Creole Fires (24 page)

“Easy to see a little slip of a thing like you doesn’t need any help a’tall.” He tipped his hat and started to walk away.

Hesitating only a moment, Nicki caught up with him before he’d gone ten feet.

“I—I’m sorry. That was rude of me. As a matter of fact, I could use some assistance. I’m traveling to Atlanta. I would very much appreciate it if you would help me secure some type of transportation.”

He seemed incredulous. “Look, little lady, that’s a damned long ways. You can’t possibly make it that far on your own.”

“I assure you I will, Mr. Preston.” She wanted to add,
And I’m not your little lady—Alexandre’s—or
anybody else’s.
“But it would be easier if you’d help me.”

Preston hesitated only a moment, his eyes moving over her expensive clothes. “All right, ma’am, if you’re that set on goin’ …. Matter of fact, there’s a gent I know’d be happy to take you. Hires his wagon out at least as far as Hammond.”

“That would be perfect.” She could catch a coach from there on east.

Preston excused himself and went into the tavern. He came out some time later with a squat little man about as wide as he was tall.

“This is Marcus. He’ll take you into Hammond for ten dollars.”

It seemed a fortune. “How about five?”

Marcus chuckled softly, his rotund belly jiggling with the motion. “Ten.”

“Five,” she haggled, knowing she hadn’t much to spare.

“Seven,” he pressed.

“Agreed.” They shook hands and Marcus led the way down the street to the livery. Preston told her to wait where she was, and the two men went inside. They came out a few minutes later, Preston in front, Marcus driving a battered old wagon whose wheels looked as though they’d fall off at the first chuckhole. The horse Marcus had hitched up, sway-backed and bony, plodded along as if each step might be his last.

“Don’t you ever feed him?” she couldn’t resist asking.

“Old Zeke’ll git ya there,” Marcus assured her.

Traver Preston helped her aboard. “Thank you, Mr. Preston.”

“My pleasure, ma’am.” He tipped his hat and smiled as the wagon pulled away.

Nicki breathed a sigh of relief. She was off to a solid start. Once she reached Hammond and decided where to go from there, the odds of Alex finding her would be far less. She would probably never see him again. He would marry Clarissa, find a new mistress, and lead the kind of life he’d always wanted.

Uninvolved.

Unattached.

Unloved.

Why did it sadden her to think of him living without her? Why should his happiness matter at all? What was it about Alexandre that made people worry about him, want to take care of him? It came to her that Alex cared about
them
, so they cared in return.
He cares, all right. About everyone but me.

“Whoa!” The sound of Marcus’s raspy voice pulled her thoughts in another direction. He tugged on old Zeke’s reins. They’d gone several miles out of town, past fields of sugarcane and black laborers hard at work. This stretch of road looked deserted. A swamp bordered one side, fallow fields the other. Several crows cawed mockingly from the overhanging cypress branches above them.

“What are we stopping for?”

“Gotta give old Zeke a rest,” Marcus said.

“But we’ve only gone a few miles. Surely he can’t be tired already.”

Marcus just shrugged his beefy shoulders.

“Sorry, ma’am,” came a voice from the edge of the swamp, “I hate like holy hell to do this, but here’s as far as you’re goin’.” Traver Preston climbed up the embankment and started toward them.

“What are you doing here? What are you talking about?” Preston moved to the side of the wagon, wrapped an arm around her waist, and lifted her down.

“I’ve got to get to Hammond,” she reminded him. “You said you’d help me.”

“Way things go sometimes. Now if you’ll be so kind as to hand me that little ol’ carpetbag, me and Marcus’ll be headin’ on down the road.” A glance behind him revealed two saddled horses. “I’ll have to tie you up, but I won’t tie you tight. Soon as you git loose, you can take that old wagon on back to town.”

“You two are in this together?”

“Never saw the man before today,” Preston told her, “but he looked like he could use the money, same as me.”

“I—I don’t have any money.” She gripped her carpetbag tighter.

Preston’s eyes roamed over her as they had before, taking in the fine cut and expensive fabric of her navy-blue riding habit. “Lady, they don’t sell clothes like that down at the mercantile. Now gimme that bag.”

He reached for it, but she jerked it back. “I’m telling you the truth. I don’t have any money. At least not very much. What little I do have, I need to get away.”

“Away?” He arched a fine dark brow. “Away from what?”

“I—I mean I need it to get to Hammond. I’m meeting my husband there.”

“Donovan St. Michaels,” he said sarcasically.

“That’s right.”

Preston chuckled softly. “Lady, I’ve seen some piss-poor liars in my time, but you’re about the worst.
Tell you what I think. I think you’re a runaway. I think Mr. Donovan St. Michaels, or whatever man calls you his, might pay pretty good money to get you back.”

“She’s sure enough a beauty, all right,” Marcus said. “Take that perty red hair a’ hers loose from all them pins.”

“She’s pretty, all right. Got style too. Not the kinda woman who’d be travelin’ on her own.”

“I’m not a runaway,” she lied.

Preston ignored her. “If she doesn’t have money, maybe we oughta take her back to Montagne. See if the constable’s lookin’ for her. She’s probably some rich man’s wife or daughter. Might be some kinda reward.”

“No!” Nicki squeaked, edging away. “You take me back and I’ll tell them you tried to rob me.”

“If you are a runaway, and I’m bettin’ you are, it’ll be your word against ours.”

“I’m not going,” she said. Taking a quick step backward, she opened her carpetbag and drew out Alex’s cap-and-ball pistol. “You take one step in my direction, I’m going to shoot you.”

Preston only laughed. His hand went behind his back and he pulled his own gun from where he had shoved in into the waistband of his breeches. “See? I got one a’ them too. Now, put that thing down before you get yourself hurt.”

With a reassuring smile, he turned and lunged for her. Nicki pulled the trigger on the pistol, discharging a blast that knocked her backward and filled the air with the acrid smell of gun smoke. Traver Preston sprawled at her feet, moaning softly. She tossed Alex’s single-shot weapon aside and dived for the one
Preston had pointed at her, now lying in the dirt beside him.

“Don’t try it,” she commanded Marcus, trying to keep her voice from shaking as he lumbered from the wagon, and pointed the gun at him with surprisingly steady hands. “I think it’s fairly obvious I mean exactly what I say.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Marcus agreed.

“Get over here.” He did as she told him. “Now turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

Marcus crossed his beefy wrists behind him. Nicki took the handkerchief out of his back pocket and tied them together. The flimsy binding wouldn’t hold for long, but then, she didn’t need it to. Traver Preston had stopped moaning, and sat up hunched over the wound in his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Preston,” she said. “I certainly didn’t intend to hurt anyone, but I’m sick and tired of being bullied. Stuff your shirttail into the wound to slow the bleeding. And get yourself to a doctor.” With that she climbed aboard the wagon, picked up the reins, and urged the old horse on down the road. Surprisingly, he moved off at a trot and continued enthusiastically for some miles farther.

An hour later, she slowed him to a walk and they held that pace for the rest of the day. She wouldn’t make Hammond, but there were bound to be a few small inns along the road. At the first one she came to she would stop for the night.

She tried not to think how close she had come to disaster. If Traver Preston had returned her to Montagne, sooner or later they would have discovered who she was—and to whom she belonged. Until Alex arrived to claim her—if he came at all—she
would have been imprisoned. The thought sent a shiver down her spine.

Then her spirits lifted. Actually, now that the danger had passed, it occurred to her that she had handled the situation quite well, considering. She’d dealt with those men just as Alex would have, meted out justice, and defended herself. With a little luck and a doctor’s care, Preston would be fine. She doubted he would report the incident, since she was already gone and with her any chance of reward.

Just as she had vowed, she had taken care of herself. She could do it again if she had to. She didn’t need Alexandre or any other man. She’d made her first real step toward freedom.

Why did a voice inside keep saying that freedom from Alex was just another word for lonely?

Alex caught the
Belle Creole
out of La Ronde and headed upriver. He knew Captain Maddox, the graying man who had piloted the luxurious riverboat for the past five years. For a hefty sum of money to cover any lost time, the captain finally agreed to put into port at any additional stops the midnight boat,
Memphis Lady
, might have made.

Each time the steamboat docked, Alex briefly departed, asking questions of any who might possibly have seen a young woman traveling alone. At one stop a skinny blond man who worked at the terminal had traveled that same vessel the night before. He remembered the girl Alex described getting on in La Ronde, but hadn’t seen her afterward, or noticed where she got off.

“She was one good-lookin’ woman,” the thin man said. “Hard to forget hair that color. Or those eyes—
sorta blue-green. She wasn’t flashy, mind ya. Just pretty, and kinda wholesome-like.”

“That’s her,” Alex agreed, feeling a hard knot ball in his stomach. The man’s too-apt description touched him someplace between anger and pain. Nicki was beautiful, naive—and alone. He didn’t want men looking at her, wondering where her man was, why she was traveling by herself. He didn’t want them near her.

Some distant part of his mind questioned his feelings. Why was she so important to him? Why didn’t he just give back her indenture papers and let her go off on her own? Then he thought of her gentleness, the way she looked at the world through such fresh, innocent eyes, even after all she had suffered. She needed a man’s protection—his protection. Setting aside her foolish pride seemed little enough price to pay.

Alex’s jaw tightened. By God, Nicki was his. Right or wrong, he had taken her to his bed, she was his responsibility, and he wasn’t about to let her go!

He would find her, he resolved, repeating the vow again and again, but by the end of the day, his worry had begun to mount. Only one more stop before Baton Rouge. What if she’d changed her mind and gone farther upriver? What if Danielle had lied to him? Both seemed unlikely. Danielle wouldn’t dare, and once Nicki’s mind was made up, she would be too damned stubborn to change it. If he found no trace of her in Montagne, he would check Baton Rouge, then start back downstream at the first opportunity. He’d go into each town and check more thoroughly.

“Damn!” Alex swore. Starting over would take time. Days he couldn’t afford to lose.

He paced the deck and watched the passing shoreline. When he wasn’t worrying himself sick over what might have happened to her, he was cursing her and planning the revenge he would extract when he finally got his hands on her.

“Next stop, Montagne,” one of the stewards called out, passing Alex on the deck.

As he had at each stop, Alex left the boat along with those departing and made his way to the terminal.

“I recollect seein’ her, all right,” one of the baggage handlers told him. “She was real pretty. She sorta waited till the others left, then she headed down Front Street toward the freighting office.”

“Thank you,” Alex said, relieved. At least he knew where to start looking. “You’ve been very helpful.”

After handing the man a coin for his trouble, he returned to the boat, picked his saddle bags up from the purser, hoisted them over his shoulder, and headed down to the main deck where Maximillian grazed beside several other horses.

Once ashore, Alex mounted the gelding and rode straight for the freight office. He found Nicki had never arrived. Fighting down his fear of what might have happened, he made his way to the livery stable.

“She come here with a coupla fellows,” the owner, a balding man with a thick gray handlebar mustache, told him. “A short, stocky guy and a gambler. They hired an old, beat-up wagon, cheapest I had, and headed off on the road to Hammond. Leastwise the short fella and the gal did. Don’t know what become of the gambler.”

“How long ago did they leave?” Alex’s worry increased with every passing minute.

“Just before noon.”

“Thank you.” They had a good head start, but if he pushed Max hard, he might be able to catch them. Or come upon some tavern where they’d stopped for the night. He prayed Nicole was all right. That she had hired someone who was only interested in her money.

His money
, he corrected with another muttered oath. When he got his hands on the little minx he was going to make her pay.

Nicki felt bone-tired and now that the sun had begun to set, more than a little uneasy. It would be dark soon. If she didn’t find an inn, she would be forced to sleep in the back of the wagon.

“Come on, baby,” she cajoled the old horse she’d already grown fond of. “Just a little farther.” She would get him some oats and a manger of hay, see that he had at least one decent meal before she left him and caught the stage. The horse nickered softly, as if he understood, and continued to plod down the road.

Darkness had fallen, the road lit only by a sliver of moon, and still she kept going. Rounding a bend that had seemed miles in coming, Nicki shivered against the early evening chill and wished she had a blanket. It was difficult to see where she was going, though old Zeke seemed to know.

They had traveled just a little ways farther when she spotted a tiny cluster of yellow dots in the distance. As the wagon grew closer, the dots became windows, and she recognized the two-story building in the distance as an inn.