Autumn Sage

by Genevieve Turner

  Sebastian didn’t care. What did it matter if he brought in another criminal? He’d thought there’d been meaning in what he did as a marshal, that his actions tipped the balance toward justice. That his efforts, small as they were, were a means to make amends for his own crimes.

  He’d brought in McCade, set him before a judge—and now the man would never answer for what he’d done to Isabel.

  “I’m certain Cole McCade will do something criminal,” the judge went on. “He can’t seem to help it.”

  “I’ve set a man to watch him,” Sebastian said.

  Bannister stiffened. “I never told you to do that.”

  “I’m paying the man. It’s entirely unofficial.”

  “Well.” The judge blinked uncertainly. “That’s commendable foresight, I suppose.”

  Sebastian hadn’t done it for the judge—he’d done it for her.

  A knock came at the door, the judge’s clerk poking his head in. “A boy just delivered a note for Marshal Spencer.”

  Sebastian rose, took the slip of paper. As he read it, a roaring moved through his ears and he set his teeth together hard to keep it from escaping his mouth.

  He snatched up his hat, his fingers numb upon it. He glanced at the clock. One hour and fifty minutes before her train left. Could he arrive in time?

  If he didn’t…

  He’d promised to protect her.

  Always.

  He must arrive in time.

  “What’s happened?” Bannister asked.

  “McCade is already on his way to Cabrillo. He’s taking the same train she is.” He’d never thought McCade would act so swiftly.

  But why not? The outlaw was free, back in his father’s good graces—why not deal with that last complication while his luck was good?

  Sebastian prayed his luck was better.

  “You’re not going after him, are you?” the judge demanded. “He’s been found not guilty. There’s nothing to detain him for.”

  Once, such a consideration would have stopped Sebastian. But he couldn’t care about the rule of law at the moment—he only cared about her. “If McCade does anything illegal, then I’ll detain him.”

  “I never said you could go,” the other man challenged him.

  Sebastian studied the judge’s face.

  “You want him to kill her.” It was pure accusation, and farther than he should have dared, but not near as far as he’d like to go.

  “No.” The denial was quick, sharp. “But your role in this has ended.”

  It hadn’t. He’d promised her—and he would see that promise through to the bitter end.

  Sebastian spread his hands. “By all means, try to stop me.”

  The judge’s throat bobbed. “Your father would disapprove of this.”

  His father. As if his father’s approval had ever meant anything to him. If Sebastian’s actions would earn Judge Spencer’s disapproval, then they must be correct.

  Sebastian had to laugh. It scraped his throat as it went past, yet it still felt good to release it. Odd, but good.

  Bannister didn’t seem to agree, going whiter than Sebastian had thought possible.

  Sebastian shook his head. “Her sister is married to your son, for God’s sake.”

  Did the judge even think of such things? Señora Moreno had spent decades hiding from him, Isabel herself had been terrified when Bannister had faced her—did the man have the slightest notion of those who cowered under his long shadow? Of those who were affected by his political jousting?

  Likely not. The judge was powerful and wealthy—and had convinced himself that he was an instrument of justice. No need for self-examination there.

  Seabstian knew then that he could no longer obey this man’s commands, bend himself to achieve the judge’s ends. Even if it was in the service of justice.

  There was no time to tell the judge that—Sebastian had a train to catch.

  He set his hat upon his head and pulled open the door. “I’ll return in a few days.”

  He only hoped he wasn’t already too far behind the both of them.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Isabel stared out the train window and wished she could press her forehead against the glass. It would be cool and firm against the fever of her headache, providing blessed relief from the pain set hard as a fist behind her eyes.

  But she didn’t dare do something so common, so coarse. Instead she stared at the crowd on the platform and wished the train would move.

  A family stood there, parents and three small boys. The husband kept tossing his wife the most besotted smiles, as if it were nothing to smile affectionately at her in the midst of all these people, as if he had a neverending store of smiles to give to her.

  Sebastian had given her exactly two smiles and one laugh.

  She almost set her head against the glass, but stopped herself at the last moment. Her mother sat across from her, knitting in an abstracted fashion. Any lapse in Isabel’s conduct would bring a reprimand.

  She shifted on the hard wood beneath her and pulled herself straight. She could only look out the window, not touch it. No matter how the cool pane called to the flame burning under her skull.

  The family left and the crowds thinned as the departure time neared. A slim man with serious intent passed under her window; a stout, elderly lady checked the watch pinned to her bodice; and there, near the waiting room, was—

  Her heart stopped and she slapped a palm against the window. She blinked hard, her breath coming fast.

  No. It couldn’t be him.

  She searched the entire platform, craning to see each end, ignoring her mother’s worried frown. She’d seen him, she was sure of it.

  Where was he?

  Him—no. That man—no.

  With each discarded subject, her pulse leapt higher.

  He was there, she’d seen him, her eyes would not fool her so—

  After what felt like endless minutes, she sat back when the platform was empty.

  He wasn’t there. It wasn’t him.

  Due to some mad trick of her eyes or her brain, she thought she’d seen McCade on the platform.

  Foolishness. Why would he be here, on this train? No, he would certainly remain in Los Angeles, celebrating his victory next to the father who’d engineered it.

  Her fear was producing sick mirages—and she was believing they were real. Perhaps she was going mad.

  “Isabel?”

  She summoned a smile for her mother. “It was nothing. I thought I saw something, but it was nothing.”

  But her heart kept bucking like some silly horse afraid of its own shadow.

  With a jolt, the train moved out of the station. Finally, they were leaving this place.

  She watched as Los Angeles began to slide away, taking with it all the foolish dreams of her youth. Along with her greatest enemy.

  And the man who could have been her greatest love.

  Her throat closed and salt pricked at her eyes. She breathed slow and steady to hold the tears at bay. She was done with him, him and this city. She had only to repeat it, over and over again, and soon enough it would be true. She would turn to stone once more.

  She rummaged in the satchel at her feet for her schoolbooks. Lesson planning was a good way to lead her thoughts away from what she should not be thinking of. The book fell open with ease to the last topic she’d read of: Brazil.

  She would not think of that evening in camp, when McCade had appeared out of the darkness like a demon summoned by a witch, would not think of Sebastian asking her if she were all right.

  Would not remember the fall of his fist into the other man’s jaw.

  The hints had been there all along, the key to his true nature.

  Or was it? A boy of seventeen was very different from a man of thirty, especially a man who had undertaken the mental rigors Sebastian had. In all those notebooks there had been no hint of violence until…

  Until her.

  He had struck McCade because
of her. He had threatened the judge because of her. He had destroyed the furniture—because of her.

  She snapped the book shut, unable to pretend to read any longer. She turned back to the window, watching the world slip by in a dizzying blur, the pain in her head pulling at her stomach and raising a wave of nausea.

  For her, he made everything better. For him, she made everything worse.

  That simple fact was why a future between them was impossible.

  She pressed hard against her belly, hard against the pain tearing through the center of her. She dared not do more, dared not wail or weep or tear at her hair. Her mother was watching.

  Dear God, what if there were a child?

  He would do his duty, of that she was certain, but it would be nothing more. There would be no smiles or laughter—only that cold, inhuman indifference, as inexorable as stone grinding against stone. Such a fate would be worse than never seeing him again.

  As soon as they were home, she would pray ceaselessly there was no baby in her belly. Even the love of a child would be poor recompense for a lifetime of Sebastian’s iciness.

  But for now she simply stared out the window. The emptiness within her was eerily familiar, a sibling to the silence that had taken her just after the attack.

  No bruised neck or gawking gossips muted her in this moment—only the knowledge that her future had never looked darker.

  She tried to find still points in the rush moving past the window. Small bits of fixedness to hang onto for half a second before they were lost. It made the nausea distinctly worse, but she kept to it regardless.

  She had a sycamore in her sights and was turning to watch it disappear back into the blur when a shadow fell across her. A large, dark shadow.

  Was that when one knew one was in love with a man—when one could identify him only by his shadow?

  She looked up into Sebastian’s gray eyes.

  The expression on her face tore at Sebastian’s heart.

  Always before, always, she’d been lit from within by a fierce inner light, ready to do battle at a moment’s notice. Now she simply looked vacant and drab, the light burned down to ash.

  She didn’t appear to be happy or sad or angry to see him. She appeared empty.

  He missed her fierceness desperately. Missed all of her desperately.

  “Marshal Espencer,” Señora Moreno said in unwelcome greeting, her face flat and her neck stiff.

  Isabel said nothing at all.

  “Señora, Señorita. I apologize for bringing you distressing news again, but…” Lord, he hated this, hated having to hurt her over and over again. But it must be done. “I’ve received word McCade is returning to Cabrillo. I suspect he intends harm to the Señorita.”

  The Señora’s mouth pinched tight, but she betrayed no other reaction. Isabel merely turned back to the window, as if she cared not that a man might be hunting her.

  Or perhaps she could no longer stand the sight of Sebastian.

  “I saw him. On the platform.” It was spoken quietly to the window, but he heard Isabel’s words clearly.

  So McCade was here, somewhere. Thank the Lord Sebastian had found her before McCade had.

  “Isabel!” her mother snapped. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I thought it was a trick of my mind,” she answered dully.

  “You’re certain?” He pitched his words as if she were made of glass and his voice might shatter her.

  “I saw him for only the barest moment, but yes, I’m certain it was him.” Still she would not turn from the window.

  “That’s what you were searching for earlier,” her mother said, “when you said it was nothing.”

  Her daughter gave no indication she’d heard.

  Señora Moreno waved to the seat next to Isabel. “It seems we won’t part company quite so soon, Marshal Espencer.”

  She sounded put out indeed by the prospect. He couldn’t blame her for her fit of pique—hadn’t he clearly proved he was a dangerous man?

  The daughter in question didn’t look his way as he sat, ready to keep watch over her. Only half an inch separated the folds of her skirt from his pant leg. Another half an inch, and there was her leg. A full inch between his flesh and hers. With her mother watching as they sat in a rail car, with everything that had happened between them, it might have been a full mile.

  With her face turned to the window, she presented him with of a view of her profile eerily similar to the one she’d given at their first interview. The dark twist of her hair, the pale ridge of her cheekbone with the shadowed hollow beneath, and the wire of her spectacles as it disappeared behind the shell of her ear—it was all the same, and yet not.

  He wondered if it pained her, the bite of the earpiece into the delicate skin behind her ear.

  If they were alone—if things were not so terribly wrong between them—he could slide the frames from her face and massage the red mark he knew would be left behind, until she was soft and pliant against him. She might even breathe a kiss against his fingertips in thanks.

  Well, that had been a pleasant fiction. He sighed silently as his fingers tingled with the imaginings of her lips. An ache tore through him, that it would only ever be imaginings.

  So this was what pure misery felt like. It had been some time since he’d experienced it, but he recalled now. Distilled agony, heated and separated, then heated and separated again, until all that remained was the very essence of an ache, the same ache that made up the center of him.

  This was going to be the longest train ride in the history of train rides.

  He flinched every time the compartment door opened—but it was never McCade. Isabel faced the window the entire time—and never looked his way. Her mother knit ceaselessly—and never spoke a word.

  When the train finally pulled into the station in the valley, he was half-convinced the ride would never end—the three of them stuck for eternity in this bizarre and tense tableau.

  At least they could finally get off this train. Except there was still the ride up the mountain. He ground his teeth in memory of that bone-rattling journey.

  The train halted with a jolt and a screech at the tidily painted depot.

  Her mother rose and put away her knitting. Isabel finally turned away from the window, her gaze shunning his, and made to join her mother.

  He held out a hand to halt her, stopping just before landing on her forearm. Not even an eighth of an inch, and he would grasp her.

  “Wait.” More plea than command. After all, she was the one who gave the commands.

  Her mother went ahead, obviously assuming they were right behind her.

  Isabel remained in the seat, staring at his hand. His skin began to heat with her gaze laid across it.

  “What was he wearing?” he asked softly.

  She looked up and the fire was back in her eyes.

  His mouth softened in the barest beginnings of a smile.

  “A dark brown suit, almost the color of wet clay.” Her words were clipped and crisp again, not a hint of dullness in them. “And a Derby hat.”

  He searched the platform.

  “Wearing a gun belt?” he asked.

  “No. Not that I could see.” She looked with him, the tilt of her body identical to his as they bent toward the window.

  The crowd began to thin.

  “Did you spot him?” he asked.

  “No. I’m not even certain I saw him at the depot in Los Angeles. You know,” she said, almost conversationally, “if he is coming, the men will hang him. You won’t be able to stop them this time.”

  “It’s the sheriff’s job to prevent any violence.” Although he knew Williams wouldn’t.

  “How many sheriffs do you know who stand tall when a mob comes, rather than stand aside?”

  She was correct, but damn it, this was not a duty he wanted to assume. He only wanted to protect her. But the sense of justice he’d spent years honing, the one he hadn’t entirely been able to leave behind in the j
udge’s office, niggled—vigilantism was not justice.

  He rose. “Hurry. We don’t want to be on the train when it leaves.”

  She rose as well. “And if McCade is not in Cabrillo? How long do you plan to stand sentinel over me?”

  How long? Forever, if need be. Perhaps standing sentinel would go some way to convincing her and himself he could be trusted. Perhaps if he stood guard over her forever, in that second before forever ended, she might allow him to touch her again.

  Or perhaps not. Perhaps he was doomed to wander forever in the shade of her disfavor.

  Her lips twitched. “Very well,” she said with some disgust. “Search for him as long as you like. As long as necessary.”

  With that, she swept past him to rejoin her mother.

  He followed behind, his jaw set against the knowledge that not only would he have to protect her from McCade, he would now also have to protect McCade from a lynching.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Joaquin!” Isabel hung in the doorway of his room at the sanatorium, her lungs working like a set of bellows. Too fast. She’d run through the halls too fast.

  Her gaze darted over his figure in the bed—sitting up. Eyes alert. Slightly hunched, but not crumpled. Thank the Lord.

  “Isabel?” He leaned forward, gasping a little as he did. “What are you doing here?”

  So much to tell him. So little time to do so. “I need your help,” she began, trying to slow her breathing.

  “My help?”

  The disbelief in his voice made her pause. Perhaps this had been a poor idea. What was she thinking, to haul the man out of his bed like this?

  She was thinking to stop a mob.

  She needed his help. He must get out of bed.

  But first, she must make her confession to him.

  “The trial ended yesterday,” she said baldly. “He was found not guilty.” She wrapped her fingers around the doorframe to steady herself.

  For half a moment, his expression went to pure accusation, and all of her flinched.

  But then he sagged back against the bed, his gaze turning inward. “Well, we expected that.”