Love and Fury: The Coltrane Saga, Book 4 (45 page)

Delia flung herself off the bed and ran from the room, screaming. Some of Gavin’s blood had spattered into her strawberry-blonde curls. “You’re next, bitch!” Dirk hollered after her. “You were in on it, and you’re gonna die tonight, too!”

Delia ran blindly down the unfamiliar corridor, knowing only that she had to run, but not where to run
to.
She screamed on and on.

She turned a corner and started running down the stairs, stumbling and then falling, bouncing against the stairs until she landed hard, on the floor. There was an awful pain, and she knew something was broken, but the maniac was coming after her, the knife held high over his head.

He cackled triumphantly as he scrambled down the stairs, eyes glittering. Reaching her, towering above her, he raised the knife as high as he could, then brought it down.

A gunshot exploded, deafening her, and then Dirk Hollister pitched forward, dead, a bullet between his eyes.

John Travis Coltrane knew joy for the first time since that magical morning in Briana’s arms.

There was no time for contemplating Hollister’s fate. Travis helped Delia to her feet, demanding she tell them where Briana was. Babbling, she told them what she knew: that Gavin was dead, that Briana was probably responsible for the knife wound in Hollister’s shoulder, and that Briana was on her way down the mountain to the waiting ship.

Colt left on the run, and Travis didn’t try to stop him. He would catch up.

Ignoring the servants who had appeared suddenly out of nowhere to stare and whisper, Travis went to see for himself whether Gavin Mason was really dead.

Then he would deal with the men who’d helped Gavin steal from him, and get the gold that was rightfully Coltrane gold.

Colt would take care of finding Briana…if she could be found.

Briana was sobbing. Time was running out. Her head was bleeding and her feet were torn, but the moment she’d wakened enough to remember what had happened, she’d forced herself up, forced herself to get moving again. Her head hurt unbearably and she was shaking, but she kept going. The sky had lightened, and it was nearly dawn.

She still had another twenty feet or more to climb down when she paused to wipe her eyes, then stared downward in horror. “No. Oh, dear God, no…”

The ship was starting to move!

Panic thrusting her forward, she scrambled over the rocks as fast as she could. She was getting dizzy again, but all that mattered was getting down as fast as possible. The ship would pass directly beneath her, and if she could reach that last ledge, she could jump into the water. Surely someone would see her in the water, wouldn’t they? It was her one last chance.

“Please, please,
please
God,” she whispered, her body trembling with pain and desperation.

At last, at last, she reached the ledge. Raising her arms, she took a final deep breath, offered up a prayer, and flung herself outward in a smooth arc.

The cool water took her. She went under, then pulled herself up to the surface, taking a deep breath as her head broke through the water.

She swam toward the ship’s prow, mustering all her strength and all the control she could impose on herself. Panic would kill her. She had to stay in rigid control of her body and her mind.

Intent on reaching the ship’s path, panting with the exertion of swimming so hard after her injury, Briana failed to hear the voice crying out to her from the rocky ledge, did not hear the splashing behind her.

As she swam toward the ship’s path, crying out silently for someone on the ship to see her, she sensed movement behind her and to the side, but she didn’t dare turn her head to look.

And then Briana began to wonder whether she might be drowning. Her head ached terribly and her limbs were bruised, sore, and begging her to stop swimming. While forcing her tormented body onward, onward, she began dreaming of sleep, and blessed relief.
Stay awake!
she screamed to herself, and fixed her gaze on the ship’s prow, which was now a little nearer. Something warm touched her shoulder, but she barely felt it, so intent was she on straining herself forward, forward.

All at once she remembered that, if someone saw his life flashing before him, that meant he was drowning. She must be drowning, then, she realized. Why else would she see her life—her love—before her? Why else would Colt’s dear face rise up out of the turquoise waters? How was it that she felt his strong arms around her, guiding her? Why, as she relaxed against him, did she feel herself in shallow water, and then on land?

She felt herself leaving the earthly realm, yet she struggled for consciousness, lest she be denied the joy of her dying, vision.

“Briana…”

She closed her eyes, yielding to his kiss, felt his strong arms lower her to the sand.

“Briana, I love you.”

She opened her eyes. She knew then, praise God, that it was real.

Sometimes, she acknowledged, tears of joy in her eyes, sometimes the dream is real.

She prayed the dream would never end.

About the Author

Patricia Hagan might be the New York Times bestselling author of 38 novels and 2500 short stories, but she can also lay claim to being among the vanguard of women writers covering NASCAR stock-car racing. The first woman granted garage passes to major speedways, she has awards in TV commentary, newspaper and magazine articles, and for several years wrote and produced a twice-weekly racing program heard on 42 radio stations in the south.

Patricia’s books have been translated into many languages, and she has made promotional trips to Europe, including England, France, Italy, Norway, Greece, Turkey, Croatia, Spain and Ireland.

Hagan’s exciting eight-book Coltrane saga, which spans from the Civil War to the Russian Revolution, has appeared on every major bestseller list and is one of the most popular series published in France, never having been out-of-print in that country in nearly 30 years.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Patricia grew up all across the United States due to her father’s position as a federal attorney, finally settling in Alabama where she graduated from the University of Alabama with a major in English. She now resides with her husband in south Florida where she volunteers as a Court-appointed Guardian Ad Litem for abused children.

But of all her accolades and accomplishments, Patricia most of all loves to boast of being the proud mom of a Navy SEAL.

Look for these titles by Patricia Hagan

Now Available:

The Coltrane Saga

Love and War

The Raging Hearts

Love and Glory

Love and Fury

Coming Soon:

Love and Splendor

Love and Dreams

Love and Honor

Love and Triumph
 

The course of true love is running anything but smooth for Travis and Kitty.

Love and Glory

© 2012 Patricia Hagan

The Coltrane Saga, Book 3

Together at last, Kitty Wright and Travis Coltrane are married and rebuilding her North Carolina farm. But despite his love for Kitty and his son, Travis is not one to be content behind a plow. And when President Grant asks him to be a government emissary to Santa Domingo to explore establishing military bases there, Travis cannot resist the lure of adventure.

Kitty is heartbroken but tries to understand. Then an old nemesis shows up—Luke Tate. He has always desired Kitty and abducts her, taking her West. When Travis returns to find Kitty gone, he places his son in the care of a friend, then goes after Tate, only to be told that Kitty is dead.

It is only much later, when he sees Kitty working in a hospital, that he realizes she is not dead, but is suffering from amnesia after a severe beating. She does not know who he is…does not know who she is.

With love, patience, and pure stubbornness, Travis is determined to regain the one thing he can’t live without—Kitty’s love.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Love and Glory

He was tall and built well, firm, corded muscles glistening as the merciless sun beat against his bare back. Hard, lean thighs strained against tight denim pants as he doggedly followed the plow. The plodding mule struggled, pulling the plow through the dry, parched earth. Insects flitted annoyingly around man and beast. No breeze stirred, and the oppressive heat hung like a shroud.

Damn, it was hot. Travis Coltrane could feel his bare skin tingling, knew that already the sun was searing his flesh. But he would not burn. Before long, his skin would be the color of leather. Travis was a French creole, and naturally dark-skinned. He would only become darker. Sweat trailed down his forehead and into his gray eyes, stinging. He wiped the salty moisture away with one hand, ignoring the burning in the open blisters of his fingers and palms. Some were already bleeding from the rough, splintered wooden plow handles. It was this way every spring when he first began the plowing, but soon the blisters would close and become hard.

Suddenly the plow lurched sharply, hitting a mound of earth, and even as Travis saw the swarming wasps and realized he had hit an underground nest, the angry horde was upon him. He quickly dropped the worn reins, letting the mule trot away and escape. Travis stumbled backward, swinging his arms at the attacking wasps. Just as he felt a sharp sting on his shoulder, he ran across the field toward the bordering woods.

Reaching safety beneath the gnarled limbs of a great oak, he stared at the quickly rising welt, grateful to have been stung only once.

He leaned back against the rough bark of the trunk and breathed deeply, closing his eyes. Lord, how he hated this. He hated what he had been doing for the past two years and he dreaded what lay before him.

Two years. He shook his head, wiping at the sweat on his face. Had it really been only two years? Jesus, it seemed more like twenty. It was becoming harder and harder for Travis to remember any life other than the drudgery of the farm.

If this is all there is, he asked himself miserably, if this is what my life is all about, then why didn’t I just die in the damned war?

Gettysburg. Antietam. Bull Run. He had been in all of them, by damn. One of the best officers and riders in the whole goddamn Union cavalry. That’s what others had said about Captain Travis Coltrane, leader of the infamous Coltrane’s Raiders, feared by the Rebels and respected and admired by the Union Army.

Sitting there, in the still, hot spring day, Travis could almost smell the sulfur and smoke once more, hear the shouts and cries of his men as they charged into battle, the clanging and clashing of sabers. And he had led those men, by God. They had looked up to him and—

Bullshit.

The steely gray eyes darkened as bitterness and self-loathing washed through him. Was he on his way to becoming just like the old men who spent their days sitting in front of the courthouse in Goldsboro, telling and retelling their battle stories, each tale becoming more glorified as it was repeated? Some still wore their tattered Confederate uniforms, even four years after the war had ended.

People, he told himself, particularly old soldiers, chose to forget what was painful. And Lord, there had been so much pain in that infernal war. Now that it was safely in the past, it was all glory.

Was he becoming just like them, sitting here beneath a tree and staring at the empty fields and hating his life so much? Would he waste the rest of his life longing for remembered glories?

He lifted his gaze to the heavens as though there might be an answer somewhere up there. Why did it have to be this way? Year after year of coddling that goddamn ground, planting tobacco and corn and praying for rain, praying the insects would not come, praying for a good harvest in the fall so there would be money to get through the long winter and feed for the livestock he had managed to acquire. Was this all there was? Travis asked the sky.

He snorted with contempt. Pray! Hell, he never prayed. He just cursed life when things didn’t go the way he wanted them to. Farmers prayed over their crops. Travis did not consider himself a farmer and he never would.

He looked across the field at the little cabin he had built with his bare hands from the smoldering ruin it had been. The neighbors had burned down the original house, for the good Southern patriots of Wayne County had not taken kindly to old John Wright marching off to fight for the North.

Now there were two rooms. It wasn’t much, but Travis still felt pride over what he’d managed to do with the ruins. He had done it all alone, with sweat and grit. He had cut the oak trees, sawed them into planks, then smoothed the surfaces that would be on the inside. The results had been worth his hard work, for the interior walls shone brilliantly with the natural beauty of the blond oak wood.

He had done the same with the floors, not wanting Kitty or John to risk stepping on a rough, splintery surface.

A room for sleeping and loving. A room for cooking and living. And a little porch off the back, covered in twisting morning-glory vines, where they could sit and watch the sun go down…while holding hands and dreaming of what they hoped the future would hold for them.