Whispers of Heaven (16 page)

The black man was still bending over to pick up the boot when Jessie caught a glimpse of the knife that had appeared in Gallagher's hand. With a quick flick of his wrist, he sent the blade flashing through the air with a lethal whistle that ended in a scream as the knife imbedded itself in the blond man's bare chest.

She felt a scream rise in her own throat and bit it back hard. The man stumbled, his stolen coat tails swinging, his gentleman's boots crunching in the grass. He dropped his chin to his neck, his eyes widening as he stared down at the knife sticking out of the naked white flesh of his chest, as if he couldn't understand how the thing came to be there. For the space of a heartbeat he wavered in the warm sun, the light of life slowing fading from his eyes. Her hands covering her mouth, holding back another scream, Jessie watched him die. He was dead before he hit the ground.

By then, Gallagher was already moving, curling forward into a roll that carried him across the meadow, toward the chestnut. He came up clutching a thick branch in both hands that he swung like a shillelagh into the side of the other white man's filthy head, hard enough to spin the man around and send him careening into the horse's gleaming flanks. The gelding reared up, its hooves flailing the air. The dark-haired man disappeared.

Sobbing out loud now, Jessie fell to her knees, crawling on all fours through the high grass toward the dead bushranger and the pistol he still held loosely gripped in his outflung, motionless hand.

"It's been a while, Gallagher," she heard the black man, Parker, say.

She looked to where Gallagher stood, his half-naked body in a low fighter's crouch as he faced the remaining bushranger across some ten feet of sunlit meadow. "I have no quarrel with you, Parker."

"No," said Parker, as Jessie's hand closed around the handle of the pistol. "But I reckon she does."

Jessie surged to her feet, the gun clutched in both hands before her and leveled on the black man's bare chest. Her breath came so hard and fast her entire body was shuddering, but she held the gun steady. "That's right," she said, her voice cold and tight with rage. "And I intend to see you hang."

The black man froze, his hands splaying out at his sides.

Gallagher swung to stare at her. For a moment, all was silent except for the rustle of the wind in the grass and the click of one of the horse's teeth on its bit. "You know how to use that thing?" he asked.

She nodded, not looking at him. "I could outshoot my father by the time I was twelve."

"Ever shoot a man?"

"No. But I could, if I had to."

He took a step toward her, and then another and another, until he was close enough that she could see the faint gleam of amusement lightening his shadowed eyes. "I do believe you could." Reaching out, he laid his hand over hers on the ornate handle of the gun. He was suddenly, intensely serious. "But I'm asking you not to."

"What?"

His hold on her was light, nonthreatening, although he didn't remove his hand. She could feel the scars on his palm, warm and rough through the thin leather of her glove. He was close enough that she could see his naked, sun-darkened chest lift as he breathed, see the corded muscles of his throat work as he swallowed. "I'm asking you to let him go. I know him. He's not a dangerous man. And he did you no real harm."

Her hair had fallen into her face and she shook her head, trying unsuccessfully to clear her eyes. "No real harm? If you hadn't come when you did, those men would have
raped
me."

"I wasn't no part of that," said Parker, his wide-eyed gaze fixed on the pistol in Jessie's hand as if he expected it to go off accidentally at any moment. "You know I wasn't."

She stared at him coldly. "You were with them."

"A man doesn't last too long in this bush on his own," Gallagher said, his voice quiet. "You know that."

She glanced at him, although she was careful not to look at him too long. He was too close to her, too naked too... male. "1 remember a saying I heard once. Something to the effect that when a man lays down with dogs, he must expect to rise up with fleas."

"An te a luidheas leis na madraidh, eireochaidh se leis na dearnadaidh."
He gave her a slow grin. "You've spent too much time with Old Tom." As she watched, the smile faded slowly from his lips to be replaced with an almost frighteningly intense expression. "Give me the gun, Miss Corbett. If you turn him over to the authorities, they'll send him to Port Arthur or Norfolk Island. Or hang him."

It occurred to her, then, that she ought to be afraid of him, of Gallagher, that he could simply take the gun away from her without asking. And she wondered if that's what he would do, if she said no. She searched his dark, hard face, her breath coming quick and tight. "You would do this for him?"

"Yes."

From deep within the forest came the harsh cry of a cockatoo. She realized there'd been a subtle shift in the light, as afternoon stretched out toward evening. Torn apart by indecision and uncertainty and a deep sense of confusion, she let her gaze travel from Gallagher, to the black man, and back again. What he was asking of her was wrong, by everything she had been taught. Yet he had saved her life at the risk of his own. Now he was asking her for this, and she didn't see how she could, in all justice, deny him. "I won't lie about his presence here," she said. "When Warrick finds out what happened, he'll hunt your friend down and kill him."

"Yes."

She gave him the gun and walked away.

She went to sit on the log at the edge of the clearing. She sank slowly, her body trembling, her arms wrapping around her waist, hugging herself. "If you want anything from these dead men," she heard Gallagher say, "you'd best take it and get out of here fast." The other man's response was a murmur, too low for her to hear.

She stared across the clearing, to where the gelding now grazed peacefully, the sun shiny on its well-groomed hide. Nearby, the body of the second bushranger lay sprawled in an ungainly heap. She wondered if he, too, was dead, then saw his head and decided he must be. A fly buzzed, and for a moment she thought she might be sick. She put her head on her knees and squeezed her eyes shut. She could hear the two men moving around the glade, but she didn't look up.

After a time, she heard Gallagher say, "You stay on this is- land, and they're going to catch you. Maybe sooner, maybe later, but it'll happen."

Raising her head, she stared across the glade to where the two men now stood, near the uphill track. "Yeah?" said Parker, his chest rumbling with a mirthless laugh. "What you reckon I oughta do? Swim back to Africa? Man, even if that was possible, I was born in
Georgia."

She watched as Gallagher rested his hands on his hips, his pelvis tipping forward in that peculiarly masculine stance he had. He was faced away from her, and he hadn't put his shirt on yet, so that she could see the lean, muscled line of his naked back, the beautiful, taut brown flesh crisscrossed with that patchwork of old scars that could have been left only by a cat-o'-nine-tails. Someone at some time had whipped this man long and savagely. Jessie drew in a sharp, oddly painful breath at the thought. She had seen men flogged. Seen them stripped and tied to the triangle, seen their backs ripped open and bloody, their bodies quivering with shock and agony. She thought of those things being done to this man, and felt her chest swell with a confusing upsurge of dangerous, impossible emotions.

"You could make your way to the northwest," he was saying, "where the sealers' ships sometimes put in. They're always looking to take on new men, and they aren't particular about any prior claims Her Britannic Majesty might have to their hides."

Parker shook his head. "Yeah, I've heard about those sealers. They might take on men, but they don't treat 'em good. I already been a slave twice, first in Georgia and then here. I'd rather be dead."

"A slave can always run away again," Gallagher said after a moment. "A dead man can't."

Parker shrugged and showed his teeth in a wide smile. "At least when you die, you're free." He held out his hand, and Gallagher took it in a strong, two-handed clasp. "Thanks, mate."

She felt ill at ease, as if she were intruding on something private, something she had no business observing. Swinging her head away, she stared across the meadow, to where a small brown quoll had ventured out, nose twitching, ears alert.

A shadow fell across her, and she looked up to find Gallagher standing beside her, his legs spraddled, the pistol held loosely in one hand. She glanced beyond him, but the black man was gone. They were alone in the wind-ruffled meadow.

Reversing the pistol, he held it out to her, butt first. "Take it."

She stared down at the gun, then raised her gaze, slowly, to the man who held it.

"Take it," he said again. "If I get caught with it, it'll be my death."

She took the pistol, the weight of it dragging her arm down to her side. She let it lie in the grass. "What you did was crazy."

"Was it?" He propped his foot up on the log beside her and leaned his elbow into his knee. "Parker is a good man. He doesn't deserve to hang."

"A good man?" she repeated incredulously. "He's an escaped criminal and a thief. And heaven knows what he was originally transported for."

"Murder, I think." He slanted a look at her, as if daring her to be shocked. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes remained hard. Sad. "A man doesn't always plan the direction his life takes, Miss Corbett. Sometimes things just... happen."

They stared at each other, and the moment dragged out, became something more. She felt her breathing slow down, making her acutely aware of the parting of her lips, the lifting of her chest, the flush of warmth in her cheeks. And all the while he watched her. Watched her, until the burning intensity of those dark, haunted eyes became too much for her to bear. Lowering her gaze, she found herself staring at his leg, where the cuff of his convict trousers had pulled up, showing the old shackle scar ringing his naked ankle.

She pushed up from the log and took a quick step away from him, away from what was happening. She meant to cross the clearing to where her mare, Cimmeria, grazed quietly. But then she saw the two dead bushrangers tied face down across her saddle, and she paused, her hands coming up to cup her elbows and draw them in, hard, against her sides. Tipping back her head, she stared at the clear blue sky above her. "I haven't thanked you for saving my life," she said, her back to him, her voice sounding strangled.

She was aware of him coming up behind her. She thought for one absurd moment that he might touch her, but of course he did not. "Yes, you have. By letting Parker go. Besides, we don't know that they would have killed you."

"What they were going to do to me ..." She swallowed hard as the horror of it reared up inside her, churning her stomach and stealing her breath. "It's said to be worse than death."

"It's not."

She looked at him over her shoulder. "It's not what?"

"Worse than death. It's humiliating and degrading, and you might feel like you want to die afterward. But if you're strong, you can rise above it and survive."

She studied his hard profile, the elegant flare of his cheek, the unexpectedly sensitive line of his mouth. He was so beautiful, so beautiful and fierce and frighteningly attractive, she sometimes thought she might burn up from the inside, just looking at him. "Why did you ride after me?" she asked suddenly. "Did Warrick send you?"

"No." Turning away, he went to pick up his shirt where it lay forgotten in the grass. "Charlie told me you'd taken Cimmeria out by yourself, and I knew there were bushrangers in the neighborhood."

"How could you have known?"

"I knew," he said simply, thrusting his arms through the sleeves of his shirt. And even though she knew she should look away, she couldn't help it: she watched him.

He had a magnificent body, tanned dark by the sun and hardened by years of physical labor. She let her gaze rove over the carefully defined sinew and muscle of broad chest and taut stomach, of strong arms and powerful shoulders. She watched him pull the shirt over his head and ease it down over his torso, and she wondered what such, a man's body would feel like beneath a woman's hands. Beneath her hands. And then her breath caught in her throat because she realized it was what she wanted—to touch him, to put her hands on him. It was a wicked impulse, an indecent thought. A forbidden yearning. She could not understand where it had come from. But she couldn't pretend it hadn't been there.

Still tying the laces at his neck, he walked to where he had thrown his boot. She stood, her elbows clutched to her sides, her pulse racing as she watched the muscles flex beneath his shirt as he reached to pick up his boot. She noticed the way the sun struck the planes of his face as he straightened, the harsh light emphasizing the shadows beneath his brows and high cheekbones. And then she realized she was doing it again, and she swung her head away and did not watch anymore.

The sun sank behind the treetops, throwing the glade into shadow. The breeze that stirred the grass and rustled the leaves was cooler now, and scented with the approach of evening. She should be home safe in her own room, dressing for dinner. Not here, in this violence-haunted glade, with two dead bushrangers lashed to her mare, and an incomprehensible welling of impossible, reprehensible thoughts and desires stealing her breath and leaving her trembling and confused.

He swung into the saddle and kneed the chestnut toward her, leading the mare. "Give me your hand," he said, his saddle leather creaking as he reached down to her.

She held out her hand in its soft lady's riding glove, and watched his strong, scarred fingers close around her wrist. She swung up behind him, acutely aware of the pressure of her inner thighs against his rump as she settled on the gelding's broad back. She remembered reading how once, long ago in the Middle Ages, noble ladies embarking on long journeys would often ride like this, pillion behind their grooms. She thought about those ladies and their grooms as

Gallagher kneed the stallion out of the sun-dappled glade and into the quiet gloom of the forest track.