Just a Kiss Away (5 page)

She didn’t do either.

The man took off at a full run with her still clamped under his arm and now bouncing on his hard hip. Her corseted ribs ached from each jarring stride, but it didn’t matter because just as this madman said, he had her again. She wondered why, and what he was gonna do with her. From what she’d seen of him under the wagon, she’d have bet the farm he’d killed before.

Think!
Look at him, she told herself, remembering a novel she’d once read. The heroine had looked her killer in the eye, and the villain hadn’t been able to go through with the killing. That one look had saved the woman’s life. At this point she’d try anything. She wiggled around, trying to look at him. A black eye patch and one dark brown bloodshot eye glared back. He never once broke stride.

She shut her eyes tightly. She didn’t want to be his next victim.

At that thought cold fear crept over her. She felt a scream building, slowly at first. Whenever she was truly frightened, whenever she had no control of over what was happening, she screamed. She’d screamed in the well, and she’d lived to tell about it. She hadn’t screamed with him before because he had held a knife at her throat and warned her not to. It hadn’t been easy, as scared as she was, but the thought of him slicing through her screaming throat had been enough to keep her quiet. She didn’t want her last sound on this earth to be a gurgle.

She made up for it now and screamed for all she was worth.

He swore, then hiked her up higher on his hip, grunted, and clamped his hand over her mouth. Not once did he stop jogging along.

She kept screaming, hoping someone would hear her calls for help, but even to her own ears the sound was muffled behind his sweaty hand. He whipped around a series of dark, musty corners, and finally he stopped.

“Looks like it’s safe now,” he informed her, hardly winded. “You need to learn when to shut up. They could have followed the trail of your mouth.” With that, he flung her upright and set her on the ground with all the finesse of a pile driver. Her wobbly legs buckled, and she raised a gloved hand to her eyes to try to block out the bright flashing spots. She couldn’t have screamed now for anything. She was too swimmy-headed.

“Don’t faint there, sister. I’ve lugged you around enough already, and my arm’s getting tired.” With that mannerless pronouncement, he grabbed the back of her neck and rammed her head down to her knees. Her corset stays almost cut her in half.

“Breathe!” he ordered, keeping her head jammed down. The stays were like a vise. She gasped to get air.

“Good,” he said, adding as he released her head. “I guess you can obey orders.”

In the slowest, most ladylike way possible, she straightened and stared at her killer. He was so tall that she had to crane her neck to look up at him. His hair hung to his shoulders and was thick and straight and as black as his sinister eye patch. Despite all his cuts and bruises, he had the devil’s face, with sharp angles and chiseled ridges, and he was in desperate need of a shave.

His muscular tanned neck showed from the open collar of a dirty and torn khaki shirt that was so damp it stuck to his massive body, which was, in size, the very spit of a strongman she’d once seen on a P. T. Barnum poster. The width of his shoulders and the sheer breadth of his chest were enough to dwarf her. Halfway down that Herculean chest several buttons were missing from his shirt, showing a slick, steel-rippled plane of stomach muscles. From his wide brown leather belt hung three knotted loops that held a variety of evil-looking knives, including the one he’d pressed to her throat. Her gaze trailed slowly down to the tip of longest blade. Just below it a faded yellow bandanna stained dark with blood twisted around his upper calf.

“Pass muster?” he said in a tone that scraped right down her spine. His voice was American—common Yankee, to be exact.

“Pardon me?” She looked up.

He wore a nasty white grin that was pure Yankee arrogance.

“Never mind. Let’s get out of here before they pick up our trail again.” His hand gripped her wrist and jerked her along behind him as he rushed down the dark alley.

She tried to pull her hand out of his grip, but he held fast. He overpowered her by sheer strength, so she had no choice but to stumble along behind him. Her mouth, however, was not so passive.

“Why are you doing this?” she called out to his back.

“Because those men would have hurt you.” He jerked her around another series of corners.

“You threatened to cut my throat,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, but I was just trying to save my skin.”

Before she could respond, he dragged her over a cobbled street, and it was all she could do to keep on her feet. “Sir! Sir! Please stop!”

He jerked to a stop, had the gall to drop his shoulders as if he were frustrated, and turned slowly around, his look all irritation. “Now what?”

“If you weren’t about to kill me, why are you kidnapping me?”

“Kidnapping you?” He scowled. “I’m not kidnapping you. I’m saving your sweet neck!”

He wasn’t gonna kill her or kidnap her. She sighed with relief. Then his words registered.

“Save me from what?”

“Those soldiers would have used you to get to me.”

“But I don’t even know you.”

“Right, but they don’t know that, and they wouldn’t believe you if you told them. They would just figure you were lying, question you over and over until they’d finally get fed up and get rid of you.” He took her arm and started to move. “Now let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Back inside the city. Then I can get you to whatever hotel you belong in and out of my hair.”

She stiffened at his rudeness, then dug in her heels to try to stop their motion, but he dragged her three feet before finally stopping. She drew herself up and told him, “But I’m not staying in a hotel.”

He spit out a vile oath, and then very slowly, as if speaking to a foreigner, he asked, “Where are you staying?”

“The Binondo District.”

“Okay.” He nodded, taking in a long breath for patience. “That’s in the opposite direction.”

She agreed, but he wasn’t looking at her because he appeared to be counting under his breath. Her brother Jed acted like that, except he was a southern gentleman.

The Yankee madman clamped on to her arm and took off again, running so fast that he all but dragged her over an even rougher stone walk.

“Would you please slow down!”

He ignored her and dragged her on. Her heel caught on the jutting edge of a stone and broke. “My shoe!”

He hauled her a few more feet, then thankfully stopped and turned around. She hopped on one foot while she tried to ram the heel back in place. “My heel’s broken.”

He glanced at his hand for a brief moment, then said, “Disarmed, huh?”

She frowned. What an odd thing to say . . . but then, everyone knew that Yankees didn’t think like normal people. She decided to try to make him understand. “Sir, you don’t seem to understand—”

At that instant he picked her up in his arms.

“Put me down!”

He ignored her and headed south.

“Pay me some mind!”

“I didn’t know you had one.”

She fumed, but remembered a lady didn’t show her anger. It was beneath her. She did what she’d been taught. She didn’t speak to him.

Five minutes later she realized that was exactly what he wanted, and she gave up on acting like a genteel lady. She’d tell him off.

“You’ve broken my shoe,” she complained, breaking the silence.

He ignored her.

“My new fan’s gone.”

More silence, and he whipped around another corner so fast her head spun. It took a moment for her to try again. Remembering her drafty drawers, she added, “My dignity’s been completely shattered.”

“Good,” he finally said. “Then you won’t mind this.”

He threw her over his shoulder, clamping his tree arm ‘cross the backs of her thighs just as she screeched. With each jog, his hard shoulder now jabbed her corset into her ribs. It kept her from finding the breath to yell. She stared in a dizzying blurr at his hard back, her only view, and she almost gave up, until she remembered one more thing.

She managed one deep breath and raised her head away from his broad back. “I’ve lost my parasol!”

He never broke stride, just continued down the street, muttering some fool thing that sounded like “There
is
a God.”

Eulalie had twenty-seven bruises.
She counted every one while she bathed. Her arm had marks from that man’s tight fingers; her wrist and shoulder ached from being pulled like taffy all over Manila. She sank lower into the tepid soapy water, hoping it would soothe her. Instead, her ribs cried out. She’d forgotten about them, briefly. Earlier, she’d been absolutely sure that every fool one of her corset stays had left permanent indentations on her rib cage.

Josefina had said the bath would help, and it did. But she couldn’t help but remember the housekeeper’s face when the Yankee toted her home. He had charged like a bull through the wrought-iron gates, across the tiled courtyard, and up the stone steps, which accounted for some of her bruises. Then, instead of knocking like most humans, he’d kicked on the heavy doors until poor, stunned Josefina pulled them open.

“You’re home,” he’d said and whacked her on the derriere. “All safe and sound.” Then he deposited her in front of a stunned Josefina. “And you’re out of my hair,” he rudely added before he spun around and was out the gates before Eulalie could do more than see straight.

The little housekeeper had said there were more and more of his type living here since the Spanish relaxed the trade laws. She said she shouldn’t have let Eulalie go off by herself, which prickled. It was just like being at home with her brothers. Now Josefina would probably start watching over her.

She rose from the tin tub, dried off, and put on her pink ruffled lace dressing gown. Then hairbrush in hand, she brushed her long hair, letting it spill freely down her back to dry. Josefina had brought her a plate of sliced mango, bread, and cheese to tide her over until dinner. The meal was to be delayed until her father’s return.

Picking up the tray, she sat in a high-backed caned chair and placed the tray in her lap. The silence hit her. It was so quiet. She heard no sounds from the street because the house sat on the back of the property. Her nervousness grew. With five older brothers there was always noise at home. Hickory House was not a quiet place. She tapped her foot on the floor to give the room some sound.

With knife and fork, she cut the fruit and delicately placed a piece of it in her mouth. Very slowly and carefully she chewed, making sure her lips never parted. She swallowed, then looked around the empty room.

At home she always had polite dinner conversation with one of her brothers. It was a lady’s tool to kill the time between bites, assuring herself that she wouldn’t overeat. But there was no one to talk to. She took another bite, chewed and swallowed again. The food hit her nervous stomach like a cannonball. She set the tray aside and paced the room, wondering what her father was like.

Finally bored into action, she went downstairs to his study. She paused outside the double doors, a little nervous, a little excited, a little scared. One deep breath and she went inside, closing the door behind her. She leaned back, the door handle still in her hand, and she took in the room. It was dark, the only catches of light being those that filtered through huge shutters on the wall of windows opposite her. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness she could see well enough to cross the room and open the sliding wood shutters. Light flooded the room, and she turned, hoping the place would give her some insight to her father.