He strode to her. “Let me help you.”
Before she knew it, he had set her upon her horse, and he looked up at her, eyes shaded by his plumed hat. “Of course, I’m taking quite a risk here. You know where our camp is now.”
She started to answer him, but he slapped her horse’s flanks, and her mount bolted forward, cantering down the trail.
Numbly, she rode.
She rode for at least fifteen minutes before she abruptly pulled back the reins.
She couldn’t do it.
She couldn’t part with him this way.
She turned her horse back, racing to Ian. She leaped down from her horse, hoping against hope that he might still be there. But she didn’t see him; he was gone.
“Ian!” she cried out desperately.
Of course he was gone. He had let her free, and now he had other things to do.
“Ian!”
He came around a pine, hat still low over his eyes. She ran toward him, throwing her arms around him. She kissed his lips, and then she tried to talk, jumbling her words.
“I can’t say that I’ve changed sides, Ian, because I haven’t… actually. I mean, I think we’re all wrong now to be at war, and I don’t know the solution, but… at first I wanted revenge for my father. And I did believe very much in the simple right of states to be free. But then there were other things….” She hesitated. It didn’t seem the right time to mention Peter O’Neill’s name. “There were troops ready to burn out a woman with four children because her husband had been killed fighting for the Union. And when the Yanks came to St. Augustine I began to realize what I hadn’t wanted to see. It is about slavery, and slavery is wrong. Lilly is so many colors—black among them. I couldn’t imagine someone owning her, whipping her, and it can’t be right that white men can sell mothers and fathers and children just because they’re black, and …”
She broke off, running out of words.
It didn’t matter. His arms came very gently around her, and he was kissing her. And there was passion in his touch, and no anger now, and he was sensual and tender and forceful without being brutal in the least….
And though they were in the middle of a pine copse, they’d had so little time together. In a matter of minutes, their clothing was in tremendous dishabille and they were entwined down on the pines, making love.
The sun broke through the branches of the pine above them. Alaina shielded her eyes. His mouth moved teasingly over her belly, planting small kisses. He commented on the baby, that he should have known… there was a slight swell about her. She grimaced ruefully and admitted that she hadn’t really known herself until quite recently.
“You were too busy spying to pay attention,” he told her.
“You could have come more often and made me so nervous I didn’t dare spy,” she told him.
He grinned at her. “Would it really have worked?”
“You can be very intimidating.”
He soon found the fang marks in her calf, and she told him what had happened. Then she demanded to know, “Did you send Risa down to watch me?”
He shook his head after a moment. “I knew she was going South; she wrote to me. She really is a better friend than you can imagine.”
“You’re still a little bit in love with her.”
“Only a little bit,” he told her, then added sternly, “But Alaina, throwing yourself in front of a rattler even if you believed you might have an immunity—”
“I didn’t intend to get bitten, and I’m really fine.”
“And the baby?”
“I pray the baby survives me!” Alaina admitted.
On an elbow, staring at his wife, Ian wondered if they could possibly have reached a point where they could survive. She had been so impassioned when she had been speaking to him. No, she couldn’t suddenly become a flag-waving Yank.
And yet…
She was so, so beautiful. So delicate, stretched at his side, dressed only in her long man’s shirt, her bare legs sprawled across the ground beneath the pines. His own clothing lay in a tossed heap several feet away, his scabbard and sword under his breeches.
She smiled, her topaz eyes smoky against her porcelain complexion, her hair a tangle of sunlight and dappled shade. Then suddenly her eyes widened.
Too late, he heard the footsteps.
He, Ian McKenzie, the Panther, had failed to hear the approach of the men standing behind him now.
He stared into her eyes and was suddenly certain that she’d ridden straight to her Rebel contact. He knew by the silence of the men behind him that they had come to snatch a panther from a trap.
Bitterness assailed him, and he stared at her with an anger and hatred so intense it was nearly blinding. Then he rolled in a split second.
A pistol was already aimed at his head. A shotgun, held by none other than Peter O’Neill.
“Well, will you lookee here, boys, what do we have? A naked panther tangling in the grass with a snake! Guess who wins that fight? Get up, Alaina, good work!” Peter said.
She gasped, drawing her white shirt closed, leaping to her feet. Ian, tense upon his haunches, felt the knife of her betrayal work more deeply into his back. There were three men with Peter, all of them armed, aiming their guns at him. And he was naked on the ground, his sword and Colts a good ten feet away.
“This is like Goddamned Christmas!” Peter breathed, looking down at Ian. “I’m so excited, I just don’t know where to start. I’m going to kill you, of course. You’ve needed killing for a long time. But how? Shoot you, hang you? Shoot your kneecaps out first, of course, but … I think I should tie you to a tree, let you watch me make love to your wife. What do you think, McKenzie?”
He thought he was in a damned wretched position. But he’d be dead a hundred years before he said such a thing to Peter O’Neill. The bastard had been warped to begin with. The war had given him a chance to become a monster.
And yet…
Alaina.
He was on Alaina’s side.
“Peter, you are sick!” Alaina suddenly cried out. She stared at the men with him. “What’s the matter with you all? You’re Rebel soldiers. Peter doesn’t have you fighting a war—he has you helping him with his personal revenge!”
Ian gazed at his wife.
She flashed him a furious look; she was well aware that he believed she had betrayed him. “’
“Get up, McKenzie,” Peter said, “Alaina, shut up and get over here. My men and I are rescuing the Moccasin; we are heroes to the Cause, and that’s a fact. Get over here!”
She stared at Peter, and Ian’s heart nearly sank—because she moved. She moved to obey Peter.
But as she moved, she came upon the pile of his clothing and shoved his guns toward him, through the pine needles, still beneath his clothing. Then she pretended to trip against Peter, aiming his shotgun into the ground.
In those brief seconds, Ian rolled and caught up his guns. Peter’s men both fired; Ian shot off defensive rounds without thinking, killing one of Peter’s men, disarming and wounding the other two in a hail of gunfire. But when he rolled to Peter, he saw that O’Neill had taken Alaina, and that he was better shielded by Alaina’s body than he might be by a steel fortress.
“Shoot him!” Alaina demanded.
She knew damned well that he couldn’t.
Peter smiled, his colorless eyes hard on Ian. He started to lower and aim his gun again.
“No!” Alaina shrieked, slamming an elbow back against Peter.
She was good; she was tough. Ian knew that well enough. And Peter lost his gun. But before Ian could leap to his feet and tackle the man, Peter had whipped out a razor-honed army-issue knife and set it against Alaina’s throat.
“She comes with me, and you stay there. Right there, where you are,” Peter said. “Jarvis, Tatum?”
“Yessir!” One of the men replied, pain clear in his voice.
“Dammit, move on out ahead of me, get the horses. Is Pazinsky dead?”
“Yessir,” the other man said.
“Stand still until we’re out of here, McKenzie,” Peter O’Neill warned him. “Dead still.”
Ian stopped in his tracks, looking at Alaina. He stood watching, keeping his eyes on Alaina’s, as Peter dragged his wife away.
Peter stepped over the body of his own dead man as he backed the entire way out of the copse.
“Not a word,” Peter warned Alaina. She was mounted in front of him on a small gray mare. A good, sturdy, surefooted mount. Peter wasn’t a fool. He did know how to navigate this terrain. His men followed behind them, silent—and in pain, she was certain. “One word, and I slit your throat.”
She ignored him. “You can’t kill me. You can’t afford to kill me. Because he’s going to get up, put on his clothing, and hunt you down.”
“Do you think I’m a fool? Do you think I’m less than your arrogant husband? I know the hammocks and the swamps and the rivers just like he does, Alaina. I made it all the way down here with my company to root out the Panther. And by God, I will finish him!”
She turned slightly and saw that his mouth was in a grim line. He was a dangerous man. Not the spoiled rich boy she used to know. He was honed and tight, and had been living a life, fighting. Always fighting.
She was suddenly afraid.
“Peter, ride to the rest of your men. I’ll accompany you to them. I’ll say that I am the Moccasin and that you did rescue me. You will be a tremendous hero in the South.”
He smiled.
“I will take you to the rest of my men, Alaina. Tomorrow. Right now we have Privates Jarvis and Tatum. They’ll stand guard, and tonight you spend with me. Before anything else can happen, my dear, I’m going to take what should have been mine.”
Ian dressed in seconds flat. He whistled for Pye and leaped up on his mount.
He warned himself that he had to follow carefully. He had to let Peter O’Neill think he had a good lead on him.
Which, at the moment, he did.
The sun rose, yet Alaina was shaking.
They’d been riding for hours. Hours. She felt ill, nauseated.
The sun had begun to beat down cruelly; hot, sticky dampness was all around them. Her bare legs had been ripped by sawgrass and gnawed by mosquitoes.
Which didn’t matter.
What mattered was that Ian hadn’t come.
They had paused once by a freshwater stream. Tatum’s wrist was shattered, and he was moaning and complaining that he had to get to a surgeon. Jarvis, as it turned out, had only sustained a flesh wound. He kept telling Tatum to be a man.
And still, Ian didn’t appear.
It was a dangerous time, Alaina thought. Ian must know how volatile Peter was, how the thought of revenge had eaten away at his mind. Ian was surely being careful, very careful, tracking them until the time was right.
Unless…
Unless he believed that she had betrayed him one time too many. She had seen his eyes when he had realized someone was there, watching them….
“Keep an eye out, boys, keep an eye out!” Peter commanded his men.
“Hell, Captain, I think we’ve lost him!” Jarvis said happily.
Alaina began to worry.
If Ian didn’t come before nightfall…
Peter O’Neill had picked a deserted Seminole outpost as his camp.
There were several chikees in the overgrown encampment, all built off the ground with thatched roofs and no walls. It was a decent choice, Ian admitted, watching the party from the cover of a stand of oaks. Peter and his men were elevated, able to see anyone or anything coming at them.
There was open space between the trees and the chikee they chose. It was going to be damned difficult to surprise the party.
Still, Ian waited. He couldn’t take chances. He was afraid that Peter would gladly kill Alaina before allowing her to escape.
He leaned against the oak, trying to plan his strategy.
But then… Alaina screamed. Ian whirled to see her struggling with Peter, and before he knew it, he had let out his own Yankee brand of Rebel yell and gone charging for the chikee.
She had tried to be rational. She had reminded herself that she had once thought she was in love with Peter. She told herself that he wouldn’t really hurt her, that she couldn’t cry out. If she screamed, and Ian was following her, she could endanger his life, because he would certainly come after her. Throughout the day, she had known Peter’s intent to rape her, and she had tried to tell herself she could endure such an event. She had to endure—she was carrying another child. And she had Sean.
Perhaps she even had Ian.
She had wanted to be rational. Brave and so stoic she could perhaps dissuade Peter by her total disinterest.
But when he had dragged her to the rear of the chikee and thrown her down while his men kept watch by the fire they had built…
She screamed.
And all hell broke loose.
Ian came running out from the trees, yelling in a manner that rivaled a Seminole war cry. He started firing his guns and hit Jarvis again.
Jarvis dropped. Dead.
But Tatum, despite his injury, was an adept shot with his left hand, and he started firing back even as Peter drew his rifle and fired shots off wildly into the night.
Then there was silence.
Peter, half atop Alaina, rose slightly.
“McKenzie!”
There was no sound at first.
“Fight me for her, O’Neill. Fight me for her!”
Peter started to laugh. “I don’t have to fight you for her, McKenzie. There’s my man and me. And you, out there alone.”
But there was suddenly another blast of gunfire—from a totally different direction.
Alaina felt Peter’s sudden convulsion as he dragged her around with him. She stared into the night, praying for some kind of salvation.
Then she saw a man riding forward.
And her heart sank.
For he was in gray. A handsome gray uniform, with a plumed hat.
Yet even as her heart sank, she saw that Ian had slipped out from around the pole where he had taken refuge from a hail of bullets.
And as she turned again, she recognized the rider herself.
Jerome McKenzie.
Jerome rode straight into the camp, into the firelight.
“You!” Peter raged, looking at Jerome. “You’ll hang! You’re a Confederate officer, by God! And you’re supposed to be on a ship somewhere. You’ll hang from the highest tree, betraying your country for your kin.”
“I wonder what your penalty would be for rape, Peter,” Jerome said coolly. “And you—you’re a disgrace,” he said contemptuously, looking at Tatum.
“She’s the Moccasin—” Tatum began.
“I was afraid of that,” Jerome said quietly. “Hello, Ian.”
“Jerome,” Ian responded.
“He’s got to die,” Peter said to Jerome. “And if the two of you think you’re going to join McKenzie blood against me, remember we’re in the middle of a war.”
“This war is between you and me, Peter,” Ian said flatly.
“Shoot him! Shoot him!” Peter commanded Tatum in a sudden frenzy.
But no one moved.
Ian walked forward then, determined. He walked right past Tatum, who seemed too stunned to waylay him. He leaped up to the platform of the chikee, striding toward Peter.
He threw his gun down and drew his sword.
“This particular war is ours, Peter. Let’s finish it— without killing anyone else.”
Peter hesitated. He still had Alaina.
He looked at Jerome. “If I kill him, you ride away.”
“You kill him, and I ride away,” Jerome agreed.
Peter smiled. He reached down, ostensibly for his sword.
He picked up his Colt six-shooter instead, but before he could shoot Ian point-blank, Alaina screamed.
She threw herself at Peter.
The gun went off.
“No!” Ian bellowed, bringing his sword down with a crushing blow against the butt of the gun.
Alaina fell; the gun went flying. Peter grasped for his sword then.
And Ian felt fear for his wife tear into his limbs, but he couldn’t reach her. Peter was coming at him with his sword like a madman.
Ian fought the fear and saw red.
The war had improved Peter’s abilities. He fought back with vigor and strength. But Ian was incensed, desperate to get to Alaina.
God!
He’d fought so hard.
He’d won so many times.
He was the Panther.
Yet this battle would mean nothing if she wasn’t all right.
From the corner of his eye, he could see that Jerome had come to the platform of the chikee and was gently lifting Alaina into his arms. She wasn’t moving.
Peter’s sword tip flicked Ian’s forehead. He felt a drop of blood fall into his eye, and he blinked furiously against the stinging sensation.
And fought back with a vengeance.
Peter made a wild lunge.
Ian was ready.
He didn’t have to slay his enemy; Peter impaled himself on Ian’s sword.
For once, he couldn’t regret the blood spilled, the life lost. Heedless of Tatum, he rushed to where Jerome knelt beside Alaina.
“He nicked her temple. She’s out cold. Let’s get her to Belamar,” Jerome said.
He rose, handing Ian his wife. “We’re thirty minutes away. She needs help. Teela, my father, and Jen are at Belamar.”
Ian nodded. But then he stopped, facing Tatum, who was staring at Ian and Jerome nervously, looking from man to man, licking his lips as he aimed his gun at them.
“This ain’t right!” Tatum said. “You’re both my prisoners.”
Ian looked at Jerome, then handed Alaina back to him. He drew his bloodied sword.
“Fool, I’ll shoot you,” Tatum said. And he pulled the trigger.
But his gun was empty. He drew his sword.
Ian was tired, bone weary. He didn’t want to kill. But Tatum wouldn’t let it end. With one thrust, Tatum fell.
When the battle was over, Ian stared at his cousin. “God, am I sorry. God, am I sick of the killing.”
“Some folk don’t give you a choice,” Jerome said. “At least the Moccasin can truly slip into legend now,” he added.