'Malachi, no!'
'Shannon, darlin', I'm sorry, yes!'
She let out a spate of oaths again, struggling fiercely against him. She didn't have much chance. He quickly had a grip on her wrists. No matter how she swore and raged and resisted, he tied them to the bedposts with her own knit stockings.
'I'll get you for this, Malachi Slater!'
'Maybe you will.'
'I hope that your leg rots and falls off. Then I hope that the infection spreads, and that everything else rots and falls off.'
Leaning over her, securing the last of the knots, he smiled. 'Shannon, I don't think that was a very ladylike comment.'
She narrowed her eyes. 'This is no gentlemanly thing to do.'
When he was done, he sat back, satisfied. She stared at him in trembling fury. A frightening and infuriating vulnerability drove her to try to kick him. He laughed and inched forward. He touched her cheek gently, almost tenderly.
'You're not coming, Shannon. I tried to warn you.'
'Don't you dare touch me. Let me loose.'
'You look lovely in bed.'
'Get off my bed!'
'All that passion! It's quite—stirring, by God, Shannon, it is. I hope it remains if I'm ever tempted to take you into my bed.'
'Malachi Slater, I promise you,' Shannon grated out, straining at the bonds that tied her wrists and staring at him with rage and tears clouding her eyes, 'the only way you'd ever get me into your bed would be to knock me out cold and then tie me to it!' She jerked hard upon her wrist.
He laughed, rose and bowed to her deeply, sweeping down his plumed hat. Then he came very close, and suddenly teased her forehead with the briefest touch. It might have been a kiss.
'Miss McCahy, I promise you. If I ever decide to bring you to bed, no ties or binds will be needed.'
She gritted her teeth. 'Get out!'
He swept his hat atop his head and offered her his slanted, rueful smile.
'Take care, Shannon. Who knows? Maybe the possibilities are worth exploring.' He paused for a second. 'And I promise you, darlin', that I will not let anything rot and fall off.'
With that, he turned and left her.
'You can't just leave me tied like this!' Shannon called in amazement to him as the door closed in his wake. She bit lightly into her lower lip. 'I could rot and fall off and die!'
She heard the husky sound of his easy laughter—and the twist of the key in the door. 'Delilah will be up in a few hours. You won't die, Shannon.' He seemed to hesitate. 'And you might well do so if you were to come with me. Delilah isn't going to let you go until my trail is as cold as ice, so just behave.'
'Malachi!'
It was too late. He had gone. She could hear his footsteps as he pounded down the stairs.
With a cry of pure exasperation, Shannon jerked hard upon her wrists, men slammed her head against her pillow. Tears formed in her eyes.
How could she have been so incredibly stupid?
She tried to breathe deeply, to regain a sense of control. She stared at her left wrist, then tried to free it. He was good with knots, she determined. The ties did not hurt her, but they seemed impossible to loosen.
She fell back in exasperation.
There had to be some way out of it. There had to be.
She stared at the ceiling for several long minutes. The best she could come up with was a fairly dirty trick, but she had to try it.
She waited. This time, she wanted to make sure that he was gone. She waited longer.
Then she screamed, high-pitched, long and hard and with a note of pure terror.
Within seconds, Delilah burst in upon her, her dark skin gray with fear. 'Shannon! What is it?'
'Beyond my window! Right outside! There's someone here, oh, I know it, Delilah!'
Shannon lowered her lashes quickly. She wondered if God would ever forgive her for the awful scare she was giving Delilah, then she figured that most men and women who had survived the war had a few sins on their consciences—God was just going to have to sort them all out. He would understand, after all they had been through, that she had to go after her sister herself, come what may.
'Outside, now?' Delilah whispered.
'Let me up before someone gets in!' Shannon urged her. She was whispering, too, and she didn't know why. It didn't make much sense, not after her blood-curdling scream.
Delilah hurried over to the bed, clicking her tongue as she worked on Shannon's left-hand knot. 'Lord, child, but that man can tie a good knot!'
'Get a knife. There's a little letter opener in my top drawer. It's probably sharp enough.'
Delilah nodded, hurrying. She came back and started sawing away at the stocking. 'Yes, he sure can tie a knot!' she murmured once again.
'I know,' Shannon said bleakly. Then she looked up, and her eyes met Delilah's.
Delilah jumped back, dropping the letter opener and shaking her finger at Shannon. 'Why, you young devil! This whole thing was a ploy!'
Delilah had nearly severed the knot. Shannon yanked hard and managed to split the rest of the fibers. The letter opener was within her reach on the bed. She grabbed it before Delilah could reach it, and quickly severed the second bind.
Then she was free.
'Shannon McCahy—'
'I love you, Delilah,' Shannon said, quickly hugging her and giving her a kiss on the cheek. 'Take care of Gabe.'
'Shannon, don't you go getting yourself killed! Your death will be on my conscience! Oh, Lord, but your poor pa must be rolling over in his grave!'
'Pa would understand,' Shannon said, then she hurried from the room. She had lost a lot of time. Malachi would ride hard at night. It wouldn't be easy to catch up with him. Not that she wanted to meet up with him tonight. She just wanted to find him so that she could follow along behind him.
She hurried down the stairs. Delilah had picked up her saddlebags from the porch and dragged them into the hallway. Shannon knelt and checked her belongings. She reached into the top drawer beneath the empty Colt brackets and found matches and added them to her bags.
Delilah had followed her downstairs. Once again, Shannon hugged her.
'Come home soon,' Delilah said.
'If Matthew comes, you tell him what happened. Maybe, maybe Matt can do something if the rest of us fail.'
'Shannon—'
'We're not going to fail.' She gave Delilah a brief, hard hug and hurried out of the house.
Entering the stables seemed strange, even just seeing the hay bales where she had fallen beneath Malachi.
She was startled to discover that she had paused and imagined the two of them as they had been that night, so very close in the hay. A curious heat swept over her, because she was remembering him as a man. The touch of his hands, the curve of his smile. The masculine scent of him. The husky tones of his voice.
She pressed her hands against her cheeks with shame. She wasn't in love with Malachi Slater. She didn't even like him. She had hated him for years.
But that wasn't what disturbed her. What disturbed her was a sense of disloyalty. She had been in love. Deeply in love. So in love that when she had heard of Robert's death, she had wanted to die herself. She had ceased to care about the war; she had ceased to care about the very world.
