As he watched, a mountain breeze billowed her dress and cloak and scarf in the night, and in the moonlight it was as if living power swirled around her. Everything she touched was more alive, more vital, more beautiful. A half moon glowed in the cloudless eastern sky, while she faced the west.
As her dark cloak and light hair danced around her, Tom knew exactly why her reputation had reached the level of the mystical. Back when Tom had last seen her, she’d been beautiful and wounded and sweet.
No one put those words to Lady Gray now. Untouchable was more often repeated. Untamable certainly, as if anyone would consider trying to tame a witch. She was called cold, but Tom had seen the warmth. Life might have forced her to hide that away, but Tom would never believe the warm, intelligent, vulnerable woman he knew wasn’t there somewhere. Merciless. That might be true. Tom was sneaking in after all. He didn’t want to risk finding out she had no mercy. Unbeatable, too. A warrior with nerves as steady and strong as the stones of her castle.
But all of that reputation wouldn’t keep friends nor enemies away. She had a large supply of both.
A rifle, now, that made people fight shy. But even the rifle wouldn’t keep Mandy Gray’s family back. They were a salty lot. But the danger of knowing her was so intense that she’d begged those she loved to stay away, and they’d let her alone.
Tom had heard the grumbling, had done some of it himself. Her pa had come and tried to pull her out of her mountain fortress, one of her sisters, too, and some faithful old friends. She’d run them off to save their lives. And Tom knew, even if no one else did, that her coldblooded rejection was rooted in love. Or maybe he just believed that because he’d been run off, too.
Her cloak stormed and twisted around her. Her hair, loose in the wind, danced white, like living smoke curling around her head. It went with the gray of her clothes. It was said she always wore gray to match her name and her castle and her mood. But in the night, who could say what she wore? Everything about her looked gray, even her eyes, which Tom knew were a flashing sky blue.
It gave Tom grim pleasure to know he was dressed in pitch black. That suited his mood.
A desire to yell at her, tell her he was coming, coming to rescue her from this self-imposed exile, clogged in his throat as he saw the butt of that deadly accurate long gun poking up at an angle by her left shoulder. She always wore it that way. The rifle and her lightning-fast reflexes were as much a part of the legend as her beauty and isolation.
She’d be real glad to see him. He was sure of it. But she had a reputation for shooting first and asking questions later, so he didn’t want to startle her.
Mandy Gray and that rifle. Tom bit back a growl that she’d made it so hard for him. He fully intended to own Mandy, and he’d use that rifle on her backside if she didn’t come along quietly.
But he’d tell her all that a bit later, after he had her disarmed. The element of surprise increased his chance of survival.
Since she was right where he wanted to be and there was no way to gain that high ground as long as she was there, Tom settled in to his precarious perch to watch her and pick his moment to stake his claim. Considering she was the most beautiful woman Tom had ever seen, watching was no hardship.
As he waited, a long tube appeared over her head as if she were taking aim at the sky. A thrill of fear raced up his back as the irrational thought flickered through his head that Lady Gray was having a showdown with God. She’d declared war on the whole world, why not God, too?
Tom followed the line of the tube and saw a falling star streak across the sky, then another. As if maybe God was shooting back.
Shaking that madness away, he knew she hadn’t made a move toward her rifle. Tom was watching too closely to miss even Mandy Gray’s wicked speed.
She pointed upward and held the tube to her eye, riveted somehow, completely unaware of her surroundings. Tom tried to figure out what had caught her attention until he realized that her utter focus on the sky gave him his chance to move.
Wiping his bleeding fingertips on his black shirt, to make them less slippery, he resumed his stealthy climb, glancing every few seconds at Mandy and that tube and her frozen fascination with … something.
He’d never seen anything like it before.
The sky is falling.
Mandy’s heart trembled and she enjoyed it—the fear.
For so long she’d feared nothing. Felt nothing. Not joy, not fear, nothing. She loved her children, so she felt that to some extent, but her love translated into protecting them, and to do that she needed to remain in control.
Beyond the love of an angry mama grizzly, her heart was as dead as her husband.
She didn’t fool herself with romantic notions that her heart was dead because her husband had died. No, she’d been finished with feelings long before Sidney had assumed room temperature. The men who’d shot Sidney had hardened what few feelings she had left.
So now the sky was falling.
Maybe the end of the world. Maybe Jesus coming again.
That suited her.
White lights shot across the sky. She lost count. She stood and watched through Sidney’s telescope and felt. For the first time in a year she wasn’t ice cold all the way to her soul. It was as close to free as she could be in the stronghold of her home, Gray Tower.
Logic told her that the world probably wasn’t coming to an end. That would be too easy. She hadn’t had an easy day in her life. West Texas wasn’t what anyone would call easy, and certainly there’d been no ease since she’d come to Montana.
She pulled the telescope away from her eye and watched white slices of heavenly light. Content with the goose bumps of fear, her spirits rose. Assuming the world wasn’t ending, she’d come to a good place out here. Her children were safe. She was safe—bitterly lonely but safe.
And at night she looked at the stars and dreamed of being far away. And dreamed of making sense of that map Sidney had left, a map that would take her to a gold mine and give her a way out of her troubles.
But the map with its odd star markings as a starting place made no sense. And the gold and the freedom it could buy might as well be as far away as those slivers of slashing light. But the stars changed. She’d learned that since she’d begun studying them. And every night the stars were out, she looked and hoped Sidney’s map made sense.
Tonight, here she stood again and watched the sky and stayed safely in her tower. The Shoshone people who lived around her had made this land impenetrable. And she hadn’t had a report of someone trying to gain access for months.
A few reported deaths weighed on her. And there was one nightmarish night when they’d gotten through the watching Shoshone and come upon her. She’d survived that life-and-death fight on a moonlit night, but with a scar on her soul—the knowledge that she had killed another human being.
What choice did she have? Running her thumb over the little callus on her trigger finger, she knew she could fight or she could die, and her children with her. When evil men preyed on a woman, they had no right to hope for mercy, and neither the Shoshone nor she showed them any.
Another star shot a streak of white light, and she shivered in that lovely fear, the first real feeling she’d had since the cold had sleeted through her veins on the night she took a man’s life. The fear gave her hope.
Maybe, finally, even without Sidney’s gold, she could believe she was safe. She could dare to believe the men who hunted her had finally given up.
A hard hand clamped over her mouth. She went for her rifle to find it locked between her body and whoever held her.
“Hold still,” a voice hissed in her ear. “I won’t—ouch!”
Mandy struck hard with her telescope, going for the kill. She slammed her attacker in the nose. Even as she landed the blow, she knew it wasn’t hard enough. His arms never relented. His grip on her trapped rifle never wavered. Then somehow her telescope was gone, thrown aside. She heard glass shatter as it landed against the rocks. Then it
bounced and clattered over the cliff. The telescope she needed to study the stars and save herself.
With a sickening twist of her stomach, she knew she’d failed her precious babies. That thought made her desperate, and she twisted, fighting the iron grip. Her hard boots stomped but missed the man’s foot. With a sinking stomach, she knew this man was tough.
Her elbow rammed his stomach. He grunted and his grip tightened, pinning her arms. She could get no force behind the blow. He lifted her off her feet. She kicked with her heavy boots. Grunting in pain, he wrapped one leg around both of hers and they fell backward.
The grip knocked the wind out of her even though she landed on top.
“Stop! Mandy, quit.” The man still whispered.
Mandy instantly knew he was aware of her Shoshone friends and was careful not to alert them. Where were they? They were so diligent.
“Will you please—”
Writhing against him, panic drowned out his words. She didn’t need to hear to know the man would spew threats and gloat with pleasure at her sure death.
Her children! What would become of them? What plans did this evil man have, all because of Sidney’s filthy gold. She sank her teeth into the hand over her mouth and clawed at the muscled wrist.
“Mandy! Will you stop that?” The voice was deep. “Ouch!” Raspy. “Get your teeth out of me.” Familiar.
She froze. She knew that voice.
“Are you done trying to beat the stuffing out of me yet?”
Tom Linscott.
Mandy’s taut muscles relaxed. She opened her clenched, attacking jaw and sagged back against the hard length of him. She wasn’t going to die today.
Looking toward the heavens, she saw yet another streak of light. The sky wasn’t going to fall after all. Her world wasn’t going to end.
Tom’s hand lifted from her mouth. “I knew I had to quiet you down before I tried to talk to you.” He rolled sideways, tipping her off of him.
She kept moving and gained her feet, ignoring an almost instinctive need to go for her rifle.
Standing, dusting his backside, Tom gave her, and her rifle, his full attention.
“Get out of here. You need to go. I’ll signal the Shoshone people so they’ll know you’re coming out the gap.” Mandy frowned and looked over the ledge. “Did you climb up that cliff?”
Taking his hat off and slapping it on his leg, Tom said, “Yep.”
“How’d you do that? Wise Sister’s family would have seen you. They know this is the only other way in.”
“Not exactly a ‘way in,’ Mandy. It took me two hours of hard climbing in the pitch dark. My fingers are bleeding.” Tom scowled at his hands, black tipped with blood.
Mandy noticed some teeth marks, too. “Well, you’re in.” Mandy took an uncertain step forward when she said those words.
He was definitely.
In.
Then she, who thought everything over and had complete control of her actions and complete death in her emotions, launched herself into his arms.
He caught her and lifted her onto her tiptoes and kissed the living daylights out of her. A moment stretched to a minute, then two. Her arms tightened on his neck.
He pulled back. “Mandy, I’ve been—”
“Shut up.” She tilted her head to deepen the kiss and put an end to his ridiculous talking for long minutes more. He cooperated fully, and Mandy realized she could feel so much more than just fear.
When she regained her senses, she found her toes dangling about three inches off the ground, not quite sure when he’d lifted her. He pulled away and, even with his face shaded by his Stetson in the dark, she saw him smile.
“Hi.” His white teeth flashed as pure as shooting stars.
She dove for his lips again but he ducked. “We’re going to talk now. I’ve come to get you out of here.”
In one second, with one poorly chosen sentence, Tom cleared Mandy’s head of nonsense.
“I can’t leave.” She pushed against his shoulders. “I’ll be killed.”
“I’ll protect you.” He ignored her pushing.
“You can’t.” Her shoving hands turned into fists. “You’ll be killed.”
He lowered his head and kissed one of the fists that was curled upon his chest. “I’ll hire enough people to guard us.”
“No!” Her struggling paused as she watched his soft mouth touch her taut fingers. She shook her head to clear it. “They’ll be killed.”
“I’ve got tough men. We’ll protect you and your young’uns.”
“I can’t take the children out.” Shaking her head frantically, Mandy knew they’d come to the real reason she stayed trapped in here. “They’ll be killed.”
“Will you stop saying that!”
“No, because—”
“Will you shut up, or do I need to gag that mouth again?”
Mandy frowned but didn’t speak the obvious. He’d clearly heard her already.
“There is no reason on earth you have to stay up here.”
“Yes, there is. I’ll be kill—”
An extremely rude snorting noise cut her off. “There have been other rich people, Mandy. Many of them have lived to an old age.”
“They didn’t make enemies of the Cooter clan. There doesn’t seem to be any end of them. And they all have a grudge, aimed straight at me.”
“The Cooter feud against you is famous, no denyin’ it. But the solution isn’t to hide up here for the rest of your life.”
“Yes it is.” It was a stupid solution; even Mandy knew that. But it seemed to work, and the alternative was death. “If I go out in public, they’ll come for me.”
“Then they’ll be stopped, arrested, and hung.”
“You can’t arrest them all. They’re like cockroaches. They keep coming. I’ve already been shot at twice. Hit once.” Mandy rubbed her arm, long healed but not forgotten. “Sidney is dead.”
“No great loss.”
“Buff was shot.”
“That was before the feud.”
“Luther was shot.”
“I know. A bunch of Cooters have been arrested. Several are dead.”
“But there are always more of them. There’s no end to it.”
“Buff and Luther weren’t hurt badly.”
Sidney sure had been, but Mandy didn’t mention that. “In the last few months there’ve been no attacks.” That she did mention. A tenuous peace, but the best she could hope for. “They seem satisfied as long as I stay up here, like they’ve got me in prison, I suppose. But every time I try to leave or someone tries to get in, they come and keep coming. The Cooters and their kin will hurt anyone who gets in their way.”
“Then they’ll have to go through me.”
“That’s exactly right, Tom.” The night wind tossed Mandy’s gray cloak around, whipping it, lifting it until it floated around her like smoke, drifting and tossing her hair. “They’ll come through you. I’m not risking anyone else. I’m here. I’m safe. I hope the really spiteful members of the Cooter clan will die out by the time my children need to leave. Until then I stay.”
“Then I’ll stay with you.”
Shaking her head, Mandy said, “You’ve got family, a sister and nephew, a ranch.”
“Two nephews, now. My sister had another son.”
“My family is all in Texas. The Cooters haven’t gone that far to bother them, mainly because they’ve gotten the notion I’ve cut my family off.”
“Wonder where they got that idea?”
From Mandy herself. She’d started the rumors about her family begging for money. All nonsense and a blow to the McClellen family pride. Ma and Pa would never have accepted the lie she put about. But then Luther was shot trying to get in to see her. He was lucky to survive. After that Mandy’s family had respected her wishes and left her alone.
Tom wasn’t leaving.
“I’m not staying.” Tom crossed his arms and planted his feet as solidly as if they were rooted to the ground. “I�
��ve got a ranch to run. Let’s get packed. We can be well away from here by morning. The way through the gap is clear tonight.”
“We can’t be sure of that.”
“I’m sure of it.” Tom reached out and grabbed her so hard his fingers bit into her arm. She’d have bruises tomorrow. Fair enough, she’d punched him in the face. He’d have a few bruises, too.
“I’m not going.” Mandy yanked against his grip.
Tom jerked her forward so suddenly she stumbled into his chest. His arms went around her waist, and he lifted her up to eye level. Mandy didn’t think of herself as a short woman. But then she was mainly surrounded by toddlers, so compared to them she was quite tall. Tom was a big man, though, and he made her feel tiny and very feminine. Just look how he’d grabbed her and kept her from getting to her rifle. It was galling.
Now he lifted her straight off her feet. His muscles were the iron hard bands a man earned fighting nature to run a ranch. He dangled her there with no apparent exertion and stared straight into her eyes. “How about we do it this way, Mrs. Gray?” Tom swooped down and kissed her until she didn’t have much left in her head, surely no sense.
He pulled back, only inches, his intense eyes and stubborn jaw filling her whole world. Made her want. Made her feel. “I’m taking your children out of this fortress tonight. You can come with me or stay behind.”
Made her crazy. “I won’t let you.”
“You can’t stop me.” He fell silent and waited. A big, tall stack of pure stubborn.
Going for her rifle wasn’t really an option since she’d just admitted keeping him alive was her first reason for not going. Still, her fingers itched to grab for the barrel.
When she didn’t respond, Tom set her on her feet, turned, and stalked toward the house, as if he planned to pack the three children up and take them without her permission or company.
She reached for her rifle and grabbed … air. Looking down by her right hand where the muzzle was always waiting, she realized it was gone. Looking up, she saw Tom carrying it.
Sophie's Daughters Trilogy Page 60