“Let him—I’ll lock my door! I’ll have him arrested!”
“One door would not stop this hombre, I think. And the marshal, he would only laugh at you if you asked that your own husband be hauled off to jail.”
“Papa could do it! Papa could have Gideon thrown into the hoosegow just like that!” Willow snapped her fingers.
“Sí, but the papa is not here now, is he? No, he is far away, at one of his copper mines, and even when he leaves there he will not come first to this house.”
Willow lowered her head. What Maria said was all too true; her father would go to Dove Triskadden when his business was through, and remain with her until morning. And by morning, of course, it would be too late.
She would be ruined.
Forever.
And what of poor Evadne? Didn’t she deserve her husband’s attention, feeling the way she did?
“Evadne?”
“Mrs. Gallagher is resting,” Maria assured her. “I gave her a dose of her medicine and she spoke to me. I’ve already sent Pablito for the doctor, but I feel certain that there is no more to be done.”
Willow nodded, fidgety. Neither Maria nor Gideon seemed very concerned, but to her, Evadne had looked dreadful.
“You love the señor, no?” asked Maria, her tone gentle with knowing as she dragged Willow’s trunk out of the wardrobe and began to fill it with drawers and camisoles, dresses and nightgowns.
“No!” lied Willow. “I do not love Gideon Marshall. Wherever would you get such an idea?”
“Ah, but I know you too well, chiquita,” argued Maria with a smile and a pat of Willow’s hand. “You have loved him always.”
Willow shook her head. “No! I loved Lancelot—an imaginary man, no more real than Cinderella’s prince.”
“You love this one,” Maria insisted, seemingly oblivious to what was about to happen.
Willow was appalled. “Maria, how can you do it? How can you stand there, calmly packing my clothes, when you know I am about to be—kidnapped?” She swallowed and hugged herself tightly with both arms. “And worse?”
Maria chuckled. “Kidnapped,” she repeated, as though Willow had made a joke.
“Maria, Gideon doesn’t love me—he told me so himself. Suppose he turns out to be a drunkard, or he beats me, or—”
“Gideon will not beat you, though you will surely try his patience many times.” Maria seemed damnably certain of that, and Willow wondered why.
Despondent, she sank down onto the edge of her bed. What was happening to her? She knew that Gideon intended to track down her brother, for heaven’s sake, and yet she would have gone with him willingly, glad to be his wife, if only he’d said he loved her.
Maria paused to place a gentle hand beneath Willow’s chin. “Little one, do not fear. He does love you, your Gideon.”
“He came right out and said he didn’t!”
“Then he lies or, perhaps, he has not yet recognized his feelings for what they are. Chiquita, the señor burns for you. This is in his eyes. In his breath. In the way his hands want to reach for you, and he must still them.”
“That’s only lust!” Willow protested vehemently.
But Maria would make no further comment. She went placidly back to the packing, and when it was finished, she left Willow to her musings to go and make sure Pablito had gone on his errand, then to sit with Evadne until the doctor arrived.
Willow was bending out of her window, trying to decide whether she could jump and escape to freedom without breaking one or both legs, when the door of her bedroom opened behind her. She whirled, expecting to see Gideon standing there.
Instead, she was confronted with a wild-eyed, distraught-looking Evadne. Her dark hair, always elegantly coiffed, tumbled down over her shoulders, reaching past her waist.
“What did you do to entice my son?” the woman demanded, in strange, slurred tones.
For a moment, Willow was too taken aback to speak. Had Evadne—proper and temperate Evadne—been partaking of spirits? “Entice your son? Evadne, I didn’t—”
“You’re exactly like your mother!” Evadne broke in, and her voice was shrill now. She trembled with indignation. “Leaving one man, taking up with another, doing whatever you want, no matter who gets hurt! Well, I won’t let you poison Gideon’s life the way Chastity did Devlin’s. Do you hear me, Willow? I will not permit you to spoil his chance to be happy with a suitable woman!”
A suitable woman.
Evadne was referring, of course, to Daphne Roberts.
What made Daphne “suitable,” Willow wondered, unexpectedly injured, and why wasn’t she suitable, too?
A thousand protests leaped into Willow’s mind, but she did not give voice to any of them. It was Evadne who had been poisoned, with hatred and with bitterness, but trying to reason with her now would be useless.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Willow said finally, as compassion swept through her. “The truth is that I love Gideon very much.”
“Love him?” scoffed Evadne. “No one in this misguided family has any conception of the meaning of that word!”
Willow blinked back tears. “My father loves you, Evadne.”
Evadne fell against the doorjamb, and the dearth of color in her face was frightening. “Does he? Does he, Willow? They why, pray tell, does he spend every free moment with that Triskadden woman?”
Sympathy for her stepmother swept over Willow in a crushing wave; she went to Evadne, took her arm, guided her to a chair. “Please. You mustn’t upset yourself so—you don’t look well—”
“Don’t touch me!” Evadne shrieked.
“What is wrong?” Maria queried anxiously, from the open doorway.
Willow looked at the housekeeper in relief and pleaded, “Maria, has the doctor arrived? Mrs. Gallagher is not well.”
“I am not ill!” screamed Evadne, flinging away the hand that Maria extended to her.
Over Evadne’s head, Maria’s worried brown eyes met Willow’s gaze. “The señora needs to rest. Help me take her back to her room, chiquita. The doctor is on his way.”
Surprisingly, Evadne allowed herself to be squired to her own chamber, but she muttered senselessly the whole way. When she had been settled on the bed, Maria and Willow left the room to confer in the hallway.
“You will go to meet the doctor, chiquita, and beg him to hurry,” Maria commanded. “Quickly, por favor.”
Willow had never loved Evadne—the woman had not permitted that—but she was genuinely worried about her father’s wife. “What about Papa? Shouldn’t he be here, too?”
Maria considered. “He will be with the woman now. I do not want you going there. You go and tell the doctor that Mrs. Gallagher is worse than we thought, and I will send Juan for the judge.”
Under other circumstances, Willow would have been disappointed not to be sent on such an errand, for she had always wanted a close look at the notorious Dove Triskadden, who had once been, it was rumored, the queen of a great Chicago bordello. Now, with Evadne so ill, Willow knew her curiosity about her father’s mistress had to be put aside.
She bounded down the stairs, out through the front doors, and over the walk. At the gate, she encountered Gideon.
Having forgotten his ultimatum in the emergency, Willow stopped and waited for him to step aside.
“Are you ready to leave?” he asked.
“Your lust will have to wait, Mr. Marshall,” she informed her “husband” in a scathing undertone. “I’m off to see what’s keeping Dr. McDonald.”
“What?”
“Something is terribly wrong with your mother,” Willow said, though not without kindness, pushing past him, wrenching at the gate until the catch gave way.
At this, Gideon bolted toward the house and Willow was free to seek out the doctor.
Devlin Gallagher was hopping awkwardly about on one foot, struggling into his left boot. “How serious is it?” he snapped, as Juan waited just inside Dove’s back door.
The
boy shrugged. “I do not know, señor. My cousin Maria, she say to come here, bring you back. She sent me for the doctor earlier.”
Calmly, Dove Triskadden handed her harried lover his coat. At Devlin’s beleaguered look, she simply smiled, very sadly and very gently, and said, “Go. I’ll be all right.”
Heedless of the young man who awaited him, within earshot, Devlin kissed Dove briefly but with conviction and replied, “I love you.”
“Go home,” insisted Dove as her fingers brushed his cheek in farewell.
* * *
Willow grasped Dr. McDonald’s frayed coat sleeve the moment he stepped out of Evadne’s room. There were deep lines in the man’s face and his eyes were averted.
“Well?” pleaded Willow. “What’s wrong? Will my stepmother get better?”
Perhaps reading something in the doctor’s manner that Willow had missed, Gideon thrust himself away from the wall he’d been leaning against and closed his hands gently over her shoulders.
“Mrs. Gallagher has suffered some sort of apoplectic fit,” the physician said wearily. “She may linger a few days, a few weeks—or only a few hours. I’m sorry.”
Willow looked wildly to Gideon, saw him close his eyes and saw the color seep out of his face. “Oh my God,” he whispered raggedly.
Guilt encompassed Willow. Had she caused this thing to happen by being so troublesome to Evadne, always talking back, stirring things up? Oh, God in heaven, why had she baited the woman the way she had? Why?
Overcome, Willow cried out and groped down the stairs, nearly falling before Gideon caught up to her, midway down, and pulled her into his arms.
“Willow,” he said, his breath warm in her tangled hair, holding on as she tried in vain to wrench free of him. She wanted to run from him and from her feelings and from the terrible thing that had befallen her stepmother. She wanted to escape the awareness that she’d never loved her father’s wife, and the sense that she’d brought this calamity on somehow. “Willow!”
She cried out in anguish and then began to sob. “I made her so angry . . . I’m to blame for this—”
“No,” Gideon rasped. “No.”
And then he lifted Willow into his arms and carried her back upstairs and into her room, Maria appearing in the corridor to lead the way.
Willow felt herself being lowered carefully to the bed. Her entire body was wracked by sobs, deep, dry, angry sobs that came from the depths of her and were not stopped until after the laudanum Dr. McDonald administered had taken effect.
Gideon and the doctor had both left the room by the time Maria began undressing Willow and helping her into a nightgown.
“Rest now, chiquita,” the older woman urged, her eyes bright with tears. “Rest.”
Willow was too befuddled to speak, and the room kept going in and out of focus, while the bed seemed to have all the substance of a wispy summer cloud. After Maria had gone—did she dream it?—Gideon came into the room, sat down nearby, then touched her cheek.
Willow smiled at him and for a few moments none of the dreadful things that had been happening were real after all. It was all a bad dream.
“Lancelot,” she sighed.
Gruffly, brokenly, Gideon laughed, and his fingers were warm where they caressed her face. “At your willing service, m’lady,” he answered.
Willow smiled again and allowed the fog of sleep rising up around her to carry her away with it.
* * *
It was late and there were voices, angry voices. Willow listened but could not make out the words or the identities of the speakers.
Curious, she got out of bed, scrambled into her wrapper, and crept into the hallway and down the stairs.
“You were with your whore, you son of a bitch!” Gideon yelled. “My mother is dying and you were with your goddamned whore!”
Willow froze outside the closed doors of her father’s study.
“Dove Triskadden is not a whore,” replied the judge, with admirable evenness of tone, “and I will thank you to keep your voice down, Gideon. It’s the middle of the night and this mother you speak of so fondly is gravely ill.”
“You don’t give a damn, either, do you?” Gideon retorted, his voice torn, raw with grief. “You’re probably hoping she’ll die. That would solve a lot of your problems, wouldn’t it, Judge?”
Fury at this cruel accusation surged through Willow’s numb little frame like lightning blazing down a metal rain-spout. She wrenched open one of the doors and stormed inside, pausing only when she found herself face-to-face with Gideon Marshall.
“Don’t you ever speak to my papa like that again!”
Devlin sighed heavily and leaned back against his desk. “Willow,” he scolded. “That’s enough. Go back upstairs and—”
She whirled, glared at him. “Don’t you dare tell me to go back to bed!” she warned. “I’m not a child, to be sent here and there, seen and not heard.”
Devlin’s look was stern, and his sorrow was plain to see. “Leave us,” he said. “Please.”
Willow’s gaze swung, full of fury, back to Gideon. She was about to let loose with a tongue-lashing, but the words were stopped in her throat by the anguish she saw in his face. She knew then that Gideon had attacked her father because of this, because he was in terrible pain, and not because he’d meant any of the awful things he’d said.
One glance at Devlin revealed that he had understood all along.
“I’m sorry, Gideon,” Willow said softly. “About your mother, I mean.”
Gideon looked haggard; he was pale and his eyes were distracted and his shirt was so rumpled he might have slept in it. Yet he smiled. “I did like it better, I admit, when you called me Lancelot.”
Willow flinched, then felt color pound over her cheekbones. Oh, Lord in heaven, had she really said that? Had she really called him by that silly, treasured name? “I guess I’ll go to bed,” she said, averting her eyes.
Devlin grasped the half-filled glass of whiskey on the edge of his desk and took a deep draft, then turned away to stand, shoulders slumped, at the window. Gideon and Willow might not have been within a hundred miles for all the notice he paid them.
Outside the study, in the darkened hallway, Willow looked up at Gideon’s shattered face and longed to comfort him, in the way a woman comforts a man. “I’m sorry about your mother, Gideon,” she said again.
Torment darkened his eyes to a deeper shade of green, and he rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Why wasn’t I better to her, Willow?” Gideon asked hoarsely. “Why?”
Because she loved Gideon Marshall, no matter what he had done in the past or meant to do in the future, because he needed her, Willow lifted her hands to the sides of his face. “Hush,” she said, and when his lips fell to hers, with desperation, she welcomed them. Welcomed him.
When the kiss ended, Willow caught her husband’s hand in her own and led him slowly up the stairs. If Gideon wanted her now, she would give herself, without any regrets.
But, at the door of her bedroom, he balked. “Willow . . .”
She pulled him inside the room; slowly, in the silver light of the moon, she unbuttoned his wrinkled shirt, then removed it. “I love you,” she whispered, even though she knew that she shouldn’t have confided such a secret.
Showing no sign that he’d heard her, Gideon groaned as Willow’s hands smoothed the mat of golden maple hair glimmering on his chest, stopping to toy with his nipples, caressing the powerful muscles of his shoulders and upper arms.
Acting strictly on instinct, Willow tasted one of the masculine nipples cosseted in toasty down and knew wonder and delight when it grew taut against her tongue. Gideon moaned; heartened, she stood on tiptoe, then caught his earlobe lightly between her teeth.
With a hoarse cry of response, Gideon took her face between strong hands and lifted it. “Willow, do you know what is going to happen if you don’t stop? If you don’t stop right now and order me out of this room? God help me, if you don’t tell me to, I won
’t be able to go!”
“You did say we were going to live together as husband and wife, didn’t you?” Willow whispered back. “Just this very day, in fact.”
“Yes. And I behaved like an obnoxious idiot.”
Willow reached up to trace his taut lips with an index finger. “Hush, Gideon,” she said.
5
Devlin Gallagher finished his drink and set the glass aside resolutely. Then he made his way up the stairway to Evadne’s room, the room he had been barred from since the night Steven had appeared, with Willow and Maria, the servant woman, in tow.
A long time ago, now.
A decade.
He lifted his hand to knock, shook his head distractedly, and opened the door.
Evadne was awake. Devlin sensed that as he approached the bedside, struck a match, and lit the fancy globe lamp on the nightstand.
There were no words to say, not at first. For almost a minute, Devlin simply stood there, staring down at the ravaged face framed in dark, tangled hair, and saw accusations flare in the eyes that had once adored him without reservation.
Devlin drew up a chair and sat down at the bedside. He had loved this woman once, in a comfortable, settled way. She had been a good wife to him, restored his faith in her gender, tried hard to accept Willow as a daughter.
He despaired, truly and deeply, at her suffering. “I’m sorry,” he finally managed to say, in a gruff undertone.
One side of Evadne’s face was slightly out of line with the other and she couldn’t speak. Still, it was as though she had shouted an ugly challenge; Devlin flinched and momentarily closed his eyes.
Cautiously, he reached out and took Evadne’s hand, held it. Even now, in this desperate hour, he could not find words to reach her, to comfort her. She seemed to hold herself apart from him in some inexplicable way.
He knew he deserved it.
His eyes clouded with tears of frustration and grief. Devlin kept his vigil through the night hours.
Just before dawn, with no fuss at all, Evadne Gallagher died.
* * *
Willow sat up in bed, arms wrapped around her knees, and studied the man sleeping naked beside her. Who would have thought, to see them in this intimate state, that they had not made love during the night? No, Gideon had talked, in the hoarse tones of bereavement, and he had even wept a little once, in Willow’s arms, but he had not taken her.
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