Runaway (55 page)

He nodded, smiling, then stepped out into the night. Jarrett looked at Tara. “Get some sleep,” he told her. “I’m going to take first watch.”

“But you need sleep as well.”

“James will spell me later. I’ll be in then.”

He left the cabin as well. Tara longed to leave and sit with him, but he meant to listen and to watch the night, and he would not welcome the distraction. Besides, she was bone weary.

She lay down on the pallet, and for a while stared into the darkness, feeling numb. Carter had caught up with her, just when her life had become everything that she
might have wished for instead of the nightmare he had created out of it.

But she still had Jarrett. He loved her anyway. He meant to fight for her. She was so very grateful. But she feared the time ahead of them when they would part. She had no fears about living with her brother-in-law’s family, no worries about rough conditions, fierce weather—snakes, alligators, or any other savage creatures. None could be so dangerous as man.

At length she dozed. And in the sweet cloudlike arena of sleep she felt him come to her. Felt him lie down beside her, felt his warmth. Felt the liquid fire of his kiss upon her lips, the caress of his fingers upon her flesh. He made love to her slowly, seducing her out of the shadows, so gently that she thought she still dreamed.

But then the slow-burning fuse of desire within her caught swiftly ablaze. She felt the full force of his naked body against her own, the slick heat of his flesh, the fierce pulse of his desire. She no longer slept, she drifted from the dream into a fiery explosion of ecstasy, and there she clung to him, more in love with him than she had ever been before, and trying to hold on to him as if she might hold to the dream that way.

Dawn came. She felt that she had barely slept again before Jarrett was urging her awake. He had coffee. By the coming light James had felt secure enough to make a fire, and he had brought coffee and dried meat for them to eat. She was grateful for the coffee, yet when she tried to chew upon the meat, she was stunned to find that her stomach would have nothing to do with it. Even as the two men discussed the route they must take, she leapt to her feet and went racing from the cabin. She was sick. Longing just for some clean, clear water, she hurried down to the stream. She crouched down on the bank, cupping up water, dousing it over and over upon her
cheeks, grateful for the coolness of it. The water helped, and yet she still didn’t feel particularly well. She hadn’t had enough sleep, she thought. Yet even as she knelt by the water, she nearly gasped as a hand touched her shoulder. She turned to find Jarrett hunched down by her side, studying her, a small smile curved into his lip.

She arched a brow.

“Well, it might be, you know,” he told her.

“Might be?” she asked.

“Morning sickness.”

“I’m never sick, Jarrett, I’m—oh!” She gasped. She stared at him blankly, trying to think, trying to count. Her life had been in such a tempest lately, she had paid little attention to the natural functions of life.… “Oh!” She gasped again.

His dark eyes were enigmatic. Her heart suddenly seemed to wrench at her. How strange, how sad! The Indian camp had already been deserted, and yet it was here that he had lost a wife and child once, and here that he was discovering his new wife was expecting.

The wife wanted by the law.

“Oh, Jarrett!” she whispered again, wondering if he was thinking of Lisa. “I’m sorry, I should have known. Or suspected. I would never have let you know … here.”

His ink lashes fell over his eyes for a moment, then rose, and the gentle curl of a smile was on his lips. “I lost something here; I’ve gained something here.”

“Are you pleased?” she whispered.

“Ecstatic,” he told her solemnly, that curl still on his lips. “All right, maybe ecstatic is what I feel creating the babe …” He reached out, touched her chin. Kissed her lips briefly. “I have never been happier.”

“But—”

“Tara, I have never been happier.” He rose, catching
her hands, helping her up as well. “It would be paradise,” he told her softly, “if only we could go home.”

She leaned against him, feeling tears burn fiercely behind her eyes. She felt his fingers, his grip tightening upon her shoulders. She looked up at him. “I will tell James to lash you to a stake if you don’t take care of yourself.”

“You won’t have to tell him that!” she promised. “Jarrett, I love you so much, I swear, I’ll not let anything happen.”

“Come on, then,” he said huskily. “I’ve got to get you out of harm’s way.”

They walked back to the camp together. James was already mounted, with their horses at his side. He seemed anxious. “The horses are spooky,” he said. He smiled at Tara. “There’s a chill at my neck. It’s time to leave this camp behind.”

Jarrett helped her up on her horse, then mounted his own. James took the lead. Tara rode between the two men as Jarrett brought up the rear.

They rode for hours. She began to feel the aches in her shoulders, back, and thighs. She no longer felt sick to her stomach, but it seemed now that her abdomen was growling away as if she kept some wild creature within it, and she prayed that the ride kept her husband and brother-in-law from hearing the ruckus.

They rode through wild, beautiful country. When they came upon marshland where they could ride abreast, James informed her that he had told his family and people to keep on moving with the daylight, as the tribe—encumbered by children and belongings—would move more slowly than she, Jarrett, and he needed to go. He meant to go deep into the interior of the state, far south, and into the swampland of the Everglades. “You’ll
be safe there,” he said. “I promise you. And Jarrett will find a way to clear you. I know that he will.”

Tara began to believe it herself. Night fell. She spent the darkness in the swamp, high on a hammock of land, in her husband’s arms. They built no fire. She felt his warmth, and it was enough. She slept amazingly well, guarded by her husband and brother-in-law.

The temperature remained blessedly low as they rode the next day. They rode for hours, then came upon a stretch of river where they paused, for it was filled with beautiful birds. Jarrett pointed them out to her. Cranes, egrets, herons, the unbelievably pink flamingos.

“The land remains beautiful,” she said.

“And deadly,” Jarrett warned. “Take care. This is cottonmouth country through here. And for every gator nose you see, I promise you there is a second nearly submerged nearby. Keep your distance.”

She was never quite sure when Jarrett had managed to tell his brother that she was expecting a child, but when James looked back at her, apologized, and said that they might stop for a while, she became aware that he did know. There was a good copse of trees ahead, not far from a clear stream feeding off the river. “We’ll rest,” he told her.

When they stopped, Jarrett was there to lift her down from her horse. She was sore in every bone of her body, grateful for the break, yet hoping that she’d manage to get back on her horse again. It was a trying time for Jarrett, she knew. Now he was doubly worried about her, for he was afraid to jeopardize her condition, yet he knew he had to get her out of harm’s way as quickly as possible.

She sat on the ground in the hammock where tall pines grew. The high ground here was carpeted with them, and the trees seemed to reach the sky. Jarrett went
down to the stream for water, and James sat before her, having offered her more of the meat, telling her she needed to try to eat again.

This time it seemed that the meat went down well. In fact it seemed absolutely delicious. She could have eaten pounds of it, she thought, but the men had to eat as well, and she tried to appear satisfied with one piece.

James was smiling at her. “Eat more.”

“Really, I’m fine.”

“You must keep up your strength and your health.”

“You and Jarrett must have something too. If you pass out from hunger, how will I get through?” she demanded.

James shook his head. “Neither of us will pass out from hunger. We’ve both gone without eating several days at a time—my people literally starve often. We learn to go without. But you mustn’t, not now. For your sake, for my brother’s sake. If he really must leave you with us, I am going to see to it that he returns to a healthy son this time.”

Tara laughed softly. “A son? This from a man with two daughters?”

“Jarrett will have a son. He lost a child. This one will …”

“Replace it?” she asked softly.

“One life never replaces another,” James told her. “Each is special and unique. But this child will give you both back life, and I pray God, it will grow to help with the healing of our peoples and our land.”

She smiled, reached out to him, and squeezed his hands. “Thank you!” she said softly.

Jarrett came back with canteens filled with water. Tara drank deeply, felt Jarrett’s black gaze upon her, and slowed down.

After a moment she rose. “Just where is the water, Jarrett?” she asked.

“Down there. If you need more—”

“I need to walk!” she told him and grimaced. “If I don’t get some of this awful stiffness out of me, I’m afraid I won’t even be able to get on a horse again!”

“We’re deep into Indian country now,” James advised.

Jarrett, chewing on a piece of the meat himself, leaned back against a pine and seemed somewhat to relax. He nodded. “Perhaps you’re right.”

She left them and walked across the pine forest, over the trail, and then down a damp embankment. It was amazing how quickly the land changed here! One minute she had been on high, firm ground. Down by the water the ground itself seemed to be wet as well.

She found a tree stump by the water and sat upon it. She pulled off her shoes and stockings to wiggle her feet in the cool water, sighing at the wonderful way it felt. She leaned over the water, once again bathing her face and throat in its coolness.

When she came up, she was puzzled by a feeling of unease that seized her.

A hand touched her shoulder.

Jarrett!
she thought. He had come to her, just as he had come to her earlier that morning.

But the thought faded instantly. She knew her husband’s touch.

She opened her mouth to scream, but a large hand clamped down upon it. An uncalloused hand, one that had never been used for physical labor. One with a large ruby upon the middle fìnger. One attached to an arm that wore an overly ruffled, lace-edged shirt.

Clive Carter!

Oh, sweet Jesu, how had they come so far, so fast! He didn’t belong in the swamp and hammock and marshes!
Rivers of fear and distaste seemed to wash through her; she thought she’d pass out. Dear God, she had run so long ago! She had never thought to feel his hands upon her again, never thought that he would touch her.

“Don’t scream!” Carter warned her. “Don’t scream. That black-eyed savage of yours will come running through the trees—and I’ll have to shoot him right in the heart. I’m a damned good shot. But then, you know that. I managed to get my shot in at my father, and I wasn’t even carrying a gun. It’s amazing how easy it can be to devise a murder without even getting blood on your hands.”

She was stunned to realize that he was all but confessing to the murder of his father. Then she wondered why she should be so surprised. She knew she hadn’t killed Julian. And they had both known since the deed had been done and she had first locked eyes with him across his father’s drawing room that he had made the arrangements for the fatal shot to be fired. A confession to her meant nothing. It would always be her word against his, except that he had been certain that there had been a roomful of people as witnesses to what had apparently been her guilt.

He had one arm locked around her; his other hand remained clamped tight over her mouth and all but covered her nose. She couldn’t breathe. She would pass out. Worse. She was beginning to feel sick again. His cologne had mingled with the sweat of his body, and it seemed overwhelming.

She tried to bite his finger. He yelped, easing his hold just a fraction.

“Let me go!” she cried. “I’m going to be sick.” She tried to look around. She didn’t see Tyler Argosy, or any of the army men from the fort who would have been his
escort here on their mission to uphold the law. Clive had found her on his own.

“You’re as slippery as a snake, Tara, but I’ll be damned if I’ll ever let you go. It’s taken me forever to get my hands on you. Now, you’ll never escape me.”

He started to rise, dragging her up with him. She saw the harsh, satisfied, and cruel smile that cut across his face, the glitter of pleasure at her fall that lit within his eyes.

“You could have had everything, you stupid bitch!” he told her softly, adjusting her weight. “I would have even married a little starving Irish wretch, even though, I admit, it was the prospect of the inheritance that would have made me do so. I can’t imagine now why I spent so much time trying to charm you. You were nothing but a little foreign whore in my father’s house, and I should have simply had you instead of harboring fantasies about you for so long! Of course, I intended that you should pay for everything the night my father died. I just didn’t think that you could run so fast, disappear so well. And who in hell would have thought you could manage to marry a rich and influential man out of a New Orleans tavern! That one took some thought. I needed more than an arrest warrant for that one. I needed a wedding certificate to predate the one you were so anxious to acquire with a black-eyed, Indian-loving stranger!”

She was glad that he kept talking. But it seemed he didn’t want any answers. He held her closely and cruelly, his fingers hard now over her mouth to keep her from biting again. He was stealing her breath away, stealing her strength. If she didn’t breathe soon …

He eased his hold again as he balanced his way up the embankment, struggling a little with her in his arms. The instant she could talk, she did. “I’d never have
married you, you bastard. And I would have preferred death at any time to your touch! I—”

The hand clamped down again. She started to struggle.

He fell down on one knee, trying to keep his hold on her. “Bitch!” he accused her. His fingers suddenly threaded through her hair with such force that she was gasping, unable to cry out because of the awful pain she was in. “I promise you—you’ll be touched! I’m taking you back as my wife, Tara, and when I finish with you—”