Jack glanced at her, sipping his brandy. “I must say, Miss Alexander … Hannah … you do cut a striking figure.”
“Must you say so?” They shared a chuckle and a sip of brandy, hot in Hannah’s nostrils, a pleasant burn down her throat, warm in her belly against the autumn chill.
“Might I say so?” Hannah tilted her head a bit, then took another sip of the brandy, her only response. Jack went on. “By gads I have never been so wrong in all my life.”
This caught Hannah’s attention. “Not so striking a figure after all?”
“All the more so. But I refer to my prediction when we met, that one of us would surely fall for the other, and the poorer I’d be for it.” Jack shook his head and took another sip of Brandy. “Sure enough, that’s about as likely as the moon falling from the sky and crashing down on this very house!”
“Even less,” Hannah said with a chuckle.
“We finally agree on something,” Jack said as they clinked their snifters.
“And you'll profit quite handsomely,” Hannah said. “That must please you.”
“It does, I don’t see any shame in admitting that. And you’ll have the finest home in Indiana, perhaps the entire Midwest.”
Hannah gazed out over the hills, but her mind leapt from their conversation, from the house and the orchard, to the mountains.
To the mines.
“And your notion of mining for coal,” Jack said, “the more I think about it, the better an idea I think it is.”
Hannah tried not to show that she’d been lost in thought, or how amazed she was that he was apparently thinking something very close to the same thing. “And if you’re still interested in having me stay on, in a … a supervisory capacity is how I took it, well, I might be available for such a thing.”
Hannah didn’t resist the little half-smile, but hid it with another sip of brandy. “You may do as you like, Mr. Kincaid.” Reading the flicker of light in his eyes, one brow raised, she added, “Professionally, I mean.” She handed him her brandy snifter. “And with that, I shall bid you a good night.”
Hannah stepped back and into the dining room as Jack stood there, a snifter in each hand. “You’re leaving me two-fisted?”
“Good night, Mr. Kincaid,” was all she said. Hannah knew he lingered long enough to finish both snifters of brandy, but that she could sleep soundly with Don Bellamy on guard throughout the night.
*
“To a Mr. Seth Jenkins of the W.A. Burns Mining Company, Chicago, Illinois.” Hannah stood with Jack behind her, the Marion County telegraph clerk scribbling down the information. “Request a personal consultation on my property in Marion County, Indiana, at your earliest possible convenience. All expenses and time paid. Please confirm availability and estimated arrival.”
Jack said, “You sound pretty sure he’ll come.”
“Call it a hunch. Feel like a bite since we’re in town?”
“Only if you’ll let me pay.”
Hannah sighed. “You men and your appearances … and they call us the fairer sex.”
They stepped out into the street, Hannah taking another long look up and down in each direction. The town had really blossomed since Hannah had been gone, the population doubling twice, store fronts and hotels and restaurants all telling the tale. Carriages rolled up and down and turned corners where more blocks of new buildings rose like mushrooms to cover the plains.
Things were changing in Marion County, as they were for Hannah and for everyone else in the United States; gentry or laborer, free man or slave.
Two men on horseback, with wool sacks over their heads, rode around the street corner, each carrying a lit torch in the bright glare of midday. Jack’s hands on Hannah’s arms held her back, without any need. Hannah was ready to watch and wait, knowing too well the lessons of racing blind into any situation.
Her father had been lured into such a trap, and the memory of his death in payment for his carelessness was emblazoned upon her memory. She’d seen it first hand, and she wasn’t about to witness such a thing again much less suffer under its yoke herself, not if she could help it.
The men rode their mustangs up to a shot across the street, a bookstore by the fleeting glimpse of it. Without dismounting, they tossed the torches into the windows of the bookstore, shattering the windows and disappearing into the wooden structure.
Screaming erupted unseen in the store, just before two people ran crying out, a woman and her child, eyes wide with terror. They tore past the horses, the riders lingering at the door but disinterested in the two, obviously mere customers.
They wanted the owner, and they wouldn’t have to wait long to find him. A stout, balding fellow ran into the street, a rifle in his hands. One of the riders pulled his reins, this mustang rearing up, kicking its front legs into the man’s face. The rifle flew out of his grip and the fat little fellow fell to the wooden sidewalk in front of his store and under the horse’s murderous hooves.
Hannah broke free of Jack’s grip, stunned and ineffectual, and she was nearly struck by a passing coach on her way across the street. Her heart was pounding, anger seething in her as she fell in front of the fallen man and looked up at the riders. Seeing a woman beneath them, they paused, hesitating to do what they were clearly sent to do,
Murder.
The horses even seemed to change their disposition, frustrated, eyes bugging as they looked down at Hannah, her arm out, hands flat to stay them.
“Get outta the way, girl!”
But Hannah didn’t even have time to answer him. Jack arrived and stood in front of her, the horses scuttling backward just a bit as he pulled both Hannah and the bookstore proprietor to their feet.
In that frenzy and malaise, Hannah shouted at Jack, “What are you doing?”
“Saving your life!”
Jack pulled Hannah and the rescued man back across the street as the black smoke began pouring out of the bookstore. The men shot Hannah one more glare before turning to ride off, flames reaching up out of the window as pedestrians began screaming and running in every direction. Somebody shrieked, “Fire brigade, somebody call the fire brigade!”
Hannah, Jack, and the storekeeper stood and watched the building burn, the man attracting Hannah and Jack’s attention. He looked back at the two of them, first Hannah and then Jack.
Jack asked him, “What’s your name, friend?”
But the chubby man looked at them both, fear welling up to overtake the confusion in his expression. He pulled himself away from them and ran terrified down the street, eager to disappear into the crowd. From the other direction, bells clanged and horse hooves clapped en masse, the fire brigade finally about to arrive.
*
Sheriff Wendell Slaughter ran his fingers through his bushy brown mustache, graying stubble clinging to his cheeks and chin. Hannah and Jack sat in a pair of creaky wooden chairs on the other side of his desk in the small corner office of the Marion County Jailhouse.
“But you didn’t see their faces,” he said with a long, tired sigh as he raised a metal coffee cup to his face and took a long slurp.
“They rode mustangs,” Jack said, “one with a white swath across the right flank.”
“Lots of horses like that around here, mister. That don't mean much to me.”
“What about that poor shopkeeper?” Hannah asked. “He’s the man you’re here to protect. Doesn’t he mean anything to you, doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
The sheriff’s eyes sank to short-tempered slits. “Don’t you sass me, Miss Alexander. Things have changed since you’ve been gone—”
“And not for the better,” Hannah said. “Why did that man run away from us? Why won’t he come forward, why aren’t you interviewing him instead of us?”
“Oh, I’ll be interviewing Mr. Milton, don’t you worry about that.”
“Is that his name,” Jack asked, “Milton?”
“Eugene Milton, that’s right. And I’m to take it that you don’t know the m
an?”
“We don’t,” Hannah said. “I don’t need to know a man’s name to see when he’s outnumbered, bushwhacked in his own place of business.”
“And you stepped in,” Sheriff Slaughter said. “Almost got yerself trampled to death, for a person you didn’t even know.”
“That’s right.” Hannah stared him dead in the eyes, not flinching, staring him down to the very last silent second, neither willing to back down.
Jack finally interjected, “She would, Sheriff, believe me.”
“Oh, I do,” the sheriff said. “I surely do. Hardly matters anyway. Those boys weren’t working alone, and whoever hired ‘em’s gonna hear about your … noble act. Maybe they’ll overlook it.”
Hannah asked, “They who?”
“Not sure, can’t really say, could be a lot of folks … old-fashioned folks who don’t cotton to the shopkeeper’s … modern views.”
Hannah tilted her head, but Jack only looked away, as if he needed no further explanation. Hannah did, and she wasn’t bashful to ask for it.
“What views?”
But the sheriff just stared her down. “You really don’t know? Hhmm, maybe you been in the wilderness too long.”
“Abolition,” Jack said with a tired sigh. Under the sheriff’s suspicious glare, Jack shrugged. “I ain’t been in the wilderness for ten years, Sheriff.”
“No, you’re here from … from New York City.”
“Yeah, we know all about it.”
“And what’s your position on it?”
Hannah had heard of the anti-slavery trend back in Cutthroat, of course. But she was eager to hear Jack’s opinions on the matter. Jack seemed to feel the pressure of her scrutiny, and of the sheriff’s, and he knew each wanted to hear diametrically opposed answers.
Jack said, “I’m not for slavery, if that’s what you’re asking. But that’s a matter for politicians to work out. I build houses, and that’s all I care about. Is that clear enough?”
“For now,” Sheriff Slaughter said, turning to Hannah. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Your position, Miss Alexander.”
“It’s my own affair.”
Sheriff Slaughter smiled, his bushy mustache arching on his weathered face. “Miss Alexander, maybe you don’t understand what we’re talking about. There’s a war raging out there, and little by little it’s leaking into every city, every town, every heart and every mind. Even a woman, if she deems to assume the responsibilities of a man and not be content to stay in the kitchen or the bedroom—”
“I most certainly have a position, Sheriff. But I haven’t committed any crime, and there’s no reason I should have to answer to you, whatever my feelings on the subject may be.” Out of the corner of her eye, Hannah saw that Jack wanted to say something, to redirect her, but he was holding himself back and she was very glad of it.
“Unless Milton was committing a crime,” Sheriff Slaughter said, “unless I have to consider you a conspirator, an accessory to the fact—”
“What fact? Abolition is a crime? What about the First Amendment? What about freedom of speech?”
“What about inciting the public to overthrow the government of the United States of America? What about High Treason?”
“You can’t be serious!”
“I’m dead serious, Miss Alexander … dead serious.”
She stared him down, but the sheriff didn’t flinch. Finally she said, “I don’t know the shopkeeper. Ask him, I’m sure he’ll tell you the same. So I can’t possibly be an accessory to any fact, treason or other. If you find any legal avenue you wish to pursue, you’ll know where to find me.”
Hannah stood, Jack and the sheriff doing the same. “Yes I will, Miss Alexander,” the sheriff said with a tip of his hat, “I surely will.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hannah stomped down the street, Jack barely able to keep up. “What gall! He might as well have come right and say he’s in the South’s pocket. Whatever faction of the slave trade’s still holding power up here is holding him, tighter than a spring lover, I can tell you that!”
“I don’t doubt it,” Jack said in a casual tone.
“You don’t seem very perturbed by it. Of course, it has nothing to do with building houses, so what would you care?”
“I care a great deal, actually.”
“Then you simply lack courage to speak your convictions.”
Jack grabbed Hannah by the upper arms and spun her to face him. “No, I just know enough when to keep my big mouth shut, unlike you.”
“Something I hope never to know!”
“Hannah, listen —”
“Miss Alexander —”
“Hannah, listen to me. I don’t hold any truck with the slavers, none at all. But you can’t just go face-up against everything in life. Somethings are better dealt with in other ways, stealthier ways, more effective … less bloody … ”
“Such as?”
Jack looked around, chin grinding as he gave it some thought. “Let’s go get something to eat, give it some thought.”
“Is that all you do, eat?”
“Is that all you do, grouse and worry and fret and fight? I tell ya, you’ll make somebody a fine wife someday, that’s for sure … you’ve got all the skills for it.”
“And you to be some woman’s errant child!” A long, awkward silence passed between them, Hannah finally seeing herself as absurd as he must have. “Now that you mention it, I’m famished.”
“All right then,” Jack said, looking up and down the street. “Let’s see what we can find.”
An hour later Hannah sat with a belly full of venison chops and roasted asparagus tips bathed in butter and lemon juice, warm and tangy on the back of her tongue, and two glasses of cold beer. The piano jangled in the corner of the restaurant, not the fanciest in Marion County but surely the nearest and likely the most colorful.
“What are we gonna do about that sheriff?” Hannah finally asked after a meal of small talk.
“What’s to be done? If he comes against us, him or whomever he represents, we’ll —”
“We’ll be ready is what,” Hannah said, recognizing the slightly drunken slur in her voice. “We’ll have to be ready.”
“Agreed.” After a short pause, Jack said, “But there’s little to do about it until then. How about a dance?”
“I—? No, I hardly think—” Jack stood up, legs together, one hand behind the small of his back in a continental manner, his other hand extended to her. Hannah went on. “I just don’t find it appropriate to—”
But Jack took her hand anyway and pulled her up from the table and to the empty area near the piano player. The man, old and bony, stooped forward with a mischievous, toothless grin, caught Jack’s glance, Hannah could see their silent exchange in the corner of her eye. The old man went into a jaunty country two-step, and though Hannah had never danced a step in her life, she quickly discovered that she didn’t have to.
The music pulsed out of the piano, a discordant orchestra both deep and tinny, swirling up out of that wooden spinet and through the floors, the thump of the deeper notes resonating through the floorboards, into Hannah’s feet, up her legs and higher still.
But her focus was on Jack Kincaid in front of her. His blue eyes were locked on hers, cutting through those ever-errant locks of black hair falling over his forehead. His tall build moved with amazing grace around the cleared area, everyone’s attention falling to them, one-by-one. But Jack’s attention was fixed on Hannah’s, and hers on him. For her, it was as if they were alone in that room; nobody else to watch or be impressed or jealous, nobody in the town or the county, no other single person in the entire United States. There was only the two of them and that music, rattling every bone, stirring every puddle within her.
And there was Jack Kincaid in front of her, strong and tall, whisking her around the room with complete control and mastery, certainly of his every motion and hers. For Hannah there was no
effort, no thought, no control, no mastery. For Hannah, this was a wordless chance to abandon control for once in her life, to let fantasy and reality at last become one and carry her off in a tide of rhythm and tune, clang and thrust and swirl and dip. At last there was no worry, no forethought, no consideration at all beyond the immediate, beyond the physical.
They took a room in the hotel across the street.
Hannah could hardly control herself, and she wasn’t about to let Jack Kincaid or any man control her. She peeled his clothes away, and he hers. Their bare bodies were quick to reveal themselves in the shaft of moonlight streaming in through the window, Hannah’s proud breasts nearly hovering in front of her. Jack reached up eagerly to cup them, his lips and rough skin tingling as he took her hardened nipples in his mouth.
His manhood was hard and ready, and Hannah grabbed it with all the command and sureness streaming through her. Hannah was in full thrush of her personal power, no lilting wallflower to be plucked, no demure virgin to be taken by some great man. This was a moment Hannah had dreamed of her whole life, one she had come close to never seeing and more than once, and come too close to seeing against her own will. This moment was hers, and she was going to possess it the way she possessed everything else in her life, the way she would possess Jack Kincaid if she so chose.
Hannah splayed her legs and lowered herself over him, his length intimidating. But Hannah’s legs were strong, and they positioned her at just the right height, the precise position, and his head parted her lips with a welcome pressure.
She lowered herself slowly and Jack seemed to read her body, raising his own body to meet her in that sultry space between them. Her taut muscles pulled and clenched, pausing with just a few inches of him inside her, unable to take more before raising herself up a bit and then lowering herself again. She repeated the cycle, more welcome with every turn, slowly getting faster, the rhythm and tempo at her command.
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