Kiss of a Traitor (2 page)

Then the bushes exploded outward a few yards behind her, and the black beast and rider burst through. The man raised his head, and his hard eyes fastened on her. With a strangled gasp and a lurching stomach, Willa gave Cherokee license to flee once again. The horse put on a burst of speed that threatened to leave the black horse and his rider far behind. But while her route had been convoluted to throw him off her scent, the man’s had been more direct and his larger horse was fresher. The rebel gradually shortened the distance between them.

In a snap decision, she tried another feint. Willa stopped Cherokee in his tracks, swung him around on his hindquarters, and aimed him at the oncoming man. Confusion shone in the officer’s face for a moment. Then he reached down and whipped out his saber. Sword in his right hand, reins in his left, he braced for the collision. At the last possible second, Cherokee slewed wide around his left side and thundered past. The glinting blade whistled through empty air.

Damn him to the devil!
The accursed rebel appeared behind her once again. Willa’s heart pounded against her ribs. By now any normal man would admit defeat and forsake the chase. This one was harder to pry loose than a deer tick. She had one more trick. Should it fail to work … well, it simply had to. She feared to envision what the devil would do were he to capture her and discover her gender. She could not imagine his acting the gentleman and calmly escorting her to Marion’s camp as a prisoner of war, then negotiating with her father for her release.

When the trail forked, she leaned left and peered back at her nemesis. He continued to gain.
Excellent.
She silently willed him to draw as close as possible without overtaking her.

With her objective in sight, Willa straightened, and Cherokee slowed imperceptibly. While sitting upright, she twisted at the waist to catch and hold the gaze of the soldier. He had pewter-gray eyes, though a dark beard hid the remainder of his features. Moving a trifle closer, he stretched out his arm to pull her from Cherokee’s back. All the while, his gaze clung to hers as if an invisible rope tethered them.

The moment she awaited came, a dropping of her horse’s withers when he lowered his neck. Bewilderment dawned in the man’s eyes as she fell backward until her spine made contact with Cherokee’s rump. The fate Willa intended for the officer struck him at the same time as the low branch that dipped across the trail.

“Holy hell,” he muttered a second before the limb whacked him in the chest and swept him off the black horse while Willa and Cherokee ducked beneath it. The ground rose up to meet him with a loud thud.

When the rebel tumbled to the ground, Willa reined in Cherokee. The black horse ran past her and stopped a short distance away. A thrill feathered along her nerves. She could not help but look back to gloat on her victory. She had laid him out like driftwood washed into the salt marsh on high tide. Her racing pulse abated somewhat at the sight of him, lying on his belly in the weeds and ferns.

Turning Cherokee, she walked him toward the fallen man and halted when she drew close. The rebel was quite a bit larger than he had appeared from a distance, pacing in the clearing or hunched over his horse at a gallop. Unsure of what to do now, she studied him for movement, for some minute sign of life. His eyes remained closed—muscles lax, limbs sprawled. She had difficulty determining whether he was even breathing. Sudden pressure squeezed her chest. Had the fall broken his neck?
Good God.
Had it killed him?

Nausea surged to her throat, and she drew breath with difficulty. She never considered having to cope with killing a man. Though in truth, she’d not exactly killed this one. She merely led him to his death.

She forced herself to inhale a heavy draught of air and shook off the queasy feeling. What was done was done. Were she to make a difference in Britain’s colonial struggle, as she had stated so often to friends and family, she would be well advised to accept the realities of war. Even so, she envisioned her participation in a different light. Her dreams consisted of heroic rescues of innocent planters from marauding rebels, or miraculous escapes while she defended herself and her virtue from the lustful attentions of rampaging partisans. But her favorite reverie was of her escorting a bound and gagged Francis Marion into the Georgetown garrison. Her imaginary battles embraced trickery, cunning, and feats of courage, not blood and broken bones. This particular situation, this deadly confrontation in the swamp, had unraveled into an unforeseen tangle.

The longer she regarded him, the greater her empathy. A growing urge crept over her, obliging her to deal with the circumstances she had wrought. Were the man truly dead … so be it. Were he merely injured or unconscious, she could not help but feel an obligation to move him to a place where he would present less of a lure for predators, mayhap even an area where his friends would eventually find him. Her blood chilled at the thought of panthers, red wolves, or alligators preying on the wounded man.

As Willa alighted, she shook her head at her own misguided charity. For pity’s sake, he was her enemy—a traitor. She should abandon him without a second’s thought, as he surely would have done had she been the one lying in the ferns. She was allowing her female sentimentality—a personal trait she despised—to influence her.

But she could not disobey the voice of her Christian conscience, which compelled her to determine his condition. And to salve her political conscience, she would search him. Were he an officer in Marion’s Brigade, as she suspected, he could be carrying papers that might prove helpful to her father, the Georgetown Tory commander.

As Willa approached, her muscles tensed for any sudden movement, her prudence seemed muddleheaded. He lay like one dead. No stirring beneath the coat stretched taut across his back. No slight rising as he took a breath. Stopping a foot away, she stretched out a tentative leg and nudged him in the ribs with the toe of her boot. No reaction; no flexing of muscles or indrawn breath.

She pushed harder, going so far as to kick at his back, though she felt ghoulish and ashamed at abusing a dead or grievously injured man. He did not even flinch. He was dead or so deeply unconscious as to be harmless. Crouching down, Willa attempted to flip him over.

Large hands grabbed her ankles. Almost before she could blink, she found herself flat on her back with several hundred pounds of irate male on top of her. She stared upward, lashes fluttering madly, wits scattered to the wind, the breath crushed from her lungs by his overwhelming weight.

“I … I can’t breathe,” she managed to whisper. Blood hammered in her ears, and she pictured her face turning blue from lack of air.

His steely eyes flickered, the dark brows jutting together. As he pressed her wrists to the ground, he brought up his knees, straddled her waist, and lifted his upper body. She squeezed her eyelids closed at the retribution in his gray gaze.

“Why were you spying on me, boy?” he rasped in a deep voice that ignited a disquieting flame in her lower stomach.

His choice of words struck her like an artillery shell.
Boy?
Willa blinked open her eyes, and her initial panic began to ebb. She had no idea whether to feel smug at her successful disguise or insulted he failed to notice her breasts when his body lay atop hers. Mayhap her bosom was small, but not so small as to be discounted entirely. She was a woman, full grown. Temptation tugged at her injured pride to correct his blunder. But he topped her by more than a foot and outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds. And he was a rebel. Under the circumstances, she recognized the prudence of granting him his erroneous illusion.

His breath wafted across her cheek again. “Answer me, damn you, or I shall wring your scrawny neck and leave you for the ‘gators.”

Her gaze meshed with eyes like molten mercury in a wide, bushy black beard of a face. Swamp mud coated the skin not covered by whiskers. He had lost his hat during the fall, revealing a wild abundance of dark hair that ran to ebony. Rather bearlike. His voice was pitched to intimidate but contained no real menace. Still, a healthy caution strung her nerves tight.

“I-I ain’t spyin',” she sputtered, her thoughts spinning. If only she could reach the hunting knife in its sheath at her waist or the paring knife tied to her forearm under her shirtsleeve. And the skinning knife in her boot? Also inaccessible in her current position.

“Speak up,” he prodded. “Tell me. What did you overhear?”

His persistence and painful grip sparked a streak of belligerence. “Not’in',” she spat and assumed a sullen expression.

His eyes narrowed even more, were that remotely possible. Releasing her wrists, he caught her shoulders in his hands and shook her until her head bounced against the spongy ground. When her hat flew off, hair whipped against the sides of her face and into her eyes. She silently thanked her impulse to cut her hair before venturing out. The last time she had roamed the swamp masquerading as a boy, she ran into a British patrol. When a soldier snatched off her hat, Major Thomas Digby, her father’s obnoxious aide, recognized her and hauled her back to Willowbend for one of the most humiliating episodes in all her seventeen years.

“Leave off,” she shouted through the pain piercing her skull. “I swear, I ain’t heard not’in'. I was jes’ huntin', an’ when I saw yur campfire, I skedaddled.”

The officer let go of her shoulders and sat up, his thighs pressing either side of her hips, his groin heavy on her stomach. Crossing his arms over his chest, he glared down at her.

His voice lashed out again. “Where do you live?”

With one shaky hand rubbing her sore head, she pointed with the other. “On the backside’a the swamp. My pa’s got a farm.” Having lived in the Americas since her eighth year, she could lapse at will into the broad, flat accent of the colonists, though it compelled her stepmother to roll her eyes in censure.

“Why did you run?” he prompted.

Willa favored him with a look that labeled him a lackwit. “I don’ know not’in’ ‘boutcha. I figured you was a deserter. My pa’s warned me ‘bout messin’ with deserters. Said they’d as likely slit my throat as look at me. I jes’ wanted ta get as far away as fast as I could.”

A suspicious glint settled in his eyes, and a curve tilted one side of his mouth. “If you were hunting, where is your musket?”

Dammit, he’s right. Had I been hunting, I’d have been carrying a gun.
Willa grabbed the first thought that flew into her head. “I dropped it when I ran ta my horse. I was too scared ta go back. Please,” she pleaded, hoping to distract him and escape before he asked a question she would be powerless to answer convincingly. “Please let me up. Yur crushin’ me.”

The rebel shot her a silent look rife with warning. His weight shifted, and he rose to his impressive height. Fingers clutched her arm in a tight grip and jerked her to her feet. Conflicted emotions clouded his face as his grasp relaxed a bit. “Where did you learn to ride like that?” His voice sounded less angry … even held a hint of respect.

Willa forced a smile. She was on her feet and had lulled him into believing she was harmless. “Injuns. My pa kept some slaves after the Injun wars.”

Her smile coaxed a tilt from the man’s lips, but distrust still lurked in his eyes and shaped the expression on his face. As stubborn as a balky mule, he continued with his interrogation. “And that horse? Where did you get him? I’ve never seen his like. Seems a mite fancy for a farmer.”

She heaved a mental sigh. Would the cursed rebel never run out of questions? Some trapper would stumble across their skeletons years from now, and the officer’s fleshless jawbone would still be flapping. “My pa captured him durin’ the Injun wars. He’s the only horse we got. Now you gonna let me go?”

She could imagine the wheels turning in his head as he debated what action to pursue. She hoped he would now send her on her way.

“You had best tell me what you heard, boy, and maybe I’ll let you go.”

Willa shook her head and sent him a look of disgust. “I gotta say, yur some kind’a stubborn, ain’tcha, mister? I already tole you twice. Didn’ hear not’in'. Didn’ see not’in'. Don’ want ta know not’in', not who you are or what you was doin’ way out here in the swamp. I jes’ wanna go home.”

While he chewed over her response, Willa picked out mud from under her fingernails with a twig. Her fingers trembled.

A sigh gusted from the officer. His manner relaxed, and he bent over to scoop his hat off the ground. His next words revealed his capitulation. “You have a name?”

Willa lifted her gaze, the tension easing in her chest. “Will,” she said with a cagey smile.

“All right, Will. You said your farm is just outside the swamp?”

She nodded as she edged toward Cherokee.

“I shall take you home, then. Your pa was right to warn you about deserters. You should not be in this area alone.”

Her brief taste of victory took a dive, and her stomach sank along with her optimism. “Thanks. Ain’t needin’ no bodyguard though. I kin fin’ my way home without yur help. ‘Sides, I don’ cotton ta yur company much anyways.”

The officer gave her a sharp look. He caught up Cherokee’s reins and handed them to her. “Nevertheless, I plan to ride with you and see that you reach home with no further incidents. Your pa must be worried about you.”

With a scowl, she warded off the man’s offer to help her mount and climbed aboard Cherokee. Should her “pa,” Lord Colonel George Bellingham, the Earl of Westchester, become privy to her escapade, he would be more than worried. How would she shake off the annoying man now? She had no intention of allowing him to follow her to her father’s “farm,” a massive plantation house on the Georgetown outskirts.

“So, what else did you learn from the Indians?” the officer inquired after mounting his horse.

She turned to note the smug grin on his face. “Jes’ this.” She whisked her hand to the throwing knife tucked in the small of her back, slung her arm forward, and her fingers released the weapon. It spun through the air and buried itself hilt-deep in the tree beside him, catching and pinning his coat sleeve to the trunk. Spinning Cherokee on his back legs, she threw the rebel a salute and took off at a gallop. She glanced back to see him grasp the knife hilt with two hands and yank it from the tree trunk.