LITMIR.BIZ

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man could reload, pleased when the blade easily found its target.

      He kept her at his back, their paired position creating a circle of safety, the thrust and counter-thrust of the two men left easily beaten back. He heard the rasping of her breath and the quick noise of steel against steel. And then a lightly worded curse. She was tiring. He could see it in the way she held her blade. Parrying no longer, but defending. Why?

      Gritting his teeth, he finished the fight. Quickly.

      When silence again filtered through the clearing, Emerald found in her the strength to look up. And wished that she had not. Asher was furious and the clamp of his hand hurt the top of her arm. She swayed and would have fallen had he not steadied her. The sting in her side left her breathless and she didn’t dare to look down to see the damage. Not yet. Not now.

      He was sweating and in the last yellow light of the fading day the fury in his eyes glittered. ‘You are the damn pirate’s daughter? Beau Sandford’s daughter? It was you on the ship…?’

      ‘You have remembered?’

      ‘Damned right I have.’

      ‘I tried to make it up to you. Here and in London. In the bedroom. It was the only way I knew how.’

      Even words were hard to say. Beneath the fabric of her jacket she felt the steady drip of blood. She looked down surreptitiously to make certain the white of her petticoat was not stained with red. If she could just be alone, she could remedy it. With the last surge of energy she pulled her arm away.

      ‘My God.’ Censure coated his curse. ‘You saw our bedding as some sort of a sacrifice?’

      ‘A payment. For my father. For me. We wronged you.’

      ‘Wronged me? Lord, Emerald.’ He rolled the name again around on his tongue. ‘Emerald. Is that what I should call you now?’

      ‘Some people call me Emmie.’

      ‘But never Emma?’ She shook her head as he waited.

      ‘So everything was a lie?’ The swollen flesh at the top of his lip creased into a humourless smile, and she refrained in the face of his anger to tell him the whole of it.

      A lie?

      To lie in the moonlight together and watch the way the light played off the hardened angle of his body. To feel his lips against her own, melding all that had once been into what now was.

      Just a lie?

      If he felt even a fiftieth of what she did for him, he could never have asked the question. Tears sprung to her eyes.

      ‘Everything.’

      One word and it was finished. She almost welcomed it when he turned away, for she could not see the hatred in his beautiful velvet eyes.

      Laying her arm hard against her side, she followed him through the forest, pausing at this tree and that one to recatch her breath. He did not wait for her, did not look around to see her progress and for that small anger she was glad. Everything ached and the dizzy rush of blood in her ears was becoming louder. Lord, if the bullet had pierced her stomach…She shook her head, refusing to think about it, and was pleased when she saw Azziz standing against the upturned bulk of the carriage, his fingers rubbing the knot of a gash on the back of his head. Taris stood beside him, looking dazed.

      ‘Where’s Lucy and Miriam?’ Asher’s voice was hard as he looked around the clearing, and Emerald replied as Azziz stayed silent.

      ‘In the woods. I told them to hide there.’ She half-turned so that the right side of her body was hidden from him.

      ‘Which way?’

      ‘Over there.’ It hurt to even lift her arm and point, the dragging red-hot pain worsened by movement. Let him go and find the others. Let him go soon before she was sick, before the whirling lightness overtook everything.

      When he didn’t move, she looked up.

      ‘God.’ he said roughly. ‘My God,’ he repeated and stormed towards her. ‘What the hell has happened to you?’

      His hand was warm against the cold of her own and she curled her fingers into his and held on. Anger she could deal with. Pity undid her. She felt the hot run of tears on her cheeks and hid her head against his jacket.

      ‘Lord, Emma.’ He used her old name, a small mistake as he pulled back her coat and his fingers were gentle against the wound, even as the roiling blackness claimed her and she fell into his arms.

       Chapter Thirteen

      Someone held her down. Hard. Hurting.

      ‘Keep still, Emma!’

      Emma! Emma?

      Not her name. Nearly her name? Asher’s face flew in and out of focus, the dark edges of a room behind, white candles burning on a desk.

      Fragments. Memory. Her father mopping the blood from her brow and her mother in a corner. The same candles pushing back midnight.

      ‘I need some more whisky…’ The slurred voice of a drunk.

      Her mother.

      Evangeline.

      Little angel.

      Murderer.

      In the blink of an eye she remembered everything that she had shut out as a six-year-old and, bringing the pillow across her ears, she began to shake. Hard liquor and the sound of screaming. The smell of whisky as a bottle broke. Shards of glass and the boozy face of Mother, close. Too close. Dangerous.

      ‘Mama!’ Her voice across the years. Young. Afraid. Unbelieving. She needed to get away. Out of the room. Into the dark of the trees around St Clair. Safety.

      ‘Emerald.’ Another voice. Softer. Huskier. Underlined with calm.

      Asher was back. Against the shadows, his face impossibly handsome and the smell of drink receding against a different reality.

      Falder. They were home.

      ‘Home?’ she whispered and watched as uncertainty kindled.

      ‘Azziz and Taris?’

      ‘Azziz is in the room next to this one, nursing three broken ribs and a sizeable lump on the back of his head. Taris escaped remarkably unhurt.’

      ‘How long?’ Full sentences were beyond her.

      ‘You’ve been here for a week. But you have had the fever. It broke this morning.’

      ‘Feel…strange.’

      ‘It’s the laudanum to take away pain from the wound in your side.’ He stood up and stretched. The dark rings under his eyes were easily seen.

      ‘Stay…please.’ Suddenly she was afraid. Her mother crouched in the shadows with her madness and beyond that her father beckoned, tears streaming down his cheeks.

      ‘James.’ Curly-headed James. She had seen his lifeless body buried in the fertile ground beneath the oak tree at St Clair before her father had calmly read the sermon and sent his wife away. Far from home. Far from them. Far from the grave of a son she had killed.

      Emerald swallowed, trying to arrest the moisture that she could feel behind her eyes. Her childhood. The bones of secrets and lies. The product of falsity and hatred. Tears leaked out and fell down her cheeks, warm against a cooling skin.

      She had lost them all. And now she was loosing Asher.

      ‘I always loved you…since the Mariposa… I thought…I think…you are the most beautiful man I have ever seen.’ She took the last of her pride and buried it. At least he would know. Her voice broke and she could not carry on.

      Not just repayment, then.

      When

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