Patricia Potter (33 page)

“’Tis preferable to swimming at that hour,” he replied, the smile growing larger.

“It depends on the choices.”

“And how odious they are?”

“Exactly.”

Levi broke in. “I assume thee have met.”

“Ah, yes,” Quinn said. “In fact, I came here to tell you of her demise.”

“Her…?” Levi’s face, if possible, became even more puzzled.

“She left the
Lucky Lady
last month,” Quinn said. “Between stops.” He turned back to her, his eyes very dark, very intense. “It was a damn fool thing to do.”

The very intensity of his expression left her without a retort. His face was thinner than it had been, his bearing not quite as arrogant despite his challenging, teasing words.

He didn’t wait for her to reply, and continued. “But I’m damned glad to see you alive.”

Meredith heard the underlying strain in his voice, the concern, even the pain, and it startled her. She had not considered the possibility that he might believe her dead or that he might care. He seemed not to care for much at all. But as she slowly looked up at him, she saw the muscle throb at his throat, the only outward sign, she was beginning to learn, that betrayed deep feeling.

“I swim well,” she said merely.

“In the winter, even the strongest swimmer can die in those currents, or of the cold,” he said. “I’m sorry you believed it preferable to my presence.”

This time she could not mistake the pain in the words, although they were spoken in the same light mocking tone. She realized with sudden insight that they were intended as an apology and self-accusation and, furthermore, that both were rare and excruciatingly difficult for him.

She wanted to reach out to him, to drive away the shadow lurking in that handsome face, to touch the cleft in his chin. She no longer cared what he had done; she only wanted to ease the strain so obvious in his body.

As if he understood, his mouth relaxed slightly and he looked once again at Levi. “Would you tell Miss Seaton that I am one of you and of no danger to her?”

Levi had been studying both of them: the tautness of their bodies, the shock in each face as they saw each other, the flow of energy between them, which, if not wholly visible, was certainly strong and alive and vibrating.

“It’s obvious thee know each other,” he said dryly, answering his own earlier question, which had been ignored. “Captain Devereux has been with us four years and has become our most successful conductor along the Mississippi line.” He turned to Meredith. “And our Meredith joined us when she was but fifteen. Thee did not know…?”

Quinn turned to Levi. “Unfortunately, I only guessed several weeks ago…after I found her outside Elias’s warehouse and,” he hesitated a moment, “kidnapped her.”

Levi stared at him with reproach. “Thee knows my feelings on violence.”

“Aye,” Quinn said. “But I believed there was no choice. When I discovered later that she might be with the Railroad, she disappeared.” It was only half the truth, even less than half, and he thought Levi knew it from the piercing look he received from the Quaker. Yet Levi asked no questions, and Quinn was grateful.

Quinn heard the uncomfortable uncertainty in his own voice when he looked at Levi. “May I talk to her alone?”

Meredith started up out of the chair, more in retreat than agreement. “No,” she exploded.

Once more, Quinn and Meredith received searching looks from the leader of the Underground Railroad. He saw the anguish in Meredith’s eyes and the determination in Quinn Devereux’s. His hand went out to her shoulder. “I think it well that thee listen,” he said softly, nodding to his wife and Cam to follow him as he left the room.

“Levi?” she said in one last cry for help, but it was ignored. She felt, more than saw, Captain Devereux approach and gently guide her back into her chair, then take one next to it. She felt her hand being taken by one of his, and her chin being lifted by the strong callused fingers of another. She kept her eyes lowered, not wanting to see the face that had always fascinated her with its strength and secrets.

“Meredith,” he said, and his voice, low and compelling, commanded her to look at him.

Her eyes slowly moved upward until they finally met his, and she was instantly lost. For the first time since she had met him, they were unguarded, and she saw not the weeks of pain she had suffered, but years. Years and years of raw lacerating loneliness and something else, something she couldn’t define. Despite her resolve to keep away from him, she moved closer, her hand reaching up and touching his face as if to wipe away the horrors she was seeing there.

The tenderness was his undoing. That she could have such a feeling for him after what he had done, after what he had made her do, was incomprehensible to him. “I thought…I thought I had killed you,” he said in a broken voice, and she suddenly understood his ravaged look as he came into the kitchen, the new shadows in his face.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t intend that…I just had to…get away.”

His jaw worked. “From me?”

“From the way you made me feel,” she said simply, knowing all the games between them were over. “And I thought…that you cared only to find answers to your questions.”

“I knew the answers, Meredith. I think I knew them for a long time, but I needed the excuse…” His voice trailed off and he closed his eyes as he admitted the truth. He
had
known, somehow he had known. From that first dinner on the
Lucky Lady,
something inside him had told him Meredith was different, that she was special. It was why, he knew, he had taken the trouble to fence with her, to tease her, to enrage her. He had never done that before; he had merely used women, and dismissed them. As he had been used and dismissed.

And he had nearly destroyed her because he had not been able to admit to any affection, any love, any emotion other than curiosity. His hand tightened on hers.

“I’m not…very good at saying…”

His stumbling words, so unlike anything she knew of him, sliced to her heart. She ached for him. She ached for herself. Neither of them had been very good at expressing themselves, except with their bodies. Perhaps that was why they had been so very good together that afternoon.

The remembrance brought back sensations she had felt with him, red-hot sensations that even now were gathering strength inside her. But there was more, so much more. As she looked at his face, which was for the first time vulnerable, she knew it was love that beat so fiercely inside her. She swallowed hard, afraid of herself, more than a little afraid of him, and the stark raw emotions he unleashed in her. She was afraid to love him, afraid of what he would do to that love.

It was as if he read her mind, and he wanted to say he would never hurt her. But he couldn’t. As long as he continued with the Underground Railroad, as long as she continued, the danger of loss was there, of death, of imprisonment. And there were his other dark fears.

Desire hovered in the air between them: the need, the longing, the sweet wild craving that had always been there and that had been made stronger by their lovemaking.

He wanted to say he loved her.

She wanted to say she loved him.

Yet years of caution, of hurt, made the actual words impossible for either to voice. But they were real. Very real.

Meredith felt warmth running in honeyed streams throughout her body. Dear God, but she loved him. The realization was both like a knife to her heart and a balm to her soul. He would not be an easy man to love. Yet it was such a fine feeling, so giddily wonderful, to know she could.

He smiled ruefully, fully understanding the battling emotions in her face. He felt them all too well himself. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry.

Instead, his hand increased its pressure on hers, and he rose, gently bringing her up with him.

“We have to talk,” he said simply, and she could do nothing but nod. If he had asked her to accompany him to hell, she would have done so.

C
hapter 18

MEREDITH WOULD
never know how he managed it on Christmas Eve, but Quinn found a closed carriage and, with a bill to the driver and an admonition to keep driving, he hustled her inside and took her in his arms.

They had not even said farewell to Levi and the others. Quinn said they would understand. Meredith was not quite so sure, but his magic had once more wrapped her in a cocoon, making her oblivious to anything or anyone else.

It was cool in the carriage and freezing cold outside. Dusk was forming and, from the glass windows, they could see the cozily lit homes decorated with Christmas finery. Wandering groups of carolers filled the air with songs of triumph and joy and hope.

They had always been bittersweet songs for Meredith, striking deep into the part of her that had always longed for family. But now, tucked under the strong arm of Quinn, she relished them, and her heart hummed along with the eager young voices and filled with a quiet but potent exultation of its own.

There was a possessiveness in Quinn’s touch, an almost desperate quality that made her look up. His lips brushed hers lightly as if he couldn’t quite believe she was here.

His hand traced the curves of her face. She had never looked so delectable, this silly Miss Seaton, who had been a member of the Underground Railroad since she was fifteen, who obviously could swim better than most men, who apparently thought little before plunging into a river and swimming to snake-infested shores, and who could paint with the best of artists. She was all that and more, he thought, as an uncertain smile formed on her face. The look in her eyes seemed to reach inside him and steal what remained of his senses.

“You will never know what damned agony I’ve been through in the past weeks,” he said softly.

“I thought…”

He leaned down and kissed her mouth, his hand disentangling her hat from her head and running through the long honey-colored hair. His heart thudded as the kiss deepened, and his tongue entered her mouth with long scalding sweeps. He rejoiced as her own tongue responded, and met his. She was almost shy at first, but soon she was meeting his every thrust with one of her own. He could feel her body quiver with his slightest touch, and knew his own was doing the same.

Could this really be love?

He tore his mouth away and rained kisses up and down her face, then her neck and finally her throat, thinking how fine her skin was, how it tasted like spring flowers. He felt her hand move behind his neck and play with the hair that grew long there, and he loved every light touch. He had dreamed of this over and over again in the past fortnight, and now he groaned as the dream became reality.

He pulled away and stared at her face, at the kiss-swollen mouth and eyes now misty. He had almost destroyed her once. He would not do it again.

“How did you come to be in Cincinnati?” he said finally, when the great ball of sadness cleared his throat.

“A girlhood friend. I’ve been visiting her and her grandparents for years.”

“Abolitionists?” It was a guess, but little else made sense. Something, or someone, other than her half sister had to have been involved.

She nodded, not sure whether she was relieved at the change of mood. She had been drowning in him, in his magnetism, in the feelings he always created in her, the feelings that disregarded practicality and the good sense she had always held dear.

“The painting was yours?”

She nodded shyly.

He grinned. “I found another. I think it came on the same trip we did, but I didn’t know it then. I was bitterly afraid it was your last.”

“The fields,” she said.

“The fields,” he confirmed. “It’s buried in one of my trunks. I didn’t think I could bear to look at it again. Now…perhaps…”

Meredith snuggled deeper into his arms. “I’m glad you like my work, particularly the rainbow.”

“Hmm,” he murmured, his temperature beginning to rise once more. She fit so well, cloak and all, into the planes of his own body. “There was someone else on that boat.”

She looked up with puzzlement.

“Daphne, your maid.”

Meredith clapped her hands with joy. “I’m so glad. I’ve been terribly worried about her. I’ve had…friends in New Orleans looking.”

Quinn couldn’t hold back a chuckle as she grinned and started laughing herself.

“We
have
been at cross-swords, haven’t we?” she said with a giggle, but it wasn’t the silly giggle he had heard in company. It was delighted and delightful, and full of amusement. “I had been trying to find a way of getting her North without giving myself away.”

“Despite the wonderful way she dresses your hair?” he asked teasingly.

“No one else has been able to do it quite that way,” she admitted with mirth. “She kept trying, in her quiet way, to do something else. I think she was quite distressed that I insisted on that particular fashion.”

He leaned back and laughed. “Perhaps that’s one reason I was desperate to get her away from you. I always thought your hair held a great deal of promise.” His fingers touched it now. “And I was right.”