Desire in the Sun (44 page)

“You don’t have to be lily-white to bed a lady and make her like it, Boss Man.”

The deliberately jeering note in Joss’s voice terrified Lilah. Why was he saying such things, goading Kevin so? She did not believe that he would be deliberately reckless so he must have some sort of plan.

“Did you hear him, Lilah? Did you hear what he thinks of you? He’s gloating, gloating because you let him touch you! He’s probably bragged about it to all the other bucks—God, it makes me sick! You’d be better off dead than defiled by the likes of him!” Kevin was babbling now, his voice rising in pitch, his eyes moving from her face finally to rest on Joss’s above her.

“I’m going to blow a great bloody hole right through the middle of your pretty face, boy,” Kevin said to Joss, as if he relished the thought. Then his eyes shifted to Lilah again, and he made a sideways gesture with the pistol. “Get out of the way. It’s always possible that I might miss.

“Move aside, Lilah,” Joss said in her ear, too low for Kevin to hear.

“No!” Lilah was frantic. She knew Kevin well enough to know that he truly meant to shoot Joss in cold blood where he stood. Pressing back against Joss, she shielded him as best she could with her body, clutching the fabric of his trousers in both hands so that he could not shift her aside. “Kevin, don’t do this! Don’t kill him! Please, I—”

“You have approximately one second to move.”

Kevin lifted the gun. Joss’s hands tightened until they were almost painful on her shoulders.

Without warning the pistol boomed. Joss flung Lilah aside with such violence that she crashed into the opposite wall before falling, dazed, to the floor. Scrambling to her knees, her stomach churning with horror, she looked up in time to see Joss knock Kevin to the ground with a flying leap. Apparently he had gone for Kevin in a low, fast dive just as the pistol went off, just after he had shoved her out of the way. Kevin went down
with a grunt and a curse, throwing punches with vicious intent. Joss slugged him in the stomach, in the back, the blows landing with sickening thuds. Then the two were rolling around in the dirt, scrabbling for supremacy as they fought like savage dogs.

The battle seemed fairly equal, with both men meting out and absorbing a tremendous amount of punishment. Lilah gasped as Kevin locked his fingers around Joss’s throat. She looked around for a weapon to come to Joss’s aid.

The pistol had fallen beside the cot. Fired once, it was now useless.

Wildly she sought some other weapon—the lantern! She would blow it out, and smash it over Kevin’s head.

As she started for it, edging around the room close to the wall so as to stay well away from the men, Joss brought his feet up under him, heaved, and sent Kevin sprawling over his head. Then he straddled Kevin, held him with one hand digging viciously into his throat, and punched him in the face with ferocious power. Kevin grunted, quivered. His hands clawed impotently at Joss’s thighs. Joss reached for the useless pistol, closed his hand around the barrel, and brought the mother-of-pearl handle crashing down on the side of Kevin’s head.

As he repeated the blow, the door crashed back on its hinges.

LVI

“W
hat be goin’ on in here?” The man who filled the doorway was enormous, black, clad in the same loose white trousers that Joss wore. Lilah stifled a scream at his sudden appearance, watched as Joss turned to glare at the intruder. More disaster! Then, miraculously, her mind started to function again.

The situation was not quite beyond saving.

“Henry—it is Henry, isn’t it? I need your help. Mr. Kevin’s had a. … a fit of some kind, and J-Joss here had to subdue him. I need you to stand guard over him, not let him up until I can get back here with help.”

Henry, whose identity she remembered because he was the biggest of the field hands, taller even than Joss and huge with muscle, frowned. But the habit of obedience was ingrained in him, and he obviously knew her for the master’s daughter.

“Yes, Miss Lilah,” he said, and stepped into the room, looking uncertainly down at Kevin’s unconscious form. Joss, after shooting a quick, surprised glance at Lilah, lowered the pistol and stood up, stepping away from the body. Joss was barefoot, dressed only in the trousers that now sported a long rip down one leg. His chest and arms were covered with red marks from the punches. His hair was wildly disordered, and blood trickled from one corner of his mouth. He wiped it away
with the back of his hand, and looked at her again. Despite all that had happened, his green eyes were bright. Like most men, Lilah suspected with an inward spurt of disgust, he probably secretly liked nothing better than a good fight.

“You come with me,” she said, nodding to Joss, every inch the mistress. “Henry, I’m counting on you to keep Mr. Kevin here until I get back with help. Do you understand?”

“Yes’m, Miss Lilah. I understand,” The big man squatted down by Kevin’s prostrate body, scowling direly at the seriousness of his charge. Lilah, motioning to Joss to follow her, stepped quickly outside. Her eyes widened as she saw the crowd that had gathered in the narrow track between the rows of huts. Apparently a goodly number of the field hands had been awakened by the shot and had come to investigate.

Lilah looked at the mass of faces, recognized several through the graying light, chose one. “Mose, you go in there and help Henry. You’re both to keep Mr. Kevin in that hut and quiet until I get back. You hear?”

“Yes’m, Miss Lilah.” Mose detached himself from the group that Lilah saw numbered perhaps twenty, and went into the hut, sidling past Joss, who was just coming out.

“The rest of you, go on back home. You’ve no business hanging about,” she said sharply to those who remained. As they began to disperse, she motioned to Joss, who fell in with deceptive meekness behind her. Once the two of them were safely out of sight, she looked wildly over her shoulder at him. To her amazement, he was grinning.

“As I believe I’ve said before, you’re a female in a million! That was a stroke of pure genius.” Admiration shone from his eyes as they moved over her. “How long do you think we have before the Boss Man gets away from them?”

“I don’t know—Papa will miss him at half past five, when he doesn’t ring the bell.”

“Then we’ve got a little more than an hour. I have to get away. You don’t have to come with me. It’ll be dangerous, there’ll be pursuit. I can send for you when I’m safe in England.”

Lilah stopped walking abruptly. Joss stopped too, his expression suddenly serious. Beyond him, perhaps half a field away, she could see the white stucco walls and red roof of Heart’s Ease, dark and still in the hour before dawn. The house and all those in it were everything she had once held dear. The moment had come when she had to decide, finally, irrevocably, whether or not to give up her home and family and every bit of the security she’d always known for this man. If he left without her, she greatly feared that she would never see him again. Even if he got away, got back to England, she would be trapped. Her father would never let her go to him.

Chances were, he would not get away. As he’d pointed out, there’d be pursuit. But perhaps if she were with him, she could keep him from being killed out of hand.

In any case, her choice had already been made. Whatever came of it, good or ill, she was throwing in her lot with Joss.

“I’m coming with you, and we don’t have time to argue,” she said with finality, and caught his hand. “Come on, we have to get away before Kevin starts raising a ruckus. The stables are this way.”

LVII

B
efore noon they were within sight of the red roofs and sun-washed pastel buildings of Bridgetown. Lilah and Joss reined in on top of a grassy hill overlooking the serene wash of the ocean to the west and the bustling town sprawling out from the sapphire curve of Bridgetown Bay just ahead. From their vantage point they could also see a considerable way back down the road over which they had traveled. The heat was intense, the sun bright; the horses, her own sorrel mare Candida and a big bay gelding called Tuk, were tired out.

Dismounting to rest the animals, which had been pushed hard by their headlong flight, Joss and Lilah sprawled wearily in the long grass as the horses lowered their heads to drink from the stream that cut across the hillside. So far there had been no sign of pursuit. It seemed as if their decision to flee directly to Bridgetown, where they would sell the horses to buy passage on whatever ship might be sailing with the next tide, had been the right one. As Lilah had pointed out, nothing would be gained by trying to hide themselves on Barbados until her father forgot about them. Her father would never forget about them. Their only hope was to find a ship that was leaving Barbados for any destination whatsoever before word could be gotten to the harbormaster that they were being sought. Later, when they
were safely out of the reach of her father and the militia, they could worry about getting to England.

Sitting with her back against the huge twisted trunk of a baobab tree, Lilah idly stroked Joss’s hair—he was stretched out, his head resting on her lap—and considered their situation. She was exhausted, dirty, hungry, and frightened. The night before she’d had no sleep, and her lemon-yellow muslin dress, never intended to withstand the rigors of riding, was hideously crumpled and stained. In addition, she was only half dressed, not having bothered with stays, stockings, or more than one petticoat when she had donned her clothes to go in search of Joss the night before. Still, she was better off than Joss. He was barefoot, unshaven, clad only in the ripped trousers, with bruises turning livid all over his torso. It occurred to her that they might have a problem she had not previously considered: What respectable ship’s captain would agree to take aboard such disreputable-looking passengers, without papers or baggage of any kind?

She said as much to Joss.

“We’ll pay them enough so that they won’t ask too many questions. The horses should bring a good price. Enough to get us aboard a ship, at least, with a tidy bit left over. And I thought to buy us both what clothes we need before we approach the ship. Then we’ll have baggage and we’ll be dressed appropriately. That should make things easier.”

He sat up, smiled at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners. With his unshaven jaw and bare chest he looked the complete brigand. Despite her worry Lilah smiled back. Cost what it might, she still had no doubts, none, about her decision. If only they could get safely away!

“Come on, we’ve rested long enough,” Joss said, his thoughts apparently running parallel to hers. He stood up, wincing at the soreness of his bruises, and held a hand down to her, Lilah allowed him to pull her up, then ran a questing hand along his ribcage.

“Are you sure nothing’s broken?” she asked worriedly. He had taken quite a beating from Kevin—and he had been the victor. She shuddered to think what Kevin must feel like now. Or what he was doing. What her father was doing.

“Positive. Don’t worry, I’ve survived far worse than a few bruises.”

“I know.” She smiled at him again, really smiled this time. He looked down at her for an instant, his eyes turning grave. Then he bent his head and kissed her.

As they mounted their horses, Lilah chanced to look back down the road. What she saw brought fear shooting through her: a dozen or so uniformed riders cresting the next rise over, coming fast.

“Joss. …” Mouth drying, she could not say more, but wordlessly pointed back down the road.

He looked, and his face tightened.

“They’re militia! Do you think it’s us they’re after?” Her voice was high-pitched with dread.

“From the way they’re riding I’d say it’s likely. I sure don’t propose to stay here and find out for certain. Come on!”

They urged their tired horses into a gallop, heading for town. The land thereabouts was entirely under cultivation, and there was no place to hide even if they’d wanted to.

The pounding of the horses’ hooves against the hard-packed dirt road echoed the fear-quickened drumming of Lilah’s heart. Bending low over Candida’s neck, urging her to greater speed despite the distance she’d already traveled that day, Lilah knew deep in her heart that they were not going to get away. Joss raced beside her, his face grim, his bare back gleaming bronze in the bright sunlight. He rode the horse as if he’d been born to it.