Sophie's Daughters Trilogy

by Mary Connealy

  “I’ve known Tom Linscott a lot longer than I’ve known you. Why would I lie for a witch?”

  Mandy looked straight into Muriel’s eyes for far too long. Then a grin snuck onto Mandy’s face. “Because us women have to stick together?” Sort of like the Cooters, only way better.

  Tom shoved open the door.

  Muriel grinned back. “Good a reason as any, I reckon.”

  “Reason for what?” Tom walked over and lifted the saddlebags out of Mandy’s hands.

  “We were talking about female things, Tom. You really want to know?” Muriel crossed her arms.

  Mandy hoped sneaking wasn’t a female thing. She’d like to think men did their share.

  “No, good grief, no. I don’t want to hear it.” Tom shook his head almost desperately and turned to Mandy. “Let’s go. We’re burning daylight.”

  Running her hand over her dress pocket to make sure the directions Sidney had left her were still there, Mandy nodded to Muriel. “I’ll be a good wife to him, Muriel. If I don’t get him killed, that is.”

  Muriel closed her eyes as if she were exhausted. “Enjoy the ride to … Denver.”

  “I found an idler in town willing to make some money. He nosed around real quiet-like to see if anyone knows much about Linscott.” Fergus eased himself down by the fire.

  Cord was sick to death of standing watch on that ranch. They didn’t dare get closer, within rifle range. Linscott’s hands were too savvy. They’d run off a herd of beeves to see if that would clear the lookouts and draw off the men who stayed around the ranch house, but Linscott seemed to have enough hands to always keep a solid guard posted and track down stampeding cattle.

  “Do you have to ride in again tomorrow to talk to him?” Cord decided he’d be the one who’d ride in. He needed to do something or go crazy.

  “Nope.” Fergus took a long pull on a bottle of whiskey, then corked it and tossed it across the fire to J.D., who was practically licking his lips at the sight of liquor.

  “Take one long drink, and then we’re hitting the trail.” Fergus had a smug smile on his face that made Cord’s heart beat faster.

  “You found something?”

  “Tom Linscott and Lady Gray hit the trail today … for Denver.”

  Surging to his feet, Cord said, “Then why are we sitting here? Let’s ride.”

  “We’re sitting here, little brother, because I trailed ’em. The man in town pointed to the trail they took, and I could make out the hooves of those big black thoroughbreds easy as if someone were holding up an arrow. And I saw their trail head northwest.”

  “Northwest?”

  “Yep. They should be coming up the trail straight toward us. I rode hard to beat them here. We’ve got plenty of time to get set up. Then we finish this.”

  Kill a woman.

  Cord didn’t like it much. But Grandpappy wanted them to stick together, and that woman had killed a Cooter.

  “The man also said she’d married Tom Linscott.”

  Cord froze. “So Linscott has to die, too?” Tom Linscott was a salty man with a lot of friends. One thing to hunt a lone man who lived like a hermit on the mountaintop. Another thing to finish his wife who had killed one of their own and who kept to herself. Cord didn’t like it, but it was a blood oath, and he couldn’t turn away.

  But Linscott was an established rancher. Attacking Linscott could bring a whole load of trouble right down on their heads. But so what? The feud was well known, and Linscott had bought in knowing he’d joined the wrong side.

  “Chances are we’d have had to kill Linscott anyway if he was riding with her,” Dugger said, taking his turn with the whiskey bottle and drinking half a pint in a few gulps.

  “But what if we don’t get him?” J.D. asked. “He’ll come after any man who kills his wife. Once Linscott’s in this, we’ll be fighting tough men who’ll keep coming.”

  “We’d better be sure to get him when we get her, that’s all.” Cord thought he sounded confident, but it wasn’t coming from his belly. This whole feud was making him sick. He’d been earning an honest living riding for Lord Gray. He’d had ambitions. He’d wanted to get his hands on Gray’s gold somehow. But until he’d made that move on Lady Gray, he’d been earning the best honest wage of his life.

  It had eaten at him that he rode for a man he considered a fool. Lazy, leaving his security to others, ignoring that beautiful woman and those young’uns to go to Helena and Denver and Ogden to flash money around and spend time with dance hall girls. Building himself a mansion somewhere no one could see it, of all stupid things. Then leaving the house he’d spent a fortune on to stay in a hotel room in a frontier town for weeks at a time.

  Sidney’d had everything, and Cord wanted it. All of it, right down to the three children. And somehow Cord had thought he’d find a way to end up with what Lord Gray had. If watching Gray act like a king had given Cord a little taste for acting the same, the only way Cord could satisfy that taste was to take it.

  He’d goaded these others and fed them with family pride and Grandpappy’s rules. Fergus had never even heard of the family rules, and he’d said, since he heard, that Curly had been killed in a shooting. Cord knew if he pushed it, Fergus would agree to go chasing off after whoever had killed their other brother. But Cord had enough to do. And chasing after Lady Gray made sense, when there was a fortune in gold at the end of the chase.

  Cord had always planned to get Lady Gray under his gun sometime and, rather than kill her, make her an offer of marriage she couldn’t refuse on pain of death. She was a strong woman, and Cord doubted she’d take him over death if it was only her. But for her children, she’d marry him. She’d put herself at his mercy to save them.

  Yes, he’d planned it all. Even down to how he’d enjoy crushing that arrogance in her. Sidney had it, too, but it was phony, built on a foundation of gold and foolishness. But Lady Gray carried herself like true royalty. And Cord had seen how easy she was with that rifle. He’d never seen her fire it until that day at Linscott’s cabin. She was pure greased lightning with that thing. But he’d always seen she was comfortable with that fire iron across her back.

  The first thing he’d do was separate her from that Winchester. Then he’d teach her to say, “Yes, Cord. Right away, Cord.” He’d teach her with his belt if he had to. Many’s the time he’d had brutal imaginings about humbling that woman.

  But all these daydreams faded with Linscott in the game. They’d have to kill them both because both would fight to the death without the children to use as leverage. And with Mandy and Linscott fighting side-by-side, the two of them went a long way toward evening the odds a bit.

  Linscott had to die fast under a hail of bullets. And once he was dead, there’d be trouble because he wasn’t a man whose death would be ignored, even snickered at like Lord Gray’s had been.

  For the first time, as Cord sat there feeling all his plotting and planning unravel, he really felt that thirst Grandpappy had bred in him—thirst for family pride, thirst for his name Couturiaux from the Old Country. The castle, Gray Towers, had been sealed off forever. The gold was locked away somewhere, and only Lady Gray could get it.

  Lady Gray—Mandy, Cord knew her name well enough—was going to die on this trail, right here tonight under the Cooters’ guns. They’d have to kill her hard and fast to have any hope of defeating her. And when that happened, she’d take the secret of that gold to her grave.

  Years spent in scheming and Cord had nothing left but pride. He looked at Fergus and J.D. and Dugger, a sad lot, but Cooters to the bone. Couturiauxs right to that flash of white hair.

  Fine, if this was all he had, then he’d fight for the family, fight for the brand. He pulled his six-gun from his holster and checked the load, and then he turned to Fergus. “What trail will they be using?”

  Fergus rose from the fire with a flare of evil in his eyes. “I’ll show you, and we can scout out a place to lie in wait and finish this.”

  Like back-shootin
g coyotes. Could a man take pride in that?

  “Then we can head for town and get more whiskey,” J.D. added eagerly as he drained the bottle.

  It was all Cordell Couturiaux had.

  Sixteen

  What do you mean we’re not going to Denver?” Tom followed his wife off the trail trying to catch her. He’d yelled that she’d taken a wrong turn.

  She’d laughed. The little spitfire had laughed at him. Then she’d taken off to the north, through a dense stand of woods that might well stretch all the way to the Idaho border and beyond.

  “Catch me, and I’ll tell you all about it.” Mandy looked back with a smile on her face that made Tom lean low on his horse’s neck and urge it forward on the uneven ground, bent on catching himself a wife—for the second time this week.

  He caught her all right and persuaded her to bed down for the night before the sun had even set. There was no talk of maps nor gold nor Denver. There was only Tom with the woman he’d wanted in his arms for five years.

  Now he had her. He’d stormed through all her objections and taken her for his own, figuring himself as the sensible one of them. Smiling, he lowered her to their bedroll and let every minute of that frustrated waiting show in his kiss and his touch.

  One of the very best things he liked about his wife was she seemed to have a few years of frustration of her own to relieve.

  Much later, they sat by the crackling campfire in the lowering sun, Mandy in his arms, sitting between his legs, resting her back against his chest while he held her tight. “We’re gonna have us a good life, Mandy girl.”

  And a few more children if Tom had anything to say about it.

  She looked up over her shoulder with a beautiful, private smile that made Tom think of those long, lonely five years again.

  Her endless white blond hair was loose and messy, raining over Tom’s arms and her shoulders. It drooped over one eye, but he could see enough. She was relaxed and at peace for the moment. That look of fear and regret that always, always shadowed her face was missing right now, and Tom wished he could figure out a way to make it stay gone forever. She’d lived with fear and regret for long enough.

  He wrapped one arm tight around her middle to pull her even closer, then smoothed her hair back and unwound it from his arms and her shoulders. He brushed it off her forehead. His hands were coarse and awkward, too rough for someone so beautiful, but he couldn’t quit touching her. Watching the shining strands of her hair slide through his hands, he couldn’t remember much in his life that was more perfect than this moment.

  “I haven’t had much family in a lot of years, Mandy. Having you and the young’uns is going to make my house a home.”

  “What about Abby, your sister?”

  Tom hated to think of all his sister had been through. “I’ve only really known her for a few years.”

  Mandy twisted around to look at him. “How can you not know your sister?”

  Tom wanted an excuse to keep holding her, so he decided to talk. “Abby came west with my family years ago. She was still really young.”

  “You didn’t come?”

  Shaking his head, Tom went back to caressing Mandy’s hair. He needed to learn to braid so he had a chance to touch her more. “Nope. I was a full-grown man of sixteen years. When my folks decided to go west on a wagon train, I stayed behind. I had a job and a girl and my future all laid out in front of me.”

  Mandy sat up straight and frowned over her shoulder. “You’ve been married before?”

  Mandy obviously didn’t like to think he’d had a wife. All things considered, this little woman had a lot of nerve to object to the nonsense in Tom’s past.

  “Never married her. But I was determined to when my family moved away, so I told them good-bye. I was headstrong and so sure I was all grown up.”

  “I suppose most sixteen-year-olds are sure.” She subsided back into his arms, watching the crackling fire.

  My folks had been gone about a year, and I missed them so bad, but I had my girl and my pride. I was getting by.”

  “What happened to her?” Mandy’s hands rested on his thighs, her fingers flexed as if she were comforting him.

  “I lost everything. The girl I gave my family up for found herself a rich man, leastways rich compared to me. And since I was working in her father’s store, I got fired when she got herself engaged to another man.”

  “I’m sorry. I know how it hurts to have your dreams die, even if those dreams aren’t very sensible. I was madly in love with Sidney when I married him. It took me a while learning that I didn’t even really know the man.”

  “Yep, it hurt.” Shaking his head, he added, “I was so young. I really don’t blame her for picking someone else. I had no hope of caring for a wife and supporting children on the salary I was earning. I suppose I had it in my head that her pa would let me be a partner in the store, but she’d have been crazy to marry me.”

  He could still remember the feeling of his heart breaking in two. He’d covered it with anger and told himself he didn’t really want her, but she’d torn down everything he saw for his future with a few careless words.

  “She’d have been lucky to marry you, Tom. Store clerk or rancher, whatever you turned your hand to, you’d do well. You’d take good care of a wife and children.”

  Tom kissed her neck, just for the kindness in her voice. He could have used that kindness back then. He’d been devastated.

  His arms tightened on her waist so she was pulled snug against him. Mandy lay her head back on his chest and hugged his hands wrapped around her belly. He opened one hand to lay on her stomach and wondered if maybe he’d managed to get a child of his own started with his wife. The idea was so appealing he couldn’t talk for a moment.

  What if she wasn’t expecting yet? Tom decided he needed to do more to make sure she was. He was ready to turn her to him when she started talking again.

  “So after things ended with your girl and your job, what did you do?”

  He was no longer in the mood to talk about his childhood, but he found himself in the mood to be very obliging to his wife right now. “I got another job for a while, but finally pride became a lonely companion. I found a wagon train headed west and set out to throw in ranching with my family.”

  “But you said you haven’t had much family in years.”

  “When I got out here, they were dead.” Tom found himself in need of swallowing before he could go on.

  Mandy made a sound of such pure sympathy that for a minute, Tom had a struggle to hold back tears. And that would be so embarrassing that the horror of it settled him down. “A fever had gone through and killed a lot of people, my family included. I hadn’t been told. They lived a long way out from town and didn’t really know anyone, so no one ever visited to see they’d died. I got here, and there were records of their claim, so I found where they’d homesteaded. I rode up there thinking they’d be so excited to see me, and I was crazy lonely for them.”

  The silence stretched as Tom remembered that ramshackle cabin. In bad shape because no one had done a thing to it in over a year. “I found an empty cabin. Then I found graves.” Tom had thought that girl had broken his heart, but Tom knew as he stood there over those windswept graves what true sadness was. “It’s the same place I live.”

  “Tom, I’m so sorry. But Abby was alive.”

  “Abby was gone. I—” His voice quit working. This went beyond grief to guilt and regret that was almost unbearable. He never let himself think about it. “I thought she’d died, too. I just assumed she had.”

  Mandy sat up and turned fully to face him, drawing her legs beneath her until she was next thing to kneeling between his legs. “You assumed? But where was she then?”

  “A band of Flathead Indians had found her alone in the cabin, the rest of the family dead. They took her in. I didn’t hear from her until just a few years ago.”

  “She lived with the Indians all those years?”

  Nodding, Tom said,
“They were good to her. She’s very loyal to them. Don’t act like you feel sorry for her when you see her next time because she’ll pull that wicked knife and start sharpening it right in front of your eyes.”

  Mandy laughed. “Sorry, I’m sure it’s not funny to you.”

  “It’s just something else I did wrong. I should have been there to help.”

  “And died of the fever yourself?” Mandy met his eyes.

  “I might have lived. Abby did.”

  Gently his pretty wife rose to her knees and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  All Tom could think of for the next hour was that he was very glad he was here, too.

  Finally, long after the flickering flames of their fire had turned to glowing red coals, it was time to go back to what he’d been going to ask before they’d started talking about Abby. “Why didn’t you trust me with Sidney’s map from the first?” He shouldn’t ask when they were so content and relaxed, in harmony for once, but it had to be spoken of sometime, and tomorrow would be a long hard-riding day.

  “I’ve always trusted you, Tom. Too much when it was the wrong thing to do. When I was a married woman.”

  He gathered her wildly tousled hair in one fisted hand and eased it over her shoulder. “That’s not real trust. Not the kind where we talk about whatever’s on our minds.”

  “I begged you to stay with me when Jarrod was being born. That’s trust.”

  “You were alone with two toddlers and terrified. You’d have begged a grizzly bear if that was all the help that was to be had.”

  “Probably right.” Mandy flashed her white teeth at him.

  He was glad he hadn’t gotten her stirred up and mad yet. “And yes, for anything to have happened between us back then would have been wrong. I’m not asking you why you didn’t share all your secrets with me back then. But I dragged you out of that stupid castle days ago. You didn’t tell me about the map until you turned off the trail a couple of hours ago. Why?”

  Mandy reached her long, graceful neck up and kissed him on the side of his jaw. He was so much taller than she was, so much bigger all over. He should have worried about the delicate little lady. But she was strong. Tom caught himself hustling to keep up with her and rarely had a spare second to think of her as fragile.