Forbidden to the Gladiator

by Greta Gilbert

  But the past could never be changed. Only accepted. Perhaps even forgiven, although never forgotten.

  With a tired shake of his head, Dale pushed aside the grim thoughts. He picked up a rickety wooden chair from the corridor, carried it into Miss McKenzie’s cell and propped it against the wall. Cautiously, he lowered himself onto the seat. The chair creaked but held his weight. Only when he was safely seated did the lady perch on the edge of the cot, wriggling her backside to find a comfortable position on the lumpy mattress.

  “So,” Dale said, closing his mind to everything but the facts of the case. “Why did you shoot Elroy Revery?”

  “I have nothing to say.”

  “Did you know him from before?”

  “I have nothing to say.”

  Oh, but you’re saying plenty, ma cherie, Dale thought. The flicker in your eyes just revealed that you knew him in the past.

  “So, why would you want to kill an old acquaintance?”

  “I have...” She was halfway through her stock answer before the question fully registered. Her lips pressed together, as if to trap any unwise words inside. She quickly regained her composure and finished in a mutter, “...nothing to say.”

  Dale found himself staring at her full, wide mouth. Heat rose beneath his collar. He’d succeeded in blocking out the tragic memories of Laurel, but he didn’t have the same success in steeling himself against Rowena McKenzie. She’d ruined his concentration. A twist of shame at the lack of professional discipline tightened in his gut. Never before had inappropriate thoughts about a female prisoner taken hold of his mind.

  Bristling, he scowled at her. “This is a hanging town, and Judge Williams is a hanging judge. With a Democrat taking over the White House, the judge has been tied up with administration, but he is riding circuit again and will be here within a week. Do you really want to be strung up? A rope round your neck, a trapdoor beneath your feet and a hangman to pull the lever and let you drop?”

  “I have nothing to say.”

  Angry at himself, angry at her, Dale pushed up to his feet. The flimsy wooden chair gave an ominous creak. On an impulse, he curled his hand over the top of the backrest, lifted the chair a few inches from the floor and slammed it down again, breaking it into pieces.

  “It’s that quick,” he warned her. “Once you are standing on the gallows, it will be too late to change your mind and decide that you would rather live, after all.”

  From the way her nostrils flared and her breathing quickened, Dale knew she wanted to talk, had to fight to hold back the words that might save her life, but her willpower was greater than her fear.

  “I have nothing to say.”

  “Are you afraid of someone? Afraid to talk?”

  She pressed her fingertips together in a gesture Dale recognized from his mother, from Laurel—a means by which a lady stopped herself from fiddling with her clothing or her jewelry.

  “I am waiting for a telegram.”

  “A telegram? Will that prove your innocence?”

  She considered a moment, and then she spoke very carefully, weighing up each word. “It will allow me to prove my innocence.”

  Dale frowned. “It will not prove your innocence, but it will allow you to do so. How will you be able to do that? What information will the telegram bring?”

  “I have nothing to say.” The firm tone of her voice made Dale suspect she feared she had already said too much, so he chose another line of attack.

  “Is Rowena McKenzie your real name?”

  “It is the name I was born with and expect to die with.”

  Despite the tension in the air, a smile tugged at the corners of Dale’s mouth. “Not if you marry. Then you’ll die with your husband’s name.”

  Miss McKenzie’s expression grew pinched, hinting at some past hurt. “Some women never marry but live out their days as spinsters.”

  His smile deepened. “I doubt you’ll be one of those.”

  But as soon as he had spoken Dale realized it might be difficult for a lady fallen on hard times to find a suitable husband. Affluent, educated men sought wives who could boost their fortunes and increase their social status. A café waitress could expect to be courted by ranch hands and storekeepers, and a gently bred female might consider such men too rough, too lacking in culture. It occurred to him that he and Rowena McKenzie had something in common. Both of them were caught between the world they grew up in and their present circumstances, not fully fitting in either world.

  * * *

  The rain had ceased and a cold, clear night was falling outside. Rowena huddled on the cot in her jail cell, her attention focused on the small square of starlit sky she could see through the iron-barred window.

  Was she afraid? No, she was not. At least not afraid of the noose.

  But she had once been afraid. Alone and afraid. And she had taken the route of a coward and fled from her father’s house, from her father’s grave, unwilling to take over the fight that had killed him, unwilling to stay on the land that had killed both her parents.

  Only four years old when her mother died, Rowena could barely remember her. All she could remember was the distant chanting of the Shoshone by the stream where her mother had gone to do the laundry. They had killed her with a blow to the head and taken her scalp. Flaming red hair, it would now be a prized possession in some brave’s lodge.

  And her father—she didn’t know who had killed him. Just over two years ago, she’d returned home from school in Boston, to see her father’s coffin lowered into a grave. He’d been gunned down, but no one could—or would—tell her who had fired the bullet.

  Reese, the man in charge of the ranch, Twin Springs, had been a stranger to her. He’d claimed that her father had employed him and his band of gunfighters to defend the property. But Reese had been living openly in the house, as if he owned the place. Unable to tell enemy from friend, Rowena had fled into the night, leaving Twin Springs for others to fight over, like a pack of hungry dogs might fight over a bone.

  Her thoughts drifted to the marshal who had come to interrogate her. Even now, in the privacy of her jail cell, Rowena could feel her pulse accelerating. She didn’t know what it was about him that disturbed her so. He wasn’t the most attractive man she’d met, but there was power about him, and determination and intelligence.

  The marshal’s comments about a husband had stirred up unwelcome memories. Only two men had ever proposed to her. Freddy Livingston was rich and handsome, and she had imagined herself in love with him. He had courted her, believing her to be an heiress to a ranching empire, but the moment he had discovered the modest nature of her father’s holdings he had cast her aside. Had he broken her heart? No, Rowena decided. The shame of a public rejection had hurt more than the loss of Freddy as a future mate.

  And the other proposal had hardly been a proposal at all. It had been Reese pointing at a young man in the crowd of men at her father’s graveside. “We’ll hold the ranch for you. It would make things easier if you married Luke here. My son, and as good a man as any.”

  She’d barely caught a glimpse of this Luke Reese, a shadow among shadows in the twilight of a winter evening. She’d had some idea of a lithe man of medium height, with high cheekbones and jet-black hair. Part Shoshone, if she wasn’t mistaken, and the grief of growing up without a mother had caused her to speak up too sharply.

  “How dare you talk to me about marriage?”

  That night, she had walked off into the frozen darkness. Maybe one day she would find the courage to go back and claim Twin Springs, the ranch that was hers by law. However, she might have to fight for the property, and a woman could not win such a fight alone.

  To claim Twin Springs, she needed help from a man, a fighting man. She would have to employ a man as unyielding and capable as the marshal with cold green eyes and a crescent-shaped scar on his face. The imprint of fangs
was clear to see, as if some wild beast had taken a bite out of him and found him too tough to chew. What was it her father used to say?

  “Make a deal with the devil and you might end up in hell.”

  With a sigh, Rowena burrowed deeper into the blanket, trying to ward off the night chill. Of course, it was just an empty dream. She had no money to employ a gunman of any stature, not even the cheapest whiskey-soaked old-timer, and she was not brave enough to simply ride up to Twin Springs and claim ownership.

  She directed her attention to the more pressing problems. What had happened to the two conmen who had rescued her from a snowdrift after she’d walked away from her father’s funeral? Eugene Richards and Claude Desmond—or Elroy Revery and Robert Smith, as they were calling themselves for this particular caper. Had they become stranded after their circus-trained horse, the faithful Scrooge, met his end at the bottom of the gully? Were they trying to make their escape on foot, lost in the desert?

  Doubt and worry dulled her vision, dimming the stars visible between the iron bars. She had made her choices, but guilt ate away at her. Why did it have to be so hard to do the right thing? Why did it have to be so hard to know what was the right thing to do?

  Claude and Eugene had found her nearly frozen to death, and had put their business activities on hold while they nursed her through the fever that followed. She’d known that they earned their living by dishonest means, but she had never seen it done. They had laughed about it, making it sound like an amusing escapade, a gambling game.

  When she was well again, the pair had dropped her off at a stagecoach depot with enough money to last until she found a place to settle down. And now, two years later, fate had brought them to Pinares, and the cruelty and selfishness of their actions had become evident, leaving her with an impossible choice.

  The people in Pinares were her friends. And by not exposing the scam she had failed to protect them. But what could she do? While she’d been close to death, Claude and Eugene had confided in her, shared their traumatic past. Claude, a slender man with delicate features, had been abused as a boy, hired out to men who gained pleasure from hurting children. And Eugene, a giant of a man, had been locked into a broom cupboard by his father, to stop the teenage boy from sneaking into the pantry and stealing food to nourish his growing body.

  The history of incarceration in a closet barely big enough to accommodate the breadth of his shoulders had left Eugene terrified of enclosed spaces. And Claude would rather die than relive his childhood torment. Prison would be the end of them.

  So, she had chosen to protect those two. But soon she’d have to tell the truth, even if no telegram arrived to let her know that Eugene and Claude had escaped to where the law couldn’t reach them. The pair of fraudsters might have once saved her life, but her loyalty didn’t extend as far as dying at the end of a rope to keep them out of prison. However, until the circuit judge arrived, she would have to remain silent, waiting for the right moment to reveal that she could not be guilty of murder, because there had been no murder at all.

  * * *

  The hotel room was quiet, the mattress firm, the sheets clean, but none of it improved Dale’s mood. He’d made a dog’s dinner of it. He’d barged into the jail, expecting to coax the facts out of the accused and be done with his assignment within a day.

  Restless, he rolled over, the sheets tangling around him. He could always tell when a nightmare hovered at the gates of his mind. Sometimes he preferred to stay awake all night instead of letting the past horrors intrude. But tonight the long ride from the railroad took its toll. As Dale slipped into the shadowed world of slumber, Rowena McKenzie seemed to accompany him, her elegant beauty like a ghost of a life he had once expected to lead—the life of a gentleman, with a gentleman’s manners, a gentleman’s house, and a gentleman’s wife.

  When the nightmare came, it was not the rancid breath of a coyote in his nostrils and the fangs tearing into his cheek. Neither was it bullets slamming into his flesh and the ground rising up to meet him as he tumbled down to the canyon floor. Those restless dreams were a legacy of the gunfight to break out of the lawless life.

  This nightmare was from deeper into his past. He was twelve years old, the summer hot, Spanish moss hanging from the trees, the river low and sluggish as he and Laurel—already a young woman at sixteen—sat fishing on the bank. He could hear the sound of heavy boots crashing through the undergrowth. Coarse voices. Laurel’s whisper.

  “Hide. Hide. Let me take care of them. Whatever happens, don’t come out. Promise me... Promise...promise.”

  The images jumbled, flashed before his eyes. Soldiers holding Laurel down. One of them had his trousers pulled down all the way to his ankles. Bare buttocks rising and falling, rising and falling. Throughout the assault, Laurel made no sound at all but the soldiers joshed each other.

  “Hey, Krieger, hurry up, it’s my turn.”

  “Shut up, Ives, you idiot.”

  Dale watched from his hiding place behind a tree, fraught with despair. He’d promised to Laurel not to come out. But the guilt, the sense of helplessness felt like a rock crushing his chest. Tears of shame stung his eyes. At twelve years old he regarded himself a man, and now he was behaving like a little boy, too frightened to intervene while the soldiers did those terrible things to his sister.

  Craning forward so he could study the men waiting for their turn, Dale memorized the name of each man, and their features. Fisting his hands, he gave himself over to the hatred, his little boy’s mind striving for that grown-up feeling again.

  When it was over, when all four men had sated their lust, they buttoned up their trousers and shared a smoke. Laurel lay on the ground, her dress torn, blood on her thighs, one arm slung across her face to keep her suffering private. But she was alive.

  Not daring to move for the fear that the snap of a twig or the rustle of leaves might alert the men to his presence, Dale blinked away the tears of pity and shame and waited for the soldiers to be off on their way again.

  “The little bitch, we have to do something.”

  “No, leave her be.”

  The one wearing a sergeant’s stripes dug out a few coins, tossed them down.

  “Buy yourself a new dress, sweetheart.”

  Heavy boots crashed past Dale’s hiding place. He counted the men passing. One. Two. Three. Only one more, and they’d be gone. He could go to Laurel. Help her. Comfort her.

  A gunshot.

  “Hey, Krieger, what did you do that for?”

  “Couldn’t leave the little bitch telling tales.”

  Dale woke up, the sheets soaked with perspiration, his body trembling, the nightmare still holding him in its grip. Two sets of patrician beauty, one merely a promise at sixteen, the other fully blossomed in her early twenties, merged in his mind. And it became clear to him that whatever the outcome of his investigation—whether Rowena McKenzie was guilty of murder or not—he could not let her die at the end of a rope.

  Copyright © 2018 by Tatiana March

  ISBN-13: 9781488087134

  Forbidden to the Gladiator

  Copyright © 2018 by Greta Gilbert

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