by Nora Roberts
“A what?”
“A woman of ill repute,” Liza said in a whisper.
“Oh.” Sarah’s eyes grew huge. She’d heard, of course. Even in Philadelphia one heard of such women. But to actually pass one on the street… “Oh, my. I wonder why she looked at me that way.”
“Probably because Jake Redman’s been out your way a couple times. Jake’s a real favorite with Carlotta.”
She shut her mouth tight. If her mother heard her talking that way she’d be skinned alive.
“I should have known.” With a toss of her head
Sarah started to walk again. For the life of her she didn’t know why she felt so much like crying.
Mrs. O’Rourke greeted her with pleasure. Not only had it been a year since she’d had a new dress, she was determined to know all there was to know about the woman who was keeping Jake so churned up.
“I thought you might like this striped material, Mrs.
O’Rourke.”
“It’s right nice.” Maggie fingered the cotton with a large, reddened hand. “No doubt it’ll make up pretty. Michael…my first husband was Michael Bailey, he was partial to a pretty dress. Died young, did Michael. Got a little drunk and took the wrong horse. Hung him for a horse thief before he sobered up.” Not certain what response was proper, Sarah murmured something inaudible. “I’m sure the colors would flatter you.”
Maggie let out a bray of laughter. “Girl, I’m past the age where I care about being flattered. Buried me two husbands. Mr. O’Rourke, rest his soul, was hit by lightning back in ‘63. The good Lord doesn’t always protect fools and drunkards, you know. Save me, I’m not in the market for another one. The only reason a woman decks herself out is to catch a man or keep one.” She ran her shrewd eyes over Sarah. “Now you’ve got a rig on this day, you do.”
Deciding to take the remark as a compliment, Sarah offered a small smile. “Thank you. If you’d prefer something else, I could-” “I wasn’t saying I didn’t like the goods.”
“Sarah can make you a very serviceable dress, Mrs. O’Rourke,” Liza put in. “My ma’s real pleased with hers. Mrs. Miller’s having her make up two for her trip to Kansas City.”
“That so?” Maggie knew what a pinchpenny the Miller woman was. “I reckon I could do with a new dress. Nothing fancy, mind. I don’t want any of my boarders getting ideas in their heads.” She let out a cackle.
“If a man got ideas about you, Maggie, he’d lose them quick enough after a bowl of your stew.”
Sarah’s fingers curled into her palms when she heard Jake’s voice. Slowly, her body braced, she turned to face him. He was halfway down the stairs. “Some men want something more from a woman than a bowl of stew,” Maggie told him, and cackled again. “You ladies want to be wary of a man who smiles like that,” she added, pointing a finger at Jake. “I ought to know, since I married two of them.” As she spoke, she watched the way Jake and Sarah looked at each other. Someone had lit a fire there, she decided. She wouldn’t mind fanning it a bit. “Liza, all this talk about cooking reminds me. I need another ten pounds of flour. Run on up and fetch it for me. Have your ma put it on my account.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Anxious to be off, Sarah picked up the bolt of material again. “I’ll get started on this right away, Mrs. O’Rourke.”
“Hold on a minute. I’ve got a dress upstairs you can use for measuring. Needs some mending, too. I’m no hand with a needle. Liza, I can use two pounds of coffee.” She motioned at the girl with the back of her hand. “Go on, off with you.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” Liza promised as she walked out the door. Pleased with her maneuvering, Maggie started up the stairs.
“You’re about as subtle as a load of buckshot,” Jake murmured to her.
With the material still in her hands, Sarah watched Jake approach her. Though she was standing in the center of the room, she had the oddest sensation that her back was against the wall. He was staring at her in that way he had that made her stomach flutter and her knees shake. She promised herself that if he touched her, if he even looked as though he might touch her, she would slap him hard enough to knock his hat off.
He had images of touching her. Of tasting her. Of rolling around on the ground and filling himself with her. Seeing her now, looking like some flower that had sprung up out of the sand, he had to remind himself that they could only be images.
He figured that was no reason he couldn’t needle her a bit.
“Morning, Duchess. You come by to see me?”
“Certainly not.”
He couldn’t help but enjoy the way her eyes fired p. Casually he brushed a finger over the fabric she held and felt her jolt. “Mighty pretty, but I like the dress you’ve got on better.”
“It isn’t for me.” There was no reason in the world she should feel flattered, Sarah reminded herself. No reason at all. “Mrs. O’Rourke expressed interest in having a dress made.”
“So you sew, too.” His gaze traveled over her face, lingering on her mouth too long for comfort. “You’re full of surprises.”
“It’s an honest way to make a living.” Deliberately she looked down at the gun on his hip. “It’s a pity not everyone can say the same.”
It was difficult to say what the cool, disapproving tone made him feel. Rage, familiar and bitter-tasting. Futility, with its cold, hollow ring. Both emotions and flickers of others showed in his eyes as he stared down at her.
“So you heard about me,” he said before she could follow her first impulse and lay a soothing hand on his arm. “I’m a dangerous man, Sarah.” He took her chin in his hand so that her eyes stayed on his. “I draw my gun and leave women widows and children orphans. The smell of gunsmoke and death follows me wherever I go. I got Apache blood in my veins, so I don’t look on killing the way a white man might. I put a bullet in a man the same way a wolf rips out throats. Because it’s what I was made for. A woman like you had best keep her distance.”
She heard the fury licking at his words. More, she heard frustration, a deep, raw frustration. Before he could reach the door, she was calling after him.
“Mr. Redman. Mr. Redman, please.” Gathering up her skirts, she hurried after him. “Jake.”
He stopped and turned as she came through the doorway. They were outside only a step, but that was enough to have the heat and dust rising around them. “You’d do better to stay inside until Maggie comes down for you.”
“Please, wait.” She laid a hand on his arm. “I don’t understand what you do, or who you are, but I do know you’ve taken the trouble to be a help to me. Don’t tell me to forget it,” she said quickly. “Because I won’t.”
“You’ve got a talent for tying a man up in knots,” he murmured.
“I don’t mean-”
“No, I don’t reckon you do. Anything else you want to say?”
“Actually, I-” She broke off when she heard a burst of wild laughter from the next building. As she looked, a man was propelled headfirst through a pair of swinging doors. He landed in a heap in the dust of the road. Even as Sarah started forward, Jake shifted to block her.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“That man might be hurt.”
“He’s too drunk to be hurt.”
Her eyes wide, Sarah looked past Jake’s shoulder and saw the drunk struggle to his feet and stagger back inside. “But it’s the middle of the day.”
“Just as easy to get drunk in the daylight as it is when the sun’s down.”
Her lips primmed. “It’s just as disgraceful.” Whiskey might be the work of the devil, Sarah thought, but she had promised Lucius. “I wonder if I might ask you another favor?”
“You can ask.”
“I need a bottle of whiskey.”
Jake took off his hat and smoothed back his hair, then replaced the hat. “I thought you didn’t care for it much.”
“It’s not for me. It’s for Lucius.” She was certain she heard the sound of breaking
glass from the neighboring saloon as she reached for her reticule. “I’m afraid I don’t know the price.”
“Lucius is good for it. Go back inside,” he told her, then passed through the swinging doors.
“Quite a man, isn’t he?”
Sarah lifted a hand to her heart. “Mrs. O’Rourke, you startled me.”
Grinning, Maggie stepped outside. “Your mind was elsewhere.” She handed Sarah a bundle. “Good-looking, Jake is. Strong back, good hands. A woman can hardly ask for more.” Maggie glanced over as the din from the saloon grew louder. “You don’t have a fella back east, do you?”
“A what?” Distracted, Sarah inched closer to the saloon. She hated to admit it, but she was dying to see inside. “Oh, no. At least there was no one I cared for enough to many.”
“A smart woman knows how to bring a man around to marriage and make him think it was his idea all along. You take Jake-” Maggie broke off when Sarah squealed. Two men burst through the swinging doors and rolled into the street, fists flying.
“My goodness.” Her mouth hanging open, Sarah watched the two men kick and claw and pummel each other.
“I thought I told you to go inside.” Jake strolled out, carrying a bottle of whiskey by the neck.
“I was just-Oh!” She saw blood fly as a fist connected with a nose. “This is dreadful. You have to stop them.”
“Like hell I do. Where’s your wagon?”
“But you must,” Sarah insisted. “You can’t simply stand here and watch two men beat each other like this.”
“Duchess, if I try to break that up, both of them are going to start swinging at me.” He passed her the bottle of whiskey. “I don’t feel much like killing anybody today.”
With a huff, Sarah thrust the bottle back into his hands and followed it with the fabric and Maggie’s bundle. “Then I’ll stop them myself.”
“It’s going to be a shame when you lose some of those pretty teeth.”
Taking time only to glare at him, Sarah bent down and scooped up the spittoon Maggie kept beside her doorway. Her skirts in one hand, weapon in the other, she marched toward the middle of the melee.
“That’s some woman,” Maggie said with a grin.
Jake merely grunted. “Got grit.”
“Go water down your stew.”
Maggie just laughed. “She’s got you, too. Hope I’m around when she figures it out.”
A little breathless, Sarah dodged the rolling bodies. The men were groaning and hissing as they struggled to land punches. The smell of stale whiskey and sweat rose from both of them. She had to scramble a bit for aim before she brought the brass down with a thunk on one head and then the other. A roar of laughter, then a few cheers, poured out the doorway of the saloon. Ignoring the sound, Sarah looked down at the two men, who were frowning at her and rubbing their heads.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” she told them, in a tone that would have made Mother Superior proud. “Fighting in the street like a couple of schoolboys. You’ve done nothing but bloody your faces and make a spectacle of yourselves. Now stand up.” Both men reached for their hats and struggled to their feet. “I’m sure whatever disagreement you have can be better solved by talking it out.” Satisfied, Sarah nodded politely, then glided back across the street to where Jake and Maggie stood.
“There.” She handed Maggie the spittoon. Her self-satisfied smirk was for Jake alone. “It was only a matter of getting their attention, then applying reason.” He glanced over her head to where the two men were wrestling in the dirt again. “Yes, ma’am.” Taking her arm, he started up the street before she could get it in her head to do something else. “Did you learn to swing like that in your fancy school?”
“I had occasion to observe the nuns’ techniques for handling disagreements.”
“Ever get knocked on the head with a spittoon?”
She tilted her head, her eyes laughing under the cover of her lashes. “No, but I know what a wooden ruler feels like.” Sarah glanced in the dry goods as she stopped by her wagon. Inside, she could see Liza flirting with a thin, gangly man with straw-colored hair and shiny brown boots.
“Is that Will Metcalf?”
Jake stowed the rest of her things in the back of the wagon. “Yeah.”
“I think Liza’s quite taken with him.” She bit back a sigh. Romance was as far away from her right now as the beautiful house her father had built for her in his mind. Turning, she bumped into Jake’s chest. His hands came up to steady her and stayed on her arms. Not so far away, she thought again. It wasn’t far away at all when it could reach out and touch you.
“You got to watch where you’re going.”
“I usually do. I used to.” He was going to kiss her again, right there in the center of town. She could feel it. She could almost taste it.
He wanted to. He wanted five minutes alone with her, though he knew there was no use, it was no good.
“Sarah-”
“Good morning, Jake.” Twirling her parasol, Carlotta sauntered up to the wagon. Smiling slightly she ignored the warning look he sent her and turned her attention to Sarah. She’d already decided to hate her, for what she was, for what she had. Her smile still in place, she skimmed her gaze up and down Sarah. Pure and proper and dull, she decided. Jake would be tired of her in a week. But in the meantime it would give her pleasure to make the little priss uncomfortable. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” Jake ignored her and kept a hand on Sarah’s arm to steer her to the front of the wagon.
Sarah didn’t recognize the basic female urge, the primal urge, to face the enemy down. She only knew she wouldn’t have the woman smirking at her back. “I’m Sarah Conway.” She didn’t offer her hand, she simply nodded. It was as much of an insult as Carlotta’s sneering scrutiny.
“I know who you are.” Carlotta smiled, fully, even as her eyes turned to blue ice. “I knew your pa. I knew him real well.”
The blow hit home. Carlotta was delighted to see it. But when her eyes skimmed up to meet Jake’s, most of the pleasure she felt died. She’d seen him look at men that way when they’d pushed him too far. With a toss of her head, she turned away. He’d come around, she told herself. Men always did.
His mouth grim, Jake reached for Sarah’s arm again to help her into the wagon. The moment his fingers brushed her, she jerked away.
“Don’t touch me.” She had to turn, to grip the edge of the wagon, until she caught the breath Carlotta had knocked out of her. All of her illusions were shattered now. The idea of her father, her own father, with a woman like that was more than she could take.
He’d have preferred to walk away. Just turn and keep going. Infuriated, he dug his hands into his pockets. “Let me help you into the damn wagon, Sarah.”
“I don’t want your help.” She whirled back to face him. “I don’t want anything from you. Do you understand?” “No, but then I don’t figure I’m supposed to.”
“Do you kiss her the same way you kissed me? Did you think of me the same way you think of her and women like her?”
His hand shot out to stop her before she could scramble into the wagon. “I wasn’t thinking at all when I kissed you, and that was my mistake.”
“Miss Conway.” Samuel Carlson stopped his horse at the head of the wagon. His eyes stayed on Jake’s as he dismounted. “Is there a problem?”
“No.” Instinctively she stepped between the men. Carlson’s gun had a handle of polished ivory, and it looked deadly and beautiful below his silver brocade vest. It no longer shocked her to realize that even a man as obviously cultured and educated as he wouldn’t hesitate to use a weapon. “Mr. Redman’s been an invaluable help to me since I arrived.” “I heard you’d had some trouble.”
Sarah discovered she was digging her nails into her palms. Slowly, stiffly, she uncurled her fingers, but she could do nothing about the tension that was pounding at the base of her throat. It sprang, she knew, from the men, who stood on either side of her, watching ea
ch other, ready, almost eager.
“Yes. Fortunately, the damage wasn’t extensive.” “I’m glad to hear that.” At last Carlson shifted his gaze to Sarah. She heard her own sigh of relief. “Did you ride into town alone, Miss Conway?”
“Yes, I did. As a matter of fact, I’d better be on my way.”
“I’d be obliged if you’d allow me to drive you back. It’s a long ride for a woman alone.”
“That’s kind of you, Mr. Carlson. I couldn’t impose.”
“No imposition at all.” Taking her arm, he helped her into the seat. “I’ve been meaning to ride out, pay my respects. I’d consider it a favor if you’d allow me to drive you.”
She was about to refuse again when she looked at Jake. There was ice in Was eyes. She imagined there would be a different look in them altogether when he looked at Carlotta.
“I’d love the company,” she heard herself say, and she waited while Carlson tied his horse to the rear of the wagon. “Good day, Mr. Redman.” Folding her hands in her lap, she let Carlson guide her team out of town.
They talked of nothing important for most of the drive. The weather, music, the theater. It was a pleasure, Sarah told herself, to spend an hour or two in the company of a man who understood art and appreciated beauty.
“I hope you won’t take offense if I offer some advice, Miss Conway.”
“Advice is always welcome.” She smiled at him.
“Even if it’s not taken.”
“I hope you’ll take mine. Jake Redman is a dangerous man, the kind who brings trouble to everyone around him. Stay away from him, Miss Conway, for your own good.”
She said nothing for a moment, surprised by the strength of the anger that rose up in her. Carlson had said nothing but the truth, and nothing she hadn’t already told herself. “I appreciate your concern.”
His voice was calm and quiet and laced with regret “But you won’t take my advice.”
“I don’t think it will be necessary. It’s unlikely I’ll be seeing Mr. Redman now that I’ve settled in.” Carlson shook his head and smiled. “I have offended you.”
“Not at all. I understand your feelings for Jake-” She corrected herself carefully. “Mr. Redman. I’m sure the trouble between him and your brother was very distressing for you.”