Shameless (34 page)

Another shout and various muffled sounds indicative of general confusion reached their ears.

“Sounds like it.” Gathering up the reins, he swung onto the roan’s back, then kicked his foot free of the stirrup and held his hand down to her. “Will you come with me?”

In answer, she caught his hand and put her foot in the stirrup and let him pull her up behind him. Then he put his heels to the horse’s sides, and they were off.

Had he not known the terrain as well as he did, they would have been overtaken many times. The pursuit was, as he had predicted, immediate and furious. The exigencies of escape made him forget all about the headache and dizziness that had plagued him. Riding hard, he headed roughly north, sending the horse galloping ventre à terre through the silvery moonlight, staying well away from the roads and villages. Several times, as he set the roan plunging up hills where no trails existed, or down steep gorges where the slightest misstep would have meant a fatal fall, or took shelter in a hollow hidden by undergrowth, their pursuers passed so close that he could hear them cursing and blaming one another for the laxness that had permitted his escape. But by the time dawn broke, they’d seen or heard nothing of those who chased them for an hour or more. With the sun just peeking
above the horizon, and pink and orange streamers spinning through the purpling sky announcing day was at hand, they were about to lose the cover of night, which would make hiding more difficult. Having climbed to the top of a towering, wooded hill and coming at last to a cliff overlooking the countryside, as well as, at some distance, the road from Tynemouth, and seeing nothing more alarming than a herd of grazing cows as he scanned the moors stretching out below them, Neil felt it safe enough to dismount and stretch their legs. Reining in the horse, he said as much to Beth, who for some time had been resting rather heavily against him, arms clasped around his waist, silent as a shadow.

“Tired?” he asked as she slid to the ground. Her hair had fallen from its knot during the night, and now hung down her back in a riotous mass of curls. Her face was pale as milk, her eyes smudged underneath with shadows.

“Sore, rather,” she said with feeling, holding on to the stirrup as if not certain her legs would support her.

Neil smiled, knowing full well what part of her anatomy she was referring to.

“If you laugh, I’ll not be answerable for the consequences,” she warned, frowning up at him most direly.

“I’m not laughing.” He dismounted to stand beside her, then frowned, too, but not at her, his attention having been caught by movement on the road.

“What is it?”

“Riders.” A group of them, moving north at a brisk pace. Neil counted a dozen men. It was impossible to be certain, of course, but he would be willing to place a substantial wager that so large and fast-moving a party was out at such an hour for no other purpose than to hunt them.

“Why, I believe it’s Hugh. It is! In the front there. I would know his horse anywhere! They must be searching for me.”

“Wait.”
Neil caught her arm when she would have waved and, he thought, shouted.

“But it’s
Hugh,
” she said, as though he didn’t understand. “My brother-in-law Richmond. He’ll know how to sort this out, I’m sure of it.”

“No.” Neil’s tone was brutal, and his grip tightened on her arm. Although the confrontation with Richmond was what he had planned from the beginning, what he needed to set himself free, what he desired, he had no wish for it to occur
now
. Beth stiffened at his unaccustomed usage of her; he could feel the sudden tensing of her arm beneath his hand and, all at once conscious that his grip was too tight, loosened it apologetically. He looked down at her, his lips compressing at the sight that greeted him. The soft glow of the just-rising sun turned her glorious hair to fire. The silky black wings of her brows had twitched together in a manner he knew well. The delft blue eyes looked back at him unblinkingly. Her soft and eminently kissable lips had firmed into a frown.

“Why not?” she asked in an ominous tone.

Why not, indeed. As he opened his mouth to tell her yet another lie, Neil had an earth-shattering epiphany:
Betrayal works both ways
.

N
EIL’S HAND DROPPED AWAY
from her arm.

“Because if you summon him here, I’ll kill him, and I don’t wish to do that in front of you.”

The blunt statement robbed Beth of breath. For a moment she stared at him, hoping that the words would take on some other meaning if she allowed them enough time. But they didn’t, they kept their unpalatable form, and finally she could no longer deny it and said faintly, “What?”

“I said I mean to kill Richmond.”

Under her wondering gaze, his mouth hardened into a thin, cruel line. His eyes as he looked down at her became the pitiless jet she remembered from their first meeting. His handsome face set in savage lines. His tall, muscular body seemed to expand and tighten into something truly formidable. She’d glimpsed this side of him before: the predator.

Beth felt very cold suddenly. “Why?”

“Because if I don’t, he’s going to kill me. One or the other. There’s no other way out of this.”

Breathing remained difficult. Thinking was harder. It was as though the safe, familiar landscape she’d thought she was traveling through had changed in an instant into something out of a nightmare.

Keeping her voice even cost her a considerable effort. “And what is ‘this,’ pray?”

There was a flicker in his eyes as they slid over her face.

“Something far too dark and ugly for me to sully your ears with.” His tone was curt. “Suffice it to say that I find I can no longer make you a part of it, and will drop you off at the next village or farmhouse we come to.”

Tightening his hold on the reins, he turned back to the horse, giving every indication he meant to once again mount up. Beyond him, on the road far below, Hugh and his men rounded a bend and disappeared from sight.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Beth walked several steps away before turning to scowl at him. She was very much shocked still, but her wits had recovered enough to realize that what she was hearing from him was the truth. The man she saw before her, the predator, was absolutely real, and, she had no doubt, absolutely ruthless. She also did not doubt that he meant to do exactly as he said. But she was not, she discovered, frightened of him in the least. He might look as savage as he chose, but she knew as well as she knew anything that he would never harm her. “Do you actually think you can just tell me you mean to kill my brother-in-law, and if you don’t he’s going to kill you, and that’s an end to it? No more questions, no discussion of any kind, just
‘I’ll drop you off
’? ”

He was watching her, slapping the reins across his palm impatiently, his expression grim. Behind him, the horse dropped its head and began cropping at the dew-drenched grass, the homey sound an odd juxtaposition to the tension spinning out between them.

“I’m sorry for it. Believe me, I would not cause you pain if I saw any other way out. But I don’t. And if one of us has to die, I mean to make damned sure it’s Richmond and not me.”

Beth thought of Claire, and her heart lurched. “You can’t do this.”

“I have no choice.”

“Why? Forget that fustian about sullying my ears and give me a round answer. I love Hugh as dearly as any brother, and he is my sister Claire’s whole world. If you kill him, she will be destroyed. Our whole family will grieve forever.”

“Would you rather I be the one who dies instead?”

Beth’s heart lurched a second time. The world seemed to spin around her as she realized how that possibility made her feel, and then it steadied again as she faced the knowledge head-on. Her shoulders squared. Her head came up. Her eyes held his without flinching.

“No. I can’t bear that either,” she said.

He stood looking at her for a moment without saying anything more. Then he turned away, pulling the horse’s head up.

“Come.” His tone was curt as he tossed the reins over the horse’s head and swung into the saddle. Behind him, the sun was limning the horizon with gold, and casting the blackest of long shadows across the countryside below. It backlit him so that he appeared as nothing more than a big, sinister silhouette on horseback as he rode toward her. “It’s time to go.”

Beth watched his approach with growing resolve. Reaching her, he reined in, then held his hand down to her, clearly meaning to once again pull her up behind him.

Chin jutting, she backed several paces away and folded her arms over her chest.

“Oh, no. I’m not going anywhere with you. Not until we talk this out.”

“Talking pays no toll.” His voice turned harsh as he withdrew his hand. His face was the hard, expressionless mask she’d seen only once or twice before. But he didn’t set the horse to following her.

“Nevertheless, I wish to talk.”

“Do you think I can’t compel you to come with me, my girl?”

That made her bristle. “I think you’d be well advised not to try.”

“I warn you, you are beginning to test my patience.”

Her eyes flashed. “Behold me all a-quiver.”

His eyes narrowed dangerously at her. “You should be all a-quiver. If you had the sense God gave a goose, you would have been from the beginning.”

“Pooh. You don’t frighten me in the least.” She held his gaze, not backing down an inch, even as the truth broke over her like a particularly icy wave and her eyes widened at the force of it. “That’s why you came in the window. You meant to kill Richmond that night. Didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I must have been damnably in the way!”

“You were. And don’t swear.”

“Don’t swear?
Don’t swear
?” Her voice rose precipitously, so much so that the horse threw up its head in alarm. She was suddenly so angry at Neil she could practically feel steam rising from the top of her head.
“You
to tell me that, who doesn’t so much as blink at murder? I’m surprised you didn’t just kill me, too, that night. Then there would have been nothing to stop you getting to Richmond.”

He said nothing.

Her eyes widened. “You thought about it. Didn’t you?”

“I thought about it,” he admitted.

“You don’t even have the grace to lie,” she marveled.

“I’m done with lying.”

“Having lied for so long, the difficulty of that must be on the order of an alcoholic adjuring drink!” Her brow knit as she cast her mind back over various things he had told her. Then she looked at him with growing horror. “Dear Lord, you came after me for a purpose, didn’t you? You saved me from that unholy castle so that you could use me as bait to lure Richmond to you!”

Once again he sat silent. Then he said, way too calmly for her liking, “Before you attempt to slay me with any more dagger looks, I suggest you take a moment to reflect again on what your fate would have been had I not rescued you.”

“Are you looking for
gratitude
?”

“I’m looking for nothing. Damn it to bloody hell and back anyway, I’ve had enough of this.” With that, he swung down from the horse’s back, tossed the reins over a nearby branch, and stalked purposefully toward her.

Every self-protective instinct she possessed screamed at her to run, to put as much distance as possible between herself and this formidable man who was clearly quite capable of breaking her in two and looked like he would enjoy doing it, but then she’d never been much a one for turning tail, and anyway her temper was heating.

“I forbid you to kill Richmond. Forbid you, do you hear?” Her tone was fierce. “Just as I mean to forbid him to kill you.”

He gave a derisive laugh. “Forbid away. It will make no difference.”

Then he was upon her, towering over her most disconcertingly. Knowing him, Beth read his clear intention in his expression of putting her on the back of the horse by brute force if necessary.

“I certainly can’t prevent you from behaving like the veriest bully, but I guarantee you’ll not keep me behind you for long. I’ll jump off the first chance I get.” Holding his gaze, she scorned to retreat so much as a step.

“I give you thanks for the warning. I see I must set you up in front of me instead.” Lip curling mockingly at her, he scooped her up with such ridiculous ease that, angry as she was, Beth was forced to acknowledge that physically she was all but helpless against his strength. Fuming silently, glowering at him, she scorned to struggle as he carried her like a babe in arms the necessary few feet and plopped her down sideways in the saddle, clearly meaning to mount behind her.

“Hah!” Taking no more than a split second to swing her leg over so that she was astride, she snatched the reins from the branch and drove her heels into the horse’s sides, then clung for dear life as the startled beast leaped forward and bounded away into the undergrowth as if a pack of wolves were nipping at its heels.

“Beth!” he roared after her, and commenced to swearing. She delighted in every profane word.

Chuckling, in full control of the horse now, Beth took her time circling back toward him, being careful to keep well out of his reach. Bathed in the rosy glow of the brightening dawn that pinkened his white shirt and cast a long shadow at his booted feet, his eyes snapping with anger, his lean cheeks flushed with it, he left off swearing as she came near in favor of fixing her with a hard stare that must, she thought, have curdled the valor of many an opponent.