love you. I want to go back to Cincinnati.”
No you don’t. You want to he with Brendan.
The unbidden thought rocked her almost as much as Stuart’s presence. “I … I want to go home.”
Liar.

“Your home is with me, my dear. You’re my wife, though you seem unable to accept that.” He took a sip of his brandy, set the glass down, and pulled off his frock coat, hanging it neatly over the back of a brocade satin chair.

“I’m partly to blame for that,” he said. “If I had done my duty by you that first night, none of this would have happened.” He unfastened a diamond
stickpin, untied his black silk stock, and laid them over the chair.

“What … what are you doing?”

“What I should have done before—ending any grounds you might have for an annulment. Take off your dress, Priscilla. It isn’t up to the quality I had purchased for you, but I’m sure you don’t want to see it in shreds.” He started unbuttoning his shirt.

“But … but what about the time I spent with Brendan … your concern for legitimate heirs?”

He tugged the shirt from the waistband of his breeches, unbuttoned the cuffs, shrugged it off and tossed it away. The sandy hair on his chest glistened in the lamplight. His face and neck were tanned, his hands and wrists, but the rest of his skin looked pale.

“Are you carrying Trask’s child?” he asked.

“It’s … possible.” She hadn’t thought about it before—now that she did, a surge of joy welled up inside her.

“You monthly time has come and gone—either you are or you aren’t. Either way, it doesn’t matter.”

He doesn’t know Brendan’s in Natchez.
Mace Harding hadn’t seen them together! At least Brendan was safe. Stuart started toward her, but Priscilla backed away.

“Stuart, please. It’s never going to work out between us. I don’t want to be your wife.”

Stuart’s eyes turned hard. “I intend to have you, Priscilla. Whether you believe it or not, I’ve discovered I’m quite fond of you. Now you may remove that dress, get in that bed, and do your wifely duty—or you may fight me. In which case, I will call Kyle Sturgis in here to hold you down and strip you naked.
If it takes all four of my men, I intend to lay claim to you this evening, my dear. I would suggest you make up your mind to it.”

Priscilla just stood there. “No.”

In two angry strides, Stuart reached her, grabbed the front of her dark green silk dress, and ripped it to her waist. The sound of rending fabric echoed in the silence of the room. Her heart lodged somewhere in her throat, Priscilla tried to fight him, but he was stronger than she ever would have guessed.

Dragging her over to the big four-poster bed, he pressed her down on the soft feather mattress, grabbed her chemise and ripped it open, leaving her breasts bare above the top of her corset. Priscilla raked her nails down his cheek.