The Moon and the Stars (11 page)

“Why should I? You have no pity for anyone or anything, and I would never lower myself to beg mercy from you,” she stated mutinously.

He clamped his jaw tight and left her for a moment. When he returned, he handed her a bottle of liniment. “As I told you before, you will want to rub this on your body wherever you ache—it will help with the soreness. You should put some on your wrist as well.” He paused as if he did not know what else to say to her. “I am not in the habit of mistreating women.”

“You just singled me out for that honor?”

She glared at him as he walked away, and he turned back to her in time to see her fury. He actually smiled, which only made her angrier.

“I will make camp just over there,” he told her, nodding to a glade of trees. “Come on over when you are ready. I am sure you must be hungry.”

She watched him until he disappeared from sight, trying to decide if he was the cold-blooded killer she imagined him to be, or if he had a soft side and really cared that her wrist was hurt.

The pain in her backside reminded her that she would have to take her trousers down to apply the liniment. After the deed was awkwardly accomplished, she followed the smell of bacon frying. She was hungry and willing to endure Wade Renault's company as long as he gave her something to eat.

After she had eaten her fill of bacon and beans, she watched him douse the campfire. Her gaze followed him when he spread a blanket beneath the tree. “Don't think I'm going to lie beside you,” she said, coming to her knees and then standing up and holding her body stiff.

“Madame, we are in perfect agreement on that,” he remarked as he unfurled a second blanket several paces from his, and smoothed it. “It has always been my habit to sleep alone.”

She stared into the darkness and flinched when she heard an owl hoot in a nearby tree. “Are there very many wild animals out here?” she asked in a shaky voice.

“Of course. This is their habitat.” He unbuckled his gun belt and placed it beside his blanket. Then his hands went to the leg buckles on his chaps, and he slowly began to unbuckle them one by one. Erotic thoughts coursed through her mind. She became fascinated, wondering what pleasure those hands could stir alive in a woman if he so chose.

She felt her face flush. There should be nothing intimate about the way a man removed his chaps, but he
performed the deed in a manner that sent her heart slamming into her throat. He was the most masculine man she had ever known. It sounded trite, but he was like a work of art.

Angry with herself, she looked away when he eased himself down on his blanket and stretched out his long frame.

She heard him cock his rifle, and knew he had placed it close at hand. “You should not concern yourself about wild animals—I always hit what I shoot at.” He spoke without conceit, merely stating a fact.

She reluctantly settled on the other blanket. “I just bet you do.”

“If you are not sleepy, why do you not tell me about yourself, Madame Caroline Richmond Duncan?”

“Lovely weather we're having,” she said, unwilling to share any part of her personal life with him.

“I know what you are doing, madame.” Amusement laced his voice. “You do not want to talk to me, so you resort to speaking about the weather.”

She liked the sound of his clipped accent and found herself wanting to know more about him. “It isn't that I have nothing to say,” she said, swinging her head in his direction and offering him her most haughty glance. “It's more that I was taught if I was ever in the company of a person that I didn't particularly want to converse with, I should mention the weather.”

There was an amused twinkle in his eyes. “Anyone will concede that you are a properly brought up Southern lady.”

“There are clouds in the distance,” she said in an uninterested way. “I hope it won't rain again.”

“So it is to be the weather.”

She noticed the irritation in his tone and smiled to herself; it was the first time she'd penetrated that thick skin of his, and it felt good. “But then again,” she continued, “I could be wrong about the rain. The storm may very well pass us by altogether.”

He laid his head on folded arms. “You just do not know when to stop, do you?”

“You do not want to talk to me?”

“Good night, Mrs. Duncan.”

She wanted to throw something at him. “I certainly don't wish you a good night.”

“I hope you have one,” he said half to himself. “Otherwise I do not expect to get any sleep myself.”

She said nothing, but her gaze swept him from head to foot. She had never known a man like him, but then, she had never before met a bounty hunter. He appeared to have fallen asleep; she could see the steady rise and fall of his chest.

Caroline suddenly had the most outrageous fantasy: What would it feel like to lay her head against his chest and allow him to hold her? She wanted him to be her protector, not her captor. She was afraid of him, and yet there was a part of her that wanted to pour her heart out to him.

Why was that?

After a while, her eyes grew heavy and the ground grew harder. She had already moved her blanket once because a root was jabbing her in the back. Now she was even more uncomfortable, and she tossed and turned, trying to find a position in which she could fall asleep.

She heard him mutter a soft oath and watched as he
rolled to his feet. “Madame, will you settle down! You will not be fit to travel in the morning if you do not get some sleep.”

“I never slept on the ground before,” she answered tartly. “You may be a brute and accustomed to such sleeping conditions, but I am not.”

He stalked down the hill and soon returned with an armload of grass, which he spread on the ground, then made a second trip and repeated the deed. “Move your blanket onto this padding and maybe then we can both get some sleep.”

She ached all over, and now she was exhausted. Nothing in her life had prepared her to deal with a man like him. She moved her blanket as he had instructed, and he bent down beside her to help smooth it out.

Just as he was about to move away, she heard the cry of a wolf and then several other answering howls. She dove at him, pressing her body tightly against his.

“Will they come into camp?” she asked, looking up at him with fright in her eyes.

He eased her away from him and stepped several paces backward as if he needed to put some distance between the two of them. “There is nothing for you to be concerned about.”

“Those creatures sound very near,” she said, scooping up her blanket and moving closer to his. “Are you sure they won't come near us?”

“I told you not to worry.” He sounded frustrated. “Now, dammit, go to sleep. The wolves will not harm you, and neither will I.”

She turned her face into the blanket. He said he
would not harm her, but he already had. In making her a prisoner, he had degraded her, but the worst was yet to come. If she didn't find a way to escape, she would soon be under Brace's control. She could not let that happen. Brace would kill her without feeling any remorse.

Her eyes fluttered shut, and she sighed. She would just sleep for a little while. Maybe an hour or so. . . .

The sun had just touched the eastern horizon and tinted the sky a deep pink. The nocturnal creatures of the wilderness had already sought their safe dens and burrows, whereas the daytime creatures were embarking on their never-ending quests for food. Caroline awoke slowly and stretched her arms over her head.

With a soft groan she made it to a sitting position. There was not a place on her body that didn't ache. Gripping the rough tree trunk, she used it for leverage to move herself into a standing position.

She glanced around camp and found that Mr. Renault was nowhere in sight. She heard the neighing of horses and assumed that he must be tending to them. She was amazed that he had built a campfire and even cooked breakfast without waking her. The smell of fresh bacon made her stomach rumble.

When he led the horses toward her, she groaned, dreading the thought of getting back onto a saddle.
She shook her head. “I can't get back on that horse today. Must I?”

He stared at her grimly, slapping a pair of leather gloves against his thigh. “I should have taken into account the fact that you are a woman and made arrangements for us to travel by stagecoach to San Antonio. Of course, you probably would have caused me trouble if I had done that.”

Her eyes widened. “I am astonished. Are you admitting that you made a mistake?”

He tried to suppress the smile that played on his lips, but he was not entirely successful. She was such an enchanting woman, with a sense of humor and obvious intelligence. “Does it please you to know that I miscalculated?”

“Well, yes, it does,” she admitted. “You always seem to have everything planned out in advance. I'm surprised you made just this one little mistake.”

He walked toward her, and she took several steps backward. She wondered why he always seemed to stalk, instead of walking like everyone else. There was an air of arrogance and self-assurance about him that had intimidated her from their first meeting. And it still did.

“Did you apply the liniment like I told you to?”

“Of course I did. But it's not a miracle cure-all, if that's what you think,” she remarked bleakly. “I am very sore.”

He glanced down at his boot as he considered his options. “I will allow you to rest today if you will agree to apply the liniment several times. Even with this delay, we should make it to San Antonio in three days' time.”

“And if I don't want to get back on that horse?” She was testing him, which was a dangerous thing to do, and she knew it. “What will you do then?”

He gazed down at her, his lips set in a tight line. “I do not much care in what condition you arrive, as long as you can stay in that saddle.” His gaze drilled into her. “Or I could throw you across the saddle, although I have heard that is not a very comfortable way to travel.”

“You are inhuman.”

“I have been told that. It is good you believe it.”

“You are . . . you are—”

“Madame, I know exactly what you are thinking. You do not have to voice your every grievance. Just be quiet!”

And she was quiet, but only for a moment. “If you are married, I wonder how your wife puts up with your dreadful attitude toward women,” she said ungraciously.

He caught and held her gaze. “If I ever do marry, I will make sure my wife does not want to shoot me like you shot your husband.”

She was aghast. “You think—” She shook her head. “I did not shoot my husband. How dare you say such a thing to me! You are a fool!” she stated with fury building inside her. “A complete fool.”

His eyes swirled like molten lava. “No one before now has ever called me a fool.”

“Well, you are one!” She walked toward him, anger making her forget about the pain in her muscles, as well as the need to be cautious around him. “Brace told you that
I
shot my husband, and you believed him?”

He watched her closely, the first feelings of doubt surfacing. “He said something like that.”

“Nothing is beyond that man. He is totally without honor.” She looked at Wade in confusion. “But you must have already guessed that about Brace, haven't you? I never considered that he would make such an outrageous charge against me. I don't know why I didn't expect him to do something like that, but I didn't.”

“What did you expect?”

She was trying to gather her thoughts. What did Brace hope to accomplish by making such an outrageous fabrication? “You wouldn't understand even if I told you.”

He looped his horse's reins around his hand. “I understand this, Mrs. Duncan. In all my years of tracking criminals, I have yet to meet one who did not swear he was innocent.”

She took a step that brought her right in front of him. “I see how it is with you, so I'll save my breath and let you think what you will. You have already made up your mind about me, anyway.”

He led the horses away, leaving her to stare after him. She was as confused as she was angry. She would probably shoot him if she had a gun.

When he was out of sight, she began to pace back and forth. Brace was an evil man; she had always known that—but to blame Michael's death on her was beyond understanding. When she stopped to think about it, she could see how his mind would work. If he could make people believe that she had shot Michael, it would solve both his problems. If she was convicted
of murder, he imagined that the Duncan estate would go to him. She stopped a moment and leaned back against the tree trunk. But he had told the authorities right after it happened that Michael had shot himself. He was building a bed of lies. The truth was not in that man.

Nonetheless, she was in real trouble.

Her knees suddenly went weak, and she slumped to the ground. This was one of the bleakest days of her life. She dug her fingernails into the bark of the tree while her whole world tilted and blackness crushed in on her.

She fought against a fear that was so dark it felt as if she were smothering in it. She wiped her tears on the back of her hand, angry because Brace's evil had taken her by surprise once again.

Besides herself, there was only one other person who knew the truth about Michael's death. Lilly had helped her escape from Brace the day of Michael's death, but would she help her if it meant accusing her own son of murder? Caroline was not sure.

She knew that she had to get back to Charleston as quickly as possible, and she had to face Brace one last time before she could go on with her life.

She wasn't feeling well. She was achy, but maybe it was just being saddle sore. She touched her forehead, and thought she might have a fever, but it could be the heat.

She could not get sick now.