LEGEND

by Jude Deveraux

  A wave of guilt overtook Kady. “Marriage is very serious, and you must know that I will go back to my home the very second I can,” she said. “Aren’t you involved with some girl you’d rather marry? Maybe some woman is going to be furious when she finds out that a man she thought was hers has—”

  “Pretty much all the women in this town are in love with me,” he said solemnly. “Even the married ones want to widow themselves so they can marry me. Women follow me down the street like so many baby ducks. I have to change my sleeping place every night to foil their attempts to find me because they seduce me all—”

  Kady grabbed his arm. “Shut up, and let’s get this over with. The sooner this is done, the sooner I can get something to eat.”

  “After you,” Cole said, smiling at her and pushing the door to the church open wider. “Mrs. Jordan,” he said under his breath.

  Chapter 7

  KADY AWOKE BECAUSE HER SCALP WAS ITCHING FURIOUSLY, and there was something constricting her breathing. When she opened her eyes, it took her a moment to focus on the ceiling, which was constructed of closely set posts. Idly, she wondered when her landlord had redecorated and why he’d decided to give the rustic look to an apartment in Alexandria, Virginia.

  Turning her head, she looked about the place as she rubbed her eyes and tried to clear what seemed to be pounds of crusty sleep from them. A cabin, she thought, a mountain cabin. One room, very clean, all homemade furniture, blue calico curtains on the windows.

  Abruptly, Kady sat up as memory came flooding back to her. She was no longer in Virginia but in the mountains of Colorado, and the year was 1873.

  For a moment she buried her face in her hands and remembered all that had happened in the last few days, especially what had happened yesterday. Cole Jordan, a man she hardly knew, had escorted her into a church that was nearly crushed under the weight of the flowers that adorned it. Kady’s eyes had widened as she looked at the lilies and roses and great swags of wildflowers that hung from every conceivable surface.

  “There’s a wedding later today,” Cole had said, smiling down at her dirty face. “Or maybe the flowers are for us.”

  “Then they should all be dead,” she said quietly, not meaning for him to hear, but he did, and she felt bad for the hurt on his face. It really was nice of him to help her in this way; it was just that this was not what she’d hoped for her marriage. She’d wanted her friends there, Jane and Debbie, and she’d wanted to look beautiful, not as though she’d spent the night in a coal bin.

  As she walked down the aisle, she glanced up at Cole, saw the way the sunlight glanced off his blond hair, and she nearly ran out the back of the church. She’d wanted to walk down the aisle with Gregory, with the man she loved and not this stranger.

  A minister was standing at the head of the church under a lovely arch of greenery and tiny white flowers. Had this been someone else’s wedding, Kady would have marveled at how beautiful everything was. The choir was singing, but she could hardly hear them. At her wedding to Gregory, she had planned to have a soprano from the New York Opera Company sing.

  She hadn’t been aware when the minister had started the service, so she wasn’t aware when he stopped it. She was only aware when she felt the eyes of everyone in the church on her.

  Still holding her arm tightly as though if he let go, she’d flee, Cole handed Kady his handkerchief. She had no idea when she started crying. Not the great wrenching, noisy sobs that she could feel inside her body, just hot tears slowly running down her cheeks in a steady stream.

  “Don’t mind me, I always cry at weddings,” she said to the minister, then, after a confirming look at Cole, he continued.

  Somewhere during the short ceremony, Kady said what she was supposed to, so eventually she heard the words that declared she was now married to this man. Bracing herself, she expected him to kiss her. He had that right now, didn’t he?

  But Cole didn’t kiss her. Instead, he accepted the congratulations of the choir members, never letting go of Kady’s arm, and after a while, he led her out of the church onto the porch. There they were pelted with rice as the people wished Cole and his bride the best of luck and happiness forever. They also hoped the two of them would have a hundred children.

  Amid all the laughter of friends, no one seemed to notice that Kady didn’t say a word.

  Cole helped her onto his horse, then, still fending off pelting rice, he led them past the church, then took a left and followed a deep creek until they came to a cluster of log buildings. To their right was a large opening in the side of a mountain that could only be one of Legend’s silver mines.

  “The Lily Mine,” Cole said, the first words he’d said to her since their “marriage”—if that loveless ceremony could be called that. Cole dismounted, talked to a couple of men for a moment, then turned to help Kady down.

  He led her to a small white tent, and inside was a little table covered with a white cloth, a broken and mended ceramic vase of wildflowers in the center.

  “We’ll bring you some food in a minute,” one of the men who’d followed them in said. “You just tell us anything you need, Mrs. Jordan, and we’ll do our best to get it for you.”

  It was the name that nearly did Kady in. She’d so looked forward to being called Mrs. Norman, but instead she had been given this stranger’s name. “Thank you,” she said, but the tears running down her cheeks increased in volume.

  “Well, ah, yes, well, I’ll leave you two alone,” the man said, backing out of the tent nervously.

  As Cole held a chair for her, Kady nearly fell down onto it. She’d sold herself for a plate of mush, she thought, her head on her hands.

  Reaching across the table, Cole took one of her hands. “I’m not as bad you seem to think,” he said softly. “Honest.”

  She forced a little smile. “I know. I am being horribly ungrateful, and I apologize. If you’d appeared in my time, I don’t think I would have taken your predicament to heart the way you have mine. I wouldn’t have made the personal sacrifice that you have. I do thank you.”

  “Good,” he said, smiling. “Now, what do you want for a wedding gift?”

  “Soap,” she said without hesitation. “And a hot bath.”

  “Wise choice,” he answered seriously, making Kady give a tiny bit of a smile.

  She started to say more, but the tent flap was pulled back and in came the food, great quantities of it, all of it set on the table until it nearly collapsed under the weight.

  Kady lost no time digging in, reaching into each dish with her fork, not bothering with putting it on the chipped plate that had been set before her. Cole also ate, but he was more interested in watching Kady.

  “You like our Colorado cooking?” he asked.

  “I would like to see the man’s skillet,” she said, mouth full.

  “His skillet?”

  “I figure the cook has a skillet big enough to fry a whole sheep, head, hooves, and all, and he half filled the skillet with lard, then cooked all of this food in the grease.”

  Cole blinked at her. “How else do you cook?”

  So much information filled Kady’s head that she could form no words. She just kept eating, one vegetable, one meat indistinguishable from another. Even the baking-powder biscuits had been fried in the grease. But now she was so hungry she’d have to worry about her arteries later.

  After Kady had eaten all she could hold, she was overcome with sleepiness. Yawning, she said, “How far away is your house?”

  “Not far,” he said in a way that, had she been less tired, would have annoyed Kady. He said it as though the location of his house was secret, something mysterious.

  Kady didn’t meet his eyes because she didn’t want him to see what she’d already figured out. Cole was embarrassed that he was a poor cowboy, probably with only a horse and half a dozen cows to his name. His clean clothes to the contrary, she wondered if the place he lived in was any better than a shack.

  “It’s all right,”
she said softly. “It doesn’t matter where I live. I won’t be here long anyway.”

  He’d smiled at her, then tucked a curl of her hair behind her ear. “Where we live,” he said, then withdrew his hand when Kady pulled away from him, a look of fear on her face.

  Cole turned away but not before she’d seen the look of hurt on his face. He didn’t think this was going to be a real marriage, did he? she thought. He couldn’t. Not after all the things she’d said. Not after—

  “Ready to leave?” he asked, pulling back her chair.

  At least his manners are nice, she thought as she followed him out to the horse. Outside, the stars were overhead, and the night was quite cool, and when she was mounted in front of him, the position felt almost familiar. It seemed quite natural to lean back against his solid form, and feeling his strong arms around her, she fell asleep.

  That was the last she remembered until she awoke this morning in the bed, looking up at the cabin ceiling. As her memory came back to her, she peeled the pile of blankets and quilts back to see that she was in her underwear, what she’d stripped down to when she’d first seen Cole. It didn’t take a great detective to see that the space next to her, the side between her and the door, was indented from a larger, heavier form having slept there.

  Rolling out of bed, Kady knew that she had to stop looking at the past, what could have been, and start looking toward the future. She had to do whatever she could to get back home.

  Flung over the back of a pine chair was the wedding dress that had caused all her problems, and for a moment she grabbed the torn, dirty garment, then raised her hand to fling it into the stone fireplace where a nice little fire burned cheerfully. But something held her back. Maybe it was her belief that it had been Cole’s mother’s dress that stopped her. Neither his mother nor he deserved to have such disrespect paid to a dress that had been meant for happiness.

  There was a wooden chest against one wall, so Kady went to it, lifted the lid, meaning to put the dirty dress in there out of sight. But as she put the gown in one end of the chest, she saw what looked like boy’s clothes: shirts, worn trousers, underwear, even boots and socks. Kady was sure that nothing in the world had ever pleased her as much as the sight of those clean, soft clothes. Now, if she could only find a bar of soap and a stream, she’d be clean for the first time in days.

  But search as she might, she could find no soap. She did find an interesting heap of food supplies that she wanted to explore later, but what she wanted most, soap, was nowhere to be had. “So much for wedding gifts,” she said as she went toward the cabin door, still wearing the underwear, the boy’s clothes over her arm.

  For just a second, her hand on the door latch, she thought that maybe the door would be locked. When the latch lifted easily, she told herself her fears were ridiculous. Cole Jordan was a very nice man who sang in the church choir. He was not a monster who imprisoned women.

  The outhouse was in back of the house, up a little hill, or more correctly, further up the mountainside. Inside, Kady was intrigued to see a rope attached to one wall, a big blue calico bow tied to it. The rope went out through a knothole in the back of the sturdy little building.

  When she left the outhouse, she walked around to the back and saw that the rope led into the trees. There were blue bows tied every few feet along the rope.

  Curious, Kady followed the line, wondering where it would lead. Had Cole planned an ambush? A sexual tryst in the woods, maybe? With every step she took, she became a bit more cautious, hesitating now and then, looking about her in case he should pounce from behind a tree. They were married now, so he would think he had every right to do what he wanted to her, wouldn’t he?

  When Kady came to the end of the rope, she stood and stared, not believing what she was seeing. She’d always heard that Colorado had hot springs, and this divine little pool before her was obviously one of them. Steam rose from the warm water. Around the stone sides of the little pool were bunches of wildflowers and what had to be—oh, deliciousness!—at least six bars of soap. And there were three blue towels stacked on a rock just outside the pool.

  Tears came to Kady’s eyes. Cole Jordan really was the very nicest man! she thought as her hands tore at the fastenings of the clothing she wore. It flashed through her mind that he might be spying on her, but at the moment she didn’t care. When she unhooked the corset and it fell to her feet, Kady breathed a great sigh of relief, then took so many deep breaths of the thin mountain air that she felt dizzy.

  The other clothes quickly followed, and when she was naked, she cautiously stuck one toe into the pool. The water temperature was perfect!

  Never in her life had Kady enjoyed a bath as much as this one. The water was fed by an underground spring, so it was replenished constantly. She lathered her body and her hair, sliding down under the water to rinse.

  She probably spent at least an hour in the pool, until her skin was shriveled and her hair was squeaky clean. Reluctantly, she emerged and grabbed a towel to wrap around her naked body. When a comb fell from the first towel, she wasn’t in the least surprised, as Cole seemed to have thought of everything.

  By the time she got back to the cabin, she was a new woman. The boy’s clothes fit her quite well, if she belted them tightly so the pants wouldn’t fall down and rolled up the cuffs so they didn’t drag the ground. She was a bit large busted to go without a bra, but she wasn’t about to put that corset back on.

  She half expected to see Cole in the cabin, but there was no sign of him, so Kady set about organizing the food supplies. There wasn’t much variety: flour, beans, bacon, potatoes, dried fruit, dried peas. “How do I make bread with no yeast?” she asked aloud, then gave a cry of delight when she pulled the plug of a small keg and found it was full of beer. “Biga!” she said, giving the Italian name to the yeasty mixture that could be used to make bread. She could have used the potatoes to make the yeast, but beer would be quicker. Under the bags of flour was a crock full of butter and a basket of eggs.

  Within minutes, Kady had food started. She mixed the beer with the flour to make a mixture that would form yeast, scoured the enamel coffeepot with sand, and used it for clarifying the butter so it would keep longer. After drawing water from a huge barrel in the corner of the room, she put the beans in an iron pot to soak. She had to make her own baking powder from soda and cream of tartar before mixing a batch of biscuits. Climbing on the bed, she pulled an Indian pot from a shelf high on the wall and was glad to see that the inside of it was glazed. She set the dried fruits to soaking in the pot.

  Only when these things were done did she make herself an omelet. She hadn’t done much cooking in an open fireplace, but she always loved to try new equipment and new foods, so she enjoyed the heat on her face. There was an iron spider, a sort of Dutch oven on legs, rusting at the side of the hearth, and after cleaning it and smearing it with butterfat, Kady set the biscuits to bake in the coals. When they were done, she removed them, then made a cobbler from the dried peaches.

  By now hours had passed, and Cole still had not returned. Kady had no watch, but she could tell from the sun coming through the windows that it was late afternoon. He hadn’t put her in this cabin then gone off and left her, had he? she wondered, then told herself that could not be possible.

  When another half hour or so went by and still there was no sign of Cole, she removed the eggs from the basket and filled it with what she’d cooked so far. She’d found a bottle of vinegar, so now if she could just find something to pickle, she thought, she’d make condiments to go with whatever game she could find.

  With the basket over her arm, a blanket about her shoulders, and feeling a bit like Little Red Riding Hood, she set off into the forest to look for the Big Bad Wolf. At this thought she gave a little laugh, then told herself that this was definitely the wrong attitude. She had to remember that her one goal in life was to get out of this place. She didn’t have time to make bread and pickles. Didn’t have time to wander about the woods smel
ling clean, pure air that had never known the fumes of the diesel engine.

  Cole wasn’t difficult to find. Just a few feet from the cabin, down a sharp incline was a wide, deep stream. He was standing in it, naked from the waist up, a fishing rod in his hand, and concentrating on what he was doing. The sight of him nearly took Kady’s breath away. He was one beautiful man! His upper body was sculpted with muscle over broad shoulders and a deep chest, all of it tapering to a waist that couldn’t be more than thirty-two inches.

  “Ever done any fishing?” he asked softly, not turning, but showing Kady that he’d known all along that she was there.

  “I’m more familiar with what to do with them after they’re caught,” she said, trying to sound as though she wasn’t affected by the sight of him. With her eyes averted, she went down the hill to stand on a flat, grassy spot by the stream, then spread the blanket and put the basket down.

  When she looked back up at Cole, she could not control her involuntary gasp. What she had not seen from up the hill was that there were at least half a dozen ugly round scars on his torso that had to have been made by bullets.

  As though he didn’t know what could have caused Kady’s gasp, he looked down at his chest, then back up at her. “Hand me my shirt and I’ll put it on,” he said, looking at her in question.

  “No, that’s all right. I didn’t mean to stare,” she said, turning away, but she couldn’t contain herself and turned back abruptly. “Who did that to you? Those men who tried to hang you?”

  Cole was looking at the water, pulling on his fishing line, but she could see by his little smile that he was pleased by her concern.

  “No, it happened when I was a kid. When my sister and friend were shot, so was I.” He hesitated. “I made it, they didn’t,” he said softly.

  Looking at the scars, Kady didn’t want to think of the pain he must have gone through to recover from wounds like those.

  “I’ve been told that kisses heal all wounds,” he said and when she looked at his face, she saw that he was teasing her, his eyes sparkling.