Harvest Moon

by Rebecca Hagan Lee

  Coalie glanced at the windowsill and grinned at the orange tomcat, showing David an uneven smile where permanent teeth were filling the gaps left by baby teeth.

  “I hope you like cats,” David said. “Horace Greeley has the run of the place.” David affectionately scratched Greeley’s head. The cat bumped at his hand, rumbling his pleasure.

  “I don’t mind ’em at all,” Coalie replied.

  David placed his hand on Coalie’s shoulder. “Good. Follow me. I’ll get your key.” David led the way back down the hallway, walked to his desk, and removed a key from the top drawer. “This is for you,” he told Coalie. “It unlocks the back door.”

  Coalie carefully pocketed the key.

  “That’s settled, then,” David said. “Now I need to find Tessa a place to stay.”

  “She always stays with me,” Coalie said. “We stay together.”

  “Not this time,” David replied. “I’m a bachelor. Tessa can’t stay here with me. She’ll have to have a room of her own, someplace other than the Satin Slipper.”

  He looked down at Coalie. “I guess you know Myra Brennan at the Satin Slipper has already given Tessa’s room to someone else?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then we need to check the hotel and the boardinghouses about a room, and we should stop in at the mercantile.” It occurred to David that he’d begun to think of her as Tessa rather than Miss Roarke. He’d have to remember to call her Miss Roarke in public.

  “Why? The mercantile don’t have rooms to let.”

  “I know. But it has clothes—dresses. Tessa’s going to need something to wear home from the jail. Her saloon dress is ruined, so I thought we’d buy her another dress. A different type of dress.”

  “Can we get a green one?”

  David grinned at Coalie. “Maybe. Is green your favorite color?”

  “Nah.” Coalie waited while David pulled on his new coat. “I like red. Tessa likes green.”

  Horace Greeley ambled from the spare bedroom and trotted along at David’s heels. Coalie followed both of them out the front door, where Greeley began an exploration of the alley. Coalie picked up his pace until he was walking abreast of David Alexander down Main Street toward the mercantile.

  David ruffled the boy’s hair. “So you think a green dress will please her?”

  “No doubt about it,” Coalie answered. “But I don’t think any of the people in town’ll be willing to let Tessa stay with them. She’s gonna have to stay with us.” He looked up at David. “And I ain’t at all sure what she’ll say about yer cat.”

  * * *

  An hour later they entered the jail. Coalie sat quietly while David discussed Tessa’s situation with the sheriff.

  “You can’t release her into my custody. She’s an unmarried female. What about her reputation?” David fought to keep his voice at a conversational level as he shoved the legal document back across the sheriff’s scarred oak desk.

  “I don’t have a choice, Mr. Alexander, and neither do you.” Sheriff Bradley was perhaps forty-five, but his white hair, his weathered face, and the determined glint in his eyes made him look like an ancient warrior. “The hotel won’t take her, and the boardinghouse won’t neither. You said so yourself. Do you have any better ideas? I can’t take her home with me. My wife wouldn’t stand for it if I brought a soiled dove into the house. What do you want me to do with her? Send her to Fort Laramie? Or Cheyenne? She’s charged with killin’ a man. I can’t let her go, and I can’t keep her here with a bunch of rowdies. That’d be askin’ for trouble.” The sheriff fixed his gaze on David. “You’re the only one who can put her up.”

  David glared at the man. “You know how people talk. If she stays with me, her reputation will be shredded overnight.”

  “She’s a saloon girl,” the sheriff stated bluntly. “If she ever had a reputation, it’s shot to hell by now. Besides, you’re representing her. I don’t think staying with you until this mess is resolved will do her any more harm. Might even help.”

  David raised an eyebrow. He was from a prominent family, but he was also one-half Cherokee Indian. He seriously doubted that living, even briefly, with a man of mixed blood would help Tessa Roarke’s reputation.

  “Well,” Sheriff Bradley repeated, “it can’t do her any more damage. Besides, there’s the boy. You said he’d be staying with you. He can chaperone.”

  David glanced to where Coalie sat next to the potbellied stove, holding the brown-wrapped packages and balancing a hatbox on his knees. “An eight- or nine-year-old boy is not a suitable chaperone.”

  The sheriff smiled. “You’d be surprised. Well, I guess you’re just gonna have to chance it. ’Cause I don’t have a choice.” He took the ring of keys from the drawer of his desk. “Do you want her or not?”

  David knew when to admit defeat. “I’ll take her.”

  “Well, then, she’s yours. Temporarily, anyhow.” The sheriff grinned. “Let’s go get her.”

  * * *

  Tessa looked up as the sheriff turned the key in the lock and swung the iron door open.

  “I’m releasing you to Mr. Alexander’s custody, Miss Roarke. He’s your lawyer. He’ll take good care of you.”

  David’s large frame hovered behind the sheriff.

  Tessa took one look at him. “Over my dead body.”

  “Don’t you think one dead body a day is enough, Miss Roarke?” David asked.

  “I’d rather stay here.” She glanced at the sheriff, then the lawyer. She couldn’t go back to Chicago even if she wanted to. She couldn’t risk taking Coalie back there. And there was no place else—except the Satin Slipper.

  “You can’t stay here,” David told her. “By tonight this jail will be full of rowdy men. The sheriff needs this cell.”

  “Is that true?” She directed her question at the lawman.

  “Yes.” Sheriff Bradley explained, “I’d have to put men in there with you, and that’s against regulations.”

  She inched back closer to the wall and planted her feet on the bare mattress. “I have no place to go except the Satin Slipper, and I doubt I’d be welcome.”

  David moved to stand in the doorway of the cell. I’m not taking you back there, Tessa.”

  She liked the way he said her name. His voice sent shivers up her spine and made the hair on her arms stand on end. It seemed to rumble from deep within his chest, like the purr of a big tomcat. It was a wonderful voice. It seemed to surround her with warmth and understanding. It made her want to trust him, to run into his arms and lay all her troubles at his feet, and that confused and frightened her. She couldn’t allow herself to feel that way. She couldn’t afford to trust him. Not yet.

  Tessa tilted her chin up a notch higher and faced him regally, as a queen would face a subject. “Where else can I go?”

  “With me,” he said. “You’ll be going with me.”

  Tessa’s blue eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed dangerously. Holding her blanket tightly against her, she bounded off the bed and crossed the narrow confines of the cell to stand a few steps away from the handsome attorney. “I don’t know what you’ve been told, Mr. Alexander, but I don’t go with men.” Having said her piece, Tessa returned to the cot and sat down with her back to David Alexander and the sheriff.

  Momentarily perplexed by her reaction to his statement, David quizzically looked at Sheriff Bradley.

  The older man shrugged.

  David was just about to wash his hands of the whole affair when understanding dawned. He allowed himself a tiny smile before he spoke. She’d misunderstood his intentions right from the beginning, and it was time to set her straight. “I’m not asking you to go with me, Miss Roarke, in the way you obviously think. I’m offering you a place to stay. I don’t require a bedmate at the moment. Especially not an unwilling one. You’re not expected to fulfill that role.”

  Tessa whirled around, facing him once again. The blanket twisted, caught between the curve of her hip and the mattress, exposing her sli
m ankle and the shape of her leg to just above the knee. “Why not? Everyone else seems to think it’s part of my job.”

  “Not as far as I’m concerned.” Even as he said the words, David remembered the tempting look of that leg, the softness of her flesh as she removed her garter and slid the net stockings down her legs. He remembered the scent of her perfume, and that underneath the rough wool blanket and his sheepskin coat, Tessa Roarke wore only the briefest of undergarments.

  Tessa watched him. She saw the tightening of his full mouth and the spark that flared in his dark eyes. She’d seen that look before. It aroused her anger and her sharp tongue. “Maybe you think that because I work in a saloon, there’s something wrong with me.”

  “On the contrary, Miss Roarke.” David’s voice rumbled deep in his chest, his awareness of her evident in every word. “I don’t see a thing wrong with you.” He gazed at her lovely face, into the deep blue of her eyes until Sheriff Bradley cleared his throat. It took a moment, but David regained control. “Except that you’re in a great deal of trouble. I simply meant I don’t impose my…uh…carnal needs…on my female houseguests.”

  “I’m not one of your female houseguests.”

  “You will be.”

  “What will your fine lady wife say about that? Will she like having a…murderess in her house?”

  Even though she practically spat the words at him, her question was so…normal, so typically female, David almost smiled. “There’s no need to fish for information, Miss Roarke,” he said to satisfy her curiosity. “I don’t have a fine lady wife or any other kind of wife. There’s only me. And the boy in there.”

  “Coalie?” Tessa’s blue eyes brightened.

  David looked at Tessa. The expression on her face reminded him of his mother when she spoke of her children. “Yes, Coalie. A little kid about eight or nine. Big green eyes. He’s smart. Smart and tough. Maybe too tough.”

  “He’s had to be.” Tessa spoke quietly. “Just to survive.”

  “That may be true,” David said. “But there’s more to life than just surviving.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He’s a child taking on a grown woman’s problems.” David gazed at her. “He’s the one who came to get me this morning.”

  Tessa flinched. “Where is he now?”

  David glanced at the sheriff. “Waiting in the front office in a chair next to Sheriff Bradley’s desk.”

  “You brought him to this jail?” Tessa’s voice rose in anger. “You exposed him to this…this…” She sputtered, so angry she forgot her words.

  “What have you exposed him to?” David countered.

  “Love,” Tessa answered.

  “The Satin Slipper’s brand of love?”

  “No,” Tessa said. “My brand.” She met David’s penetrating gaze without flinching.

  David couldn’t think of a retort. Suddenly he couldn’t think of anything except Tessa Roarke and her brand of love. He wondered how it would feel. Standing there, staring down at her, he wanted to know.

  Sheriff Bradley cleared his throat. “Why don’t I go get the boy?” He turned and started toward the hall door.

  “Fine,” David agreed.

  “No,” Tessa objected.

  Sheriff Bradley paused. “She’s your client,” he said to David. “You make the decision.”

  “Go get him.”

  “No. I don’t want him to see me in here,” Tessa insisted, raising her voice. “I won’t allow it. Take him home. At once.”

  David didn’t much care for her tone. She could be as prickly as a porcupine. Her mood changes, as varying as the Wyoming weather. He liked her softness when she spoke of Coalie. He hated her imperious manner, though. She sounded like the queen of England ordering him around. He’d tried to be patient and understanding, but he’d be hanged if he’d continue to put up with her superior tone. She was much too arrogant for a saloon girl accused of murder. “Where do you suggest I take him, contessa?” He flung the noble title at her. “He doesn’t seem to have a home at the moment.”

  That stopped her. “But I paid my rent.”

  “Really? Well, they forgot that apparently when you were arrested this morning,” David reminded her, “for the murder of the man you’d ‘gone with’ last evening, Arnie Mason.” He felt the knot tighten in his gut as he spoke the words, felt it tighten as he waited for her to protest, to call him a liar, to swear she hadn’t “gone with Arnie Mason.” And David felt the bile rise in his throat when she didn’t declare her innocence. “You don’t have a room at the Satin Slipper, and that boy no longer has a home, because you no longer have a job.” David turned back to the sheriff, who stood waiting patiently. “Sheriff Bradley, please go get the boy. He wants to see her.”

  “The rent is paid through the month,” Tessa told him. “Myra Brennan might not want me back, but she can’t throw Coalie out.”

  “She already did,” David told her. “She gave your room to someone else and all your belongings along with it.”

  “What?” Tessa thought of her mother’s silver and black onyx rosary lying on the washstand and the envelope of precious photographs hidden away in her room. “She can have the room, but not my things. She’s not going to get away with that.”

  “Come with me.” David used her anger to his advantage. “And we’ll see that she doesn’t.”

  Tessa stared down at the wool blanket draped over David’s coat. The blanket ended at mid-calf, exposing a fair amount of bare flesh and a pair of trim ankles. “It’s bad enough that everyone in this town thinks I’m a murderess.” She brushed her hand over the rough wool blanket. “Do you intend to prove to them that I’m a loose woman as well?”

  “You work in a saloon,” David pointed out. “What are the townspeople supposed to think?”

  “That maybe I like to eat,” Tessa retorted.

  David hid the smile that threatened to tip the corners of his mouth upward. Though she resembled a porcelain doll, she was quick and tough, tougher than most of the lawyers who were his opponents in the courtroom. He turned to the sheriff one last time. “Go get the boy.”

  The sheriff nodded, then ambled up the hall to his office.

  “I don’t want Coalie to see me like this,” Tessa told him.

  “He has a present for you,” David said.

  She met his gaze, her blue eyes showing surprise. “A present? For me?”

  “Yes.” David smiled. Her childlike pleasure in a surprise made her forget her hostility. David had a sudden urge to touch her, to caress the tiny freckles that dotted the bridge of her nose.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ll let Coalie show you. They’re his gifts.”

  Her eyes widened. “You mean there’s more than one present?” She could barely contain her curiosity.

  “Lots more,” David told her as he stepped away from the bars. “Here’s Coalie. I’ll leave you two alone for a while.” He smiled at her. “And, Tessa…”

  “Yes?”

  “Enjoy them.”

  Tessa met his knowing brown-eyed gaze. The expression on his face and the way he spoke to her, in that deep purr, told her that David Alexander had had more to do with choosing the gifts than Coalie.

  She shivered at the thought and a warm feeling settled deep inside her.

  * * *

  “Mr. Alexander!” Coalie’s call echoed up the hall a few minutes later as David sat in the office at the jail. “Tessa wants you to come here.”

  “I’ll be right there,” David answered. He looked at the sheriff. They’d heard Tessa’s spontaneous oohs and aahs of delight through the thick door separating the cells from the office.

  “She sounds right pleased with all them female frills you bought her,” the sheriff commented, pouring himself a cup of steaming hot coffee. “Probably wants to thank you.”

  David shrugged. “She had to have a decent dress to wear.”

  “You coulda borrowed some of your sister’s,” the sheriff reminded the younger ma
n. “Hell, I was going to suggest you borrow some of my wife’s. That Harris is a good deputy, but he don’t know beans about how to treat a woman prisoner. He left her sitting back there wrapped in a blanket all day. He coulda got something from some of the women in town.”

  “I doubt if she’d have accepted anything,” David admitted, “or if the women would have loaned any clothes to a woman accused of murder. This way she has something of her own. She’s not beholden to anyone.”

  “Except to you,” the Sheriff pointed out.

  David’s fulminating glare spoke volumes.

  A different man might have retreated from that look, but Sheriff Bradley scratched his head and changed the subject. “Wonder what Myra’s got against that little girl in there? Renting her room to someone else is one thing. Giving away her personal belongings is something else. Makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it?”

  David didn’t get a chance to answer. Coalie’s shout interrupted once again. “Mr. Alexander, Tessa says to hurry. It’s cold back here.”

  “Take these.” Sheriff Bradley tossed the ring of keys at David. “In case you need ’em. I want to finish my coffee while it’s hot.”

  David caught the keys, then opened the thick door and followed the hallway back to the holding area.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Tessa stood near the cot holding a green calico dress and several small white garments clutched against her chest. “I need help with these,” Tessa told him, blushing as she held out the underclothes.

  “Coalie can help you.” David held up the ring of keys, selected the one with her cell number, and unlocked the door.

  “Coalie’s a little boy.”

  “I’m a grown man,” David reminded her.

  “I know,” Tessa agreed. “You know about these things. Coalie doesn’t.” She paused a moment, then shifted the clothing against her so David could see the white laces of the corset.