Authors: Lydia
His green eyes, inches from her own, narrowed like a puma’s. “If you’re gambling on the chance that I’ll back off, forget it. You’re the lying scum of the earth, Sarah Parker Buckley, or whatever your name is. I’ve hanged nobler souls than you, and I won’t have my nieces and nephews growing up under your influence. I won’t have my
sister—ouch!”
Donovan snarled as the stinging alcohol penetrated raw flesh.
Sarah had never realized words could hurt so much. Inwardly she recoiled as if he had struck her, but nothing showed in her face. Whatever happened, she could not let him see how deeply he had wounded her. She could not give him the satisfaction or the power.
Gulping back tears, she forced her features into an icy mask. “I’ll not have you telling me where I can or can’t make my home,” she declared coldly. “Do your worst, Donovan. It won’t make any difference. I can be just as stubborn as your sister, and I’m not going anywhere.”
“Then you’re a fool.” He stared sullenly past her shoulder as she applied a plaster to the cut. Her hands trembled where they touched his face. More than anything, she wanted to be done with this ordeal, to be back in the security of her little schoolroom with the door bolted behind her. But there would be no security anywhere for her, she realized. Not now.
“How much experience have you had framing a cabin?” she asked, breaking the weight of his silence.
Donovan’s jaw twitched, but he did not reply.
“A fortnight ago, I delivered Jemima Hanks down in the creek bottoms. Lanny Hanks, her husband, is an able carpenter. He needs work.” Sarah paused to retrieve the roll of muslin stripping she used for bellybands. “Raise your arms, now, and I’ll bind your ribs. Framing’s not a job for a lone man—not even one who knows what he’s doing.”
“Save your do-gooder advice for somebody else. I should have seen through you back in Richmond.” Donovan’s voice was a lash, but he did raise his arms, giving silent
consent for Sarah to wrap the muslin around his bruised rib cage.
Sarah bent to the task, steeling herself against his nearness. Donovan held himself rigid, his whole frame radiating unspoken fury. Along his ribs, the flesh had already begun to discolor. The bruises would be painful for a long time to come.
“This wrapping will help, but you’re going to be sore. I’d advise you to take it easy for a few days.” She bent close to pass the binding around his back, swallowing a gasp as one tightly puckered nipple brushed her cheek. Donovan’s was a soldier’s body, hard, disciplined and nicked with the marks of battle. The track of a rifle ball creased his lean left flank. His right shoulder was pocked with shrapnel scars. They lay creamy white against his golden skin, oddly, compellingly beautiful.
Donovan’s lips tightened as the muslin passed around his ribs. His silence seethed, emanating ice-cold fury.
I should have seen through you back in Richmond.
The words echoed in Sarah’s ears as she struggled with the wrapping, bending close again to circle his rigid back. The memory that flashed through her mind was scalding in its pain.
Richmond…music…a waltz. Her peony pink gown afloat in the midst of the swirling ballroom. Golden epaulets blazing in the lamplight. Her lace-mitted hand, resting on the fine gray wool of Virgil’s tunic…
And Donovan, his face glimpsed through the shadows beyond Virgil’s shoulder, his mouth set in a hard line, his expression guarded and cautious, veiling his emotions.
Almost by chance their eyes had met—and in that blistering instant, it was as if their naked gazes had penetrated each other’s souls, leaving no secrets unseen. So searing was the connection that Sarah had gasped and torn her eyes away from him. For days afterward she had lived in fear, certain that he had detected her masquerade. Only now did
she realize he had not. It was something else she had glimpsed that night. Something deeper.
Oh, Donovan, if only we’d been born different people,
you and I. If only we’d come together in a less dangerous time…
Sarah’s hands had slowed in their task. Sensing his impatience, she hurried to finish. The children had not reappeared. Varina, Sarah realized to her chagrin, was probably keeping them inside the cabin to further her misguided matchmaking efforts.
“Leave the wrapping in place for the next few days, at least,” she said, snipping off the end and fashioning a square knot. “Promise me, too, you’ll get some help with that framing. You’ll never manage it alone, especially with cracked ribs.”
“Promise?” His wry chuckle carried the bitterness of a January wind. “I owe you no kind of promise,
Miss Sarah
Parker. It amazes me, in fact, that your lying lips can even speak the word.”
“Stop it!” Sarah jerked away from him, quivering with the fury of her frayed patience. “I can’t change who I am, Donovan Cole, not even for you, and I’m through apologizing for it! You gave me an ultimatum, and I gave you my answer! As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing more to say between us!”
“Nothing more to say.” He watched her through slitted eyes as she fumbled for the scattered contents of her medical kit—the scissors, the roll of stripping, the whiskey.
“Nothing more to say, Miss Sarah, except this—”
Donovan’s hand flashed out like the strike of a rattler, fingers locking on to her wrist. His powerful arm wrenched her hand behind her back, the motion pinning her against his chest.
Too startled to fight, Sarah stared up into his hard green eyes. His face was chiseled granite, his breath a harsh rasp in his throat.
“Back in Richmond, I treated you like a lady because you were my brother’s sweetheart!” he raged. “If I’d known the truth, I would have unmasked you then and there, Sarah Parker Buckley! I would have stormed your room and bedded you like the false-hearted little trollop you were—and are!”
Sarah’s outraged gasp was lost against the brutal impact of his lips. There was no tenderness in Donovan’s kiss, and certainly no trace of affection. His roughness wrenched her head backward, bowing her body hard against his naked chest. His contemptuous tongue invaded her mouth, probing, pillaging, challenging her to resist.
Head spinning, Sarah struggled in the vise of his arms. Oh, she knew what Donovan was after. He was intent on proving the truth of his own terrible words—proving to her and to himself that behind Sarah’s virtuous mask, Lydia Taggart still lived and breathed.
He was wrong. He had to be wrong. She had to show him.
She willed herself to go rigid against him, but this was Donovan.
Donovan—and
she had been alone too long. Her body was as pliant as tallow in his arms. Through the thin shirtwaist, her breasts had molded to the solid contours of his chest. Her lips were softening under the fire of his kiss. His tongue was a flame in her mouth, its heat rippling downward in sweet, hot waves. Sarah could feel her hips twisting against him, feel her whole being igniting like gunpowder…
No!
The last vestige of reason screamed in her head. This man hated her. He was bent on her destruction. Give in to him now, and there was no hope for her.
With all her strength, Sarah shoved her arms against him. Donovan gasped at the sudden pressure on his rib cage. His grip loosened. Sarah tumbled away to sprawl in the spring mud, her skirts askew, her hair falling loose, her mouth damp and swollen from his bruising kiss.
Donovan bad collapsed against the timbers. His face was twisted in pain. His eyes flickered, half angry, half amused. Watching him, Sarah had just one wish—to be gone. She struggled to rise, stepped on her own petticoat and toppled headlong to the ground again.
For the space of a long breath she lay there, her face blazing as Donovan’s sardonic laughter filled her ears. He thought he had won, she realized. But he was wrong. By this time tomorrow he would know exactly how wrong he had been.
She clawed her way to a defiant crouch, facing him now like a wounded animal at bay. “You—you bullying bastard!” she hissed.
His mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “Sanctimonious Sarah, the Angel of Miner’s Gulch,” he drawled. “What a joke! Strip away that self-righteous window dressing, and you haven’t changed a whit. Lydia Taggart is alive and well…and I just had the dubious pleasure of renewing our acquaintance.”
Sarah struggled to her feet, battling the urge to fly at him like an enraged wildcat. “Don’t think you can trifle with me, Donovan! I’ve got friends in this town, and I’m stronger than you know!”
“We’ll see about that.” His expression did not change as Sarah snatched up her medical bag and strode furiously toward her mule. In her muddy, disheveled state, she could not think of going back inside the cabin—not to see Katy’s carries and borrows, not even to retrieve the cloak she had left on a kitchen chair. The cold spring breeze buffeted her skirts, chilling her through the thin shirtwaist as she swung into the saddle.
Donovan had pulled himself to his feet. Catching Sarah’s eye, he raised his hand in a mocking salute. The insolent gesture snapped the final thread of her hard-won self-control.
“I should have just let you lie there!” she sputtered, jabbing her heels into the mule’s shaggy flanks.
“I should have let you
die!”
Jerking the reins, she wheeled the mule and bolted for the trees. A gust of wind caught her tousled hair, whipping it loose to stream behind her like a banner. Her spectacles dangled forgotten from the silver brooch on her shirtwaist. Tears blinded her eyes—tears she could not afford to let Donovan see.
She clung to the saddle, grateful for the mule’s sure feet as they lurched down the trail. Donovan’s mocking kiss burned her lips and seared her memory. He had all but undone her, she realized. Another instant in his arms and her defenses would have shattered.
At close quarters, she was no match for him. He was too bitter; she was too vulnerable. Her only hope, Sarah knew, lay in keeping her distance—that, and fighting him with the one sure weapon that lay within her reach.
The truth.
Chilled, now that his rage was spent, Donovan shivered in the raw spring wind. His lips stung with the memory of kissing Sarah. His cracked ribs burned like a jab from the devil’s own pitchfork.
Reaching for his flannel shirt, he slipped his arms awkwardly into the sleeves. As his numbed fingers worked the buttons, Sarah’s parting epithet rang in his ears.
I should have let you die!
His fingers brushed the ridge of the muslin bandage. It was true that Sarah had probably saved his life. A minute more under the crushing weight of those timbers, and the breath would have been squeezed from his body. She had saved him, just as she’d saved Varina and the baby.
But it wasn’t enough.
Donovan rubbed his burning mouth with the back of his hand, wiping away the taste of her deceitful lips. His jaw
tightened as he forced himself to remember what she had done.
As Lydia Taggart, Sarah Parker Buckley had plotted against her friends and neighbors in Richmond—people who had welcomed and accepted her. She had used trusting young men like Virgil to betray the Confederacy. Her lying ways had killed Virgil as surely as if she’d fired the mortar shell that shattered his body. And Virgil was only one man. Who could say how many other lives her treachery had cost the South?
No, Donovan told himself, whatever good Sarah had done here in Miner’s Gulch, it wasn’t enough. It didn’t balance the scales. It couldn’t buy back Virgil’s life.
He exhaled painfully as the mule’s iron-shod hooves echoed down the gulch. Kissing Sarah had been a damn fool thing to do, he reflected. He’d started out with the idea of keeping things clean and businesslike between them. All he’d wanted was to get her out of Miner’s Gulch, away from his kinfolk. Then something in him had gone haywire.
Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone? What was it about the woman that turned him into a raving lunatic every time she came within shouting distance?
I should have let you die!
And she should have, Donovan realized as Sarah’s bitter words flashed through his memory like summer lightning. He had told no one about her past, not even Varina. If he had died, her black secret would have died with him.
She must have known it. Sarah was no fool. Another minute’s delay in moving the timbers, that’s all it would have taken. His death would have been a tragic accident, with Varina and the children as witnesses. No jury on earth would have found her guilty.
Yet, she had chosen to save him.
Donovan’s cracked ribs screamed as he picked up the hammer and slammed it against a stump. Sarah Parker Buckley possessed all the maddening qualities of a good
woman—and her goodness was driving him crazy. She was sucking away at his resistance like a blasted leech.
Was that what had driven him to kiss her? Was it the idea that it was easier to punish a bad woman than a good oneeasier to punish Lydia Taggart than saintly Sarah?
The wind had freshened, bringing the scent of another storm. Donovan glowered at the encroaching clouds, cursing under his breath. Why did everything in life have to be so hellishly complicated? Why couldn’t Sarah have been a man—someone he could simply challenge to a gunfight or thrash to a bloody pulp? Why did she have to be so beautiful, so soft, so full of courage?
“Uncle Donovan?” Katy’s forlorn little voice shattered his reverie. He turned to see her standing alone on the porch, clutching her slate.
“Where’s Miss Sarah, Uncle Donovan? I wanted her to come in and see my carries and borrows.”
“Uh—Miss Sarah had to leave in a hurry.” Donovan squirmed under her innocent scrutiny. “She said to tell you she was sorry,” he added, hating the lie but seeing no other way out.
“But I was all ready to show her.” Katy’s small head drooped. The sight of her tugged at Donovan’s heart. Annie was the bright sister, the capable, responsible one. And young Samuel was the best natured of Varina’s brood. But it was lively, loving little Katy who had truly won him.
He lifted her chin with a solicitous finger. She and her sister deserved toys and fun and pretty dresses, he thought, not ragged clothes, hard work and a miserable shack in the mountains with no father to look after them.