Christine Dorsey - [MacQuaid 02] Read Online Free Page B

and London but—”
    “That’s impossible.” Rachel clenched her hands together and twirled away, her skirts floating out about her ankles. But it only took a moment before she twisted back. “Where am I?” When he didn’t answer immediately Rachel lurched forward, catching the front of his buckskin shirt in her fists. Shaking did more to dislodge herself than him, but that didn’t stop her. “Tell me where I am.” But though she demanded to know, the knowledge seemed to fill her with despair.
    “The colony of South Carolina...” she repeated his answer. As her voice trailed off she let loose of his shirt. She paced the cabin again before facing him. “Then I was obviously mistaken about finding my own way home. They will come for me.”
    “They?”
    Rachel expelled her breath in an unladylike sigh. Discussing this with him was becoming a bore. She would just tell him and be done with it. Mayhaps then he would leave her alone to await... She wasn’t certain what would happen, or when. But she did know something must. No fate could be as cruel as leaving her here.
    “I was sent to save you,” she said, straightening her shoulders. “By angels.”
    If she expected him to be awestruck by her announcement, she was sadly disappointed. His first reaction was a booming laugh that tightened her lips. The next was to grab her shoulders in his crushing grip.
    “I’ve had enough of your lies, wench. It will be the truth you’ll be telling me.”
    “You doubt heaven exists?” For the first time she was frightened of him. His anger seemed a palatable thing.
    “Nay. I’ve no doubt there be a heaven... and a hell.”
    “Then why must you mistrust me?”
    He yanked her up against his hard chest. “An angel you might resemble, but I know better. For if someone sent you to me ’twould be no messenger from God. ’Twould be the devil himself.”
    Rachel stared into the hard green eyes and nearly believed him.

Chapter Two

    “What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them.”
    — Voltaire
    Philosophical Dictionary
    No amount of drink made her disappear.
    Logan lowered the jug from his lips, and swallowed before backhanding his mouth. He sat in the corner where the stones of the hearth met the south wall, his long legs stretched out on the earthen floor. And he watched the woman as she slept.
    Last evening after she insisted she was tired and he offered her the only bed in the cabin—the one where she now lay—he walked outside. Though night was upon them, the sky was clear and bright beneath a canopy of moon and stars. The kind of cool, crisp night that Logan relished. But it wasn’t the heavens that was on his mind. At least not that bit of it he could see overhead.
    What in the hell was going on? He didn’t believe her for one minute. She was no angel. Hell, he didn’t even credit that she was Lady what’s-her-name. Despite the diamonds. Logan kicked at a clump of winter dry grass. As if some high and mighty member of King George’s court would show up on the Carolina frontier.
    “As if I’d be wanting them here,” he mumbled. He might not have been old enough to fight for the Bonnie Prince like his brother, James, but he never forgave the British crown their role at Culloden.
    All of which was irrelevant anyway. For there was obviously not a parcel of truth in anything she’d said. Either she was mad. Or he was. And since he’d been told as much before, not to mention wondering often enough himself, Logan was willing to admit he’d imagined the entire incident.
    Until he wandered back into the smoky cabin and saw her sound asleep on a pallet of furs. She lay on her side, fully dressed, her cheek pillowed on curled fingers like a child. But it was not a child’s body clad in that riotously adorned gown. Logan stared a moment at the breasts nearly tumbling from the lacy décolletage, then swallowed and reached for the nearest jug.
    If he wasn’t mad, then she was.
    ~