McGill had to have her—what else could explain her disappearance?
Jacob’s horse stomped impatiently. “Where?”
Bryant looked out toward the dark shadow that indicated the ridge. McGill could have her stashed anywhere.
Should he tell Jacob?
If his friend hadn’t been able to catch the rustlers or find Celia, how likely would he be able to find Leah?
And if Jacob learned about why McGill might’ve kidnapped Leah, he was enough of a stickler to put him and McGill both behind bars. And if their boss had no incentive to bring back his wife...
“I’ll let you know if she’s not back by tomorrow.”
“What?” Jacob spit the words as if Bryant were mentally incompetent.
He shouldn’t have gotten Jacob involved. “I can get her back.”
“Bryant.”
“Thank you for helping, but I’ll take care of it now.” He let out a slow breath, trying to keep himself from turning his horse immediately and galloping across town to McGill’s mansion. He wouldn’t do so until Jacob was well out of sight and couldn’t follow.
His friend’s mare pranced around as a pack of coyotes yipped from somewhere near the ridge as Jacob stared at Bryant as if he’d gone mad.
He blew out a long, steady breath to keep his heart from racing any faster. “Trust me.”
“I suppose you’re going to be as closed-mouthed about this as you were about your gambling?”
At Bryant’s nod, Jacob sighed loudly. “I guess all I can do is pray for you then.”
“Thanks, we’ll need it.”
More than you know.
Chapter Forty
“Water. Can I have water?” Leah pushed her head off the mule’s ribcage.
Celia pulled down the brim of her hat and opened her canteen. She lifted Leah’s head for a drink, careful not to look her in the eye. Was it possible to get her mother’s friend home without revealing who she was?
Water dribbled out of Leah’s mouth. She seemed to be having difficulty swallowing upside down. “Can I get down?”
In the distance, the lowing of disturbed cattle indicated the men were still busy. They’d said they’d come back after rounding up the beeves and Celia was to follow them to the hidden valley where they rebranded the ill-gotten animals.
Yesterday, she’d been hoptoad mad about them not wanting her help, but now, all she could think about was washing her hands clean of this. If only they were farther away so she could be certain they’d not notice her stealing off with Leah.
“Please?” The older woman’s voice was soft, but not scared or whiny.
If she worked quickly and kept her face turned, hopefully she could keep Leah from getting a good look at her. Untying the knots, Celia loosened the ropes enough to slide her charge onto the ground.
“Thank you.” Leah groaned and pushed herself upright, struggling to do so since she was still bound hand and foot.
Celia grunted before tipping her canteen against Leah’s mouth, careful to keep slightly behind her.
The woman managed several messy gulps before shaking her head. “Thank you, no more.” She turned her head, trying to see over her shoulder. “You should go back home, dear.”
Backing away, Celia held her breath. Had the dim starlight been enough to give her identity away?
“Can you speak, young man?”
Celia let out the breath she’d held.
“Young man” was good. Real good.
After moving to the side about ten paces to the closest tree, Celia sat down, spreading her legs out most unladylike and leaned against the trunk in the self-assured manner Daniel always assumed.
“Are you from around here?” Leah wriggled her legs out from under her. “Could you get a message to my husband?”
If they could escape tonight, there’d be no need for messages. But if they didn’t ... Celia squirmed.
They wouldn’t hurt Leah too badly, right? Tom had told them not to leave bruises.
But then, why would Leah be allowed to go home when Tom had made no attempt to hide his identity?
“Please?” Leah’s quiet plea unnerved her.
Celia worked her voice to come out as low as possible. “No.” Her voice still sounded juvenile, but at least more like a boy’s than her own. She grabbed the canteen and guzzled.
“Do you have a home? I’m sure I could find you one. Or you could stay with my husband and me. You can leave this mess behind and have a home with people who care for you.”
Choking on her water, Celia coughed until she could breathe normally again. Had Leah truly offered such a thing?
Her size might indicate she wasn’t full grown, but she was in cahoots with the woman’s kidnappers. “Are you serious?” Her voice had started high on the first word, but she’d quickly deepened her tone.
“Thank you, Jesus,” Leah whispered. “Celia.”
Celia punched her fist into the dirt beside her. So much for the disguise.
“Honey, I’m so happy you’re all right.” Leah let out a sigh.
How could the woman sound so happy when she was hogtied and awaiting torture at the hands of two awful men?
“What is wrong with you?” Celia crawled over, whispering. “You’ve been kidnapped! They plan to hurt you, and I’m not talking about just punching you in the gut a time or two.” Celia tried to dampen the high-pitched astonishment in her voice so as not to attract the men’s attention. “And yet, you’re glad I’m all right?”
“Tell me they haven’t hurt you.”
“They haven’t.” Not yet, anyway. “But they’re going to hurt you.” Celia spit to rid herself of the foul taste in her mouth.
“I know.”
She’d said that as if Celia had only informed her that the sun would rise tomorrow.
Bryant had carefully picked his way across town in hopes of not being spotted riding toward McGill’s residence.
After pounding on his boss’s large imported front door, he took a step back and checked the windows for flickering light. None.
How dare McGill sleep tucked under his quilts as if not expecting Bryant to confront him the second he discerned the reason behind Leah’s disappearance.
He poised to knock again, but the door opened before him. A solitary flame illumined a thin, old man wearing a sleeping hat.
Before Harrison, the mayor’s butler, could speak, Bryant sidestepped him into the foyer. “Where’s McGill?”
“The mayor retired to his room hours ago.” Harrison’s voice crackled with sleep and annoyance. “If you don’t mind, sir, kindly step out of the house and wait until morn.” He opened the entry door wider and gestured toward the street.
“McGill!” Bryant strode to the banister and shouted up the massive, shadowy staircase. “Conrad, so help me, get your cowardly self down here!”
“I say, sir.” The butler stepped onto the first stair and spread out his arms, looming over his unwelcomed guest. “Leave now, or I’ll call the marshal.”
“Don’t bother with the marshal, Harrison.” McGill’s wheezy voice called from the blackness. “Bryant, for Pete’s sake, go home. Nothing is so urgent you can’t talk with me in the morning.”
“Now. We’ll talk now.” He pushed past Harrison and took three steps at once. “I’ll drag you down if I have to.”
“Hold your horses, and I’ll be down in a minute.” The boards above squeaked under the mayor’s heavy tread.
“This way, sir.” The butler stepped in front of him and pointed to the room at the bottom of the staircase.
Bryant stared at the elderly man, whose wrinkled, imperious face looked haggard in the light of the lantern he carried.
He let go of the railing and stomped down the stairs toward the room Harrison indicated. The butler shouldn’t be a witness to the upcoming conversation, so wherever he wanted to stuff him was fine.
The room smelled of leather and cherry tobacco.
Harrison lit a lamp.
In light of the bookshelves, gargantuan desk, and high-backed wing chairs, it seemed he was in McGill’s study. “Tell your boss to be down in two minutes or I’ll make him come down.”
Harrison nodded as if he’d requested something as mundane as tea and exited.
Bryant paced. Should he punch McGill in the face the moment he walked in, or talk first, then punch him?
Lantern light grew brighter on the other side of the door until McGill stepped in, shutting the door behind him. “This is highly irregular, Whitsett.”
“Where’s my wife?” Bryant took a step toward him, his fists raised.
As if his guest had only stopped in to chat, McGill sauntered to his side of the desk and sat on its edge, putting space between them. “A strange question to be asking me in the middle of the night. How should I know?”
“You know.” Bryant’s words rumbled through his clenched teeth. But he lowered his fists—for now. He couldn’t kill the man before finding out where he’d taken his wife.
“Perhaps.” He selected a pipe from a rack sitting on a bookshelf and knocked the tobacco remnants from its bowl. “I’m assuming if you know why she’s gone, you also know what I want.”
“I told you, no more.” Bryant seethed as McGill took his time filling his pipe. How could he have known that his first win at cards would eventually force him into begging for his wife’s life?
What a fool he’d been. He should’ve told her everything from the beginning. She would’ve likely forgiven him seventy times seven—she was nearly a verifiable saint.
Now she might reap the consequences for each and every sin he’d committed, unless he could placate McGill. “My wife—”
“Is fine, I’m sure.” A spark of fire scraped into life at the end of a match. “And she’ll continue to be fine—as long as you’re cooperative.” McGill puffed, turning his tobacco a deep red.
“I’m through with you.” Bryant swiped a stack of books off the desk and rounded the corner.
“I wouldn’t touch me if I were you.” McGill didn’t shrink, didn’t move. “I know what you want to know.”
He blew a puff of smoke out of his nose slowly, as if they were doing nothing more than discussing the price of beef.
Looking for something to smash, Bryant knocked over an elaborate globe from its pedestal stand. The heavy ball thumped onto the plush carpet and rolled under a chair. He growled at the fact it remained intact. “Tell me now or so help me God...”
McGill yawned. “I’ll tell you tomorrow after you’ve done your job.”
“Stealing land for you isn’t my job.”
“It is unless you want to confess your sins, which I wouldn’t advise.” McGill’s pipe tobacco glowed bright red again. “One more paper is all it’ll take.” He leaned forward and pointed at Bryant with his pipe stem. “You’ll get your wife back, a poor man will be unburdened from land he cannot handle, and I’ll sell the property to the city once I’m through. Maybe even throw it in with the deal I’ll give Hendrix on his ranch. We’ll all end up happy.”
“But then there’ll be another record you’ll want me to falsify.”
McGill shrugged.
Bryant growled and took a step toward the mayor.
“Of course, if you choose not to help me, your wife may never return.”
Bryant stopped mid-stride.
“You do have that option if you really want it.”
Bryant stared out the dark window, unable to see the land surrounding town for lack of moonlight. What choice did he have?
McGill owned hundreds, no thousands, of acres surrounding Armelle. Leah could be anywhere.
If he didn’t do McGill’s bidding, he might never find where his boss had tucked her away.
What was one more doctored ledger?
Spineless acts of deception had endangered her; one last one could bring her back.
“You love that wife of yours rather imprudently, but I’m not complaining. Otherwise, why care about a silly gambling debt? You lost your girl’s tuition, sure, but taking a sabbatical from school never hurt anyone. It wouldn’t have hurt Jennie. Schooling won’t change the fact she’s blind.”
Bryant grabbed a newspaper off the man’s desk, rolled it up, and strangled it. How he’d rather have his boss’s flesh crumpling beneath his fingers. But finding his wife was more important. “I’ll be in the office at the crack of dawn, and I want my wife home by noon.”
“I don’t see why that can’t happen. You follow through. I’ll follow through.”
Bryant stormed out of the house and slammed the front door as hard as he could, hoping it cracked off its fancy hinges.
He’d go home, but he wouldn’t sleep. A few hours remained before sunrise, and he’d spend it packing. When Leah returned, he’d hire a wagon and drive to meet his youngest daughter in Ohio. If only they’d not have to leave his oldest daughter behind.
But he’d no longer allow Conrad McGill to have any power over him.
Celia gaped at Leah. “You’re all right with them hurting you?”
The woman shrugged as if being hogtied and awaiting torture was a normal affair for the housewives of Armelle. “No, but I’m relieved to finally know what’s going on.”
Celia’s heart fluttered. How did any of this make Leah feel better?
She’d thought running away from Ma and the marshal and all their rules would’ve made her happy, but misery as thick as the night weighed upon her.
Yet this woman, whose world was about to be destroyed, sat calmly, as if she were here to watch the sun rise over the ridge and nothing more. “How can you possibly be relieved?”
“Because I have an idea of what’s wrong with Bryant now.”
Celia couldn’t help but scrunch her face. Leah’s good news was learning that her husband had problems? “How so?”
Leah’s head twisted in an attempt to look in Celia’s direction. “My husband hasn’t been acting right lately. Always jumpy, constantly belittling my compliments, angry, melancholy—”
“But I’ve never seen him out here.”
“Mr. Passey is McGill’s man now, right?”
“Yes.” Tom’s name being uttered aloud made her want to spit. She’d actually thought the double-crosser was a cowboy worth looking up to when he’d let her tag along when he’d worked for her parents.
Leah squirmed, obviously in pain from the way the ropes held her hands behind her back. “I heard him say his boss is trying to get my husband to cooperate by dragging me out here. Seems the mayor has something on Bryant. I’m not sure what, but my husband must be refusing to do something he’s decided isn’t right. But he’s definitely mixed up in something he shouldn’t be, which explains a lot of his behaviors.”
Knowing her husband was a cheat somehow didn’t make what they faced any less scary. “Do you think they’ll actually let you go?”
She nodded slightly. “I’m guessing my husband is in so deep that talking will hurt us both. They must figure we won’t retaliate since they’ve not hidden their identities. Though they could just be the sloppiest criminals in the territory.”
“I’m afraid of what they’ll do to you. Roughing someone up can mean different things.” Celia shivered. “And these men, with the way they talk about women ... what they’ve done at those buildings near the tracks—”
“Hush, child.” Leah’s voice sounded upset for the first time. “I’m sorry you’ve heard such talk.”
“What does it matter?” Celia waved her hands in the air. “They might do those same things to you.” She jumped up from the ground and paced. “I’m no match for two men. So how do I get you home without getting caught? My horse and your mule can’t outrun a snail.”
Leah scooted across the stubbly grasses. “Celia, don’t you put yourself in danger.”
“I already have.” Tears piled up, but she didn’t bother to wipe them away. “They might hurt you real bad, and if I don’t help them, they might do the same to me.” Her breathing spun out of c
ontrol, and she collapsed to the ground. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Celia, darling, calm yourself.” Leah attempted to scoot closer. “McGill intends little harm to come to me.”
Why would a tied-up woman try to comfort her? “Do you truly believe that?”
The older woman sighed and tipped her head back and Celia looked up to see whatever had captured her attention. The twinkling stars seemed peaceful—so very different from Celia’s guts twisting inside her.
The lowing of cows and the rustlers’ hushed commands grew closer.
Finally, Leah turned to Celia. “I could be mistaken, but I feel as if something is going to go terribly wrong, no matter what we do.” Leah’s shuddering breath held no hint of tears.
Celia grabbed Leah’s shoulders. “Then why aren’t you afraid?”
When she didn’t answer, Celia crawled behind Leah and started tugging on the knots anchoring her wrists together. If this woman wasn’t afraid, she ought to be.
She was plenty afraid for them both.
“Help me figure out a way to get us home.” She leaned over to bite at a stubborn knot.
“We can certainly try.” Leah wriggled her wrists against her bonds. “But we reap what we sow, and I think Bryant will reap more than he ever imagined.”
Celia spit out torn rope fiber. “You didn’t sow any of this.”
“No.” She breathed in deeply. “Leave off with the knots, darling. They’re coming back.”
Already? Celia’s innards danced. “But I haven’t even got them loose.”
“Don’t let them see you trying to help me.” Leah’s voice was sharper than she’d ever heard from this kind woman.
Celia scooted away from Leah, whose chest rose and fell three times slower than hers did.
“Tell my husband to read my diary.” Leah sniffed. “And that I love him. That I still love him, no matter what happens.”
“You’re just giving up?” Celia whispered. Was this woman not afraid of death—or worse?
Romancing the Bride Page 30