Chasing the Sunset(52)

Maggie felt insane laughter bubble up inside her. All this time, while she thought she had killed him, he had been alive and living in St. Louis. While she was terrified of hanging for his murder, people had been whispering that he had murdered her. David smiled benignly at her now, but Maggie was not fooled. He’d had the same beatific expression on his face many times as he had beaten her into unconsciousness.

“I was going through my old papers about a month ago, looking for a client’s address who had a nasty little secret. I intended to get a little working capital from him, and that is when I found your uncle’s address. I had thought it lost forever. You had taken all his letters with you, you see, and I thought I had gotten rid of everything else. I am so very glad about my inefficiency in this case, else I never could have found him again. I knew that is where you would go. I used to read his letters and laugh sometimes. He was so sincere, and so loving, and I found it so amusing to know that I made you both so miserable by keeping you apart.”

David gave a tittering little laugh and leaned forward avidly, perilously close to the

growing conflagration. “Oh, dear, I am sorry. But just the thought of that common little man, perhaps lying in his bed at night and shedding a tear at the thought of you and your regrettable mental instability that kept you so tragically apart. . . It is just too, too amusing.”

Maggie felt a cleansing rage rise up inside her at his words. He was a monster that fed off the pain of others and he would not receive any pleasure from seeing one iota of anguish cross her features, not this time.

“I was the one who shot him, you know. Too bad he did not die–he would have, if not for that three-legged hell hound that attacked me. I had to flee before I could finish the job, I am afraid. Maybe he will die of complications instead. One can only hope.”

With a roar of fury, Maggie snapped. She had taken so much from this man; he had beaten and degraded her for three long years. She had lived in a hell of his making, existing in a pervasive fog of perpetual fear. She grabbed a burning branch from the fire and attacked him with it, heedless of the knife that he held and of the fire that licked at her skirts. She screamed out her wrath and hatred as she struck him hard across the chest with the flaming end of the bough. David dropped his knife and scrambled back away from her blows, cowering.

Maggie felt the rage cleanse her soul as she beat him backwards, toward the door. He had caused one too many hurts, pushed the knife in one too many times . . . this time, he would pay.

One of the horses whinnied in fright as they came too close, and Maggie’s attention wavered just long enough for David to jump up and grab her.

“I will kill you now,” he spat into her face as he grappled with her. Maggie dropped her makeshift weapon when he twisted her wrist, hard. “I really will kill you this time.”

Maggie knew that he meant it, and she did the only thing that she could think of. He was dragging her slowly, inexorably toward the knife on the floor and she knew what he meant to do with it when he got there.

She bit him, viciously, feeling sick as he screamed, but still she would not let go until he knocked her to the ground. Even as she went down, she spat at him and felt a weird kind of triumph, though she knew he was going to kill her. She had not given in to the fear this time. She had fought him all the way.

Howling, David put his hands up to his wounded neck and then pulled them back, staring in disbelief at the blood over them. He backed away from where she lay on the cold ground. He recoiled even further when she smiled at him.

“You have scarred me for life,” he said, and backed farther away. Maggie bit back a warning as he backed right over the smoldering branch she had hit him with, and fell toward the gargantuan fire.

His arms windmilling, he tried desperately to keep from going into the flames, to no avail. Maggie watched in horror as his clothing caught on fire. He ran out the dilapidated door of the building, into the snow, the fire feeding off the oxygen he provided it with his panicked run and burning higher and harder. She watched through the open door until he fell to the ground and moved no more, still screaming, his body continuing to burn. When the screams stopped, Maggie finally backed away and retched out all her sickness before she staggered away and fell to the ground.

She lay back, closing her eyes, no longer able to stay conscious now that the danger had passed, and that is how Duncan and Nick found her, unconscious beside a fire that had now nearly reached the dry ceiling of the old barn. Nick had her scarf wrapped around his hand. They had forced their horses into a hard gallop after they had found it; they knew now that they were on the right track, and they could already smell the smoke.

Right in front of the deserted barn, they had passed the still sizzling, blackened body, and they had both looked in revulsion upon the thing that had once been a man. No one had

to tell them that this was the body of the man who had taken Maggie, and they did not stop for more than a moment. Duncan, who could smell the evil of the man even through the stench of burning flesh, spat on him as they turned away, and a bright yellow flame shot up where the liquid had hit, then flickered away.

Nick held her tenderly on his lap as Duncan looked Maggie over and checked her out. Nick looked upon the bloodstained, beautiful face of his lover. She was a fire in his blood, and in his heart, and in his soul and he knew that if she had died, part of him would die with her.

“I love you,” he murmured to her. “I love you, love you, and love you, Maggie.”

“She has got a couple broken ribs, looks like she took a couple of real hard knocks to the head, but other than that she is fine,” Duncan said quietly, his long fingers finished probing Maggie’s body, for the moment.

“I am going to see if something cannot be done about this fire before it burns down the barn,” Duncan said quietly. “I will be right back.”

Nick never took his eyes from Maggie’s face, and he nearly sobbed aloud when she slowly opened her beautiful green eyes. He pressed kisses all over her face, on her eyelids, on her nose, on her soft mouth.

“Nick,” she whispered. “I did not think I would ever see you again.”

“Me, too, darling,” he whispered back, unashamed of the silver tears glittering in his eyes and on the ends of his long black lashes.

“I have got to tell you something,” she whispered, taking short, sharp breaths because of the pain in her ribs. “I . . . I have been keeping secrets from you, because I was so afraid. I thought that you would hate me if you knew.”

“I would never hate you, never,” Nick said passionately. “I love you, Maggie. Whatever it is, I do not care. I will fix it, or I will find someone who can. Marry me, love. I adore you. My life was dull and lusterless before you came to me. Marry me, Maggie. I need you so,” he sobbed, pressing his face to hers. "I need you so." He pecked wild little kisses all over her face, then held her and rocked her back and forth as one would a child. It was as much to comfort him as her, for now that the danger had passed, the storm of emotion that he had felt for the last few hours had left him as weak as an injured child.

Maggie looked into his eyes and saw that he meant it, that it really did not matter to him what had gone before. He truly loved her, and though she was more tired and sore than she could ever remember being before, she felt a shaft of joy sing through her whole body. She raised herself up despite the pain and wrapped her arms around his neck, weeping.

“I love you, too,” she said between the kisses they shared. “I love you, Nick. I have loved you for so long.”

Duncan cleared his throat from his position over by the door. He held a rusted bucket in one hand.

“I hate to interrupt this, folks, but I need to talk to you about this fire. Do you think that we should try and put it out, or should we just let it burn itself out?”

“What fire?” Nick said, and went back to kissing Maggie, their passion radiating almost as much heat as the inferno behind them.

"I am the luckiest woman alive," Maggie whispered to Nick as she pressed her lips to his.

Duncan smiled wryly and went to make sure that the fire did not spread to the forest.





Epilogue



Nick stared down into the cradle at his sleeping son. Full of milk and content for the moment, the downy-haired infant snuggled into the warmth of the blankets his adoring father had tucked around him. Maggie slid her arms around him from behind, a smile curving her lips as she watched Nick with their son. He turned, his eyes misty with love for them both, and his arms crept around her as she laid her head against his chest.

“Hi, there,” she whispered. “Come with me, lover. Ned’s coming up to spoil his great-nephew and we’ve got at least two hours before we have to be back. Kathleen packed us a picnic, and I have a toasty warm blanket. We’ve got a sunset to chase.”

“Maggie, it is the middle of January,” he protested laughingly as she pulled him from the room and down the stairs. “It is too cold. We are going to freeze to death if we go outside in this weather.”