Read Online Dark Torment by Karen Robards - Free Book Online Page B

half-feared he might. To take his revenge . . . Probably he had been as
caught by surprise by what had happened as she had been. He had undoubtedly
come to her rescue before he’d had time to think the situation through.
Because if he had thought about it, he would have seen that fate had handed him
the perfect revenge, with no danger to himself. She would have beeen punished,
and he couldn’t possibly have been held responsible.
    “Did he hurt you?” Gallagher asked sharply.
    Sarah shook her head, still feeling a trifle dazed.
“No.”
    Gallagher drew a deep breath. His attention shifted back to the
man he held. “What do you want me to do with him? Miss Sarah.”
    She had been staring blindly at the pair of them, but that mocking
afterthought of “Miss Sarah” brought her back to awareness in a
hurry. Regardless of how ridiculous she must look, glaring at her rescuer from
a prickly, precarious seat in the middle of a gorse bush, she frowned at
Gallagher. But what could she say? She had told him to call her that, after
all. But it was the
way
he did it. He was deliberately being
provoking, she knew, but the knowledge didn’t help: his insolence enraged
her every time.
    Gallagher smiled at her, clearly relishing her helpless anger. He
looked unbelievably handsome, with the sun slanting down through the eucalyptus
leaves to dapple his hair with blue highlights, and his white teeth gleaming in
his dark face. Her involuntary reaction to his dazzling good looks only fueled
her anger. And the realization that she was furious with her rescuer rather
than with her attacker further outraged her.
    “Miss Sarah?”
    Sarah scrambled to her feet, impatiently thrusting behind her ears
the thick mass of tawny hair that had tumbled from its pins during the
struggle. She thought with some annoyance that she must be even more unsightly
than usual. Her skin was smudged with dirt, her shirtwaist was torn so that the
edge of her plain white cotton chemise was clearly visible, and her maddening
hair spilled around her like an overgrown shock of wheat. Unreasonably, the
knowledge of her lack of attraction in the face of Gallagher’s masculine
beauty incensed her more than anything else. With one hand holding her torn
shirtwaist in place, and feeling an utter fool, she glared from the man who was
eying her fearfully, motionless now in Gallagher’s hold, to Gallagher
himself. His mocking smile widened, mocking her even more. Battling the urge to
throw something, preferably a large stone, straight at those gleaming teeth,
she looked at the man who had attacked her.
    “It’s very likely that he’s a runaway
convict,” she said, ostensibly to Gallagher but without lifting her eyes
to his face. “If so, then he’ll have to be turned over to the
authorities in Melbourne. In any case, we’ll have to take him back to
Lowella.” She frowned suddenly, remembering that Malahky had bolted in
the scuffle. “But how?”
    “I left a horse back there in the trees,” Gallagher
said, nodding toward the river. “When I heard you scream, I thought
I’d be more effective if I surprised the army that I envisioned had
assaulted you.” His mocking smile deepened again, revealing a slashing
dimple in his left cheek. Sarah tried not to notice it. “I was sure that
nothing less than an army could have forced a scream from such a redoubtable
lady. Miss Sarah.”
    The look she sent him should have seared his eyeballs, but before
she could think of a way to annihilate him verbally—without losing her
dignity in the process—the man Gallagher still held by the neck suddenly
went limp. Eyes closed, mouth open, his skin pasty white where it wasn’t
stubbled with grizzled whiskers, he looked dead. Only the barely perceptible
rise and fall of his scrawny chest indicated that he lived.
    “He’s fainted.” Sarah looked at Gallagher
accusingly, glad to have something concrete to berate him about. Gallagher