Fletcher's Woman (25 page)

Once or twice during the performance, Rachel felt Jonas's eyes touch her and turned to look at him. It was very dark, and his expression was unreadable, though the angle of his head confirmed that he was, indeed, watching her.

When the play had ended, and gaslights flared on the walls of the theater, his golden eyes were carefully averted. He ushered her almost roughly up the center aisle and through the plush lobby, where other weekday theatergoers were expounding on the quality of the performance just past.

Outside, the storm was waning, riding away on a westbound wind. Reaching the buggy, Jonas grasped Rachel by the waist and hoisted her unceremoniously into the seat. Then, glowering up at her, his hands on his hips, his tawny hair glistening with rain, he said, “You're staying at my hotel tonight.”

Rachel's heart scrambled into her throat. “What?”

Jonas was striding around to the other side of the buggy, climbing up beside her, bringing the reins down on the horse's back with a decided
thwack.
“You heard me,” he said.

Rachel stiffened, folding her arms under the navy blue cloak. She had an unreal feeling, and her chest ached. “Jonas Wilkes, don't you
dare
take me to that hotel.”

His face was grim and set in the faint glow of the kerosene street lamps lining the street. Too soon, they came to a stop in front of a plain, two-story board structure.

“I'll scream,” Rachel threatened.

Jonas's jaw tightened as he secured the brake lever. “You do, Rachel McKinnon, and I'll turn you over my knee, right here on this street!”

Rachel knew that Jonas meant exactly what he said, but she wasn't about to follow him meekly into that hotel, like some mindless tart. She raised her hand to slap his face, and he caught her wrist in a grip that was torturously familiar.
Griffin,
grieved the part of her that had reveled in the gentle, demanding restraint of his hands, taken joy in the total vulnerability of her naked breasts—

What was she thinking about that for? She blushed, fearing that Jonas would read the memory in her eyes.

It almost seemed that he had. “You are not going back to that house,” he informed her furiously. “Not now, or ever. I'll get your things tomorrow.”

Rachel stared at him, stunned. Only minutes before, she had actually believed he was her friend. “You are insane!” she hissed finally.

He released her wrist with an abrupt motion of his hand, his golden eyes glittering. “Until the
China Drifter
sets sail, Rachel, I'm not letting you out of my sight. Now, you might as well accept that, because there is nothing you can do about it.”

“I can
still
scream!” Rachel reminded him in a hoarse undertone. The pain in her lungs was worse, her head felt thick, and it was getting harder and harder to care about anything except going to sleep.

Jonas sighed in exasperation. “Screaming women are no novelty this close to the Skid Road, Rachel. Now, are you coming in with me or not?”

“I hardly think so.”

His shoulders moved in an irritating, easy shrug. “Fine. Perhaps I should let Frazier sell you to one of his rich, foreign friends after all.”

Rachel's mouth fell open; cold horror jiggled in the pit of her stomach, rose to fill her raw throat. She was incapable of speech.

But Jonas went on with grim matter-of-factness. “You could
end up in a Chinese court, as a concubine. If that doesn't suit you, there are always remote
ranchos
in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina. . . .”

Inwardly Rachel reeled. Captain Frazier's compliments, so pleasing when they were delivered, had an ominous ring now.
Many wealthy men would be happy to take you as a bride, Rachel, and I could arrange for you to meet several.

But she was being silly, she decided. Surely Douglas could never do anything like that. Rachel folded her hands in her lap, and they felt cold, even cradled in the soft warmth of her cloak. “I'm not sure your motives are any purer, Jonas Wilkes,” she said.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Jonas laughed. The hard, determined set of his face softened a little. “Urchin, there is nothing I would rather do, to be perfectly honest, than carry you up to my room and ravage you shamelessly.” He looked away for a moment, then back again. Some anguished emotion flickered briefly behind the laughter in his eyes. “When I take you, Rachel—and I
will
take you—you will be ready.”

Rachel was scandalized by the bluntness of his declaration. “You are unspeakable!”

He laughed again and jumped out of the buggy. In a moment, he was standing on her side of the vehicle, looking up at her. “Come along, Rachel, my dear,” he said, companionably.

Rachel trembled, fixed her eyes on a street lamp nearby, and refused to budge. She considered shouting for help and then thought better of it. Her throat was sore, there was no breath in her lungs, and none of the men passing by looked even remotely chivalrous.

Jonas's voice was level and laced with amusement. “You have two seconds, Urchin. And remember, if you make the wrong decision, you might be sitting on pillows for a month.”

She pivoted grudgingly on the buggy's seat. “Do you promise not to—not to—”

Jonas raised one hand in a solemn vow. “I promise, Urchin.”

Rash as it seemed, Rachel believed him. “All right, then,” she said.

Jonas encircled her waist with his hands and lifted her down. She was trembling now, with fright and frustration and the nip of the chill night wind.

Jonas wrapped a proprietary, protective arm around her waist and steered her calmly into the austere lobby of the hotel.
The one room clerk in evidence, a thin, studious-looking young man, greeted Jonas with an almost obsequious grin. “Mr. Wilkes!”

Rachel felt as though she'd suddenly become invisible. The clerk didn't seem to see her at all.

Jonas smiled winningly. “Good evening, Herbert. How are things at the university?”

Herbert beamed. “Splendid, sir. Just splendid.”

“Good. I trust that my room is available?”

“Always, Mr. Wilkes,” replied the clerk, extending a brass key.

“Good,” Jonas repeated. And then he strode, dragging Rachel with him, across the small, neatly kept lobby and up a flight of steep wooden stairs.

“Why would they keep a room open just for you?” Rachel asked, feeling a great many misgivings as Jonas unlocked a sturdy-looking door and pushed it inward.

He smiled. “That's simple, Urchin. I own it.”

“The room?”

“The hotel.”

Rachel blushed. Believing Jonas outside, in a buggy, was different from believing him at the doorway of his room. Why hadn't she tried to scream, or run away?

“Why are you doing this? Were you only friendly to me so that you could lure me here?”

Jonas silenced her by laying an index finger on her lips. “Hush. I brought you here because I don't want you sailing off as an unwilling passenger on the
Drifter
. I have no intention of making love to you—not now, at least.”

Rachel was very tired, and she was sick. Could she possibly have been so wrong about Captain Frazier? He'd seemed like such a gentleman.

And what of Jonas Wilkes? Was he the rascal Molly and Griffin thought he was—or was he a rescuer?

Ruefully, Rachel faced the distinct possibility that he was both.

The interior of the room was alarmingly dark until Jonas struck a match and lit a series of kerosene lamps. The glow of soft, almost fluid light enabled Rachel to release her hold on the woodwork framing the doorway and step inside.

It was not an elegant room; like the lobby, it was so simply furnished that it seemed almost Spartan. There was a closet—its door was slightly ajar, and Rachel could see the sleeves of
coats and shirts, the legs of trousers, and part of a leather valise. In one corner, under the windows, sat a desk; in another, a little round table flanked by straight-backed chairs.

The bed was gigantic, however, and its heavy, intricately carved headboard was made of some dark, oppressive wood. Rachel shifted her gaze from it, only to catch Jonas staring at her.

He had shed his rain-dampened coat and stood beside a polished bureau, a decanter of some amber liquor in one hand, a glass in the other.

“You are so incredibly beautiful,” he said.

Involuntarily Rachel's eyes slid back to the bed. “Please, Jonas—take me back to Miss Cunningham's now—tonight.”

“No.”

“If you don't, I'm going to make so much noise that your reputation will be ruined forever.”

Jonas laughed softly and raised the glass in some sort of mocking salute. “Be my guest. My reputation is already such that you could only enhance it.”

Rachel's head began to ache, and she was limp with exhaustion. A soft, broken sob of frustration slipped past her lips to echo in the shadowy room. Feeling wretched, she made her way to the bed and sat down heavily on its edge.

She could not see Jonas, but she heard the rattle of glass against glass, and then the sound of his boot heels clicking on the bare floor.

When she looked up through a pounding haze of tears, she saw that he was standing before her, extending a crystal tumbler.

“This will help you sleep,” he said, his voice reassuringly gentle.

Trembling, Rachel took the glass. “You promised—”

He was squatting before her now, looking up into her face. “I know, Sweetheart,” he said. “And I'll keep my promise. You take the bed, and I'll sleep on the floor.”

The smooth, measured meter of Jonas's words had a trancelike effect on Rachel, and she drank the mellow, warming contents of the glass. She remembered nothing after that.

•   •   •

Griffin stirred and immediately a jagged, explosive pain shot through his rib cage and into his groin. His stomach convulsed in rebellion.

He opened his eyes, endured the spinning dizziness that
resulted, and slowly took a mental inventory of his anatomy. Cracked ribs—four, he thought—and a possible rupture. Other than that, he was all right.

“Griffin?”

Field was somewhere just behind him, by the sound of his voice. “Damn it, come around here where I can see you.”

His friend's face loomed over him suddenly, looking strained and incredibly weary. “How do you feel?”

“Like hell,” replied Griffin, in a gruff whisper. “Get me a syringe from the cabinet, and some morphine.”

Field looked annoyingly reluctant. “Do you think that's wise, Griffin? I mean, maybe you shouldn't—”

Griffin swore. “Damn you, Field. I'm the doctor here—remember?”

Still, Field hesitated. “Will it stop the pain?”

Griffin laughed, and it hurt. Badly. “No, it won't ‘stop the pain.' It'll just make me so happy that I don't give a damn.”

Field brought the requested materials from the supply cabinet, but he looked scared. “Now what?”

“Now you fill the damned thing and inject the stuff into my arm.”

Field paled, staring down at the syringe and vial lying in his right palm.

Suddenly, bless her, Molly was there, her hair tangled, her eyes puffed with the lack of sleep. “Give me those!” she snapped impatiently. Field obeyed with relief.

Griffin grinned as he watched Molly fill the syringe and raise it to the dim, struggling light of dawn. She pumped it once, to force out any air bubbles that might be lingering inside, swabbed the inside of his forearm with alcohol, and injected the medicine.

Minutes later, the drug began to take effect. The shattering pain ebbed to a quiet, pulsating feeling.

But there was something wrong; Griffin had an unpleasant sensation of being outside himself, and his control, ever rigid, was slipping. He had never used morphine before, and as its full power came sweeping down on him, he vowed that he would never use it again. Walls were beginning to crumble inside him—necessary walls. God knew what he might say or do in the next few hours.

For a time, he slept, or thought he did. One moment, he was lying on his study sofa, the next, he was standing high on the mountain, in the woods, watching that massive tree fall and
crush his father. Athena was beside him; then her features dissolved and reassembled themselves in Rachel's image.

Screams went through Griffin's frame like echoes in a deep cave. He wondered if they were staying inside him, where they belonged.

•   •   •

Rachel awakened, naked and alarmed, in the gigantic bed. To her tremendous relief, Jonas was not sleeping beside her, but on the floor as he'd promised.

Thoughts of escape played in her mind; but even as she reviewed them fuzzily, Rachel knew the task was impossible. Rolled up in a chenille bedspread, Jonas lay directly in front of the door. Whether he was keeping her in or Captain Frazier out was anybody's guess.

A window was open, letting in a stream of sunny, rain-washed air, but Rachel had no intention of dropping two stories to the alley below.

It was odd, she thought, how languid and achy she felt. How resigned. She pulled the bedclothes up under her chin and turned onto her side.

And it was then that Rachel felt the tearing pain in the lower part of her right lung. With agonizing slowness, she rolled back again, to lie flat, but the wrenching ache did not abate.

The room was too hot and then, almost immediately, too cold. She sneezed, and the involuntary motion hurt so badly that she groaned.

Jonas was standing beside the bed, shirtless and sleep-rumpled and worried. His voice came from too near, and then too far away. “Rachel . . . what is it . . . rest . . . I'll find a doctor . . . just rest.”

There was darkness and then light, heat and then cold, a moment and then eternity. It was a world of opposites.

Rachel heard Jonas's voice again and one that she didn't recognize.