Tin-Stars and Troublemakers Box Set (Four Complete Historical Western Romance Novels in One)

by Rice, Patricia

  "Here, of course," Michael confirmed.

  But Jacie protested. "No, I won't. I'll be home, because I'm fine. I knew how to fall, just like I knew how to make that jump, if I'd had the chance," she added tartly.

  "I'd rather have you here where I can see that you're looked after," Michael argued.

  "I'll be fine. Mother is going to be worried if I don't get there soon, anyway, so I'd better leave now." Glancing about, she found she was lying on a sofa in the parlor. "Where is your mother, Michael?" she asked, wondering why Miss Olivia wasn't fluttering about in her usual nervous way.

  "She's taken to her bed," Michael explained after Dr. Foley had let himself out. "The accident reminded her of Edward's death, so Dr. Foley gave her some laudanum to calm her."

  "I'm sorry," Jacie said.

  "As for your parents, your father was here, but Dr. Foley told him you'd be all right, so he went back to work. Your mother is sitting with mine till she falls asleep.

  "You were unconscious for a while," he added, frowning. "You gave us quite a scare."

  "I'm sorry," she repeated, and started to get up. She was certainly not going to keep lying there apologizing for something he had caused, albeit not intentionally.

  He held her down gently. "Please stay."

  "I don't want to."

  "Jacie, you're angry." His expression softened. "But I'm the one who has a right to be. Zach had no business—"

  "I told you not to be cross with him. He did what I asked him to do because he's my friend."

  "He isn't the sort of person you should be around. In the first place, he's a hired hand and—"

  "So is my father," she blazed.

  He knew he had erred, but he pressed on nevertheless. "Zach Newton is also a rowdy when he drinks too much, but at least that's on his own time. My father liked his work, so I've kept him on, but that doesn't mean I want you having anything to do with him, or with any other man around here."

  Jacie was tired of arguing. "I'd really like to go now," she said firmly.

  He gave a sigh of resignation. "All right. I'll have a carriage brought around."

  "That's not necessary, and you'd best stay with your mother yourself. She's going to be so angry with me when she wakes up that she'll probably cancel my party." Jacie suspected Olivia hadn't wanted to hold the celebration in the first place and that it was all Michael's idea.

  "Nothing is going to spoil that party. It's going to be very special, I promise. It's time to let everyone know that mourning has ended, and Red Oakes is ready to start living again. But most of all, it's your birthday." He smiled, eager to end the tension between them.

  Jacie really was looking forward to the day. Michael had even insisted on sending her and her mother to Atlanta to have elegant ballgowns made at his expense. It was thus understood he would be officially proposing soon. Otherwise, such generosity might have been considered improper. Still, Jacie felt uncomfortable about Michael's mother. "Be sure and tell her when she wakes up that I regret what happened. Sometimes I get the feeling she really doesn't like me."

  "That's not true, though you do worry her with some of your antics, and you know it. Like that old Indian—"

  "His name is Mehlonga," Jacie said impatiently. "He's my friend, and he's teaching me all about herbs and Indian medicine."

  "And he's also a renegade Cherokee who's been hiding in the mountains nearly twenty years because he refused to go to a reservation. He sneaks in here to teach the slaves that they should be afraid of white men's medicine. He's been a real thorn in Dr. Foley's side, and mine, too, and I wish you would stay away from him."

  Jacie's ire was rising again. "I don't blame him or any other Indian who refused to give up their land and go on that horrible march. They call it the 'Trail of Tears' and—" She threw up her hands. "Oh, what's the use? You have no sympathy for them."

  "I admit that," he said without apology, "but this isn't a good subject for us to be discussing, so let's not continue."

  She was glad to end the conversation, well aware it would always be a delicate matter between them. Neither Michael nor his mother would ever change their feelings toward the Indians, although Jacie had heard conflicting stories as to why. According to the family tale, Michael's grandfather, Jasper Blake, had been murdered by the Cherokee for no reason. Mehlonga, however, had told Jacie it had to do with the discovery of gold on Cherokee land and how Jasper tried to steal it from them. She had been tempted to ask Michael about it but was afraid it would only make him resent Mehlonga even more.

  Jacie insisted on leaving, and she hurried over to the blacksmith shop to find her father hard at work, as always. His face blackened with soot, he held an iron horseshoe to the fire. "I see you're all right," he said, glancing up only briefly. "I told Michael you would be. He was all upset. Guess he doesn't know what hearty stock you come from. Still and all, you had no business jumpin' that horse when you know how he feels about it, and you ought to know he don't approve of you hangin' around Zach Newton. Better watch yourself, girl. He ain't proposed yet."

  "Daddy, you fret too much." Jacie was used to her father's endless grumbling. He made no secret of the fact that he was anxious for her to marry Michael so she'd be well taken care of for the rest of her life.

  He looked up from the fire long enough to scowl at her and then returned to his chore and his badgering. "It'll be you who's frettin' if he decides he don't want a wildcat like you for a wife, Jacie Calhoun, You better hear me and mind your ways. Michael Blake can have his pick of any unmarried woman in the state of Georgia, and you know it. There ain't a one among 'em who wouldn't give anything to marry up with the owner of one of the richest plantations around."

  "I don't care about his money. I won't marry Michael unless I'm sure I love him."

  "And you're sure you do." He said it as a fact, not a question.

  Jacie did not respond. That was something she had been thinking about lately, a lot, because she was not sure exactly what being in love meant. Michael was the only man who had ever kissed her, and she felt all warm and wonderful inside when he did, but was that love? She wondered. And the only person she had ever been able to talk to about it was Mehlonga. She could discuss anything with him, and when the subject was love, he always said she'd know when it came, because a spirit inside would speak to her heart, and then she would have no doubt. But Jacie had not heard a spirit, and she had felt nothing but the tingling feelings Michael so easily evoked with his touch, feelings that were nowhere near her heart.

  "You ain't sayin' nothin'."

  "There's nothing to say." She turned toward the door. "I'm going home now."

  "You do that," he called after her. "And you mind what I say and quit upsettin' the folks at the big house, or you'll find yourself livin' in a shack the rest of your life. Hear me now, girl."

  Jacie heard him, all right, but longed instead to hear the voice inside her that Mehlonga spoke of so she could be confident she truly loved Michael.

  Till then, she could not speak the words Michael longed to hear.

  Chapter 2

  Jacie took a sip of the concoction Mehlonga gave her and made a face.

  "Drink more," he urged. "It will stop the pain in your head."

  "What is this?" She shivered with revulsion.

  "Boiled turnip roots."

  They were sitting in their secret meeting place, a grotto formed in the rocks by a stream running down through the mountains. Jacie thought it was uncanny the way Mehlonga always seemed to know when she'd come there looking for him, like today. She had wanted the company of a good friend, and before long he had come out of the woods.

  She forced herself to finish drinking, then said, "I want you to show me how to make it, because I want to learn all I can."

  He reached into the deerskin pouch tied about his waist and brought out a pinch of something green. Patting it on her forehead, he told her, "These are the crushed leaves of the tulip tree. They also soothe a headache."

 
; He was a stern-looking man, his face etched with wrinkles from many years in the sun. He had a hawkish nose, a short, spiky gray beard, and eyes that seemed to bore right into a person. He had a turned-down mouth that never formed any hint of a smile. He took life quite seriously, and life had been hard. "The remedies are closely guarded secrets," he said, "passed down from one family and healer to another."

  He described taboos surrounding the ritualistic gathering of herbs and plants. "If a poisonous snake crosses your path, it is a bad omen. You should return home and not work with your medicine for the rest of the day. Remember not to pick the first plant when you start out. It has to be left as a symbol to all plants that you know what their blessings are.

  "But enough teaching for today," he said sternly. "I feel something bothers you besides the soreness from your fall. Is it because the spirit has still not spoken to your heart, and the time is near for you to marry Michael?"

  She sent him a wry and mirthless smile. "It's your fault, you know. If you hadn't told me to listen, I wouldn't be worried about it." She leaned back against the rocks, and taking the crushed leaves from where he had stuck them on her forehead, she tossed them into the water below, staring as the current carried them away and out of sight.

  Mehlonga watched her intently but did not speak. He knew when to keep silent.

  After a few moments, she said, "Daddy says I should marry Michael, that he's a good man and he'll take care of me."

  "Is that what you want?"

  "I don't know. I only know that he is good to me, and he adores me."

  "As your mother has adored your father?"

  Jacie glanced up sharply.

  "Remember how we met?" he prodded. "You were only a child, and you were lost. I found you crying, and I took you back within sight of your home, but while we were together, you told me you wanted to run away because you were so unhappy there."

  Jacie remembered. It was the only time she had actually left, but there had been many days since when she wished she lived anywhere but with her parents. For they were without a doubt the two most miserable people she had ever encountered. Her mother seemed to cry all the time, and her face was a cross patch of wrinkles; her father practically lived at the blacksmith shop, working when he didn't have to, to keep from going home.

  They had fights, especially when Jacie's mother drank too much cider. She would whimper that Jacie's father didn't love her, and when he got mad, so would she, and they would curse each other. Jacie had confided everything through the years to Mehlonga but assured him she had no fears her marriage to Michael would be like that.

  "It might be if you do not love him as he loves you," Mehlonga countered. "He might turn to drink, as your mother did, which would make you angry, and then the trouble would come."

  "That won't happen. I won't let it."

  "Listen for the spirit to talk to your heart," he warned again, "as it spoke to mine to tell me I loved my Little Crow."

  Jacie made no comment, knowing he was slipping into painful memories of how he had lost his wife. He had told her about it, how when the soldiers came to take the first Cherokees forcefully to a reservation west of the Mississippi, he had been away, gathering herbs high in the mountains. When he returned, Little Crow was gone. He tried to follow after her, only to learn she had been among the first to die on the arduous journey when hunger, cold, and disease took the lives of one of every four Indians. Mehlonga had gone home and avoided the soldiers ever since, not wanting to leave the place where he and Little Crow had been so happy together.

  Finally he spoke. "Sometimes I think I would like to go there, to the west to join my people. I am getting old, and I would like to live my last years among them."

  "Would you really travel so far, not knowing whether you would be happy after you got there?"

  "I have not been happy since I lost Little Crow, so it makes no difference. It's just something I want to do."

  Jacie knew Mehlonga had loved Little Crow with a love too deep for her to comprehend and wondered if her parents had ever loved each other at all. Once, during one of her mother's drunken tirades at her father, she had screamed at him that he probably wished she had also died in the Comanche massacre that had killed her sister, Iris. He had stormed out of the cabin without answering. Her mother had become hysterical then, and Jacie remembered being horrified by it all.

  "Mehlonga," Jacie said quietly, "I've listened to all you've told me about love and spirits talking to the heart, but the fact is, Michael is going to ask me to marry him at my birthday party, and I'm still not sure I love him. He expects me to say yes. So do my parents. I don't know what to do."

  "And I cannot tell you what to do. Just keep listening, child. Just keep listening."

  Jacie was more confused than ever but told herself she had to forget about whether or not she loved Michael and just accept his proposal and endeavor to make him a good wife.

  After all, what else was there for her?

  * * *

  Michael took the white velvet box from the wail safe and went to sit down at his desk before opening it. Lifting the necklace from its satin cradle, he held it up to the light streaming through the window. It was exquisite, the diamonds glittering to compete with the stunning purple of the amethysts. The jeweler in Atlanta had followed his design but had to rush to complete the piece in time for the party. The amethysts had to be ordered all the way from South America and were a long time arriving.

  Michael was proud and pleased over the creation. He had wanted to give Jacie not only a special gift for her eighteenth birthday, but also something as a memento of the night he asked her to be his wife.

  It was hard to remember a time when he had not loved Jacie. They had grown up together, and by the time he was twelve and she was ten, Michael knew he'd never meet anyone prettier. She had hair the color of a crow's wing, but it was her strange and beautiful lavender eyes that took his breath away. That was why he had chosen amethysts for the necklace, knowing the splendor of Jacie's eyes would surpass even the beauty of those precious stones.

  Michael never had any doubts that he would make Jacie Calhoun his wife, but his parents were not pleased when they began to notice that he was thinking of her romantically. She was not of his class, they said, and he was expected to marry well, but he was stubborn and swore that when the time came, he would not court anyone else.

  The year he turned sixteen they sent him to England to study at Oxford. He argued that a planter did not need such an education, but they insisted he follow family tradition; all the Blake men studied at Oxford. And so off he went.

  Through his father's acquaintances, Michael was introduced to young ladies from London's finest families. Groomed to marry among their own class, they all had charm and grace, but Michael knew there could be no one for him but Jacie. And not merely because he found her so pretty. He loved her for her zest, her spirit, and when others raised eyebrows over her daring and sometimes unorthodox antics, Michael was merely amused.

  He made friends among his classmates, who took him to the streets of London to learn another side of life—the pleasures of the flesh. But those women were merely a harmless diversion that meant nothing beyond the moment, because he never stopped thinking of Jacie. As a child she had learned to read and write along with him, sharing his tutor at his insistence, against his parents' wishes, so they were able to keep in touch through their letters.

  His time abroad seemed to pass slowly, and Michael began to count months, weeks, finally days, until at last he was on his way home with but one thing on his mind—to make Jacie his wife as soon as possible, his parents' objections be damned.

  But fate had cruelly stepped in to decree otherwise, for Michael arrived home to learn that his father had died suddenly while he was in transit. The responsibility of running the vast plantation had fallen upon his young shoulders, and along with it, the obligation of the ritual of mourning, which could last from six months to two years. His mother declared the long
est period. Marriage during that time was out of the question.

  Jacie was around, of course, and Michael treasured what time he could be with her. She loved horses and could usually be found at the stables, but she avoided the blacksmith shop. Michael knew she was not close to her father, who was a cantankerous sort. Actually, no one liked to be around Judd Calhoun, but he did his work well, which was all that mattered to Michael.

  As for Jacie's mother, Violet, Michael yearned for the day he could get Jacie away from her. She was cold and distant to everyone except Judd, doting on him to the point of obsession, though Michael heard she drank too much sometimes and there were terrible fights. But Jacie never divulged family secrets.

  She also never complained that her mother mistreated her, but Michael had his suspicions about that, too, and felt her constant cheerfulness was actually a facade to hide the misery she endured at home.

  It had always seemed to him that Violet only tolerated her daughter, that she felt that Jacie was actually in the way of her adoration for her husband.

  But Michael could not dwell on his love for Jacie or his concern over her unhappy parents, because he was determined to show everyone he was capable of running the plantation at least as well as his father had done. By working tirelessly, he had succeeded in doubling cotton and corn production and at the end of two years was richer than his father had ever been.

  He was proud of his accomplishment but happier still that the time had finally come when he could remove the crepe band from his arm and officially come out of mourning. His mother would probably, as some widows chose to do, wear black for the rest of her life.

  He was still gazing at the necklace and dreaming of the happiness ahead when his mother tapped on the study door as she opened it. "Michael, I want you to—" she began, then stopped short. Too late, Michael put the necklace back in the box.