Autumn Sage

by Genevieve Turner

  He studied his surroundings, looking over the banks of the creek several times before becoming aware of a presence at his right elbow. A vibrating presence.

  The younger sister, since Señorita Moreno was at his left. And she likely never vibrated.

  “Would you like to see the field glasses?” he offered.

  “Oh, yes please!” She snatched them up, peering this way and that, like a strange kind of owl.

  Señorita Moreno watched with a half smile on her face. As much as her elder sister seemed to irritate her, this younger sister seemed to please her.

  Had he not seen Señorita Moreno smile so at her sister, he wouldn’t have thought such affection possible for her.

  “So,” Franny said, the glasses never leaving her face, “how long after you apprehend him will he be found guilty and sent off to prison?”

  The intricacies of a trial weren’t his specialty—his job ended at the courthouse door.

  The intricacies of a trial involving the son of one of the most prominent men in California? Well, he was only glad he wouldn’t be the prosecutor assigned the case.

  “A trial could take several weeks,” he hedged.

  Señorita Moreno took a sharp, quick inhale. Of course, she would have to testify at that trial. The cross examination was likely to be… brutal.

  He didn’t let himself dwell on that thought. Such things weren’t his concern.

  “And once he’s found guilty,” Franny went on, “how long will he be locked away?”

  “If he’s found guilty,” Señorita Moreno put in. “And if he is, he might not be locked away for long. Not for the murder of a greaser. Not Edwin McCade’s son.”

  Her sneer had the hair on his neck rising, irritation blooming too fast for him to squelch it. “I should simply leave now, let him continue to run free? Since it’s all useless anyway?”

  The surprise on her face brought him crashing back to himself. Too much. He’d let himself show too much. He pulled his expression back to stillness, pulled all of himself back to stillness.

  “I never said that.” Surprise and indignation mixed. “But our previous sheriff was also gunned down while performing his duty. Do you know how long justice thought his killer should spend atoning for his crime of murdering a Negro?” She fixed him with her fierce stare. “Ten years. I wonder what price justice will place on the attempted murder of a Mexican.”

  Ah, that fierceness of hers—it pierced his reserve.

  “I wouldn’t presume to guess; I’m not a judge.”

  He was only a marshal. He’d do well to remember that in this sparring over justice and punishment. Bringing in this fugitive was all he owed her—or justice. A man with his past had no right to sit in judgment of others.

  “Paugh.” Even her noises of disgust were controlled. “You must acknowledge that an American who attacks a Mexican, even one wearing a sheriff’s star, is likely to be set free by a jury. Is that your notion of justice, Marshal Spencer?”

  She’d better not be this belligerent at the trial—she’d be clapped in irons for contempt of the court.

  “You know it’s not. It may be imperfect…” He swallowed, composing himself before going on. His father had taught him too well how imperfect the agents of justice could be. But even so… “Justice is all that lies between us and the beast of anarchy.”

  No tool was perfect, and something was needed to prevent the monsters he hunted from preying on the weak.

  “Justice protects some,” she answered. “Or rather, the courts protect some. But justice is more than simply what the courts serve.”

  He wouldn’t think on that. For then he might dwell on how his father had served justice so faithfully in his courtroom, but served nothing but evil at home—

  No, he would not think on it.

  “I serve the courts by delivering criminals for judgment,” he said coldly. “Such debates mean nothing while hunting a fugitive.”

  Her voice went soft. “So you never think of what happens after? If my story will be believed by the jury? If my suffering will hold any weight against the might of the McCade name?”

  She’d arrived at the very point he could not contest. He knew full well the power of a father’s name, the sins that one could hide beneath the mantle of it. Judge Spencer’s name was enough to hide both his and Sebastian’s sins—how many more sins could the power of the McCade name hide?

  He disliked that—disliked that he could not reassure her and disliked that he had to urge to do so. Thank the Lord he had only a few more days in her company and could leave those sensations behind. Could return to the easy blankness of his life in Los Angeles.

  But until then…

  “Your suffering matters to me,” he offered. A tiny thing, his regard in the vastness of this world, but all he had to give her as reassurance. At least until he captured McCade.

  Señorita Moreno’s expression eased, which cut deeper than her fierceness had.

  Before she could speak, her younger sister shoved the glasses back at him, the way a child would with an unwanted toy.

  “It will be all right in the end,” she told Señorita Moreno. “You’ll see.”

  Señorita Moreno met her sister’s resolved gaze for a moment, then looked back to the scrubby brush surrounding them. “Of course it will,” she said, her words quiet with resignation. Or perhaps disbelief.

  He put the field glasses to his own eyes, searching once more. He had nothing to offer Señorita Moreno as comfort—nothing more than the capture of this outlaw.

  So that was the only thing he’d offer her.

  The night had fallen fast, the thin air of autumn sharp with cold.

  Isabel and the marshal were arranged around a campfire for just the two of them, the herd bellowing nearby, the air thick with their scent. The rest of the cowhands were clustered around a larger fire some distance away, but still within sight—propriety must be observed.

  There was a palpable sense that she and the marshal did not belong—not that they were unwelcome, but rather a recognition that they would be more comfortable apart from everyone else.

  Isabel had to admit the others were correct—she may have volunteered to come along, but she did not want to be here. McCade could be out in that pressing dark, perched in a tree like a mountain lion, watching the scene below, waiting with the unnatural patience of a cat, muscles poised to pounce when the moment was right…

  “Does she always sleep like that?”

  At the marshal’s question, she looked to her sister.

  Franny was curled in her blankets, head tilted back and mouth slightly open, her task of minding them finished for the day. She looked so young and fragile, Isabel’s heart squeezed.

  “Franny’s always been completely committed to whatever she does. Riding, roping, sleeping… she does it breakneck or not at all.”

  His mouth twitched, sending a sliver of warmth down her spine.

  How odd.

  The last word she would have used to describe the marshal was attractive. Imposing, yes. Infuriating, sometimes. But not attractive. To be honest, something rather dark stirred within her when she saw him, something she named as trepidation.

  “I’d imagine it’s exhausting being Señorita Franny,” he said.

  “I can’t recommend it.”

  “I would imagine it’s also exhausting being yourself.”

  Her jaw tightened and her heart fluttered. It was exhausting: the sleepless nights, the vivid nightmares—and no peace came during the day, not with the panic and the headaches.

  “It can’t be easy or pleasant,” he continued, “with everyone pestering you for the details of such an ordeal. An ordeal that came with a high personal cost. Even I’m guilty of this.”

  The fire gave a loud pop, sending a flurry of sparks into the chill night. Staring steadily into it, she carefully folded her hands and tried to swallow down her jitters.

  “It hasn’t been easy,” she finally said. He didn’t need to know
about the nightmares or the panic—and she didn’t want to speak of them in the dark.

  He stretched those long legs toward the fire, putting the fine leather of his boots dangerously close to the heat. “You were a schoolteacher?”

  “I am a schoolteacher.”

  “My apologies.” There might have been an amused glint in his eyes.

  “I teach at the secondary level at a school in the valley,” she answered. “I was forced to miss this term due to… circumstances.”

  But not next term. I won’t miss that.

  “There are teaching positions in Los Angeles if that’s truly where you wish to be,” he said.

  Her eyes flicked up to the innumerable stars that glinted in the cold velvet of the night sky. The stars were somehow sharper, nearer, here in the open country, although she knew logically it was nonsense.

  It wasn’t only that she’d wanted to be in Los Angeles, more than a simple desire to leave Cabrillo—she and Joaquin had wanted a new life.

  “Once we had enough saved,” she said, “Sheriff Obregon and I would marry and move to Los Angeles. We’d planned very carefully, you see.” How quickly years of caution and thought had been utterly destroyed.

  “Now that Obregon is languishing in a sanatorium, you must immure yourself as well?” A pinch of censure there.

  She studied the planes and ridges of his face, turned to sharp relief by the firelight. His cheek was already dark with whiskers; he must have to shave twice a day to keep his jaw as smooth as he did. He stared back, measure for measure, his form arrogantly relaxed, completely unapologetic in his boldness.

  “Who would I live with in Los Angeles? I’m not so modern as to live alone,” she challenged. Not that her family would have allowed her to do so anyway.

  “Who do you live with in the valley during your teaching term?”

  “That’s different,” she said. “I board with families of good reputation who are well known to mine.”

  “You could live with Don Enrique.”

  She thought of her foppish cousin and his empty-headed daughters and shuddered.

  “No?” His mouth moved not at all, but she had the impression he was smiling. “But Don Enrique is the ideal of a Spanish gentleman, is he not?”

  She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about his amusement. Don Enrique was family and a slight to him should be a slight to them all, but he was also the most ridiculous man she’d ever met.

  “I thought you only met Don Enrique the once,” she retorted.

  “I’ve seen him leading the parade for La Fiesta.”

  Isabel had never understood the Americans’ love of celebrating La Fiesta, or any other of their sad approximations of the “Old Spanish Days.” It seemed ghoulish for them to celebrate the very culture they’d smothered on its deathbed.

  “You enjoy that sort of thing?” she accused.

  “I don’t.” His voice dropped a quarter tone, just enough for her to hear the change, to know that she’d touched a nerve.

  She didn’t know what to make of him. He carried an Anglo name, carried himself as an Anglo, only revealed his other half when forced to. Yet when he’d spoken of his mother, there’d been a reverence he’d shown for nothing else.

  She stared into the fire. When one wasn’t certain how to respond, it was best not to respond at all.

  “Tell me what you wish to find in Los Angeles,” he offered, “and I’ll tell you if it exists there.”

  She knew exactly how to respond to that, but it was one thing to tell him the particulars of her attack, yet another to tell him the particulars of her soul.

  Yet he’d spoken so beautifully of the place at supper… against her better judgment, she wanted him to do that again, to weave tales of the city for her.

  “I wish to find people who can discuss literature and music, rather than cattle, and the weather, and crops.” She paused. “And I wish to find no flies.”

  He didn’t laugh, or smirk, or even smile. He only said, “There are a prodigious number of flies in Cabrillo.”

  “It’s all the cattle.”

  “We have flies in Los Angeles, Señorita Moreno. Not as many as in Cabrillo, but we still have them. Tell me, which works of literature would you like to discuss in Los Angeles?” He held up a hand. “Wait. I can already guess. Ramona.”

  Her face twisted. Of course he would suggest the story of the doomed love between Ramona and Alessandro, a love ended by Alessandro’s murder. It had been a national sensation, bringing hordes of tourists to these mountains in search of the “real Ramona.” The novel was a swamp of excess sentiment, Ramona being too saintly for words, and Alessandro—well, she had always despised drunkards.

  But it was also about the place and the people that had nurtured her and shaped who she was. How to explain what Ramona meant to her? She couldn’t explain it to herself. It was much like what Cabrillo meant to her. She loved and hated it in equal measure—the book and the town.

  “I find Ramona to be… overly sentimental,” she said. She leaned away, telling herself she was overwarm from being too near the fire. That was always the trouble with campfires—your front roasted, while your back froze.

  “Truly? Here I thought you’d offer to take me to meet the real Ramona.”

  He was laughing at her, with that arch tone of his.

  “And if I told you I was acquainted with the lady who inspired the character?” she challenged.

  “Which one? I hear there are five true Ramonas.”

  “Perhaps there are many ladies who claim to be the real Ramona because their stories are so distressingly frequent. An Indian man gunned down solely on a white man’s suspicion, and justice never blinking an eye? Surely you’ve heard that story before.”

  He wasn’t laughing at her now. Not that his solemn mien had changed the barest fraction—his expression was as flat as ever—but something had changed. His eyes perhaps; they were the only aspect of him that was not fully under his command.

  “More times than you could possibly imagine,” he admitted. “Don’t think I don’t feel the injustice of such things any less deeply than you.”

  She wouldn’t allow the sincerity in his eyes to touch her. She simply would not. “Yet you make sport of it. You claim such stories touch you, but the novel touched you not at all?”

  “I’ve never read it,” he confessed. “I don’t care for novels.”

  Of course he didn’t. “No doubt you think they contribute to the mental and moral putrefaction of young ladies.”

  He slowly raised one eyebrow. “I never said such a thing.”

  “You’re right,” she said slowly, her gaze caught on that eyebrow. “You never said any such thing. I apologize.”

  He nodded in acceptance, the firelight and shadows dancing across his face. “So you don’t like Ramona. That demonstrates good taste on your part. What do you like?”

  “Portrait of a Lady.”

  “Mmm. I have read that. It was very—interior.” There was a shudder behind the word interior that made it sound like horrid. “If you wish to associate and live with those who think as you do, then you must agree with Madame Merle that the exterior of a person and that with which they surround themselves with defines their interior?”

  She flicked a hand at his fine clothes. “Haven’t you arranged your exterior to suit your interior?”

  He rested his palms on his knees, looking as if he were preparing to pounce. “You should not make the mistake of assuming my exterior matches my interior.”

  She sat still as stone, waiting for him to… well, she did not know precisely what.

  Rise? Move toward her? Touch her?

  Suddenly all she could feel was her clothes against her skin—and the lack of his skin against that same space.

  Then he shifted, and the moment was shattered. “Do you believe Isabel Archer returned to her husband?” he asked.

  “She promised Pansy she would.”

  “Pansy.” He waved the poor girl of
f. “She couldn’t even bestir from that convent to save herself. Why should Isabel Archer sacrifice her happiness for such a spiritless creature?”

  “She was dear to her,” Isabel pointed out.

  The look he sent her pressed the air straight from her lungs. “Sometimes we must sacrifice what is dear in order to save ourselves.”

  She had the sense he was no longer speaking of the novel, but something nearer to his heart.

  What dear thing had he sacrificed to save himself?

  And from what?

  “No doubt you think she should have returned out of wifely duty.” She was deliberately provoking him—she’d not conversed with anyone about books since… since that day in the buggy with Joaquin. They’d been arguing over some serial in a magazine; she forgot exactly which. She hadn’t realized how much she missed sharpening her wits in a debate about books. “She’s made her bed”—she referred to Isabel Archer—“and now she must lie in it?”

  “No,” he said, “but I do think Miss Archer chose poorly in marrying Osmond. She had wealth and no need of a husband. I save my pity for those who have no choice.” The corners of his mouth dropped and his eyes went stern, shifting into something more severe, even for him. “You had a choice, didn’t you? And you took it.”

  A cold fury settled in her stomach. “You think I threw off Señor Obregon just when he needed me most,” she bit off. “Well, it wasn’t like that. He was the one who wanted to break off the engagement. He—”

  She swallowed hard. She hadn’t meant for all that to spill forth, but there it was. Commanding herself not to cry, she plunged on. “We were not in love. It was only to be a marriage of friends, companions.”

  Yet it had still hurt terribly when he’d ended the engagement against her protests.

  “We were clear eyed and saw the world and ourselves as they are,” she said. “That is why we’re no longer engaged. We didn’t love each other, and we knew it, but we did suit one another.” She ran a hand around her throat, much as she had done during that terrible moment when Joaquin had ended things. The bruises at her throat hadn’t been mere memories under her fingertips—they’d been real enough then.