Rebel (13 page)

“She grew up by us,” Jerome reminded Ian gravely.

“Right. If the rumor had come back about her being at the pool with someone else…” Brent said.

“We’d have been called upon to defend her honor, naturally, since she had no brothers of her own,” Jerome informed him.

“However, since we’re
your
cousins—” Brent said.

“Closest kin,” Jerome noted.

“Excuse me, I am his brother,” Julian interjected. “That actually places me as closest kin.”

“All right, we’re second-closest kin. We want to know exactly what really happened,” Jerome said.

Ian hesitated. Then he shrugged. “We had both decided to go swimming. We ran into each other. We were… seen.”

“So you’re not married,” Jerome said with a frown.

“My dear, closest kin,” Ian said, “if this toast is for me, you can hand over the whiskey bottle.”

Brent, in possession of said bottle at the moment, handed it over. Ian cast his head back and took such a swallow that he burned inside from throat to gullet. He lowered the bottle, took a deep breath, and discovered the three ringed about him in a semicircle, staring, waiting impatiently for his reply. He drank deeply again.

They still stared, patience waning.

“We are really—and legally—married.”

“But how in the devil—” Jerome began.

“Marriage is quite damned easy, and you’ll manage well enough once you get to it. You just keep saying ‘yes’ or ‘I do’ when you’re asked a series of questions.”

Jerome slowly arched a brow, looking to Julian and his brother. “I’m not quite sure why I’m concerned here. I believe, actually, that he and Alaina deserve one another.”

“She’s capable of being every bit as sarcastic,” Brent agreed.

“Determined and stubborn,” Jerome agreed.

“Pigheaded,” Brent elaborated.

“Umm,” Julian murmured. “And he is a tyrant. Ian
always thought he had the right to be the leader with us—”

“I was oldest,” Ian said, taking another long swallow of whiskey. It didn’t burn as badly as it had at first, and it seemed to be taking a few of the razor-sharp edges off the night. “I did have the right to lead.”

“Well, there you have it!” Jerome said dryly. “My ancient cousin—older than you and I by what, Julian, a little more than a year?—likes to take command. Alaina refuses to do what she’s told by anyone. This is just wonderful. They should get along like oil and water. A marriage made right in heaven. The question remains: When did it occur—and why?”

Ian arched a brow. The night was growing very late; the moon was nearly full and directly above them in the dark sky. He might well stay here forever if he didn’t answer them, and if he could count on secrecy from anyone in the world, it was these three. The whiskey was warming him; he was tired. He’d spent his journey home worrying about the state of the Union, and he’d ended with this. His head was pounding, and he did have a newly acquired wife with whom to come to some understanding before the night ended. “All right, my dear, closest kin, I’ve now been married several long hours at the very least. It occurred because the young lady seemed to be escaping an unhappy situation. It seems she believed that Peter O’Neill intended marriage—to her, rather than Elsie Fitch,” Ian said.

“I’ll throttle him,” Jerome said darkly.

“No—should the need arise, I’ll take care of the man myself. Nothing happened at the spring pool, but since no one other than my family and Teddy would believe the truth, I thought we’d best marry quickly.”

“Ah!” His brother and his cousins stared at him with a collective sigh.

“But it is—really—legal?” Jerome said.

“Reverend Dowd married us.”

“It’s quite legal,” Julian murmured. “But what a strange situation. The last time I saw you, there was a colonel’s daughter involved in your life.”

“And then there had been rumors about Alaina, of course, and I’d been under the impression that she—” Brent began, but broke off instantly.

“That Alaina was involved elsewhere?” Ian demanded with an edge.

“Sydney had thought that she was expecting to marry elsewhere soon, and that she was in lo—interested in someone. I now assume it was Peter O’Neill. Well, that’s over,” Brent said quickly. “Look, look back to the house. The lanterns are being doused.”

“The past doesn’t much matter, does it?” Jerome demanded with a level gravity that reminded Ian very much of his Uncle James. He reached out, gently grasping the whiskey bottle from Ian’s hands. “You’re wed to one another now. And since you’ve done the honorable thing, perhaps you should do the courteous thing as well, and return to the house.”

Ian took the whiskey bottle back from him. “Indeed, I should.”

Ian left his brother and cousins standing on the lawn. When he reentered the house through the breezeway, he found the servants clearing the remnants of the party. The guests had departed or retired. There was no sign of his parents, Teddy McMann—or Alaina.

He strode up the stairway and down the hall to his room. He hesitated. He felt as if his body had become one pounding drumbeat; he realized that the sound of his heart had become that excruciating pulse, and that the burning glow of the whiskey remained electrically about him.

He pushed open the door and paused.

All lamps had been snuffed in the room, but someone had built a fire in his hearth against the dampness, and the room was further illuminated as the doorway to the balcony remained slightly ajar. Moonlight spilled in. Enough moonlight to show him that his bride was curled into a protective ball on the far side of his bed. She was so curled, in fact, and so far on one side, that a breeze would send her falling to the floor.

Irritation seized him, along with the haunting knife of desire she could so easily arouse. He walked over to where she lay, looking down at her in the moonlight. Her eyes were closed; tears dampened her cheeks. She looked young. Angelic. Sympathy rose within him, until he wondered if she was crying for her lost love.

He reached down to touch her. Her eyes flew open;
she hadn’t heard him come into the room. Moonlight spilled over her, making her face very fragile, her eyes twin circles of glowing gold. Her lips trembled, and one word issued from them in a broken sob. “Please…”

He drew away, afraid of the turmoil that raced within him, certain that he must either wrench her up and inflict some violence or walk away completely. He strode to the balcony windows and stood there, tension creating an ache in him from head to toe. He heard her sigh of relief. Did she think that he was leaving?

He turned back, unbuckling his scabbard to set his cavalry sword on his desk. He took a seat in the large leather wing chair behind his desk, setting the whiskey bottle he had carried in down by his feet. He leaned back, closing his eyes to mere slits, watching the firelight play before him, damning himself anew for his recklessness by the pool, and determining his position here now. He had a wife, one he hadn’t intended. She hadn’t wanted a husband—at least, she hadn’t wanted him as a husband. But she was truly a fool if she thought that he intended to go through all the years of his life as a celebate husband because she had intended on capturing a different lover.

So…

He frowned, sitting very still.

She had risen. Slipped from the bed. Her nightgown was an ivory shade, beautifully laced. Sheer. She covered it with the matching robe that had lain at the foot of the bed. Barefoot, moving with barely a whisper of sound, she came near to where he sat, looking down at him. Apparently, she thought he slept.

She bent, plucked up the bottle. He heard her sniff of disdain. She set the bottle on his desk and moved across the room to the balcony.

He gave her a second, then came silently to his feet. By instinct and long habit, he buckled his scabbard back on.

Then he followed.

She wasn’t on the balcony. He looked up and down the length of it.

She was on the lawn, he realized. She had slipped down the rose trellis and was moving across the lawn toward the woods.

“Damn her, what is she up to?” he muttered aloud. He swung his body over the railing and caught the trellis himself, climbing down it. She hadn’t the least idea that she was being followed. He kept twenty feet behind her as she scampered along the trail that led to the pool. Ian paused behind an oak as she stood in the center of the pool’s clearing, staring at the water.

Then a man suddenly rose from the night shadows that encompassed the log at the water’s edge.

Peter O’Neill.

“Alaina!” he called softly.

She spun around, long hair and gown flowing like liquid gold in the moonlight…

To meet her lover?

“A
laina, I knew you’d come!” Peter O’Neill called out softly, coming toward her.

“O’Neill!” The quiet of the night was suddenly shattered with the deep thunder of another voice.

Peter went dead still and deathly white.

Alaina froze as well, not certain if she was more stunned by Peter calling out her name or Ian calling out Peter’s.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was the horrible tableau created here. She’d been so desperate to escape
his
room, Cimarron Hall,
him.
She was accustomed to wandering where she chose at home; there, it didn’t matter, there was no one near them, and their closest neighbors would never harm her. She’d been quite certain that Ian McKenzie had passed out with his whiskey bottle; she’d seen him with his brothers and cousins at the far edge of the lawn and she had prayed for just such a respite. In a thousand years, it had never occurred to her that Peter O’Neill might be here now.

But he was. And she knew exactly what it looked like. Peter, in this copse. Awaiting her.

She could feel herself shaking inside with a strange depth of fear unlike anything she had ever known before. Ian stared at Peter, and Peter returned that stare. Peter wore a dress sword. He pulled it from its scabbard, causing Alaina’s heart to skip a beat. But then he threw the sword out on the ground. “McKenzie, we’ll not have bloodshed. I’m not armed!” Peter cried out suddenly.

Ian McKenzie deftly unbuckled his scabbard, letting it and his cavalry sword fall to the ground.

“No bloodshed,” Ian agreed, but his tone was deadly; his blue eyes appeared obsidian. But even as he spoke,
the trail behind them suddenly came to life with the sounds of branches snapping and footsteps falling.

Julian, Jerome, and Brent burst into the copse, pausing just behind Ian.

“Jesus,” Julian breathed, surveying the scene.

Alaina felt Jerome and Brent staring at her. Neither spoke. She knew what was in their eyes: fury at her betrayal. They were her friends, Sydney’s big brothers, almost her own.

But they were McKenzies. The look in their eyes was merciless. Ian McKenzie had married her. She repaid him thus.

“Well,” Peter said, finding a certain courage. “Will you look at this! The great and powerful McKenzies! The white boys and the breeds, towering talents with guns, fists, and blades, and all lined up before me.” He lifted his arms. “If you think you can just murder me in the woods and get away with it because you are the great McKenzies, you had best reconsider. My uncle is a state senator. You’ll hang, every one of you.”

“No one is going to murder you, O’Neill,” Ian said, his voice deep and quiet. “Not now. But if I ever catch you near my wife again, I will kill you.”

Peter shrugged. Then he started to walk out of the clearing, away from the McKenzies. But he paused by Ian. “McKenzie, you just might find yourself having a rough time keeping your wife away from me,” he taunted, and he made the mistake of giving Ian a fierce shove.

“Please—” Alaina started to say.

Too late.

Ian lunged for Peter. The two went down in a split-second flurry. Ian was on top of Peter. There was no contest. Peter didn’t get in a decent blow. Ian caught Peter’s right jaw. Peter howled.

“Stop it, stop it, please!” Alaina cried out, rushing forward, wondering if she could somehow stop a murder by casting herself between the men. Then again, Ian might just as happily kill her.

She never reached the fighters. Brent caught hold of her, an arm firmly around her waist. “They’ll handle it, Laina,” he told her softly.

As Ian raised a fist to strike again, Julian and Jerome came behind him, his cousin hanging on his arm, his brother on his back. “Ian, he isn’t worth it, he isn’t worth it!” Jerome hissed.

The two were able to drag Ian off his enemy. Julian knelt down by Peter. “He’s out, but he’ll be fine. Luckily, Ian, you didn’t break his jaw.”

Brent released Alaina and stepped forward, stooping down by O’Neill as well. “Let’s get him back to Cimarron,” Julian said. He and Brent took the burden of Peter and started back along the trail to the house. Jerome hesitated briefly, a hand on Ian’s shoulder, his eyes momentarily touching Alaina where she stood by the pool, barefoot and determined not to betray her shivering.

“Cousin?” Jerome murmured.

Ian, tense as a bow string, eyes hard on Alaina, spoke quietly as well. “I’m fine.”

Jerome nodded. “Well, then, good night.” He turned to follow his brother and Julian down the trail. Alaina very nearly shrieked out to him that she wasn’t fine at all, and that he had to come back and protect her. From her husband, his cousin.

She didn’t cry out; she couldn’t get her jaw to work. Ian didn’t move. He just stood there, dark hair fallen over a dark blue eye, features set in so grim a line he might have been composed of stone.

“Well?” he murmured quietly.

“This wasn’t what it appeared—”

“Oh?”

“I had no idea he would be here.”

“You just felt the urge to run out to the pool and strip and swim again?” The sarcasm in his voice was as cutting as a blade.

“No, I just felt the urge to escape your house, you, your room—”

“You dislike my house so much?” he inquired politely, arms crossed over his chest as he began to take steps toward her. “I’d rather thought it a handsome place, and I’m quite fond of my own room.”

She was on the defensive, turning to face him to keep from being cornered as he circled around her. “I detest your house and your room,” she whispered. “I—”