Prisoner of Desire Read online

  “Even if I am at liberty to do little else?”

  His lips curled at the corners, but Anya did not make the mistake of thinking he was amused. She gave him a level look. “Now that you are awake, perhaps you would like some brandy for your headache.”

  “I would prefer whiskey, neat, but not now. Why, Anya?”

  “Surely you can guess.” She crossed her arms over her chest in what she recognized and deplored as a defensive gesture.

  He watched her, his eyes bleak. “You think you can stop the duel.”

  She returned his gaze, and her voice was firm as she answered. “I don’t think it, I know. I am going to stop it.”

  Anger flared white-hot into his face. He raised himself to one elbow, grimacing, lifting a hand to the bandage around his head, then letting it fall. “Do you think you can behave like a hoyden for the rest of your life and get away with it? What are you doing, trying to you ruin yourself?”

  “You’re a fine one to lecture!”

  “None better, because I know what I’m talking about. I’ve watched your wild career for years, watched you deliberately break every rule of ladylike behavior, watched you turn yourself into a female farmer, burying yourself on this plantation. It won’t help; it won’t bring Jean back!”

  He had watched her. There was no time to consider the implications of that admission, nor did she have any inclination to in her anger and distress. “There would be no need for me to bury myself if you had not killed Jean!”

  Pain swept across his face. His voice was low, ragged, as he answered. “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “Then you can hardly be surprised that I want to save Murray Nicholls from the same fate.”

  “That is another matter entirely. I must meet him.”

  “Not if I can help it. And I can.” Her lips were a firm line in her face as she glared at him.

  He held her gaze for a long moment, then whipped aside the quilts that covered him and surged upward, swinging his feet off the bed to stand. He took a step, and the color drained from his face. He swayed. As he swung back toward the bed, the leg shackle wrapped around his ankles threw him off-balance. He fell full-length, crashing into the bed, sending it slamming against the wall. His torso struck the mattress. He held to it, dragging it half off the bed as he slid to a sitting position on the floor.

  Anya ran to him, kneeling, putting out her hand to catch his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  His breathing was harsh and heavy. It was a moment before he opened his eyes, and when he did they were filled with such black rage that she recoiled.

  “Should I be?” he asked, his voice rasping as he clamped shaking hands to his head. “God!”

  She got to her feet and stood over him, her body stiffly upright. “I’m sorry about your head. It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t kissed me.”

  He lowered his hands, sending her a skeptical look from the corners of his eyes. “I would be interested to hear how you expected to chain me up like a dog without it. What was the alternative, a nice glass of wine with knockout drops?”

  “There might have been, if I had thought of it, but I didn’t have long to plan. As it was, they weren’t supposed to hit you so hard.”

  He was still for long moments, then he gave a soft sigh and pulled himself slowly up. She reached to help him, but he did not even glance at her hand. She retreated, clasping her fingers tightly together before her.

  He turned to sit down heavily on the edge of the bed. “All right,” he said, his voice quiet, “maybe I deserved it. You have made your point. Now you can let me go.”

  “I will let you go at noon tomorrow.”

  “Noon?” he asked, frowning, then an instant later his face cleared. “I see. You realize, don’t you, that if I fail to appear on the dueling field I will have not a shred of honor left? You know that I will be called a coward, that I will be a laughingstock?”

  The reasonableness of his tone made her uneasy, but she refused” to show it. “You are Ravel Duralde, the idol of the callow young men just out on the town, a man who has gone to the field of honor a dozen times and killed his man at least three of those times out. You can always say you were ill, detained. The courage of other men might be doubted, but not yours. As for your precious honor—”

  “Don’t,” he said, the word softly incisive.

  “Very well, but don’t talk to me of how important it is for you to attend this duel!”

  “But what is it you hope to gain? The meeting will only be postponed.”

  She made a swift, impatient gesture. “Oh, come, I’ve seen Jose Quintero’s dueling code and heard men quoting the Nouveau Code du Duel of the Comte du Verger de Saint Thomas. A duel at which one of the contestants fails to appear cannot be held again.”

  “Nicholls and I could meet later, for a different cause,” he pointed out.

  “There is no reason why you should. You hardly know Murray, and may never come in contact with him again. Anything that he may have said to provoke you was meant only to protect me. He feels responsible, since he will soon be a member of our family.”

  When he spoke, his tone was hard. “So I understood. And how will Nicholls feel about a prospective sister-in-law who has created one of the biggest scandals ever to break over New Orleans? That is what it will be, you know. You can’t honestly think that you can keep me here without the knowledge becoming public property!”

  “I think I can, for a short time. You are hardly likely to complain; you would become that laughingstock you spoke of. And if it’s the servants who are worrying you, only my housekeeper and her son know, and they can be trusted not to talk.”

  He lay down and stretched out, supporting himself on one elbow. His voice soft, he asked, “And what of when the time has elapsed and you deign to release me?”

  A faint frown drew her brows together. “I don’t know what you mean. You will be free to leave, of course.”

  “Suppose I decide not to go?”

  “Why should you stay?”

  “Oh, I can think of a reason or two,” he said softly, his dark gaze resting on her lips, moving down over the soft fullness of her breasts, the narrow span of her waist, and the curves of her hips displayed by the soft draping of the stained doeskin costume she still wore. “A woman desperate enough to go out and kidnap herself a man should be stimulating company.”

  “Desperate! Don’t be ridiculous.” Her heartbeat increased, thudding heavily against her ribs.

  “Is it ridiculous? What would you do, Anya, my love, if I were to walk into your house and make myself at home at your table, in your bedchamber, in your bed?”

  “I am not your love,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “Step one foot in my house uninvited, and I’ll have you thrown out so fast you’ll have to send for your shadow!”

  “Who will do the job? Your servants? It would mean the life of any slave who should touch me. The blacksmiths? Assault is a serious charge even for freed slaves. Murray Nicholls? But if all this is to protect him from my wrath, it would be defeating the purpose to expose him to it. Who then?”

  The temerity of the man was infuriating. That he would seek to frighten her while lying flat of his back with her needlework in his scalp defied belief. And yet, there was in his long body as he reclined on the bed a sense of power only temporarily subdued. His cape had fallen away when he tried to rise, and he was bare to the waist; still, he made no attempt to cover himself, permitting her to gaze as she would at the corded muscles of his arms and shoulders, the flat planes of his chest marked by the copper-colored rounds of his paps, the fine, curling black hair that narrowed from the triangular furring on his chest to a thin line as it disappeared under the waist of his trousers. Unprincipled, rakish, intensely masculine, he exuded a threat that was far from subtle.

  Anya’s stomach muscles tightened. Never had she been so aware of a man before. Never. Nor could she ever remember being so disturbed, so unsure of herself and a situation. She did not
like it. With slow emphasis, she answered him, “I will do it myself.”

  “Would you care to explain how?”

  “I have a pistol, and I know how to use it.”

  A faint smile touched Ravel’s lips. She was quite a woman. Most others of her sex that he knew would have stammered and blushed and ran away at the suggestion he had just made, or else fluttered their lashes in a coy pretense of misunderstanding or in blatant invitation. Of course, such women would never have dared attempt to hold him prisoner. Admiration had its limits.

  He said, “I have been shot at before.”

  She lifted a brow as she selected a new means of defense. “Tell me, are your threats an example of the honor that you refuse to have called into question? I was warned that you were not quite a gentleman. I see why.”

  “Since you are not quite a lady,” he drawled, “it hardly matters.”

  “Not a lady? That’s ridiculous!” The taunt had touched a nerve, one made more sensitive by self-doubt.

  “On the contrary. Show me, if you can, an etiquette book or ladies’ journal that covers this situation. What might the heading be: The Proper Way to Interest a Man’?”

  “I don’t want your interest,” she said in waspish tones. “I only want to hold you for a few hours.”

  His voice dulcet, he said, “You may hold me for as long as you please.”

  “That isn’t what I meant!”

  “Isn’t it? With some women it’s necessary to guess what they want. But I remember; you don’t like guessing games. We could cease playing and begin in earnest.”

  She drew herself up, looking down at him with cold hauteur. “It’s plain that the blows on the head have addled your senses. You need rest. I will leave you to it.”

  “You would leave me without food and water? I could do with breakfast.”

  That he was hungry was a good sign. “I will send it,” she said over her shoulder.

  The faint clink of the chain was her only warning. She glanced back to see him easing from the bed. As swift as a doe scenting danger, she leaped away, plunging across the room, hitting the wall near the door with a hard, jarring crash.

  There was no need to go farther. She knew exactly the limits of Ravel’s chain, for a semicircular depression was worn in the floor at its outermost limits, caused by years of her uncles pacing. Even if Ravel stretched out the length of his body, he could not quite reach her. The arrangement had been planned that way. The man being held could draw near to the fire in the room’s fireplace but not reach the flames. He had access to the bed, the armoire, and the eating table, but not the lamp on the side table between the fireplace and the door. His comfort was assured, but so was his safety. And the safety also of whoever might enter to tend the fire, bring food, or see to his comfort.

  Anya was trembling, her heart beating high in her throat. Her eyes were dark blue with angry fright as she stared across the room at Ravel Duralde. He had subsided back onto the bed, supporting himself on one elbow. He looked at the trench worn into the floor and the length of the chain that he held in his hand where he had picked it up to prevent it dragging. He lifted his black gaze to Anya where she stood.

  His voice deep and even, he said, “Next time.”

  There would not be a next time, not if she could help it. Anya made that silent vow as she marched away from the cotton gin. She would not go near the man another time. He was not seriously injured; he could not be if he had an appetite. If he was not hungry, if the pretense had been no more than a ploy to gain sympathy, then it would serve him right if she did desert him. She would send the whiskey for his headache and something for him to eat, and that would be the end of it. She did not care if she never saw him again. Let Denise and Marcel tend to the man.

  He was not that easily dismissed, however. She could not stop thinking of him and the things he had said, not while she bathed the grime of the night away in a tub of hot water, not while she lay in her bed with the curtains drawn and the quilts up to her chin, trying to rest after being awake all night.

  Would he really do the things he threatened? Would he force himself into her house, her bed, if he were freed? He could not be so vindictive. Could he?

  It didn’t seem likely. If he had not been more of a gentleman than she had been led to expect, he would have cursed her roundly for the predicament in which he found himself. She had been waiting for that, but it had not come. Perhaps he had been too weak for such a violent reaction? Perhaps he was saving his strength for the vengeance he preferred, the one he had outlined?

  Even if he were, she must release him. She could not keep him locked up a moment longer than necessary. The rest of the house servants and the field hands would soon discover his whereabouts, if they didn’t know already after all the problems and extra trips back and forth to the cotton gin created by his injuries. The news would fly from plantation to plantation and all the way to New Orleans faster than a man on a good horse could ride. It was amazing, the speed and accuracy of the news on the slave grapevine. Her good name would be in jeopardy, as Ravel had said.

  She must take care for Madame Rosa’s and Celestine’s sakes. Despite Ravel’s accusations, ruining herself was not part of her plans.

  Was she burying herself as he had said?

  She could see how it might appear that way, but she enjoyed riding over the plantation, seeing after the crops and animals and the people who lived and worked on the place. She did not care for parties and idle gossip, the endless round of visits and entertainments where the same faces were seen day after day, night after night. She had no aptitude for doing Berlin work in colored wool or fashioning flowers out of wax or weaving ornaments out of hair carefully saved from her nightly brushing. She enjoyed fine clothes and the search for the items to complement them as much as the next woman, but could not bear to sit in the salon waiting for callers, looking like a dressed-up doll, or else lying at ease eating chocolate bonbons and reading novels. She liked to do things, to see things accomplished. To her, it was the idle ladies with nothing to do who were less than alive.

  It made her uneasy to think of Ravel Duralde watching her, knowing so much about her. Why should he do that, unless it was out of guilt for the way he had interfered in her life? If he had not killed Jean, she would be a young matron by now, probably with three or four children. Her time would be spent supervising the nursery and her house, planning meals for her husband, seeing to his comfort, occupying his bed. She would have grown rather fuller of figure, no doubt, from childbearing, and perhaps quieter in her manner. The only thing she would know of what was happening in the fields or with the selling of their crops and animals would be what Jean chose to tell her. Her dependence for news and opinions of events would be entirely on him.

  She frowned up at the gathered silk lining of the tester above her bed. Such a quiet round of days might well have been stultifying. But she would have had Jean, of course. They would have talked and laughed and played with their children, and at night they would have slept side by side in their bed.

  She tried, just for a brief and rather shamed moment, to think of what it would have been like to lie in Jean’s arms, to make love. The image would not come. Instead, she saw the lean features and broad chest of Ravel Duralde.

  She flung herself over in the bed, pushing at her pillow. He was out there in the cotton gin. Her prisoner. She had captured the Black Knight, the premier duelist in New Orleans, the man they had called El Tigre when he fought with the phalangists of William Walker in Central America.

  She had caged the tiger. But how could she let him go? How could she?

  4

  ANYA KNELT ON THE GROUND, reaching into the flower bed to grasp handfuls of the crisp winter grass that threatened to choke the verbena. Nearby, in this back garden of Beau Refuge, a young boy of twelve or thirteen speared at dead leaves as if the rake he was wielding were a lethal weapon. The verbena bed fronted a row of spirea in full bloom, with arching branches of white as fine and full
as egret plumes. Beyond the end of the lacy gray-green growth of verbena with its purple flowers was a row of daffodils whose yellow trumpets were just opening. A wind with a moist chill in its breath waved the spirea branches and set the daffodils to dancing on their stems.

  “Joseph,” she called, “watch out for the bulbs.”

  “Yes, mam’zelle,” he said, but continued to mangle the stems of the daffodils as he searched out leaves.

  “The yellow flowers, be careful of them!”

  “Oh, yes, mam’zelle!”

  The housekeeper Denise, coming along the brick path that led from the house, stopped beside Anya with her hands on her ample hips. The wind flapped her apron and the knotted ends, like cat’s ears, of the kerchief tied around her head. “You’ll never make a gardener of that boy.”

  “I don’t know; at least he’s willing.”

  “His mind wanders from what he should be doing.”

  “His is not the only one,” Anya said, a rueful smile on her lips as she nodded her head toward several sprigs of verbena she had managed to pull up with the grass.

  “Humph. It’s a wonder there’s any flowers left in that bed.” The housekeeper lowered her voice. “And if it;s the man in the gin on you’ mind, it’s that one I come to talk to you about.”

  Anya glanced at the yard boy, then rose to her feet, moving nearer. “What is it?”

  “He don’t eat. When I went for the tray with his noon meal just now, he was lyin’ there with his face to the wall. He hadn’t touched his food, and he didn’t answer when I talked to him.”

  A frown appeared between Anya’s eyes. “Do you think he’s worse?”

  “I couldn’t say, but it don’t look good.”

  There was disapproval in the housekeeper’s voice. Massively built, the woman had the high cheekbones and deep-set eyes of the Indian warrior who had been her grandfather. Her grandmother, in a bid for freedom some ninety years before, had run away, taking to the woods. There she had found shelter with the Choctaws. She had lived with them for a time, but, discovering that having her freedom did not make up for the loss of the company of her own kind and the amusements of the plantation and New Orleans in the winter, she had returned to her old master. There had been a child born of her sojourn, however, and Denise was the child of that child. Because of her Indian blood, the other slaves in the quarters said that Denise had “red bones.” It gave her distinction, and added luster to her reputation as a woman with a temper.