“You’re wrong, you know.”
Grabbing a rag and a tin of linseed oil, she ignored his statement and proceeded to polish the counter.
“About Landerfelt—and me.”
She shot him a quick glance but didn’t respond.
“Sure, he might have paid you half now. Half of what he would have convinced you was the passage—and he would have been lying, by the way.”
Her hand froze on the counter, and she met his gaze.
“Two, three hundred dollars, if you were lucky. He would have packed you off to Frisco, and that’d be the last you’d ever see of him or the rest of what he owed you.”
He watched her mind working, wondering if he was telling her the truth.
“How do you know?”
“I just do. Landerfelt’s a bad egg. You’ll have to trust me on that.”
“Aye, trust you. What a fine idea.” She started polishing again, putting her back into the long strokes.
The rain beat on the tin roof. He glanced out the window at his tent, which had collapsed and now had a small creek running through it, and swore.
“You’ll catch your death.” She nodded at the other room. “Go in by the stove and warm up.”
For a second her eyes warmed to the blue portrayed in the miniature. He caught himself recalling their kiss again. Her soft lips. The smooth skin at the nape of her neck.
“You sure?”
“Go on before I change my mind and toss you out.”
He fought an unconscious smile as he squished across the floor in soaked socks. She was back to treating him like an errant child again. Probably the way she treated her younger brothers. She had four of them, to hear Mei Li tell it. It was better than silent contempt, he supposed.
She followed him into the next room and lit the lamp on the table. It was nearly dark, the sky gone black with storm clouds. Something was about to happen. He could see it her eyes, read it in her puffed-up demeanor. The old Kate was back. He didn’t know whether to be happy about it or not.
“Have you eaten today?”
“No. You?”
“Just some hardtack this morning.” She shrugged. “I can…cook something, if you like.”
“That’d be good.” He eased onto a stool flanking the potbellied stove and warmed his hands. It was the first time she’d offered to cook for him. He’d eaten nothing but wet jerky for days. The store was nearly out of foodstuffs, and she’d kept him so busy with chores he hadn’t had time to hunt. He wondered what she’d been eating the past few days.
A chill gripped him. Damned rain. He inched closer to the stove.
“Here, you’re soaked through.” She tossed him a blanket from off the bed. “Strip off and I’ll draw you a bath.”
“What?”
“A bath. Hot water? Soap?”
“You want me to—”
“Aye.” She opened the door leading to the back porch and, fighting the wind, dragged Dennington’s old copper tub into the cabin. “Besides, you’ll not stay here with me, smelling like you do. You could use a wash.”
His eyes widened of their own accord. “You want me to stay here? With you?” He glanced at the neatly made bed.
Their gazes locked. For the briefest moment he knew she was thinking the same thing he was. Her freckled cheeks flushed, and it wasn’t from the heat of the tiny room.
“Not here, you fool.” She looked away and busied herself searching for the bucket.
“Over there.” He pointed to it under the table flanking the wall.
“You can sleep in the store.” She met his gaze again, and again he was surprised by the change in her. “Well, you can’t sleep out there, now can you?” She nodded toward the forested hillside back behind the cabin.
“Hey, wait a second.” Was that his tent washing away down the ravine?
“You’ll sleep in there—” she nodded at the other room “—and I’ll be in here. With the door closed,” she added.
In her eyes he recognized a hint of the same vulnerability he’d read in them the night he’d surprised her in the dark.
“Just until the rain stops, mind you.” She tossed her cloak around her shoulders and went to draw water from the rising creek out back.
He sniffed at his clothes, wondering if he really did smell bad. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a real bath, with soap and hot water. It sounded damned good. At the least it would warm him up. If she was game, so was he.
The standoff was over.
Will watched as she readied the tub and collected some linen. Two buckets of boiling water later, Kate stood in the doorway leading to the store. “Go ahead.” She nodded at the steaming tub. “I’ll find you some soap.”
Before he could ask her if she was planning on stepping out while he bathed or staying and scrubbing his back, she disappeared into the store.
Fine. It didn’t bother him any. He listened to her rooting around in the near dark of the store as he stripped off his wet clothes and hung them to dry across a chair he’d pulled close to the stove.
“I’ll not wash those filthy rags you call clothes,” she called from the other room. “You’ll have to do that yourself.”
“Okay by me.”
She breezed back into the room, a bar of lye soap in hand, just as he was stepping into the tub. Her eyes went wide as saucers as she took in the whole of him.
It dawned on him that she might have expected him to bathe in winter woolen long johns, as some of the miners did in the spirit of killing two birds with one stone. She didn’t realize he never wore them.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph.” She dropped the soap—it skittered toward him across the floor—and she was out of the room like a shot.
The last thing Will heard as he sank into the hot water was the brass bell over the front door tinkling off its hook.
Chapter Six
What a ninny!
Kate pulled Will’s buckskin jacket up over her head, shielding herself from the downpour as best she could and dashed up the street toward the Chinese camp.
She had four brothers, for God’s sake. Had witnessed hundreds of baths in the tiny kitchen of the Dublin tenement in which she and Michael, Sean and the twins had grown up.
No matter how hard she tried to think of something else—anything else—the image of Will Crockett standing naked in the lamplight filled her mind’s eye.
She’d burn in hell for an eternity for the sinful thoughts that had raced through her mind a moment ago. Thoughts that no decent girl should be thinking. She wondered if the priest who’d married them heard confessions.
“Ow!” She tripped over a piece of scrap lumber as she neared the encampment at the edge of town. Her boots were soaked through. Main Street was a river of mud.
She wouldn’t have let a dog live outside in this weather. Inviting Will to sleep under her roof—their roof—had been the only Christian thing to do. Besides, last night she could swear she’d heard someone trying to get into the cabin. Through the back door this time, two strides from where she slept.
She supposed he was right about Eldridge Landerfelt, too. The merchant would certainly have tried to cheat her, had Will agreed to his latest offer. Kate didn’t know much about either man, but after three days stewing on it, her instincts told her Will had called it right and that he was only trying to protect her. Why was another matter all together.
Soft lantern light and strange music greeted her at the Chinese encampment. She burst through the door of Mei Li’s shanty without so much as a knock. Foul weather always precluded the normal courtesies here in the wild.
“Miss Kate!” Mei Li sprang to her feet.
“Mei Li. I—I’m sorry to trouble you, but—”
“No trouble.” She handed a bowl of what looked like rice to an old Chinese man who remained sitting on the patchwork of carpets covering the ground. “Here, you sit.”
“No. No, I can’t stay. I’m just here to beg a favor.” She smiled at the old man. Mei Li’
s father, she presumed. He arched a gray brow at her in response.
“My papa,” Mei Li said.
“Mr. Cheng.” Kate extended her hand to him.
The old man ignored it. “You wet.”
“Oh, aye.” She realized she was dripping all over their carpets, which were surprisingly dry given the torrent outside. “Sorry.” She whipped the buckskin jacket from around her shoulders.
“Husband’s coat too big.” Mei Li snatched it from her and placed it on a hook over the door. “Look funny on you.”
“I—I left in a hurry.” That was the God’s truth. “I didn’t have time to find my cloak.”
Mei Li’s father sat silent, cross-legged, studying her as if she were some oddity. Kate tried her best to politely ignore his scrutiny.
“Where Crockett?” Mei Li said.
“In the cabin. B-bathing.”
The girl’s brows shot up. “Good. He stink like beaver.”
Their eyes met, and Kate battled a smile. Her newfound friend did not mince words.
Mr. Cheng rose abruptly with the all the grace of Kate’s childhood image of a Chinese emperor. When she was a girl her father had spun fantastical tales of the Orient and places far removed from their dreary life in Ireland. Liam Dennington had never been there, of course, but Kate didn’t care. The stories seemed real enough.
Cheng nodded at his daughter, donned a black slicker and moved toward the door. The shanty was so tiny Kate had to squeeze into the corner to let him pass.
“Goodbye, Mrs. Crockett.”
“Oh, I’m not really—” She bit her tongue. No matter what she was in her heart, in the town of Tinderbox she was Will Crockett’s wife. “Goodbye.”
Cheng slipped outside into the rain.
“Papa go round up brothers for supper.”
“Oh, right. Supper.” She’d nearly forgotten. “That’s why I’m here, actually.”
Mei Li snatched up the rice bowl her father had left on the carpet. “You want eat? Here, take.” She thrust the bowl at her.
“Oh, no. That’s not what I meant.” Kate pulled her father’s old money pouch from the deep pocket of her dress and plucked a few coins from its depths. “I’m out of flour. Out of everything, really.” She offered the coins to Mei Li. “Our new supplies haven’t arrived yet, and I thought perhaps you’d sell me some—”
“No. No sell.” Mei Li squatted beside a beat-up trunk. “You borrow.” She lifted the lid and inside Kate spied a surprising array of foodstuffs, some of them wildly exotic. A game bag hung above their heads. Mei Li grabbed it and drew a fat hare from its depths. “Here, you take.”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t.”
“Yes. You take.” Mei Li thrust it at her. “Crockett replace tomorrow.”
It did look good. She’d hardly eaten a thing the past few days. She’d sold most of their remaining flour and other grains from the last wagonload. And she couldn’t really remember the last time she’d eaten meat. Panama, perhaps. “You’re sure?”
Mei Li gave her the hare, along with an armload of other items from the trunk. “Go home. Cook for husband. He work hard.”
He had worked hard. In fact, Will had done everything she’d asked of him. “Thank you. I’ll replace the meat tomorrow, and the rest of the goods as soon as—”
“When driver come.”
Kate smiled. She felt lucky to have the girl’s friendship in such a wild and unfriendly place as Tinderbox. Back home, Kate’s best friend had lived next door. She was older and married with two small babes.
Kate reminded herself that she was married now, too.
Mei Li pulled Will’s jacket around Kate’s shoulders and pushed her out the door. Squinting into the blackness, she called after her. “It dark. Bad men out. You run.”
Aye, it was dark. Like pitch. No moon, not even a bit of starlight breached the angry mass of storm clouds raging overhead. The downpour had dulled, at least, to a light, steady rain. If she was careful, she wouldn’t get too wet on the walk back.
Only a few campfires twinkled on the wooded ridge surrounding the town. Most of the transient miners had moved on to their claims in the foothills. Kate knew they’d be back when their supplies ran out. She was counting on it.
Crudely painted white letters, proclaiming a ramshackle patchwork of boards and tin Mustart’s Livery, stood out in the dark. She slowed her pace, her gaze washing over the words. Mei Li had told her what they said, along with all the other signs in Tinderbox.
Will had seen plainly that she couldn’t read. It shouldn’t have embarrassed her, but it had. It still did. If he’d been anyone else she wouldn’t have cared. But there was something about him—a certain edge of sophistication hiding under all that buckskin and fur, and the way her illiteracy had seemed to shock him—that had made her feel small and out of place.
She’d wanted to learn to read but was never able to take the time away from her chores for schooling. Perhaps she could learn now. Oh, the things she’d read if she could!
“Nice night, ma’am.”
The disembodied voice startled her nearly out of her skin. Kate froze in her tracks. “Who’s there?”
“Just us,” said another voice, this one behind her. She spun toward it. “No need to be frightened, ma’am.” The man stepped closer, and she squinted into the blackness to make him out.
“Jed Packett, ma’am.”
“And Leon.”
Landerfelt’s men. Her heart beat the tiniest bit faster and her mouth went dry. The Packetts had done nothing concrete to incite her fear. All the same, panic gripped her so tight she could barely breathe. On instinct, she sidestepped out of the circle they seemed to be closing around her. “G-good evening, gentlemen.”
“Looks like ya got a load there.” The dark shape that was Jed Packett sloshed toward her in the mud. “Let me help.”
She grasped her bundle tighter. “No, I’m fine. Truly.”
“Aw, come on, Miz Crockett,” Leon said, closing in. “All’s we want is to—”
A revolver’s hammer clicked behind her, and Kate froze. The Packetts stopped dead in their tracks.
“Evening, boys.”
The familiar voice registered in Kate’s mind, and she breathed again.
Will moved up beside her in the dark, slipping a possessive arm around her shoulder. “All you wanted was to…?” She could just make out the glint of polished steel in his hand, and wondered where he’d gotten the pistol.
“Nothin’,” Jed said. The brothers inched backward. “Just sayin’ g’night, is all.”
Will’s arm closed tighter around her. “I’ve got something I’d like to talk to you boys about. Tomorrow.”
“Fine, Will. Tomorrow, then.” The Packetts didn’t wait for any customary parting words. Jed sloshed down the street toward Landerfelt’s Store, dragging his brother with him.
Kate drew a breath of cool night air and audibly exhaled.
“You okay?”
“Aye.”
“Here, let me take those.” She heard the revolver’s hammer click back into place. Will stuffed the weapon under his belt and grabbed the armload of goods from her.
“Thank you.”
“What the hell were you doing out here alone, anyway?” He started for the cabin, and she followed.
“I was just getting some things for supper—from Mei Li’s.”
“Damned stupid. You should have waited for me.”
“I—I guess I should have, but—” She nearly had to run to keep up with him. Mud sucked at her soaking boots.
He stopped short in front of the storefront, and she nearly collided with him. The rain had stopped, she realized. All at once a sliver of bright moonlight peeked through the breaking clouds.
Will’s expression was hard as stone, his eyes black as coal. “Don’t ever go out alone at night again. Understand?”
His gaze was riveted to hers, and had she wished to look away she would not have been able. In this light, in this place, he loo
ked as dangerous as the Dublin thugs back home who murdered men in their sleep for a few shillings or a sack of food.
Kate nodded her compliance. “All right.”
He grabbed her arm and pulled her up the steps to the store. “Come on, Mrs. Crockett. Let’s eat.”
Will sat at the table, skinning the hare with his buck knife, and watched Kate sort through the groceries she’d brought back with her.
Damn fool woman. If he’d known she was going to go traipsing all over town in the dark he would have stopped her. She arched a fiery brow at him as she peeled a couple of turnips, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking.
“I went to Mei Li’s.” She flicked the peelings into a bowl, then shot a quick glance at the wet floor and his clean shirt steaming by the stove. “What a mess you’ve made.”
He shrugged. “You should have stayed and helped me.”
For an instant their eyes met, and he perceived a warring host of emotions raging behind hers. Against her will her cheeks flushed crimson, but he could see her grit her teeth behind those tightly pressed lips.
She hacked at the last turnip and promptly changed the subject. “Where did you get those?” She nodded at the new wool britches he was wearing, and the flannel shirt.
“Borrowed ’em from the store’s stock.”
Again she glanced at his shirt dripping by the stove, and he’d stake his life she was wondering what he wore under the borrowed clothes. Nothing, in fact. And the new wool made him itch like hell.
“You’ll have to replace them tomorrow,” she said curtly. “And that hare.”
“Fine by me.” He’d borrow Mustart’s shotgun. He needed to bring in some meat, anyway. And he could use the time alone. He wasn’t used to spending this much time with anyone, least of all a woman. It was a nuisance having to look out for her, but he’d given his word, and he wouldn’t go back on it.
For a split second, out there in the dark, when he saw the Packett boys creep up on her…Will swore silently under his breath, resisting the jumble of random emotions pressing in on him.
Gold Rush Bride Page 7