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EBEN STARED INTO THE DARKNESS, listening to the snores of his guards outside the door to the cell. They had left him his timepiece, and he checked it now. One minute till the stroke of midnight. He couldn’t sleep. This was supposed to be his wedding night, but instead of pillowing his head on Raven’s soft breast, he sat with his back against the wall, counting down the minutes until dawn.
Somewhere beyond the dark rectangle of the window, Jase searched for clues as to the identity of a murderer. Eben longed to be there with him, free of the dingy confines of the attic room where his thoughts continued to tread a dark path.
What would become of Raven and their child if they hanged him for Ivory’s murder? Where would she go? How would she live?
He rubbed a hand over his eyes.
Surely it would not come to that.
If there was a shred of evidence left behind in the barn, then Jase would find it and put an end to this madness. Once this was over, he would take Raven away from this place and all of its bad memories. Someplace they could begin anew.
A new life. A new start.
The little comfort the idea brought him was shattered a second later by a woman’s scream carried clearly through the brittle winter’s night. The sound brought Eben to his feet. He shouted for the guards, and when they cursed him and told him to go back to sleep, he took the bars in his fists and rattled the door on its hinges. “That’s my wife, goddamn it! I’d know her voice anywhere,” he shouted through the bars. “Open the door, or I’ll take it off its hinges!”
“Settle down, for Christ’s sake, and go back to sleep!” Ervin Bently told him. “You were havin’ a nightmare!”
Eben glanced wildly around, his eyes finally lighting on the window high in the wall. He weighed his chances and quickly
decided he had nothing to lose. Taking off his boot, he hurled it at the remaining panes, then, leapt and grabbed the bottom sill. In a moment, he’d hauled himself up, slipped sideways through the narrow opening, and lithe as a cat crouched on the window ledge to gauge where he was.
And then he was climbing. The eaves and the slate were his handholds in the quick, perilous ascent. There was one path to follow, up and over the comb of the roof and onto the west wing where he could drop onto the lower porch, then from there to the ground.
Fear for his lady drove the blood through his veins and pushed him on where any sane man would have hesitated. He’d almost reached the highest point when his foot found the loose slate. It gave way beneath him with a hiss and a rattle, sliding down the steep slope ahead of Eben. On his belly, he grappled for a handhold—anything to keep him from falling— and felt his nails tear loose. At the edge of the roof, he stopped and, for a moment, leaned his brow against the icy slate, letting go the breath he’d been holding. Then, he dug in his toes and began the climb again.
This time, he arrived without incident, dropping off the roof onto the porch, and lowering himself to the ground. Inside the inn, he could hear shouts, boots pounding on the stairs, and down the hallway to the kitchen.
Eben didn’t wait for the Bently boys to catch up with him.
He hit the ground and set off at a dead run.
“IF YOU DON’T HURRY, I will be forced to drag you,” Patrick warned Raven. “Is that what you want?”
Raven glanced back at the inn, the lights of which shone softly in the distance. The house was alerted. Soon, they would find her missing and come looking. Then, she saw a solitary figure running toward them, a shadowy form flying over the snow. “Someone is coming! Dear God, please, just leave me!
If you let go of me and run, you can escape!”
“Run! I cannot run!” he cried, frantic now. “That bastard St.
Claire saw to that when he threw me out of a window! Don’t
you see? You are my only hope! If we reach the far bank of the creek, I will release you.”
He pulled Raven along while she struggled and kicked and tried to trip him. Several weeks of bone-chilling cold had frozen the stream solid near the bank, but out in the middle was a dark and watery crevice where the ice hadn’t formed yet. ‘We can’t make it across,” Raven told Patrick. “It isn’t safe!”
“Remaining where I am now isn’t safe!” he shot back, plunging ahead onto the frozen creek, dragging her with him. Underfoot, the ice was snow-covered and slick, and Patrick’s limp slowed their crossing.
“Raven!” Eben’s shout rang out over the meadow, a distance of ten yards and gaining fast. “Let her go, Wharton!”
In a panic, Patrick Wharton spun, and the ice cracked alarmingly underfoot. “Stay where you are! Don’t come any closer!”
Eben stopped on the edge of the bank. If he followed, the man would do something foolish. He was already walking on very thin ice. “Patrick, for Christ’s sake! Let her go!”
Raven was sobbing now, trying to break from his grasp. One arm was outstretched toward Eben. Watching her, Eben thought his heart would break. “Please! Let me go back to
him! I beg of you!”
As she dug in her heels, sobbing wildly, Patrick flung her from him and teetered on a few more steps alone. Then, a great gaping hole appeared to his left. The surface on which he stood tilted and the icy water closed over his head.
“Raven! Don’t move! I’m coming for you!” Eben vaulted down the bank and skated out onto the slick surface, but she was panicked. She saw him and spun, rising to her knees and then to her feet. For a second, their gazes locked, and then the ice gave way and she was gone.
“Nooooooooooooooooo! Raven!” He skidded to a stop a few yards from where she’d disappeared and flattened himself on his belly, crawling to the ragged edge of the hole, and
without a second’s hesitation he dove headfirst into the still black water.
The icy cold was a shock to his system, and he had to force himself to keep the air in his lungs from escaping in an uncontrollable rush. He felt frantically around him.
If he didn’t find her, then he would not be found, either. He’d stay under the ice with his Raven… his only love. The pain of living without her would be too great to bear.
His hands and arms were blocks of ice, and he barely felt the wool of her cloak as it brushed against him. Frozen fingers locked around it and he drew her to him.
He surfaced gasping for air. “Help me with her!”
Tyler Lee had materialized, and got her under the arms, hauling her limp body from the water. Then, he helped Eben to climb out.
By now, Meg, and the judge and the Bently boys all stood on the creek, silently watching as Eben carried Raven to safe ground and sank down. He buried his face in the curve of her pale throat and groaned. “Please. . . please, don’t take her from me now.”
He laid her on her side and rubbed her back, calling her name again and again. Meg took off her own cloak and put it around them, and as she did, Raven stirred, coughing and gagging and spewing up creek water.
Something hot fell onto Raven’s cold cheek, scalding her skin. She raised heavy lids and looked deeply into Eben’s pale blue eyes. A thin trickle coursed down his pale cheek. He was crying. “Thank God,” he said. “Oh, thank God. I thought I’d lost you.”
She lifted a hand then and touched his face. “I knew you would come for me.”
“I could not let you go. You are my heart, Raven. It beats for you, and only for you. Without you in my life, there is nothing.”
He lifted her and carried her to the inn and she rested her head on his shoulder. “Husband,” she said, the term an endearment that warmed them both.
“Not yet,” Eben said. “But soon. Just as soon as you are strong enough.” He strode through the kitchen and up the back stairs, his single boot making an odd sound on the treads, drawing her notice.
“Eben? Where is your boot?” “I threw it out the window.”
“Oh, Eben. Not your new boots!”
But Eben just laughed. “It’s a small sacrifice for all that I have gained.”
Frenchman’s Bend Louisiana, October 1, 1808
“MISTER JASE, THERE’S A CARRIAGE comin’ up the
drive.” Tellifour stood in the doorway to Jase’s study, dignified in his starched white shirt, black coat and trousers. “You want me to tell Cook to prepare some refreshments?”
Jase stood, slipping into a white linen jacket. “Whiskey, Tell, and something for the ladies.” He strode into the hallway, making his way to the grand salle. “Catherine! Where the devil are you?”
“I’m coming! I’m coming!” Catherine emerged from the salon, the picture of femininity and grace in pale pink muslin. “Jason, you are uncharacteristically rattled. Are you sure you’re feeling well?”
“I have every right to be rattled, madam,” he said. “My brother has never been here to visit. I want everything to be perfect. In fact, I am hoping that I can convince them to stay.”
“You must allow them to decide for themselves,” Catherine told him, straightening his lapels.
“Yes, yes. I’ve heard this all before. No coercion, no arm- twisting. No begging.”
“You never beg, my darling,” she said with a smile.
“That’s true,” Jase said, stealing a kiss. “Coercion is more my style. Shall we?” Arm in arm, they walked out onto the wide veranda. A coach was rumbling up the crushed shell drive. Beside it, easily keeping pace on a heavily-muscled sorrel horse was a blond-haired man who looked a great deal like Jase.
Dressed in fringed leather, with high black boots, he looked easily as tall as his older brother. “Jason,” Catherine chided. “You did not tell me he was handsome.”
Jase sent her a sidelong glance and suppressed a grin. “He is a St. Claire, madam.”
Eben leaned toward the window of the coach and said something to the passenger, then kicked the horse and thundered up the drive, throwing clods of mud in his hurried wake. He dismounted, letting the horse’s reins dangle, and came to stand in front of Catherine.
The blue eyes with which he regarded her were the same pale blue as Jason’s, and sparkled gemlike in his lean, tanned face. “You must be Catherine?” he said in a voice both warm and low.
“Indeed, sir,” Catherine replied. “Welcome to Frenchman’s Bend.”
He did not kiss her hand, but bussed her cheek instead.
Then stood smiling down at her. “I came ahead to warn you about the noise. The babes are hungry and making quite a racket.”
“Babes?” Jase said. “As in more than one?”
“Aye, brother,” Eben said with a grin. “Twins! Megan, and Cameron.”
The carriage rattled to a stop. Eben took the twins, while Jase helped Raven to alight, and introduced her to Catherine. Cameron set to squalling, his sister fussy, but quieter. “I’m afraid he has his father disposition,” Raven apologized.
“I understand completely,” Catherine said, taking the situation in hand.
A little while later, Raven looked around the room where she and Eben would be staying. The high ceilings helped keep it comfortable, even in the vicious heat of the afternoon, and a gentle breeze filtered through the louvers. She sat on a brocaded lounge, contemplating this new situation while Cameron suckled at her breast, pinching her delicate flesh with tiny fingers as he watched her with eyes as pale and blue as his father’s.
Louisiana was a long way from McAllister’s Ford and the simple farm where she and Eben had lived until the birth of the twins. A long way from Meg, and the inn. Eben had done his best to convince Meg to accompany them to visit Jase and Catherine, but she had refused. The judge had succumbed to acute indigestion two months after his daughter’s untimely demise and had been laid to rest beside her in the churchyard. Surprisingly, he’d left the inn and all of his assets to Meg.
Once just an employee, she was now proprietress—a woman of means.
Eben came into the room as Raven laid their sleeping son beside his sister and sat down on the bed. “He wants us to stay,” he said as Raven crossed to the bed and sat down beside him. “He says there’s some prime acreage coming up for sale that’s well-suited to raising horses—as well as sons and daughters.”
“Is this what you want? To leave McAllister’s Ford for good?”
“It would not bother me to see the last of it,” he admitted. “Except, of course, for Meg.” He put an arm around her shoulders, then gently laid her back so he could look down into her pretty face. “What of you? Would you be unhappy here, in Louisiana?”
Raven sighed, reaching up to touch his face with loving fingers. “I can be happy anywhere, Eben, as long as I’m with you.”
Eben looked down at her, lying on the quilt she’d spread over the bed earlier—the quilt Elizabeth Galloway had given her for her marriage bed. His Raven, his love, his life. And
Eben decided in that instant that their future could wait until tomorrow.
Tonight, was made for love.
The End.
