Gallant Match (6 page)

The railing overhead creaked as weight was placed upon it. Booted feet appeared, first one, then the other. A pause ensued, then the feet were lowered, the ankles wrapped around the pole as the gentleman prepared to slide to the ground. Something about the trimness of those ankles, some warning, brushed the edges of Kerr's mind.

Too late. He was already moving, reaching out to grab the scoundrel in a bear hug and drag him to the ground.

His hands were filled with firm, resilient curves, his senses with the fragrance of soap and violets. His quarry yelped and let go of her hold. Kerr stumbled backward, sprawling on the ground. His breath left him in a hard grunt as Mademoiselle Bonneval, caught to him by a hard arm around her waist, landed squarely on top of him with her hips pressed to his groin.

S
onia lay motionless for a stunned instant. Rage and terror burst over her then. She flailed, kicking at the man who held her, clawing at his arm as she tried to break his hawserlike grip on her midsection. Her breath came in wheezing gasps and the edges of her vision grew dim. It wasn't fair that she had escaped the house to be caught by some drunken seaman or sot reeling homeward. It wasn't fair…

“Be still, or I swear I'll…”

That voice, the damnably American-accented voice.

Kerr Wallace. It couldn't be, shouldn't be, but it was. She redoubled her efforts, managed to ram an elbow backward into his ribs.

“Bloody hell.”

The world shifted around her in a whirl of black and red, tan and brown. She landed on her back, dragged a single whistling breath into her lungs before a hard-muscled form landed on top of her. Long legs tangled with hers, holding them straight. Her wrists were grasped in
viselike fingers and pinned to the ground on either side of her face. A hard chest, banded with thick muscle, pressed into her breasts, holding her immobile.

She closed her eyes tightly, unwilling to look, not wanting to see. Through stiff lips, she said, “Get off me at once. Let me go.”

“Go where?” he demanded as he pushed up to rear above her. “What are you about, dressed in boy's garb like some beardless kid on a spree, target for every scoundrel from here to Levee Street? You're lucky I was keeping an eye out for you.”

“Lucky.” Her lashes flew up and she glared up at the
Kaintuck
. “If it weren't for you, I'd be—”

“Not on board the
Lime Rock,
I'll be bound,” he said as she came to an abrupt halt. “So where were you off to without satchel or carpetbag to your name? If it's an elopement, banish the idea from your mind.”

“As if I'd have use for such a thing! The last thing I want is a husband or man of any kind.”

Stillness gripped him, a strained lack of movement that seemed rife with things better left unspoken. She was suddenly aware of his heat and weight pressing against her, particularly the too-firm heaviness at the juncture of her thighs. His scent, compounded of starched linen, warm wool and clean male, surrounded her. She felt incredibly open to whatever he might do, vulnerable in a way so foreign to anything she'd ever known that it sent panic thudding through her. Her heart thundered against her ribs. Her chest heaved with her every breath, pressing her breasts against him so she
wondered if he could feel their hardening tips. Fury, distress and wild yearning clashed so violently inside her head that the backs of her eyes stung with acid tears.

A soft curse feathered the air above her.

Kerr Wallace lifted off her with a wrench of hard muscles, getting one knee under him somewhere between her knees. An instant later, he surged to his feet. Retaining his grasp on her wrists, he hauled her up to face him.

Unprepared for the sudden upright position, she stumbled against him. His arms closed around her to keep her from falling. It was like being surrounded by a wall of stone. His chest was solid, ridged with muscle; his arms had no give in their support. For a single instant, she felt sheltered, protected, safe from all possible harm. The need to lean into him, to rest within that strong haven, was so urgent that she felt light-headed with it.

That lapse was more frightening than anything that had happened before. She shoved away with such revulsion that her back came up against the balcony pole behind her, rattling it in its supports. With a hand to her tight throat and her eyes narrowed to slits, she drew a knife-edged breath.

“What now?” she demanded. “Will you ring the bell and hand me over to my father?”

“Why? So you can climb down again the minute his back is turned?”

That had been her exact thought. It did nothing for her despairing resentment to have him guess it. “You
could always recommend he tie me up until the
Lime Rock
sails. Only think what a lot of trouble that would save you. You could cart me off tomorrow like a pig to market.”

“Now, there's an idea,” he drawled.

She had thought matters could not be worse. She was wrong.

Bending toward her as if with some perverted bow, he grasped her wrist again and pulled her toward him. Her breath left her in an unladylike grunt as her solar plexus struck his hard shoulder. When he rose to his full height again, she dangled over it. He clamped a hard arm across her knees and swung around, heading off down the street in the direction of the river.

A strangled cry was torn from her as fury beyond anything she'd ever known engulfed her. She jounced and swayed with his every long step. His arm was like an iron barrel hoop around her knees and his long fingers bit into one thigh above it. The blood pooled to her head so her temples pounded and she had to swallow her gorge. Her hat had been lost in her fall, and now her hairpins began to loosen their grip. They pinged down on the banquette so the heavy coil of hair slipped its moorings. She beat on his back with her fists but he seemed not to feel the blows. The movement made her slide on her precarious perch so she had to grasp handfuls of his coat to keep from falling headfirst.

“What are you…doing?” she jerked out. “Put me…down. My father will…”

“He'll what? Give me a medal?” He hefted her for
ward from where she had slipped, so the cheek of her bottom was pressed against the hard line of his jaw. “Scream for your papa, why don't you? Unless you would rather not face him.”

He was right. The last thing she wanted was for her father to see her like this, to learn what she intended before she could manage her escape. That knowledge was so devastating it left her throat too tight for sound.

It was infuriating yet terrifying, the ease with which Kerr Wallace strode along with her. He was like some unstoppable force of nature. A shiver moved over her, becoming a trembling that shook her from her head to her toes. “You…you have to listen,
monsieur.
I can pay…pay you. My grandmother—”

“That where you were headed, to your grandmother's?”

“She…she'll take me in if I can get to her. She lives—” She stopped, fearful she was saying too much.

“Not in New Orleans, I'll be bound, else you'd have thrown yourself on her mercy before now. Besides that, you'd not need britches to get to her? Where then? Upriver, maybe? Natchez, Saint Francisville? Or maybe downriver toward Mobile?”

She stiffened at his lucky guess; she couldn't help herself. If she'd hoped he wouldn't notice, she was soon disabused of the idea.

“Mobile, right. The packet for there arrived just before the
Lime Rock
and leaves tomorrow afternoon, now I think on it. Guess you were counting on that. Too bad.”

Desolation shifted inside Sonia. Her grandmother, her mother's mother, had been her hope, her one chance
for refuge. Her letter, delivered when the steam packet docked, had held the precious offer of shelter with her.

Mémère had never cared for the man her daughter, Sonia's mother, had married, had opposed the alliance when it was proposed, but been overridden by Sonia's grandfather. She blamed Simon Bonneval for her daughter's death. He had never cared for her properly, she said, had expected her to recover within mere days from the miscarriages that had plagued her so he could get her with child again. He had been disappointed at the birth of a daughter instead of the son he craved, and shown it too clearly. He had been an autocratic, judgmental husband, always finding fault, never able to see what had been done for pointing out what had not. He had taken the joy of life from her mother, so Mémère had told Sonia, and when she had lost yet another baby son, the sixth in the twelve years following Sonia's birth, she simply let go of living.

Sonia, who had taken her mother's place as her father's housekeeper in the past few years, thought the things her grandmother said might well be true. She had seldom, in all that time, managed to please him.

“Monsieur Wallace, I beg you,” she whispered, her voice a mere rasp in her throat.

His stride broke for a bare second; she was sure of it. He didn't stop, however, gave no other sign he heard.

Her anger of moments before was nothing to the rage that consumed her now. She bitterly regretted her moment of weakness. This
Kaintuck
was a monster, a heartless, ignorant barbarian; she'd been a fool to imagine
otherwise. For what he was doing, she would make him pay a hundredfold. This she swore on her mother's grave.

They reached the open area of the Place d'Armes, which fronted the cathedral and the Cabildo, or government house. Kerr Wallace turned there, making toward the levee. It was then she knew just where he was taking her.

A few minutes more and they were at the dock where the
Lime Rock
lay quiet and peaceful at its moorings. Her captor came to a halt. Bending forward, he set her on her feet but grasped her forearms for a second while she gained her balance. Giddiness assailed her as the blood pooled in her skull drained away, but she refused to show it, glaring up at him in half-blind defiance.

The levee was just coming to life at this predawn hour. Stretching away from them on either side, the long, curved embankment was lined with steamboats and sailing ships as far as the eye could see. Their signal lanterns gleamed like some earthbound Milky Way, bobbing with the wash of the river current, reflecting in its sliding surface. Stacks of merchandise, boxes and barrels and acres of baled cotton, sat ready to be loaded come good daylight.

Behind them lay the town in its orderly arrangement of streets marked by lamps at the corners, where cats and dogs slinked, pigs snuffled along and men walked with every sense alert for those who preyed on the unwary. From that direction, faint on the dawn wind, came the tinny and melancholy sound of a barrel organ.

They were so alone there in the dimness, she and the
Kentuckian. The knowledge brought an odd flutter in the pit of her stomach. His hold on her was not hurtful, but its firm pressure suggested that it could become so at the least sign of resistance. The power of it affected her like a drug, so she swayed a little where she stood.

It was maddening, that febrile awareness, when she wanted nothing more than to get away from him. Far, far away.

“We're going aboard the steamer, you and I,” he said in tones like a sledge being dragged over gravel. “We can do it nice and easy or we can do it hard—you can walk up the gangway on your own two feet or I can carry you. Your choice, Mademoiselle Bonneval.”

Refusal hovered on her lips. She longed to fling it in his face then jerk from his grasp and run like the wind.

The trouble was that she suspected he would catch her all too soon. Afterward he'd do precisely as he threatened. To be carried on board like a sack of flour, with her derrière turned up for all to see, was more than she could bear.

Pride demanded compromise, no matter how much it pained her. Besides, he could not stay with her every moment until the ship sailed, could he? She had a few hours yet before she need succumb to despair.

“The captain may not let us board,” she said, the words stiff and graceless in her capitulation.

“I've only to show him the letter of intent written by your father that appoints me your escort for the voyage. If there's a problem, he can apply to him.”

“But I'm dressed in male clothing. It will appear odd.”

“You should have thought of that before you left off your petticoats.”

She looked away. “Better to be mistaken for a boy than taken for a…a light skirt.”

“I'd agree with you there,” he said with a grim nod.

“Not that I care for myself, but your good name may suffer if I appear in pantaloons.”

Reaching out, he picked up a strand of her hair that had tumbled down to lie across her shoulder, rubbing it between his fingers. “No one could take you for a boy while this flows around you. My reputation can only be bettered when you appear in full female regalia.”

It was a compliment of sorts, if she cared to see it in that light. She did not. Snatching the strand of her hair from his hand, she flung it behind her back. “That will be difficult when I have no baggage.”

“You're going to tell me you don't have your
chère
tante Lily all primed to come running with your traps whenever you send word? Don't be daft. I'll see to it she knows your change of direction.”

“You are all accommodation.” Her voice was tight in her throat, compressed by the tears she refused to shed.

“It's what I'm being paid for.”

The words were abrupt and double-layered. He meant her father had commissioned him to see that she sailed on the
Lime Rock,
also that she remained safe, reasonably comfortable and, as with any live cargo, arrived in the same condition in which she embarked. Kerr Wallace would perform his duty. She could expect no more from him, and certainly no less.