May 1862
The night was eerie.
A full moon rode the silken black sky, casting an iridescent ivory glow over the landscape. But there were clouds that night, puffy, billowing monsters that drifted along invisibly until they covered the moon and pitched land and sea into a darkness so deep it was like an ebony void.
And in the darkness, supported by his men, Ian waited.
And prayed that he was wrong. His uncle had warned him about the Moccasin in exchange for Jennifer’s life, though he surely knew that Ian’s love for his cousin demanded no payment in return.
But Ian was afraid.
Afraid that Alaina was guilty of espionage. Afraid that he wouldn’t catch her.
That someone else would.
“A ship! Major, by God, you were right!” old Sam Jones whispered in the night.
Ian felt his heart quicken. His uncle had been right. His uncle had known.
He felt his men shifting in the darkness, amazed that he had known not just that a ship would risk the waters, but when it would do so. Sam, who had been the first man Ian had chosen for his company, probably suspected what Ian feared.
His men were anxious, he realized. He tried to speak calmly.
“Steady, boys, we can’t take a ship right now, and we don’t want anyone getting wind of us and carrying off the cargo. We want the landing party, gentlemen.” He was silent. Then he reminded them, “We’re here to seize the Moccasin.”
Alaina stared at the fast-approaching coastline. Almost home! She was glad, so glad! The war was a wearying effort, more trying than ever recently. More worrying. She didn’t know why she was so uneasy; she had slipped from St. Augustine with no difficulty, and everything had gone extremely smoothly in the Bahamas. Tonight, all she had to do was come home and turn her heavily laden coat over to her contact. Then she could go to Belamar, and sleep in her own bed. And perhaps…
She had believed, so passionately, in the Southern Cause. In States’ Rights. In the battle cry that they were like the fledgling band of the colonies before the Revolutionary War, fighting for the right to independence, for the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness—in their own way. If only others understood …
It was time to quit now. Quit. She had been a good spy, a good ambassador for the South. She had risked a great deal. Times were changing. Too many people knew her identity; too many people were beginning to guess at it.
And…
She wasn’t sure about her convictions anymore. God forbid, she wasn’t sure that the Confederacy was right! Perhaps it would be possible to slither into the water… and disappear into legend and history.
In the small inlet, just before they might have run aground, the ship was brought to a slow, smooth halt.
“Cast dinghy!” Captain Nasby ordered. He glanced at Alaina, and she knew he was worried. He had told her that he had seen the broadsides posted advising that the Moccasin was wanted—dead or alive.
Shot or hanged without mercy at the discretion of the captor.
Alaina didn’t dare think about such threats—or the fact that they would be carried out. Fear made it impossible to function.
She touched the brim of her slouch hat, drawing it lower down her forehead. She drew her encompassing greatcoat with its numerous pockets more tightly around her. The coat was heavy, with gold, laudanum, letters, and Yankee dollars for the purchase of items that had become necessary to the South but that couldn’t be bought with Confederate money. If she had to swim, the weight could drown her. She would have to slip out of it—and retrieve it later. She hoped she didn’t have to swim. She felt that she had recovered entirely from her bout with the rattler, but she was still afraid that she wasn’t as strong as she should be.
She stared at the shore, wondering again why she was so uneasy. She could see nothing amiss. The moon kept creeping behind clouds, but when the clouds parted, a strange yellow glow illuminated the earth. The water, with or without the moonlight, seemed black. Trees were encased in silent shadow. In a sudden burst of yellow moonlight, she scanned the shore. Nothing. Nothing… except…
“Wait!” she cried.
“You see something?” Captain Nasby demanded, frowning and trying hard to peer into the night.
Yes, something. Something had moved in the shadows. Alaina was filled with dread. Twin red lights suddenly seemed to peer from the trees. She felt a tightening grip of panic begin, but then breathed more easily again, nearly laughing aloud with relief.
“What?” the captain asked anxiously.
“A little deer,” Alaina laughed.
“Ah … A deer. You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“Jenkins, bring the Moccasin in,” the captain ordered one of his young seamen.
“Yessir!” Jenkins said, saluting.
The captain turned to the Moccasin. “Be careful. Please.”
“I will, sir,” Alaina said, smiling.
“Remember,” he told her firmly, “your life is far more valuable than your cargo, no matter how precious it may be. You cannot be replaced. You must remember that.”
“I will!” she promised. Alaina realized then that she wanted it to be over. She wanted to get ashore, deliver her contraband, and be done. “And I must go now.”
The captain nodded. He appeared unhappy, as if he struggled for the words to say more, but could not find them.
As if he, too, were suddenly filled with the same sense of dread.
For a moment, Alaina was made even more uneasy by his manner, and felt a strange chill, one as foreboding as the haunting night with its eerie yellow moon-glow.
“Be careful,” the captain said again, gruffly.
“We should move now, sir,” Jenkins said uneasily.
Alaina nimbly scrambled over the starboard side of the ship, following Jenkins down the small drop ladder to the dinghy waiting below. Jenkins quickly slipped the oars into the water, and the dinghy shot across the night-black sea. The coastline loomed ever closer.
“Stop!” she whispered, suddenly certain that all was not well. She felt as if the night was watching; she had the feeling of being…
Stalked.
Something awaited them. The heavy breathing of some great horrible creature seemed to echo in the darkness. The trees were too still. Nothing stirred; no insects chirped.
Jenkins ceased to row. The dinghy, caught by the impetus of his previous strength, continued to streak through the water despite Jenkins’s efforts to position the oars to stop its progress.
Then the trees came to life. The moon was gone, darkness had settled, but the Moccasin heard the sounds as men slipped from the trees, rifles aimed at the dinghy.
And dreaded words in a more dreaded voice were suddenly issued.
“Surrender, come in peacefully, and your lives will be spared, you’ve my guarantee!”
The moon slipped free from the clouds. Eight men in hated Union blue had come from the trees. They were in formation at the water’s edge: four on their knees, four standing, all aiming their rifles directly at the occupants of the dinghy. One more man stood slightly apart from the others. Ian.
Her stomach lurched.
“Lord A’mighty!” Jenkins swore. He didn’t even glance at Alaina, and she knew that he meant to surrender,
But she couldn’t surrender.
“We surrender—” Jenkins began.
Alaina dove into the water. She dove very deep, slipped out of her coat, and swam hard, trying to pretend that she hadn’t seen Ian, that he didn’t suspect that she was the Moccasin. If he didn’t know it was her, he might not catch her. He might swim straight for the boat and find nothing more than the coat she carried resting on the bottom.
She swam as hard as she could, trying to let the current help her, then surfaced. Keeping very low, she looked back to see that Ian’s men still seemed far away. She scrambled up around the mangrove roots, certain that she could disappear into the foliage and away from the water, given half a chance.
But as she came ashore, she heard a sudden shout.
“Halt, or I’ll shoot!”
She ran, expecting a bullet to plow into her back at any second.
But no weapon was fired.
Gasping for air, her lungs burning, she continued to run.
Then she heard racing footsteps. Close behind her, so close behind her …
She cried out even as his weight catapulted against her, bringing her down so hard she was winded and inhaled raggedly just for enough air to live, to remain conscious.
Oh, God, she knew it was Ian, knew it.
She wanted oblivion.
She was facedown in the roots and sand. He flung her over, straddling her with a staggering speed.
The moonlight suddenly seemed brilliant. She could see him clearly, so clearly.
He was as soaked as she, shirt and breeches plastered to the muscled hardness of his body. His dark hair was slicked back, his features like rock, cobalt eyes damning and cold and …
Strange. He had become a stranger. A hard, handsome stranger who stared at her now with such heated fury and hatred that she panicked, desperate to escape. She writhed, drawing back a fist to strike out with all the strength she could muster. She caught his jaw—but he barely seemed to notice. She struggled wildly to move him off balance, but succeeded only in winding herself further.
He caught her wrists and slammed her back to the sand with such brutal force that she cried out, panicked into silence. She went dead still and stared at him.
“So you are the Moccasin,” he said. His voice was cold and harsh, and the fury within it increased as he added, “How dare you?”
She was so afraid. And even more heartsick. She wanted to explain, but she couldn’t explain to him.
She could only keep fighting, because there was nothing left for them now except battle.
“And you’re the Panther. The bloody, goddamned Panther. Stalker. Traitor! Dear God, this is Florida!” she cried. “You are the traitor here. How dare you?”
She was vaguely aware of footfalls on the sand. And then his men gathered around them.
“Major,” one of them said quietly, “we lost the Reb from the ship. He panicked and drowned. We went in; there was nothing we could do.”
Ian listened to his soldier speak, but his eyes never left her face, and not a flicker of emotion passed through them. She bit her inner lip, dismayed. Poor Jenkins! But he had given up so quickly. If only he had shown a little more courage…
Oh, God, he was dead. Another good man. These men hadn’t even wanted to kill him, she realized, but he was dead.
“All right, Sam,” Ian said calmly, still watching Alaina all the while with the deadly glitter of ice-fire in his cobalt eyes. “Brian, Reggie, see to the body. We’ll head back to base camp.” He spoke to Alaina then. “Don’t try to escape me again.”
She couldn’t look away from him. “Will you shoot me?” she managed to ask him.
“My men get nervous in the swamp. God knows, sometimes we shoot at anything.”
He stood suddenly, jerking her to her feet. He kept staring at her while his men moved about as bidden. Someone brought the horses.
Pye!
She suddenly felt like laughing. He even had his own horse here deep in the swamp.
He threw her up atop his mount, then leaped up behind her.
No more than thirty minutes of riding in a tense silence brought them to a small grouping of cabins, built up on stilts, deep within a hammock. The cabins were all but hidden by a massive wall of pines that broke just before the small clearing.
Alaina began to shiver. The night air was cool. With her coat gone, she was dressed in men’s breeches, a cotton shirt, and high boots. Even her boots remained uncomfortably sodden with seawater.
The camp was amazing. She had heard rumors that the Panther was so good he had arrogantly settled in enemy territory. His cabins were so well hidden, and yet so close to her home. Close to where she should be handing over the items in the coat to her contact. Close to being saved….
She was the Moccasin. She had been captured.
She would be hanged.
No!
Something in her heart cried out that it couldn’t happen. But, oh, God, what a naive fool she had been! It now seemed inevitable that this day should come.
She wished fervently that he had ordered his men to drag her through the swamp on foot. That would have been better than riding with him. Feeling his rage, his horror that she was the Moccasin. It seemed to burn from him, from the arms that held Pye’s reins around her, from the hard-muscled wall of his chest. He was fire tonight, and she would be consumed in it. Cast into Rebel hell.
He seemed to be a mass of heat and muscled tension, and yet the very feel of him when he touched her was somehow colder than a northern ice floe. As if he could not bear to touch her….
Perhaps that was well. Ian seemed to be a broad-shouldered, yet slender man. His appearance was deceptive, for it was his height, over six feet, that made him seem more lithe and lean when he was actually quite powerfully built. If he were to touch her, he might readily snap her neck, break her right in two.
Yet when they reached the clearing, he jumped swiftly from Pye. Briefly, his cobalt eyes lit upon hers. Blue fire.
He turned to his men. “See to the prisoner!” he ordered brusquely, then quickly strode away. He couldn’t bear to be near her, she thought. He was afraid that he’d strangle her, tear her limb from limb with his bare hands. What would that matter, she wondered, feeling a sudden rise of hysteria, if she was to be hanged anyway? A quick death at Ian’s hands might be preferable.
Ah, but he was the famed Major Ian McKenzie. He’d never lower himself to the cold-blooded murder of a prisoner. Justice—Union justice—would have its way.
When Ian was gone, she realized that his men had been left as surprised as she. But one of the men quickly sprang to action. “My name’s Sam. Don’t try to escape, now, Ma’am. Pye will just throw you, you know.”
Pye would throw her. The horse was as irritatingly loyal to his master, as were Ian’s men.
Sam reached up to help her down. She didn’t know just how badly she had been shaken by the night’s events until she realized she could just barely stand. Another soldier rushed to her side, supporting her. He looked at her with dazzled, dark brown eyes. Too bad this boy wasn’t her jailer, she thought. She’d be free in no time.
“Thank you,” she told him softly.
Ah, but that was why they called her the Moccasin.
She’d eluded those sent to trap her time and time again.
Tonight, though, she would not escape.
Again she wished she could cry out; she wanted to explain. In a way she wanted to shriek with pain, for all she had seen in his eyes. And in a way, she wanted to rail and beat against him for being all that he was.
The Panther.
“Come along, ma’am,” Sam said. “I imagine the far cabin’s yours for the night. Gilbey, see to fresh water for the lady. Brian, post a guard.”
Sam escorted her to the cabin, keeping a hand loosely on her elbow as he helped her up a ladder to the platform flooring. Sam was polite, but firm. He lit a kerosene lantern, illuminating the cabin. “You should be comfortable enough… bed and blankets—clean sheets to wear while your clothing dries. Not much else here, I’m afraid. Ah, there’s a sliver of soap and there’s your pitcher and bowl. Gilbey will bring fresh water for washing and drinking. I’m afraid the bunk, the desk, and the chair are all the furnishings we have.”
“Well, Sam, I am quite impressed as it is,” she murmured, attempting to do so with spirit.
There was a light rapping on the door. The young soldier with the deep dark eyes, obviously fairly new in the command, appeared with a big pitcher of fresh water, pouring some directly into the bowl for her.
“Sam,” he whispered, “it is a she, all right—is she really the Moccasin?”
“She’s the Moccasin,” Sam said wearily. “So it seems. Now get on down, Gilbey. Ma’am,” he said to Alaina, “we’ll leave you now.”
They did so not a minute too soon, for the desire to wash the salt from her face became more than Alaina could bear. The fresh water felt delicious. She forgot her peril for a moment, drank deeply, then swore softly and impatiently and shimmied her way out of boots, breeches and shirt. She doused herself in the fresh water, even pouring it through her hair. Then she stood shivering again; there was no fire in the cabin, and though the late spring night was probably no less than seventy degrees, chills could set in. She found the clean sheet on the bed and wrapped herself in it. She sat cross-legged on the bed. They had left her water and a lamp. Probably far more than the Moccasin deserved. At least she would not die in sea-salted misery.
But that thought brought a sudden sob to her lips. Ian had been so terrifyingly furious and had dismissed her so cleanly! She might never see him again. She might die without ever having a chance to say…
To say what? They had chosen different paths, and nothing could change that. She had hated him often enough. She had to hate him now. She did hate him…
She didn’t hate him.
She hugged the sheet around her. She seemed to be cold on the outside but ablaze on the inside, riddled with fear, with fury. She could demand mercy, surely…
Oh, God, not from him. Nor could she cajole, plea, bargain. She’d always told herself that she would die with dignity if she was caught. She’d never beg or plead…
But she’d do so tonight, just to touch him. Except that, oh, God…
She leaped to her feet in a whirl of frustration. She had to set her mind to finding a way to escape. She couldn’t plead or cajole, because he wouldn’t believe a word she said. She couldn’t bargain, because there was no longer anything she had that he might want. Again, a soft sob of rising panic escaped her.
Then she heard footsteps on the ladder, and she swung around. The door to the cabin opened.
And he was there.
He had changed to dry clothing. His skin seemed very bronze in the lantern light; his eyes did not appear blue at all, but rather a deep and penetrating black. He stared at her so long that she thought she would scream and beg him to shoot her and get it over with. Just when she thought that she would simply save everyone trouble and die on the spot, he spoke at last.
“The Moccasin,” he said softly. Then, “Goddamn you.”
“No!” she heard herself cry in return. “Goddamn you, Major McKenzie. You betrayed your state, not I!”
“Indeed. My state betrayed my country, madam. But that doesn’t matter now; politics don’t matter now. And whether God Himself is on my side or yours doesn’t matter, either. What matters, my dear Moccasin, is that you have been captured by the enemy, while I have not.”
Involuntarily, she sucked in a quick, fearful breath.
“Yes, I’ve been caught. So… Major McKenzie, just what do you intend to do with me?” she demanded with a false bravado.
He raised an arched, ebony brow. “What do I intend, madam? How does one deal with a deadly snake? Perhaps I should use against you every atrocity blamed upon the Yankees by such delicate hothouse belles as yourself. Plunder, rapine, slaughter!”
“Ian, surely…” she breathed.
Cobalt fires of fury burned in his eyes, in the wired tension of his lithe, powerfully muscled body. He started toward her.
Despite herself, Alaina let out a terrified shriek. She had seen him angry before, seen him furious, but never like this. His fingers wound around her wrist, biting and cruel. She was jerked with such force that she lost her grasp upon the sheet and yet remained tangled in it when she was lifted and thrown, landing flat on her back against the bed, winded, so stunned that she saw blackness and stars floating before her face.
And then his hands were on her shoulders, and he was shaking her. “Damn you, damn you, damn you! How can you be so reckless, how can you risk your life when you’re caring for our son—”
“How can you leave forever when you have a son?” she cried in return.
“Oh, my God, Alaina—”
“I’ve fought the same as you’ve fought!” she told him desperately.
“You’ve fought a losing battle.”
“I had to do what I could.”
“Damn it, Alaina, don’t you know, haven’t you heard—”
“What, what” she demanded, trembling with such ferocity that she was barely aware of the force of his grip upon her.
“Jennifer was hanged!”
Jennifer! Alaina gasped, feeling as if he had slipped a knife cleanly into her. Her eyes must have echoed her agony, for he was quick to speak again, but so cold, so angry still! “I tried to stop what was happening. By a damned miracle, my sharpshooter hit Jen’s rope. She’s alive. Just barely.”
Tears of relief stung her eyes. She blinked them back. His hands were suddenly on either side of her head. “Damn you, can’t you get it into your skull just how dangerous these games are that you play?”
“Ian—” She sobbed, taking a ragged breath. Then his hold eased. And he cried out her name with a shattering anguish before his lips touched down on hers…
She thought bleakly that she was his prisoner. She had to fight him. She brought her hands pressing against the wall of his chest, but he didn’t begin to notice. Her lips parted beneath his, and she felt the seductive power of his tongue sweeping into her mouth, bringing the force of his hunger, anger, and passion. She tried to twist, tried to writhe … yet even as she did so, she was threading her fingers into his hair, parting her mouth freely to taste more of his. Her tears dampened her cheeks, and she gasped and trembled, feeling him shudder as he moved against her with a wicked determination, lips, mouth, tongue, fierce, hot against her, her flesh, her breasts, nipples, navel….
She wanted him, oh, God, she wanted him. She was touching his hair, tearing at his shirt until it was peeled from his shoulders, and she pressed her lips against his flesh with equal hunger. She whispered no words of longing, said nothing of her emotions, for she didn’t know what would be believed.
And if he thought that she made love in order to save her own life, it didn’t matter. Having him mattered. Feeling him touch her mattered. The caress of his tongue against her belly and thighs, his weight atop her, his hands, fingers stroking, the feel of him beneath her touch, the shiver and convulsion of his muscles when she captured and stroked him. His violent shudder when she slipped low against him…
With barely tempered violence, he was within her, and she cried out, clinging to him. It was a tempest, a storm, sweeping with unbearable sensation and staggering, engulfing speed. She soared fiercely, violently to an apex, and felt the power and force of him as he reached a climax as well.
Then it seemed that the weight of his body fell flat against her own. His flesh was slick as hers, his breathing as labored. Yet she couldn’t regain her breath beneath his weight, and he shifted from her, sitting at the foot of the bed, his back to her.
She watched him for several long moments, wishing she could still the silent, wet tears that came to her eyes and streamed down her face.
“Ian…” she tried, but speaking was so painful. “Ian, I know that this sounds absurd now, but… oh, God, Ian, I do love you!”
He didn’t reply, and she closed her eyes, lying there in simple misery.
“It’s amazing,” he murmured after a long moment, naked back and broad, bronzed shoulders straightening. “There have been so many times when I wished that I’d never seen your face. And there are times when I remember Teddy telling me that he was only sorry about our marriage because ‘she is the South’! And then there have been so damned many times when I’ve fought this war never sleeping, because I’ve been so damned afraid of what you might be doing. And after it all, the fear was for one reason. Damn you, I don’t want to love you. But I do.”
She wanted to touch him. She knew by the way he sat that she shouldn’t dare.
“So where do we go from here? What do we do?” she asked him softly.
He turned to her at last. “Well, my love, according to my orders, we are to go to the center of the copse come the morning—and I am to hang you. Without mercy.”
“You can’t hang me, Ian.”
“Why? Because you’re my wife?”
She shook her head. “No. Because I’m carrying your child.”
Ian didn’t sleep with her in the cabin that night; he didn’t dare.
He left his men on guard, well aware she could very easily escape, and returned to his own cabin.
He paced for an hour, then tried to sleep, then drank half a bottle of whiskey, and tried to sleep again. Nothing seemed to help as he battled for a solution as to what to do with her.
Sam came up at dawn.
Ian let him in, then sat at the foot of his bed, his head between his hands.
“The way I see it, Major,” Sam told him, “we caught the Moccasin—and the man’s already dead.”
Ian stared at him, skeptical.
Sam lifted his hands with a grimace.
Ian allowed a rueful smile. “Well, Sam, obviously you can see that I can’t hang or shoot the Moccasin. And neither can I turn her in.” He hesitated just a moment. “We’re going to have another child.”
“Ah, the trip into St. Augustine!” Sam murmured. “You definitely can’t hang her, Major.”
“But how do I keep her from getting involved again— and hanged in truth by some other Yankee commander? Not to mention the fact that she has admittedly been a thorn in our war effort? How can I make sure that she doesn’t betray the Union—and me—again?”
Sam smiled. “I think I know a way,” he said.