Swift Horse

Thyself away art present still with me.

—William Shakespeare

Marsha swallowed hard and licked her dry lips after the gag was removed from her mouth. But her wrists were stil

l tied, and a rope had been wound around her to keep her tied in the chair that she had only moments ago been forced to sit on.

She was trying to be brave in the face of danger. Not only would her brother be out for blood, so would the entire Creek nation, for the cowkeeper had done a proud and powerful Creek chief’s woman wrong.

She had no idea what to think, except that she knew that she was in mortal danger by a man who might suddenly realize what he had done and decide to do away with her in order to keep anyone from ever knowing that he had done such an asinine thing.

“This here room is going to be your home until I hear you tell me, with conviction, that you will cooperate with me,” Alan Burton said.

“And what do I have to do . . . to . . . cooperate?” Marsha blurted out, trying not to show her fear. But she was so afraid that no one would ever find her. She had seen how the cowkeeper had to shove aside a heavy, huge chifforobe in order to get into this dark, windowless storage room.

Her heart sank, for she could not help but feel doomed at the hands of her abductor. And what he had in mind for her made her insides crawl. She knew that eventually he would force himself on her, sexually. She could see it in his pale and beady gray eyes that he had abducted her mainly for her, not as an act of vengeance against anyone.

He wanted her as his wife! He had told her that while riding toward his home.

“You make me want to vomit,” she rushed out, defying him with an angry stare. “If you ever dare try to touch me, I shall fight you off by any means that I can.”

“My beloved wife Sherry, God rest her soul, was a feisty one, too,” Alan said, chuckling. “So don’t try those type of threats on me. It only makes my loins get hotter.”

Realizing that he was serious, and that she had just egged him on by saying the wrong things, Marsha said nothing else to him.

“Yep, golden-haired, pretty lady, in time you’ll be tamed enough to be willing to do anything I say in order to get out of this dark, dank, and stinky room,” Alan said. “You’ll cooperate with me, all right. And when you do, I’ll take you and my cows elsewhere so no one can ever find you. I’m tired of fighting with your brother and the Creek. I’m ready for some much-earned peace in my life and especially with a woman like you to share my bed each night.”

“You’re insane,” Marsha said heatedly. “I’ll never cooperate with you. Never!”

Alan shrugged. “If you’re going to be that way, so be it,” he said shrewdly. “I’ll make your imprisonment worse than I originally planned. You’ll not have food, heat, nor water for baths. You’ll soon be willing to do anything in order to live a normal life again.”

Smiling crookedly, he leaned down into her face. “You will even marry me,” he said throatily.

Enraged more by the minute, Marsha spat at his feet.

Laughing menacingly, Alan walked from the room and closed the door behind him, leaving Marsha in total darkness.

Tears filled Marsha’s eyes as she tried to see around her in the dark, but it was pitch-black. Nothing was definable. All she knew was that she was a prisoner to a man who had gone to maddening lengths to have her.

“Please, oh please, Lord, let someone come and find me,” she sobbed out into the darkness.

Chapter 22

Thou wast all that to me, love,

For which my soul did pine.

—Edgar Allan Poe

Feeling smug, Alan went to his liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. Smiling, he opened it and poured himself one shot, and then another, and another, until he was beginning to feel drunk. He gazed at the chifforobe that he had scooted back in place. “The lady might want to drink with me,” he said, his words drunkenly slurred.

He set the glass and the bottle of whiskey on a side table, then once again slid the chifforobe aside and opened the door.

Marsha’s insides tightened when lamplight from the outer room poured into her prison. She trembled with fear when she saw the outline of Alan Burton standing in the doorway.

But she noticed something new about him.

He wasn’t standing still. He was teetering, suddenly having to grab at the door frame to steady himself.