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itself out.
    She’d set out to plant the suggestion of herself in his mind. The only special power she had was her imagination. She’d tempt him, mystify him, tantalize him both physically and mentally, so that by the time they met, he’d be intrigued. She thought he was. But so was
she
!
    Perhaps this growing mutual awareness that wasn’t part of her plan had its advantages though. Physical attraction wouldn’t be enough. She would have to attract this man on all levels. Savannah was beginning to realize that he never did anything halfway. If her plan was to work, she would have to captivate him body, mind, and soul.
    Suddenly Savannah remembered Zeena’s admonishment that she was opening a Pandora’s box and that nobody could predict what would happen when she did. Zeena never told the future of those who lived in the circus. She refused to look. Still, sometimes an expression crossed Zeena’s face that said she knew more than she told. And Savannah knew that Zeena hadn’t wanted her to leave the troupe’s permanent quarters. She had disregarded Zeena’s warning to let it be.
    If the judge had refused her request for a ride, she’d have pretended to be helpless, desperate, flirtatious even. What she hadn’t expected was that he’d be so agreeable. Nor had she anticipated his response to her on an intellectual level, or her own awareness of him. His mind reached out to her, and she felt herself falling into an easy intimacy that surprised her.
    Savannah hadn’t told her father where she wasgoing. Alfred Ramey was accustomed to his children going off on their own, and he never insisted on knowing their plans. That was why it had been so easy for Tifton to conceal his arrest and jail sentence, why it was too late by the time Savannah had received his call for help. Tifton was already dead, killed by a cellmate, in a jail where he’d been sent by Judge Horatio Webber.
    But Judge Webber was proving to be an enigma. By reputation he was a man who stood firm, a man who stood for probity and made no compromises. She knew from both research and personal experience that nothing could sway him once he’d made up his mind. His deafness to Tifton’s appeal for leniency was proof of that.
    Tifton, in his naïveté, hadn’t considered the consequences of his actions. He believed that the judge, like everyone else in his life, would fall victim to his charm and accept his story that it wasn’t his fault; that it was all a mistake. Tifton exaggerated when it suited his purposes, but he didn’t lie. Nevertheless, Judge Webber weighed the facts and made the decision to make an example of Tifton. And then Tifton was dead.
    “You know my name,” Savannah said quietly. “What shall I call you?”
    “My friends call me Rasch.”
    “Is that what I am—a friend?”
    “No, I don’t think so. I’m not yet sure what you are.”
    “Then until you decide, I shall call you Crusader. And you shall call me Savannah, for that’s how I’m known by everyone.”
    “Then everyone is your friend?”
    “No,” she answered, “not everyone. I, too, have enemies.”
    Rasch heard the hint of bitterness in her voice. He could identify with that; he, too, felt animosity toward the people who wished him harm. But this darkly beautiful woman? What enemies could she possibly have? Was there a jealous lover in her past, or perhaps a woman whose lover she’d stolen?
    No, that seemed wrong. Her beauty undoubtedly enchanted other women’s lovers, but without any intention on her part to beguile them. She exuded an integrity that suggested she would find all meanness and cruelty abhorrent. She was like a statue he’d seen in a museum. From one side the porcelain figure was strong and pure. Viewed from the other side, her lips were tinged with pain, and her eyes stared with unseeing weariness.
    “I think I’ll call you Gypsy,” Rasch remarked. “It suits a woman of mystery and intrigue.”
    Savannah shivered. He was too close to the