Wicked Angel (Blackthorne Trilogy) (49 page)

      
She did. Afterward, he bound and gagged Cybill, then bundled her in several fluffy comforters and tied the whole securely on top of her large bed. She could sweat and squirm for hours and not make a sound that could be heard outside the room.

* * * *

      
Joss crouched in the titi thicket, holding her breath as Wilbur Kent drew near.

      
"I know you're hiding somewhere nearby. Come out and I shall return you to the fort. That or remain here as alligator bait. The choice is yours," Kent said conversationally as he approached her.

      
The only truth to his promises was that, left alone without weapons, she would be devoured by the creatures of the swamp. Joss knew he had no intention of returning her to the fort.
Cybill sent him to kill me.
The fact had hit her squarely when LeBeau, her guide, had been killed and she narrowly escaped from the sinking pirogue. She cursed herself for a fool not to have seen where the woman's vitriolic hate would lead.

      
Having dispatched her guide, Kent had run her to ground like the vicious bloodhound he was. Her arms were growing weary as she held a heavy chunk of log, ready to use it as a cudgel when he drew close to her hiding place. The nagging ache in her lower back intensified. Just a few yards farther. He passed by, ducking to get through the edge of the thicket. A bit far out of reach, but her only chance. She stepped out and swung the club with all her strength.

      
If she had been two or three feet closer she might have knocked him unconscious, but he heard her moving behind him and turned with a fraction of a second to spare, raising his arm to block the blow. The impact jarred all the way up her arms when the log connected with bone. Unfortunately it was not his skull but his forearm. He wrenched the weapon from her grasp with a sharp curse. Fortunately for her he overbalanced in doing so and fell backward.

      
Joss knew she could not outrun him. Instead she dropped swiftly to her knees, clawing for the log. She did not see the flash of his knife until it was almost too late. Rolling onto her side, she grabbed the log and raised it protectively in front of her as he scrambled closer still clutching the deadly blade. A feral grimace spread his thin lips wide, revealing long white teeth.

      
"So, you want to wrestle, eh? I always enjoy a bit of sport. No real satisfaction in an easy kill." He locked gazes with her, seeming to take pleasure in her desperate defiance.

      
He lunged forward, seizing her club with one hand and wrestling it away. Instead of holding tight, Joss released it and grabbed his knife arm with both hands. They went down, rolling on the soft damp moss. She bit and kicked like a demented thing.
I can't let him kill Alex's baby!
Joss twisted as they rolled on the uneven ground, nearing the edge of a sluggishly flowing stream. With strength born of sheer desperation she continued holding on to his knife hand with both of hers as he yanked her to her feet. Kent tried to twist his arm free but slipped in the mud and fell to his right side, pulling Joss with him.

      
The force of their landing knocked the breath from her. She felt a sharp pain between her breasts and a red haze exploded behind her eyelids for an instant but not before she saw the expression of utter amazement on his face. A low, raw whistling sound followed as she pushed free of him, backing away on all fours.

      
Her eyeglasses had been knocked off during the fight. Joss groped for them until she found them. The lenses were cracked but allowed her to see the gristly scene before her. The knife was embedded neatly between his ribs high on the left side of his chest. When he had pulled her down on top of him, her weight must have driven the blade directly into his heart. That wheeze had been Wilbur Kent's death rattle.

      
Joss struggled to her feet. Kent had pursued her by boat. All she need do was backtrack where he had hidden it. After that...well, after that she would cross that bridge when she came to it. She trudged through the awful morass toward the sound of rushing water. When she reached the bank where she had left LeBeau's pirogue, she found it half submerged from the shots Kent had fired into it. Through the cracked lenses of her spectacles she could make out the Frenchman's body floating facedown near a large log a dozen yards away.

      
When the log started to move she screamed in horror. An immense alligator swam lazily across the river. She backed slowly up the embankment, circling to give the predator a wide berth before beginning her search of the shoreline. Then she saw the canoe shoved carefully up on the muddy bank.

      
With a cry of relief, she picked up her pace, heading toward it. The dull low backache that had been plaguing her all day suddenly exploded into a sharp agonizing cramp that wrapped around her belly. She sank to her knees, breathless as a gush of water bathed her legs.

      
The baby was coming and she was alone in a swamp filled with alligators and poisonous snakes!

* * * *

      
Cybill huddled on the chair with sweat streaming in rivulets down her face and body. Her hair hung in damp tangles around her bare shoulders as she sat in only her thin silk undergarments. She had spent several hours tied up, smothered in blankets in this accursed heat, before her husband had found her.

      
Across the room Sir Rupert paced furiously. It was his unexpected early return to which she owed her rescue. She was not inclined to feel in the least grateful. He was far more furious over Joss's escape and Alex's pursuit of her than he was concerned about his wife's brush with death.

      
"Now let us review this one more time, m'dear," he said tightly. "Jocelyn Blackthorne, great with child, just slipped magically from her room this morning and somehow managed to find a gate negligently left open allowing her to escape the fort. She simply set out to walk back to American territory—all by herself with no outside aid? Then her husband mysteriously learned she was being held here, broke into your room searching for her and forced you at knifepoint to explain her absence?" His voice was low and deadly with fury and disbelief.

      
Cybill was nauseated from the heat, dehydrated and now frightened by his quiet raging, yet her jealous anger overcame all else. She flung back her fouled hair and stood up, stamping her bare foot imperiously. "I have told you what happened! They are both gone, escaped!"

      
"How convenient for you," he sneered.

      
"You really mean how disastrous for you that you've lost your chance to kill Alex and bed his woman," she shot back.

      
Chamberlain's eyes narrowed in icy anger. "Why is it, pet, that I have the feeling you are not quite telling me everything, hmm?"

      
"Don't be absurd," she said shrilly as he stalked nearer. "I should think you'd wish to give pursuit."

      
"Oh, I shall in the fullness of time, I shall. I have a Red Stick scout searching for their trail right now."

      
The colonel's manner was cold and contained but he was holding himself on an exceedingly tight leash. His return from New Providence was made posthaste because he had orders to evacuate the British contingent from Mobile. The American general Wilkinson was in route with a large force to take the fortress and hold the bay. The bumbling British high command had decided to retreat.

      
"You should pursue your quarry, not bedevil me," she snapped. "By now she could have paddled halfway to Georgia!"

      
He whirled on his heel at her last outburst and lunged at her, seizing her throat with his clawlike deformed hand. "Paddled—did you say paddled? I believe earlier you insisted she had simply walked into the swamp."

      
Cybill coughed and tried to evade his punishing grip, but he would not relinquish it. Her face turned from furious red to sickly green, guilty terror etched in every line. Abruptly he shoved her back against the chair and leaned over her until their faces were inches apart. He could smell her foul body odor. The stench of sweat was now permeated by the metallic scent of fear. He was well familiar with the smell of fear. Every night before a battle, he walked among his soldiers, reveling in it.

      
"Now, you are going to tell me precisely what you did. I will find out anyway, you know," he purred as his crippled hand stroked the bruises he'd put on her throat.

      
Cybill had observed him taunting his victims like this many times before. He played with them like a cat with a crippled bird, but he had never done it to her. And all over a woman he was obsessed with, a gauche, clumsy bluestocking, fat with another man's child! The anger she had struggled to hold in check bubbled over.

      
"I'll tell you what I've done!" she spat furiously. Tears of sheer rage brightened her eyes as she leaned forward and glared at his arrogant face. "I've spent all of our wedded life furthering your career, pandering to gouty old generals and pompously dull cabinet ministers. I've lived for nearly a year in this hellish backwater town swatting mosquitoes and watching my ankles swell in the heat while you panted after that pregnant sow without touching her!"

      
"You incited her to escape—you helped her, didn't you?"

      
"Yes! And what's more I saw to it the job was done to a cow's thumb! She's dead! And so is her brat! Willie was only too happy to follow her into the swamp and see that she ended up alligator food!"

      
"Kent!" he roared, losing all composure abruptly. "You sent Kent after her?"

      
"Yes, and you're too late, Rupert. 'Tis done, finished," she shouted back, coming up out of her chair at him with her long nails curved into claws.

      
He struck her with his good hand, hard across the face as a blind red haze enveloped him. When she fell backward against the chair, he reached down and clamped both hands around her throat, squeezing, squeezing...until she ceased her struggles. Her head plopped limply against his wrist and the long tangled black hair fell like a stringy curtain over her face.

      
With a sniff of distaste he released his hold and stepped back, looking down on the wreckage of what had once been a beautiful woman. "Bitch," he mouthed softly as he turned and left the room without a backward glance. Let that fat, stupid commandant see to burying her. He was going after Jocelyn, Kent and Blackthorne.

* * * *

      
Alex paddled slowly, his eyes watching the shoreline with increasing desperation. The sun was sinking low on the horizon and time was running out. Very soon the night would catch them in its immobilizing inky grasp. The dog sat at the front of the canoe, nostrils twitching in the evening breeze for a hint of Joss's scent. Several times over the past hours when they came to a division in the waterway headed north, he had relied on Poc's instinct to choose the right path. He knew it was probably hopeless, but he also knew he'd remain in this bayou until he found her or died here himself.

      
Suddenly Poc started barking, breaking the low hum of insects and rhythmic croaking of night creatures coming to life. A faint whiff of smoke teased Alex's nostrils. A campfire? His heart suddenly began to pound as the dog's barking intensified frantically.

      
"Joss!" he cried, paddling toward the aroma of smoke, repeating her name over and over until he was hoarse. "Joss! Joss! Are you here, darling?"

      
She came up as from a deep well as the wave of pain ebbed, thinking she had heard Alex calling her name. "Wish for something desperately enough and you hallucinate," she said through parched lips. She fumbled for Kent's canteen on the ground beside her, and started to take a sip when the sound echoed across the water once more.

      
"Joss! Joss! Answer me, please!" Following the cry a dog's sharp bark sounded.

      
She nearly dropped the precious water. It was Alex with Poc! He'd found her! "Alex, here—I'm here," she responded hoarsely, but her strength had been ebbing steadily over the last hours as the contractions grew closer together. She had used up much of her precious reserve of energy building a fire, cleaning the knife and preparing everything as best she could for her child's birth.

      
Could he hear her? Frantically she repeated the cry and was rewarded by an answer. "Joss? Is it you?" Poc's barking grew louder, more frantic. She struggled to her knees and peered out at the river. Evening mist veiled it in soft shades of gray.

      
Joss squinted, seeing a dim shape moving toward the bank. Because of the fading light and her cracked lenses she could not determine who it was. Then a small part of the apparition separated itself with a loud splash, jumping into the water. In a moment she could make out the little dog as he scrambled up the muddy bank, spraying water everywhere as he raced across the clearing and leaped into her arms, licking her face with joy.

      
She held the soaked, muddy terrier, petting him soothingly as her eyes fastened on the tall shadowy figure nimbly leaping onto the bank and beaching the canoe. "Alex? Alex, is it truly you? I've hoped and prayed and dreamed for so many months..." Her voice broke as another contraction began to tighten her belly, squeezing off breath.

      
"Joss," he cried, kneeling beside her and taking her in his arms as she doubled over, panting. "What is it? What's wrong—are you injured?"

      
Relief flooded her in spite of the building contraction's painful intensity. Her love had found her at last! She shook her head, then gasped, "Nothing...wrong...baby's coming."