Chasing the Sunset(32)

He lifted his hand cautiously away from her lips, and Maggie sat up.

“Tommy? What the devil . . . “

”Ssshh. Do not wake Mr. Nick.” His eyes were frantic, and he was covered in sweat, too much sweat for so chilly a night. He was dressed not for bed, but in dark blue trousers and a navy shirt that Maggie had helped sew for him not too long ago.

“You have got to help them, Miss Maggie,” he pleaded from his knees beside her bed. “They will catch her and they will hang her. I told her not to go, I told her it was much too dangerous, but she went anyway, she said she had to.” He had Maggie’s shoulders in a death grip, and she eased his hands off, swinging her legs off the side of the bed.

“Calm down now,” she whispered. “I do not know what you are talking about, Tommy.”

Maggie had a sinking feeling that she knew who the ‘she’ was in this story, and she came to her feet and started rummaging in the wardrobe for clothes.

“Turn your back while you tell me, Tommy,” she said, and calmly began dressing in the pants and loose shirt that she had been using for her riding lessons.

“It is Miss Kathleen, they are hard on her heels, and I do not know what to do.” Tommy’s voice trembled, tears thickening his voice. “I did not know who to get. When I . . . when I found the hidey-hole in the stables, Miss Kathleen made me promise never to tell Nick, but she never made me promise not to tell you. They had a slave locked up at Drizzell’s, and they was gonna hang him tomorrow. They said he attacked a white man, a guest of the Drizzells, for no reason, but Drizzell’s slaves all say that guest of theirs was hurtin’ the man’s daughter, and that he did not do nothin’ but run to help her when she was cryin’ out for him. Kathleen said she was gonna get him loose, and the daughter, too. I told her not to go, I told her not to,” he said, and rubbed fiercely at his eyes, where the tears seemed to spurt out without his permission. “Something went wrong. Kathleen got both of ‘em, and they are on their way here, and Ned’s waitin’ there to hide them in the place that they have, but they are right on her, I tell you, right on her, and they are gonna catch her comin’ in, I know they are.”

Tommy hung his head, weeping, his whole body shaking with the sobs he tried valiantly to repress. “I was not supposed to go, but I followed her to make sure she was okay, and somebody set up a hue and cry right after they left the plantation. My horse is faster than hers and Kathleen is leading them around in circles so I got here first, but we ain’t got much time, Miss Maggie. Somebody has got to help her.”

Maggie finished tucking in her shirt. “So that is what is been wrong with her all day,” she breathed. “You can turn around now, Tommy. Let’s go to the stables, and we will try to figure something out.”

They crept down the stairs and out into the blackness of the night. There was hardly any moon tonight, and Maggie shivered in the darkness. Tonight, instead of being her friend, the darkness seemed to cloak evil; each shadow was malevolent and must belong to some twisted being that was here to catch Kathleen, catch her and hang her if they caught her. Goosebumps covered Maggie’s skin, and she quivered. What was she going to do?

They entered the stables through the double doors, and Maggie squeaked when a giant cloaked figure grabbed her by the shoulder. A quick shake and a hissed, ‘Quiet!’ in a familiar voice had her stilling her struggles. It was Duncan, minus his cane, dressed in the strange clothing that he had been wearing when they first met, that he had later told her was made in the Indian fashion, that one of his aunts had sent to him. He turned to look at Tommy.

“Go take the horse you used to the place where you usually keep them and stay there with them until sunrise, then sneak home without the horses. Ned can collect them later. I led them here, away from Kathleen. If they find the horse here, warm and obviously just ridden, they will know for sure instead of just suspecting. Tie up my horse right out front, to make sure they see it when they come in.” His arched brows drew together. “And hurry, boy, I do not want this to be all for nothing. I do not want them catching you, either. We do not have much time.”

Tommy obeyed without question, hurrying off into the shadows. He could not have been more than five feet away when the dark swallowed him up as if he had never been.

“Where’s the most obvious place, if you were going to meet your lover here?” he asked Maggie urgently, grabbing her arm.

“The tack room,” she said without hesitation. “They keep a small bed out there, so they have someplace to catnap when one of the horses is foaling, or needs round-the-clock care.”

“Lead me there,” Duncan said grimly. “And hurry.”

Maggie headed for the tack room, nearly pulling Duncan along behind her in her haste. In seconds, they were inside. Maggie shut the door behind them, and a sudden flare of light had her turning. Duncan held a stub of a candle in his hands, and Maggie realized he must have had it in his pocket. The candlelight threw flickering shadows across his face, highlighting his scar and his blade of a nose, making him appear almost demonic. Duncan put the candle in a holder he found on the shelf, then laid out his cloak on the narrow bed, and turned to her. The light of the candle fell full upon his face and he was once again the familiar Duncan that she trusted. Maggie breathed a sigh of relief and forced herself to stop trembling. Even though she would bet her life that Duncan would hurt them, it was only human to have a moment or two of doubt, especially when a person had gone through what she endured in her life.

Duncan pulled his shirt over his head, exposing a nearly hairless, heavily muscled chest. He threw the fringed shirt on the ground, then sat on the edge of the small cot to pull off his knee-high soft boots, which he had told her were called moccasins.

“Come over here, on the cot and loosen up some of those clothes,” he said quietly, not looking at Maggie. “You don’t have to take them off, but if we are going to convince them that we are lovers, you are going to have to appear at least a little unclothed and a whole lot closer to me than across the room.”

Maggie paled. “What good is that going to do Kathleen?” she whispered, but her nimble fingers were already unbuttoning her shirt.

“They are going to think that it was me that they followed through the forest from the start, and not Kathleen,” Duncan said patiently. “If they think they picked up the wrong trail, and followed me here where I was having an assignation with Nick Revelle’s housekeeper, it will take the suspicion off of everyone here. It will give Kathleen time to hide the slaves and get home. They will waste precious time checking everything out here, and Tommy will have plenty of time to get to the place where they stable the horses in the woods and hide them. He will stay there with them, for I doubt seriously that they will check his room or that they will consider a fourteen year old boy smart enough to figure out how to get a heavily guarded man and his daughter off a plantation.”

"And Uncle Ned?" she asked breathlessly.

"Safe in his room," he said briefly.

Maggie threw her boots atop Duncan’s, and slid under the covers, avoiding his eyes as she went to pull her shirt off. She wore nothing underneath it, having dressed in too much of a hurry to worry about such niceties. He stopped her with one hand on hers, and smiled gently at her.

“I do not think that is necessary.” His big fingers tilted her chin up. “I am your friend, Maggie. I have never hurt you, and I never will. You do not have to worry.” He wrapped the blanket around her. "Here, sit on my lap, I am too big to lie down on this cot."

She nodded, and he slipped the blanket around her, putting his arms with it. Even sitting up, they were a tight squeeze on the small cot.

"You are as big as a mountain,’ she grumbled in a shaky voice. Maggie laid her head on his broad chest and realized that he was chuckling without sound in the way that he had. She marveled at the way she felt in Duncan’s arms versus the way she felt in Nick’s. She felt warmed, protected, and somewhat embarrassed at being in Duncan’s arms, but if Nick were here instead, she would have been trembling with desire, not cold.

"How did you know that Kathleen was in trouble?" she asked quietly. "How?" He did not answer her at first, and Maggie peered intently up at him in the dark, giving him an insistent shake when he did not answer her right away.

"I heard . . . Kathleen calling me,” Duncan whispered slowly. "She was afraid and she needed help. I lay in my bed and I heard her cry out. So I came here to help. I cannot explain it any better than that." Maggie opened her mouth to say something, wondering how he could have heard Kathleen from miles away. "Sshh. I hear them now,” he whispered, and Maggie resolved to drag the whole story from him later. Then Nick’s furious tones came to her ears, and her heart fell to somewhere around her toes. Duncan’s eyes met her suddenly stricken ones, and he laid a hand on her cheek.

She had not thought about Nick being with the men, but of course he would be. They would have woken him first. He was going to find her here, in another man’s arms.