Keegan's Lady (23 page)

Away . . . The instant Caitlin was left alone, that was all she could think about, getting away. Beyond that, nothing mattered. Not how she would get back to town without a horse. Not how she planned to find her way in the dark. Not how she hoped to reclaim her possessions. Nothing mattered but putting as much distance between herself and Ace Keegan as she possibly could.

So he wanted her to trust him, did he? Every time Caitlin thought about what he'd said, she nearly burst into hysterical laughter. What better way to become acquainted than by sharing a bed? Just who did he think he was kidding? She wasn't quite that naive, thank you very much. She knew all she needed to know about him, or for that matter, any man. In short, she didn't trust

Ace Keegan any farther than she could throw him, which wasn't darned far. As for his not hurting her? She'd believe that when she saw it.

After bringing her satchels to the bedroom, Keegan had excused himself to go outside and fetch in some firewood from the woodpile she'd seen out front. She could hear him there now, the logs going kerchunk as he gathered an armload. At any moment, he would return, and then her chance to run would be gone. She had to act fast.

Leaving her satchels where he'd set them on the colorfully draped bed, she hurried from the well-lit bedroom. After easing the door closed behind her, she moved down the shadowy hallway, her gaze fixed anxiously on the golden glow of lantern light ahead of her. Oh, please, God. All she needed was a couple of minutes. Just a couple of minutes, and she'd be out of there.

With a little luck, Keegan would see the closed bedroom door when he came back inside and think she was changing into her nightclothes. If he was a gentleman about it and decided to allow her a bit of privacy, that would buy her a few minutes. Not that she was foolish enough to believe he was a gentleman—or anything close to it. But maybe—pray God—he would be on his best behavior for a while—the better to trick her into trusting him.

Earlier, when he'd shown her the house, she'd seen a back door leading off the kitchen. If she left that way, he wouldn't see her from out front. If things went well, she would be a mile away before he realized she was gone. He would find it difficult to track her until daylight, and by the time he found her tomorrow, she would already have annulment proceedings well under way.

A sudden thump brought her advance down the hallway to a halt. She couldn't be sure where the sound had originated. She held her breath, her gaze fixed on the living room ahead of her. From her vantage point, all she could see was the table and the fireplace beyond it. Surely, if Keegan had entered the room, she would at least see his shadow.

After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, she moved forward a step, then hesitated, half-expecting him to walk into her field of vision. When nothing happened, she took several more steps. The table was only a few feet away, but it seemed like a mile.

To her intense relief, there was no one in the main living area. She guessed that Keegan had decided to haul several armloads of wood up to the porch before coming back in to build a fire. Good.

Hesitating only long enough to take a steadying breath, she raced for the kitchen. The smell of beans and cornbread surrounded her as she drew near the stove. She imagined him and his brothers spooning up bowls of beans before leaving for the social. Soon, they would return, and she wouldn't have a prayer of slipping away without one of them noticing. At the thought, a clammy sweat broke out all over her body. Oh, God.

Beckoning to her like a beacon, the new brass doorknob on the back door reflected light from the lantern. She didn't slow her pace until her hand closed over it. Then, with a hard twist, she discovered the door had been locked shut.

Frantic, her fingers clumsy with urgency, she struggled to draw back the bolt. At any given second, Keegan could come back inside. Tarnation! With a frustrated sob, Caitlin jerked on the bolt with all her strength. With a suddenness that startled her, the metal bar finally pulled free of its niche.

So relieved she nearly wept, she flung the door wide. Her breath caught on a strangled cry the instant she stepped outside. No porch. That was the only thought her brain had time to assimilate. Then she was falling. Though she tried desperately to stifle it, a scream tore from her throat.

Ace had just gathered a third armload of wood when he heard a strangled cry. It might have been a cougar. Sometimes big mountain cats sounded very much like a woman screaming. But he'd never heard one sound quite like that.

Concerned, he dropped the armload of wood and hurried around the side of the house. To his amazement, he found his bride lying just below the back door, her crumpled form illuminated by a shaft of light spilling from the house. Even in the shadows, he could see her mouth working for air like that of a landed fish.

Ace ran toward her. In preparation for deep winter snowfall, he'd built the house on a high foundation, so she had fallen no short distance. Because a porch hadn't been built yet, he'd bolted the back door as a safety measure. Night blind as she was, Caitlin clearly hadn't seen the extreme drop before she stepped outside.

"Dear God, Caitlin. Are you all right?"

Of course, she wasn't all right. Any idiot could have determined that. She'd obviously been attempting an escape and would have been long gone if she hadn't taken such a nasty fall.

His heart caught with fear as he dropped to one knee beside her. She lay amid the scraps of lumber like a broken doll, eyes bugging, mouth agape. By the way her chest kept catching, he deduced she'd gotten the wind knocked out of her.

"Easy, sweetheart. Easy. Just try to relax."

Ace pressed a hand to her midriff, felt the whalebone of her corset, and bit back a curse. He eased an arm under her shoulders and carefully lifted her to a sitting position. Her body convulsed with her futile efforts to breathe.

"Easy, honey. It'll come. Just don't fight it. The wind is knocked out of you, that's all."

Even as he spoke, Ace was casting a frightened glance over her. Her dress was ripped at the shoulder, and he could see scraped flesh beneath the rent. At best, she was bound to be bruised up. At worst—God, he hated to think. And like a damned fool, he was moving her around. What if she had a broken arm or leg? Or, God forbid, a cracked rib. He might puncture one of her lungs.

Usually level-headed in a crisis, Ace was a stranger to the panic that surged through him. With three rough-and-tumble younger brothers, he'd been called upon to play nursemaid more times than he could count. Caitlin wasn't one of his brothers, though. She wasn't even as sturdily built as his little sister Eden. The thought of her falling such a distance and landing in a heap of jagged wood made him feel sick.

Hands shaking, he kneaded her thin arms. Twigs. Brittle little twigs. He'd never felt an elbow with so many bones. Relief flowed through him when he discovered nothing broken.

Her lungs whistled as she grabbed unsuccessfully for breath. With a sweep of his arm, he cleared away some of the boards and eased her gently back. "Just relax," he urged her softly. "Easy does it. It'll come, honey. Just relax."

Having had the breath knocked put of him more than once, Ace knew that relaxing was easier said than done. When a person couldn't breathe, it was instinctive to panic and fight for oxygen. Unfortunately, he also knew that as long as she struggled, her lungs would probably refuse to work.

Fairly certain, after a cursory examination, that she had no fractures in her upper torso, he put his hands to work massaging her shoulders and arms, hoping to help her go limp. Even at that it seemed like an eternity before he finally felt her chest expand.

Unaware that he'd been holding his own breath, Ace hauled in a draught of air with her. "There's a good girl. Easy, now. Take it slow."

Her lungs whistled and caught again. Then, after only a moment, she was able to take another deep breath. The tension immediately eased from her narrow shoulders where his hands were clenched. Damn it. Tomorrow the poor girl would probably have bruises all over her from the grip of his ringers.

"Another breath," he coaxed. "Slow and easy. Just let your body take over." He watched anxiously as she struggled to make her lungs function properly again. "That's the way."

She shuddered. Was she relieved because she could finally breathe or revolted because he was touching her? Clamping a small hand over her ribs, she passed the next several seconds just working her lungs.

Ace sat back on his heels to give her space, which he sensed she needed almost desperately. Guilt began to rack him. This was entirely his fault. He'd known when he left her alone that she was feeling trapped. If he had been using his head, he wouldn't have given her any opportunity to run.

"No porch," she finally managed to croak.

He glanced at the yawning doorway above them. Six feet up, if it was an inch. Damn it all to hell. Taking his cue from her, he concentrated on breathing. To calm himself. To chase away the sensation of weakness that had attacked his legs. At some point tonight his feelings for this girl had gotten into an impossible tangle. The emotions that churned within him were as bewildering as they were difficult to identify. He only knew that seeing her lying there had scared the bejesus out of him.

Rubbing a calloused palm over his face, he blinked and refocused. Then he leaned over her. "Let's assess the damage, shall we?"

She made an inarticulate sound as he ran his hands up under her skirt. He realized it wasn't exactly the best thing to do. But how else was he to see if she'd broken a leg? Like most women, she was draped in so many layers, he had no hope of telling much until he'd dispensed with some of them.

His fingertips skimmed a fragile ankle sheathed in a ribbed cotton stocking, then a shapely calf encased in a cotton bloomer. A dimpled knee. A silken thigh. When he ran his hand past the layers of cotton to the slit in her drawers, she jumped like a terrified rabbit with one hind foot caught in a trap. His guts knotted.

"Easy, honey. It's okay." Assured that her left leg was reasonably intact, Ace turned his attention to her right one. As he gently prodded the network of bones in her small foot, he added, "Holler if anything hurts." He planted a hand on her chest when she tried to sit upright. "Goddammit, Caitlin, hold still. You could have a broken rib."

"I don't," she protested weakly. When his hand curled over her knee, she jerked again. "Mr. Keegan!"

"I said hold still." Running his hand up her thigh, he methodically embedded his ringers into her satiny flesh, searching for any abnormalities in her femur. To his relief, the bone felt unbroken. When his knuckles grazed a soft thatch of curls, it was his turn to jerk. He got his hand out from under her skirt in short order, the backs of his fingers burning as if he'd touched a hot coal.

"Well," he said in an oddly scratchy voice, "no bones seem to be broken. Not from the waist down, at any rate."

She shoved his hand from her chest and pushed up on her elbows. "No bones are broken anywhere."

It was his fear that she might not know if a bone was broken. With severe injury, shock often set in. "You're lucky you didn't break your silly little neck." It occurred to him he hadn't checked her there. When he reached to do so, she moved sideways and batted with a hand to stop his groping. "Caitlin, for God's sake."

"Would you please get your hands off of me?" she said shrilly. "I'm fine, I said."

That remained to be seen. "Let's get you in the house."

Not giving her time to protest, Ace ran one hand under her knees and caught her around the shoulders with his other arm. He was a little surprised at how easily he was able to push to his feet bearing her weight. As he jostled her in his embrace to get a secure hold, he made a mental note that his first order of business as her husband would be to put some meat on her bones.

"I can walk, Mr. Keegan! Please, put me down."

"I'll put you down when I'm damned good and ready, and not before." He struck off for the front door. "Dammit, stop wiggling. Do you want me to drop you?"

That got her attention. She stopped squirming, at any rate, although she seemed to be in a quandary about where to put her arms. One around his neck would have better facilitated him, but she seemed loath to touch him. Not entirely sure what possessed him, he pretended to lose his grip on her. At the downward plunge, she squeaked and grabbed hold of him around the neck.

Eating up the distance with long strides, he gained the porch and took the steps two at a time, the planks resounding with each impact of his boots. Bending at the knees, he managed to work the doorknob with one hand. As the latch released, he gave the solid oak panel a kick and sent it crashing open.

He made a beeline for the table and deposited her gently on one end in a sitting position. Her small feet sought purchase on the bench. Immediately she bent forward to pull her skirt down and arrange the folds primly around her ankles. It irritated the hell out of him that she seemed more concerned with modesty than the extent of her injuries.

He clenched his teeth to keep from cursing. Now that he had good light, he could see blood oozing from a cut at her temple. Her shoulder wasn't in much better shape, and there was a rent in her skirt that indicated she had probably sustained cuts on her hip as well.

"Jesus H. Christ."