Mountain Laurel Read online

  ’Ring didn’t answer, but he slipped a knife inside his boot, then stood up and looked down at Toby, his weathered old face wrinkled into a grimace of worry. “I’ll be all right,” ’Ring said. “Don’t be such an old woman. It’s something I have to do. I don’t know why those fools allowed her to go off on her own, but they did and now those men who were following her are closing in. I have to—”

  “Like you had to carry me out that time?” Toby snapped.

  ’Ring grinned. “Just like that. Now, sit down and stop your worrying. I’ll get the woman and take her back to the coach and give those…guards of hers a piece of my mind. I’ll meet you at the coach later today, and from now on we’ll travel with her.” He rolled his shirt-sleeves to above his forearms. “I’m beginning to see why General Yovington wanted someone with her. She needs protection.” He stopped. “And I mean to find out what she’s up to, what she’s so eager to conceal.” He turned away toward the rocks, then turned back, and for a second clasped Toby’s shoulder. No one would have guessed that the old man who seemed so quarrelsome was often like a second mother to ’Ring. “Go on or I’ll put you up for a promotion and when we get back to the post you’ll have a whole troop of men under your care.”

  “Hell,” Toby snorted. “I’ll desert. You go on. I got more to do than concern myself with your attempts to get yourself killed.”

  Maddie stopped moving and listened. She could hear the man she was to meet thrashing through the underbrush. Slowly, as silently as creaking leather would permit, she dismounted and began to lead her horse up the hillside. As the noise grew louder, her heart began to pound. In spite of her anger and outrage at the kidnapping scheme of which this man was a part, she must not offend him. She must be as gracious and polite as possible. She must—

  She took in her breath sharply as Captain Montgomery dropped from a tree, no more than a foot in front of her. She put her hand to her heart. “You frightened me!” she complained, then recovered herself. “What in the world are you doing here?” Her mind was beginning to race. She had to get rid of him.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” he said. “You told me you had people to protect you, yet here you are alone.”

  “I want to be alone.” She took a deep breath and tried to think. “Captain Montgomery, you must go away. I have something I must do and I must do it alone. It has to do with, ah…being a female.” Perhaps he’d be put off by the mystery of that statement.

  He leaned against a tree and folded his arms across his chest. “Now, what could that possibly be?” He looked her up and down. “Couldn’t be childbirth. I don’t imagine your monthlies necessitate your leaving camp, nor—”

  “You are a despicable man, and I won’t listen to any more of your vulgarities. I’ve told you before that I don’t need or want your protection.” Holding her horse’s reins, she started out around him, but he blocked her path, and when she went another way, he blocked that too. “All right, what do you want?”

  “Information. Who’re the men you’re meeting?”

  She couldn’t tell him the truth and jeopardize Laurel. Think, Maddie, think, she told herself. “One of them is my lover,” she said at last, and hoped she looked sincere.

  “So why didn’t he visit you at your camp?”

  She turned away from him while she thought. “Because…because…” She looked back at him. “Because he’s an outlaw. Oh, Captain, I know he’s done wrong. I mean, he’s not a murderer, but he has robbed a few banks so he can’t show himself and I do want to see him.” She took a step closer to him. Usually, men who’d heard her sing didn’t need any more from her in the way of flirtation, but this was one of those stupid men who had preconceived ideas about opera. She smiled up at him. He was a soldier, a man who’d been living at a fort with lots of other men, so she probably wouldn’t have to do much to flatter him.

  “Surely, Captain, even you must understand about love. I love the man even if he has done some things wrong.” She stepped even closer. His arms were down at his sides, his shirt half unbuttoned, and there was a tear just at the top of his ribs on his left side. She ran her fingertip across the skin showing through the tear. “You wouldn’t begrudge me a few minutes alone with the man I love, would you?”

  He didn’t answer, so she looked up at him. He was looking down at her with such a patronizing, knowing smirk that she stepped away.

  “Tell me, do you lie out of habit or just to get your own way? And do most people believe your lies?”

  She glared at him. “Why, you sleep-insider, what do you know about truth and lies? What do you know about survival?” Before she thought about what she was doing, she ran at him, her head down, and rammed him in the stomach, and when he gave a quiet whoosh of air, she kicked his shin hard with her stiff-soled boots, then bit him on the chest.

  He grabbed her around the waist, and they went tumbling to the ground as he put his hand below her chin to keep her from biting him again. When he had her pinned, her small body under his large one, he looked at her. “What the hell’s wrong with you? What are you up to? What are you doing in these mountains?”

  “Don’t hurt my throat,” she whispered. “Anything but that.”

  He saw that there were tears forming in her eyes and he released his hold on her chin, but he still lay on top of her, not allowing her to get away from him. He watched as she turned her face away, not wanting him to see her tears, and that seemed unusual to him. Most women liked for men to see them cry, he thought.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” he said softly, his face close to hers.

  “I can barely breathe with your weight on me, much less talk and, besides, you are bleeding on me.”

  He glanced down at his arm, saw the blood running and dripping onto her expensive riding habit. “Sorry. About the blood, I mean. It wasn’t easy getting to you. I had to come up that rock face over there.”

  Maddie twisted to look at it, saw the sheerness of it. She looked back at him. “Not possible. Even my father couldn’t climb that.”

  He gave her an odd look. “I could and did climb it.”

  As he looked down at her, his body on top of hers, his face close to hers, she saw his eyes darken and she began to twist to get away from him.

  “You won’t succeed in getting away, and I don’t mind telling you that I find the sensation of your struggles not unpleasant. You might as well tell me the truth.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, then cocked her head and listened. “He’s here,” she whispered. “He’s waiting for me.”

  “He has been for some while. Makes more noise than La…”

  She looked at him and her eyes were pleading. “Please release me. Please, I beg you. I beg you with all my heart and soul. Please release me and let me go to him.”

  “Maybe this man is your lover. Maybe you’re sneaking away so General Yovington won’t hear of this.”

  “Are all your brains in your trousers?” she hissed. “Isn’t there more in life to you than this?” She gestured, meaning his body on hers.

  He looked surprised. “Many things mean more to me than…this.”

  “He’s leaving. Oh, my God, he’s leaving.” At that Maddie became a frenzy of activity as she struggled to get away from him.

  He watched her for a moment, easily holding her but fascinated by the fact that she would fight him so hard. Whatever she wanted, she wanted it very, very much.

  “Anything,” she choked out through a mixture of tears and rage and desperation. “I will give you anything if you’ll let me go to him alone. Money. Jewels. I’ll…I’ll…” She looked into his eyes. “I’ll go to bed with you if you let me have thirty minutes alone with him.”

  At that, he rolled off her and sat up. “Go,” he said softly. “I will give you thirty minutes, then I come after you. Understand?”

  Quick tears came to her eyes. “Thank you,” she murmured, and started running up the steep hill, tripping over branches, a scrub oak scraping her face, falling ag