A hard hand slapped over her mouth. Weight like a collapsing mountain crushed her into the ground. She knew in that second that she’d failed. She’d given up everything she believed was right in the hopes of ending this feud. All she’d really done was put herself at risk, abandoned her children, and all for nothing. She hadn’t even thinned out the pack of coyotes who wanted her dead.
“You are the most contrary wife a man ever had.”
Tom. He knew exactly what was going on.
Her gun was wrenched out of her hand, which was annoying, but it didn’t stop the surge of relief and even joy she felt to have Tom with her and to have this deadly choice taken from her.
She turned her head, and he let loose of her mouth and only eased his weight for a second as he flipped her over onto her back.
She smiled.
He kissed her witless.
When she could think again, she pointed toward where the men, still blocked by the woods, were camping. “Cooters.” She barely breathed the word.
Tom eased down the hill on his hands and knees, dragging her along, as if she might not follow. The man had her rifle for heaven’s sake. What was she going to do up there without it?
He had a hold of one arm and pivoted her so her head was turned downhill. Then he dragged her along on her back, like she was a deer he’d brought down.
It took her a second to get over the pleasure of seeing him. Then she scrambled to her feet and fell into step with him. He had her wrist in one hard hand and her rifle in the other, and he strode with ground-eating steps toward where she’d left her horse.
They reached the horses, now grazing side-by-side; then Tom said, “Mount up. We can’t talk this close to them.”
He let go of her, possibly because he trusted her but more likely because he knew she needed her Winchester and figured she’d come along until she could retrieve it. Swinging up on his horse, he glared at her. She experienced a little thrill of fear at his fierce expression.
Feeling unusually obedient, she mounted up and had to move fast to keep up with him as he headed down the trail. They were too far to get back to the Double L tonight, so she expected him to stop riding at some point and yell at her.
Mandy had to admit that at least part of the light spirit she felt was because she’d been stopped from unleashing lead at those Cooters.
They’d put several miles behind them when they reached a trail that turned off. Tom followed it to a rock wall that curved into a perfect shelter.
“Tom, are we—”
“Do not talk to me, woman.” His shouted words practically took a bite out of her hide. “I’m about one wrong word from turning you over my knee.”
No one talked to her like that.
Tom had his horse unsaddled before Mandy could get her mouth shut. She wanted to dare him to manhandle her but was just the least bit afraid he might be serious, so she went to work stripping the leather off her own horse. Tom had a small fire crackling by the time she’d finished with her horse and put it on a lead rope to graze.
And now finally it was time to talk.
“I’ve made my choice.” She stalked over to Tom. “I’m not going to sit like a frightened rabbit and wait for those Cooters to come for me and my children and you.”
Tom looked up from the fire, where he was feeding in sticks, with eyes so blazing hot Mandy felt burned.
“So you headed out to kill them, is that right?” He threw in a bigger stick. “You were crawling up that rise to murder those men in cold blood—”
“They deserve to die!”
“Because you don’t trust me to protect you, is that right?” Tom shouted the last three words.
“I did it to save your life. I know you’d protect me. I know you’d die for me. I understand all of that. But I can’t let you.”
“The one thing you don’t seem to know, woman”—Tom surged to his feet—“is that you can’t stop me.”
His arm whipped out quick as a striking rattler, and he yanked her hard against his body. “You’re mine.” He grabbed a hank of her hair. “You’re mine, and I’m through waiting for you.” He sank his heavy hand deeper into her hair and tilted her head back. “We’re married. I will protect you. I will die for you.”
He kissed her until her knees went weak and her arms wrapped around his neck to keep from falling. Long moments later he raised his head, his blue eyes burning into hers.
“Better than that. I will live for you. That’s all you need to understand.” He swooped his head down, and Mandy had one flash of a moment to think she was still prey, this time to a diving hawk.
She understood. At last she finally and completely understood that she was Tom’s, and he was hers.
As he lifted her up in his arms, she accepted it. Tom had just saved her from doing something beyond the pale. He’d stopped her from breaking her covenant with God. God had surely seen to it that Tom arrived in time. God had protected her.
His lips never left hers as he lowered her to a blanket and came down with her to hold her hard against him. She clung to him. His iron muscles, his iron will.
The Cooters would come and come and never stop. But if she’d destroyed them, she’d have destroyed herself.
Then she forgot all about the Cooters. Tom drove them out of her very thoughts, and all she knew was she’d done it right this time.
She’d married herself a strong, smart, decent man. He was married to a lunatic. Soft skin, beautiful eyes, passionate nature, crazy as a rabid swamp rat.
Tom pulled the loco little vermin closer. She murmured but didn’t wake up.
It made him sick to think how close it had been. Mandy had clearly planned to unload her Winchester on those men. Maybe she wouldn’t have gone through with it. He hoped and prayed she couldn’t have. But she’d considered it. Left his cabin contemplating it. Come close to doing it.
To become a back-shooter, a cold-blooded murder, was the kind of choice people couldn’t recover from. It broke their minds, scarred their souls. Tom had never killed a man, and he hoped he never had to. He reckoned he’d do it to protect his life, his herd, and definitely his wife and children. But killing when a man was pressed into it was different than planning ahead to kill, no matter how evil the men.
That was the woman he’d married. There was no way to explain it other than she’d gone completely loco. Hiding up in that mountain fortress for the last year might well have pushed her clean over the edge. He wondered if he’d have married her if he’d known she needed to be strapped into a straitjacket and locked in a cell.
Mandy shifted her weight and rested one of her work-roughened hands on his chest.
Sure he would have. She was a mixture of strength and softness that made Tom a little dizzy when he thought that she was now his. He had the signed papers to prove it.
“Tom.” In the still-flickering firelight, he could see her face, see her lips move to form his name, though she barely breathed the word. But she sighed, and her breath was warm on his skin. He moved his arm slowly, to tuck her even closer without waking her, and she flowed against him like warm rain.
Aw shucks. Even now, knowing what kinks she had in her head, he’d marry her again. He’d have to get a net. Keep his eyes peeled. Chase her down and drag her home when she went berserk.
But so what?
He kissed her forehead, and she feathered a kiss across his jaw. He looked down and saw her eyes flicker open, heavy lidded with sleep and contentment.
Though he hadn’t meant to wake her, he couldn’t really get too upset that he had. Especially when she stretched up to meet his lips with her own. He didn’t make her stretch far. As he kissed her, he decided to hire a few more cowhands. That’d give him more spare time to cope with the madwoman he’d married.
And that was the last rational decision he made for a long, long time.
Much later, Mandy lay in her husband’s arms, staring at the stars, and saw a comet zip across the sky. She’d been watching these same
heavens … how many days ago?
Could a woman’s life change so much in such a short span of time.
Another streak of light reminded her that the night Tom had come for her, she’d wondered if the sky was falling. “Tom, have you noticed all the falling stars lately?”
“Hmm?” He was almost asleep.
She lay with her head on his shoulder, one hand resting on his broad chest.
What would Tom have to face to survive being married to Mandy McClellen, Lady Gray?
“I watch the stars. I told you that. Look up there. Maybe you’ll see a falling star. They’re raining down. It’s … almost … scary.”
Tom pressed a kiss to her forehead. Then Mandy felt him shift, and a glance at him told her he was staring up. “It’s a beautiful night to be camping out.”
A star streaked across the sky. They were in an open area surrounded by woods, so they didn’t have a wide view of the sky, but straight overhead they could see. “So strange that there are so many. I wish I’d brought my books with me from Sidney’s house.”
“Books about what?”
“The stars and planets and meteors. They were fascinating. I read about how sailors found their way all around the world using the stars. Can you imagine?”
“Sure, I can find the stars and get my bearings, know north, south, east, west.”
Mandy nodded.
Tom’s arm tightened around her. “So you’re scared when you look at the stars? How do you have time to be scared of falling stars when you’ve got Cooters to worry about?”
“The book—one that Sidney got just recently—names all these meteors and comets and says they come again and again. The unusual rain of falling stars is caused by a meteor shower called the Perseids.”
“Perseids?” Tom pulled her so close she had a hard time remembering they were stargazing.
It was actually a romantic thing to do, Mandy decided. Lie in her husband’s arms and stare at the sky, with no moon tonight but blazing with stars and the occasional streak of light. She’d talked about the stars with Sidney. Or more correctly, she’d listened when he talked. And out of sheer boredom she’d read the books and papers he’d amassed, using his wealth to gather them from far and wide. But she and Sidney had never gone out together. And nothing between her and Sidney had qualified as romantic.
“Yes, a meteor that passes close to Earth once a year, during the first weeks of August. The comet has a long stream, a tail following it. With rocks I guess. And some of the rocks in that tail get close enough to Earth and come plunging down, and they leave a slash of light when they do.”
“But not the main comet? It doesn’t come down?”
Mandy shrugged. “I don’t understand how it works. I just know from Sidney’s papers that it does. And I can look at the sky and see the truth of it.” Another comet left a burn of light.
“I think, woman, that once I’ve got you back to my ranch, you’re going to be too busy at night to do much stargazing.”
Tom moved and blocked out the sky. His face, shadowed by the night, filled her vision, and his lips indeed distracted Mandy from the stars. Mandy was certain Tom didn’t give the stars a single thought for quite a while. She was certainly thinking of other things.
Later, as she was lying, relaxed, in his arms, she saw yet another comet leave a stripe of white in the sky. Mandy’s stomach growled, and she wondered how long it’d been since she’d eaten. Tom, too, for that matter, but she was too content to move. Too happy to be in Tom’s arms. He’d regret soon enough that he’d chosen her to love.
Mandy paused. Love?
Tom’s words had all been about possession. He’d said she was his. They were meant for each other. They belonged together. And tonight he’d claimed her as clearly as a man could claim a woman. But he’d never spoken of love.
Did she even want his love? Did she want to love him? Loving a man was such a stupid thing to do. Because if she loved Tom, then she’d want to depend on him.
True, her pa had been dependable. But her real pa, the man who’d been married to her ma when Mandy had been born, had proved unreliable, and Mandy had adored him. And Sidney certainly hadn’t been a man to depend on, and Mandy had been madly in love with him at first. Thinking of love seemed dangerous, risky.
She thought of her actions today, how she’d tried to call that cold-bloodedness to herself and hadn’t been able to and had planned to kill those men anyway … maybe.
It made her sick that she might have done it. It made her just as sick that she’d left those men alive.
Could a woman who wanted to kill love? What man would want that kind of woman in his life?
Terribly glad she hadn’t committed murder today, she still wanted the Cooters dead. Her mind chased itself around until she thought she’d go crazy … crazier.
Tom pulled her close, and that broke off the circle of worry. Foolishly she felt safe. And she decided to let exhaustion win for now. As she dozed off in the strong arms of her husband, her last waking thought was that she felt a little sorry for the man.
He’d spoken marriage vows with a lunatic.
Eleven
Wake up, you crazy woman.”
Mandy jerked awake and saw Tom crouched a few steps away, across an open fire, holding a coffeepot that boiled almost as hot as his expression. In the firelight, he looked grim and dangerous and worried. It was still dark, though Mandy thought she saw a bit of lightness to the east.
As always she looked up and studied the stars. Always the stars. Then she looked back at her ferocious husband. His tone and the grim scowl on his face was not in keeping with the man she’d spent the night loving, but it was a pretty good match for the man who had dragged her bodily away from where she was drawing a bead on the Cooter clan.
“Want some coffee before we talk about what in the name of heaven you think you were doing yesterday?”
Mandy sat up in bed, and when the blankets fell away, she quickly caught them and pulled them to her chin.
Tom didn’t seem to notice. It was a shame really because she’d very much like to not have this conversation with him.
He poured her a tin cup of coffee and brought it to her. She had to fumble to grab the cup and the blanket both. He went back to the fire and threw some bacon into a red-hot skillet. He went to work on the bacon with his back to her. Deliberately, she was sure, so she’d have a moment to make herself decent.
She came up to the fire, putting the finishing touches on braiding her hair just as he was scooping the bacon out. It irritated her that he’d packed so well for the trip. He’d been just in the nick of time to stop her after all. He handed her a tin plate with bacon and a corn cake on it. This is what they’d eaten on their way from her home to his. Maybe it had all been in his saddlebags already.
“So, you were planning to back-shoot those men, is that right?” Tom settled onto the ground, his back resting on a fallen log. He held a plate in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other, obviously ready to have a calm visit about the fact that he was married to an almost-murderer.
“I was planning to.” Except maybe she wouldn’t have gone through with it. “I wanted them dead. I don’t know. I was tempted.”
Tom’s eyes slid to her rifle, close beside him on the far side of the fire. Making herself decent included going armed. All that was left was strapping on her Winchester. They were married now, so he might as well know she went armed all day, every day and slept with her long gun on the floor within easy reach. She saw it lying beside Tom and decided, just for now, to leave it there.
“We’re going home today. Maybe you remember what you left back home. Your children, who need their mother.” He left off staring at her rifle to glare at her. Fury like she’d never known flashed out of his eyes. The flickering fire made them even more savage.
Husbands didn’t really turn their wives over their knee, did they?
“You know they’ve had no one but you for the last year. Think they might be a bit
upset that you took off yesterday and left them with strangers?”
Mandy stood, her breakfast half eaten. “I’ve got to get back to them.”
“Good idea, except they’re gone.”
“Gone? You said we had to get back to them.” Mandy thought of the Cooters. Had they taken them?
“No, I asked you if you remembered them. They’re small. You went through childbirth. Probably changed a lot of diapers. There are three, two girls and a—”
“I remember my children,” Mandy snapped.
“Okay, good to know. So when you went haring off it was with them firmly in mind, then. You planned to ruin your life and probably hang and never be near them again. That was all planned out. A deliberate choice. Good to know.”
“Just tell me where they are so I can go get them. The Cooters didn’t—”
“Abby and Wade, along with a few of my cowhands, took them to Belle Harden’s house.”
“What?” Belle Harden, the toughest woman Mandy had ever known. Mandy wanted to go to Belle’s house, too.
“They’re safe. Belle lives in a mountain valley with two ways in. I sent enough drovers they can post a guard day and night. It’s a lot like where you live, only her husband, being of sound mind, built her a cabin not a castle. And they’ve got thousands of acres of rich pasture land around them to feed their cattle instead of a few yards of solid rock like you had.”
Mandy couldn’t leave her children there for long. She took the last bite of her last corn dodger and set her plate aside to scrub her face with one hand. “I snapped yesterday.”
Tom made possibly the rudest sound of disgust Mandy had ever heard. “If you’d’ve killed those men, you’d have deserved to hang. Then who was going to raise your children?”
“You.” Mandy looked up from her hand. “You’re their father now.”
Tom rolled his eyes. “Yeah, they won’t even notice you’re gone. Is that what you think?”
Mandy had done a lot of thinking yesterday. Frantic thinking, laced with fear and panic and hate. “How many of your men were killed or hurt yesterday? I know they wounded that cowhand that came running in, bleeding. He said more were down.”
Sophie's Daughters Trilogy Page 72