Golden Flames

by Kay Hooper

  Lifting the lamp, she carried it back to the table and placed it there. She stood there for long moments, staring at the cot holding Falcon, then went to build up the fire. He’d need the fire, need warmth. His fever was increasing, and there was no one but herself to deal with that. She had never been forced into a situation like this, had never felt the awareness that only her own skills could mean the difference between life and death.

  She had never felt so frightened, so alone. He could die here; the wound a handgun made in human flesh at close range was a terrible thing, and the risk of infection so great.

  She put that out of her mind. He would live, he would. She built up the fire, checked on Falcon again, and put on her coat.

  After that, she stoically dealt with the dead stranger.

  The rest of the day passed almost in silence, except for the steadily building roar outside. She gave Falcon hot tea several times, checking his forehead lightly with the back of her hand on each occasion.

  By nightfall he was burning up, and his eyes no longer saw her at all.

  She was no doctor, but she knew more than the average woman about wounds and fevers. She also knew medicines and healing herbs, that knowledge culled from a wide range of people and situations she’d encountered, including Morgan’s teachings. But her expertise was—in the end, she knew—useless after a point. His wound was clean and she rebandaged it once during the day; it looked healthy enough. It was the shock and fever that were dangerous.

  She kept him warm, wrapping the ends of the grizzly pelt around him, as well as her extra blanket. He remained still and quiet; not rambling even in his delirium; there was, she thought, something shut-in and remote about him. He gave nothing away.

  She sat near the cot, watching him, trying to fight off the pain that his arrival here had resurrected. Why was he here? Following her? Or following the man he had killed in this room? She couldn’t think about that man, that stranger who had been in the bookshop in New York; her mind was totally occupied with thoughts of Falcon, and there was room for nothing else.

  The bitterness in his eyes just before he fell haunted her, hurt her terribly. And yet, when he had been wracked with pain, his strength all but stripped away from him by the loss of blood and shock of his injury, he had touched her cheek and called her beautiful.

  During the night, she slept little. She unrolled his own bedroll and placed it on the floor near the fire, getting up several times to check on him. His pulse was fast, his breathing raspy, and his fever increased. By dawn, she was fearfully aware that even his own strength might not save him. He had been tired even before the injury, his face thinner than she remembered, his eyes rimmed with weariness. Too tired to fight off the shock of a terrible wound.

  She sat on the edge of the cot, bathing his face, praying silently for the Power greater than herself to give him the strength he needed. He had only one fairly lucid interlude that day, and it was while she bathed his face and looked down at him in helpless anguish.

  “Don’t cry,” he murmured, cloudy green eyes gazing up at her as a puzzled frown drew his brows together. “You shouldn’t cry over me.”

  Victoria hadn’t even been aware of the tears. Swallowing, she said unsteadily, “You have to get better. There’s no one but me, and I’ve done all I can. Please fight to get better.”

  “I have to get better.” His voice was idle, conversational, and his clouded eyes moved over her face intently. “You look so tired. You should rest.”

  “I will.” She brushed a lock of raven hair off his forehead, aching inside because she thought that never again would she see him like this, gentle and vulnerable.

  The opacity of his eyes increased until they were unseeing again, and his hand suddenly found her wrist and held it hard. “I didn’t mean it!” His voice was low and harsh, raw.

  “I know,” she soothed, with no certainty of what he was talking about. “I know you didn’t. It’s all right.”

  His hand tightened. “No, it isn’t all right…it was never all right. My cursed tongue…I say things I don’t mean…I hurt her. I hurt her, and she went away.”

  “It’s all right,” she whispered.

  “Tell her.” His hold loosened and his eyes began to close. “Tell her…I didn’t mean it.”

  Victoria hadn’t been able to cry when she had fled New York with Falcon’s harsh words ringing in her ears. But she cried now. She cried for both of them, for mistakes and deceits and guilts, for love and anguish, for words that should have been said.

  She buried her face in the soft grizzly pelt covering Falcon’s chest and cried for all of it.

  —

  She went out to feed and care for the horses, noting that his wore a brand. A shamrock. It awoke vague memory in her, and she remembered why after a while. Shamrock Ranch. The Delaney family. So he was one of those Delaneys, those tough, hot-tempered, hardheaded men. The Bar F was in western New Mexico, and the Delaney homestead in southeastern Arizona, so they were neighbors of a kind. And she had heard much of the Delaneys, news of large and powerful families being the sort that traveled.

  Realizing who he was gave her a flicker of hope. The Delaneys were known for many traits, not all of them good ones, but they were certainly known for their hell-bent strength. The voyage to America hadn’t killed them, the journey across a rugged new frontier hadn’t killed them, and, word had it, the Apaches had given up trying to kill them long ago. Not all had survived the years, of course, but the Delaneys beat the odds, it was said.

  And Victoria, remembering that, couldn’t believe that Falcon Delaney would die now because of a weaselly madman with a lucky shot. She refused to believe that.

  —

  By the following night, she was exhausted and drawn herself, and Falcon was deeply unconscious. She did what she could for him. She fought to break his fever, using every scrap of knowledge she could remember. She kept tea and stew hot. She didn’t pace, because it wasn’t in her to move needlessly, but she watched him through the hours.

  From time to time, she dug the handbill from her saddlebags and sat looking at it, smoothing the paper. Just a chance, of course, that one of Morgan’s killers had left this behind. Just a chance she could find them in Charleston, if not before. But it was a chance she believed in strongly, and she was, on some cold level of herself, conscious of the time ticking away.

  Once the storm passed, only one thing would keep her here. Only one thing could. Falcon. In truth, he was the only man on earth who could have interrupted her determined search.

  When she rose to check him near dawn, his stillness and silence made her heart leap in agonized fear, but when she touched his forehead, relief swept over her so suddenly that she nearly fell. His skin was damp and cool, and he was breathing normally.

  He would live.

  Looking down at him, she didn’t think, somehow, that he would make any more unguarded comments. He wouldn’t, she thought, say again that she was beautiful. He probably wouldn’t laugh. He wouldn’t say that he hadn’t meant it, hadn’t meant to hurt her.

  She wondered again—why was he here?

  When she went out to feed the horses, she saw that the storm had passed. Snow lay everywhere, blanketing the harsh landscape in a sparkling whiteness. She gazed around for a moment, feeling an abrupt surge of loneliness. Then she shook off the unusual emotion and went into the barn.

  When she returned to the cabin, she stood for a few moments at the window, a corner of the canvas lifted so that she could see out. She moved away finally and retrieved the handbill from her saddlebags. Smoothing it out against her thighs, she stared down at it for a long time. If she began moving again within a week, there was still time. Time to find those men before they headed for Charleston.

  But a wounded man recovered slowly. Even a hell-bent Delaney man. How long? Two weeks? Three weeks before he was well again? How long before he was strong enough to care for himself, to ride if he had to?

  Victoria sat at the table and l
ifted her gaze to the man lying so still on the cot. After a long time, she looked back at the handbill. She folded it up carefully, and returned it to her saddlebags.

  Sometimes, she realized, there was no choice to make.

  —

  When Falcon came to his senses, he realized immediately where he was and what had happened. But she…After what had happened in New York, he wasn’t sure of anything where she was concerned. He felt a savage bitterness that he now owed her his life, and the power of his own emotions kept him silent during those first hours of convalescence.

  Still, he couldn’t help watching her. And thinking. She fascinated him. She was miles from anywhere and alone. She dressed like a man, and wore a gun tied down in the manner of gunfighters. And she had been tracking two men on horseback with the skill of an Apache.

  But her hands were gentle in their touch, and there was nothing hard on her face, nothing cold or brittle in her manner. When she moved, it was with the clean, economical grace and coordination of muscles under unthinking control. She was alert to her surroundings, each sound obviously noted, without being at all nervous.

  Her face was calm, tranquil; her eyes gazed levelly with a thoughtful air of intelligent perception. There was a curve of humor in her lips, and a hint of vulnerability. Fine breeding was apparent in her delicate features, and strength in the proud tilt of her head. Her lovely face was almost imperceptibly thinner than he remembered, and there was, in her eyes, a hint of strain and the shuttered look of control.

  She was the woman he had met in New York—and yet she was not that woman. She was quite different now. He could see the strength in her, the strength that had been concealed beneath the silks and gloves and hats of New York. And it wasn’t that fragile strength of a young girl that he had glimpsed more than once; this was something bedrock inside her, something that had always been there but had never been needed.

  Until now.

  What fascinated him the most was that, for all her masculine attire, it was obvious that this woman knew she was a woman. It was in the straight, proud way she held herself, in the slight sway of her hips when she moved, and, most of all, in her eyes. She knew she was a woman, an attractive woman, and she was comfortable with that knowledge without being overly conscious of it. This was no woman hankering to be a man; she was female from her long, braided, blond hair to her small, booted feet.

  But she was here. Alone. Wearing a gun while she tracked someone. Her husband’s killers? Falcon had heard of Morgan Fontaine’s death before he could reach the Bar F, and he had seen Victoria as she had ridden a day or two out from the ranch. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that she was tracking two men—white men, because the horses were shod—and he was certain that the men she sought were Read Talbot and Gus Rawlins.

  A third man, Falcon had quickly realized, was also tracking someone. Victoria. And Falcon had tracked him, edging closer cautiously until the storm caught them all and the other man had hurried on recklessly. He hadn’t been given much time to study the man he had shot here in this shanty, but he had heard enough before he had burst in, and knew that the third man of the New York trio was now dead. He had also heard Victoria’s bewilderment when gold was mentioned, and he was almost positive that had been genuine. She knew nothing of the gold.

  But what kind of woman was she, in truth? So much a lady in New York that her deception had shaken him badly, yet here she was, clearly skilled in survival in an extremely hostile land. Alone. What kind of woman would discard her dresses to ride like a man and wear a gun?

  She asked him not a single question, and a glance told him that she had not disturbed his saddlebags; there was still mud encrusted on the buckles. Quiet, she seemed not to want conversation; seemed, even, to avoid it, and busied herself inside the cabin with cleaning her gear and, later, his own saddle and bridle.

  A fairly silent man himself, he discovered that the silence of the little cabin began to grate on him. There was, he knew, too much between himself and this woman. Too much left unsaid, unexplained. Too many feelings that had exploded between them with too little time to explore, to understand. Too many puzzles. Too many questions.

  Too much pain.

  “You’re alone now.” It was a statement, but a question as well. And a harsh one. He could still feel the shock of learning she had a husband, the betrayal of lies. The sickening knowledge that she belonged to another man.

  She was sitting at the table, repairing his shirt with neat stitches, while he lay on the cot and watched her. He was still weakened by the wound, dependent on her and painfully conscious of that fact.

  She folded the washed and mended shirt and laid it to one side. Those unreadable green eyes appraised him. “I’m alone,” she confirmed quietly. “But I can take care of myself.” Her voice was matter-of-fact and without arrogance.

  He wanted to say it more clearly, wanted to tell her that he knew her husband was dead. He remembered wet, green eyes and bitten lips, and wondered where that woman had gone. She had put a wall between them—or maybe he had, in New York. And in the riot of his emotions, he didn’t know how to break through it, or even if he should.

  She rose and went to the fire to stir the bubbling contents of the cooking pot. She had gone out just after dawn, returning sometime later with a jackrabbit, already skinned and cleaned. He had heard no shot, and assumed she’d set snares.

  An unusual woman. God, what an understatement!

  He felt awkward, uncertain, almost baffled by her and by himself. Had he apologized to her for what he’d said in New York? He thought he remembered doing so. She had saved his life when she should have let him die, had watched over him, bathed him, fed him, seen to his needs. She had said not one word about what had happened—and almost happened—between them, and her unreadable eyes made no accusations, no reproaches.

  But Falcon felt what was unsaid. And he was torn by his own knowledge of what she apparently had no awareness of. The gold. As much as he had wanted to destroy her husband upon finding out that she was married, he was reluctant now to tarnish a man unable to defend himself. And, even more than that, he was strongly reluctant to be the one who told Victoria the truth about Morgan Fontaine.

  She had haunted his days and nights since that first meeting in the city. She had driven him nearly mad with wanting her, drawn tenderness from some place inside him he hadn’t even known existed—and she had lied to him by omission. And he wanted to punish her savagely for doing that to him, for cutting him up inside. He wanted to tear down the wall between them and get his hands on her, he wanted to hold her. Kiss her. Touch her.

  He wanted to know, no matter how much it hurt him, how she had really felt about her husband. He had to know. He had to know that because it was tearing him apart not to know.

  —

  His strength was growing steadily, thanks to her deft care and good cooking, and he’d been on his feet several times as the days passed—unsteady feet, to be sure, but both were working.

  He should have been thinking only of the gold. He had to have his answers. All his answers. Had to understand the enigma that had haunted him since New York. The instincts he had depended on for most of his adult life were in turmoil, leaving him unsettled and uncertain.

  What was he feeling?

  Grimly, he waited for his strength to return. And it came quickly, because he willed it to come. On the fourth day after the fever had broken, he prowled around the interior of the cabin, fully dressed but for his boots. She had placed his guns near him as soon as he’d regained his wits; they were cleaned and loaded, and she made no comment. Her own gun was always within reach, worn in its holster whenever she went outside, and never more than a step away inside the cabin.

  He asked, finally, a question that had troubled him. “The man. The one I shot. Did you—?”

  She glanced up. “I buried him.”

  The ground was still frozen. Falcon thought about that, but made no comment. He stood by the window, a corner of t
he canvas pulled back slightly, looking out at the snow and absently fingering the dark growth of beard on his jaw. He didn’t know how to talk to her, how to begin to ask the questions he needed to have answered. And he knew that his hold on his emotions was precarious, to say the least.

  “Would you like to shave?”

  He turned to look at her where she sat by the fire, mending a broken strap on her pack harness. She was watching him, one brow lifted slightly.

  Falcon fingered his jaw again and nodded. “Lost my knife,” he confessed; hearing the rusty, unused sound of his voice. Had the silence gone on that long? It had.

  She rose and put water on to boil, and while her back was to him, he saw a slight movement he couldn’t interpret. When she turned back, a knife lay in her hand. The haft was about four inches long, the blade six inches, and it looked razor-sharp and deadly. He hadn’t seen a scabbard, but realized instantly that she carried the knife somewhere on her person—always. She laid the knife on the table.

  “There’s soap in the washbasin,” she said, nodding toward the battered tin basin placed on a small, sturdy table beside the water barrel. “I’m going to ride out for an hour or two and see if anyone’s passed this way.”

  He watched her buckle on her gunbelt, then reach for her coat and hat. He wanted to tell her to be careful, but he somehow knew that she was always careful. Always cautious. Always guarded. And where had she learned that? When the door closed behind her, he started to clean up.

  It was just under two hours later that she returned, and Falcon had found time to trim his hair, as well as shave and wash up. He’d told himself it was a simple matter of feeling better when he was clean and neat, but an inner voice jeered at him.

  Her eyes rested on his face, somewhat surprised, while she discarded coat and hat. “You look better.”

  He felt his ears warming, and swore silently. For Christ’s sake, what had happened to him? Where was his rage, his bitterness? “I feel better.”