Willow: A Novel (No Series)

by Linda Lael Miller

  Still, she was lonely—the house seemed big and empty without Gideon there—and she was used to living in town, where there was a lot of coming and going. Willow hastily dusted her floury hands on the apron she wore over her calico dress. Then, with decorum, she walked to the door to admit Dove Triskadden.

  Dove was not a young woman, but neither was she old; Willow discerned that she was somewhere in her early forties. And yet, standing there, with her curly mane of pale blond hair, wearing a tailored dress of mint green silk and nervously twirling a parasol to match, she was as attractive as any lady in town. Her waist was narrow and her bosom was full; it was disturbingly easy to understand why Willow’s own father found Miss Triskadden so attractive.

  Poor Evadne, Willow thought as she summoned up a questioning smile and greeted her father’s mistress politely.

  Dove’s dark green eyes danced as she stood there on the front porch, resplendent in her splendid dress and a dramatic hat with long feather plumes for accent. “Hello, Mrs. Marshall,” Dove responded, in a voice that was sweet and somehow lush.

  “W-won’t you come in?” Willow asked, stepping back and wondering what on earth one served to such a guest? Tea? Brandy? Something frivolous, like sherry or a fruit cordial?

  Alas, Willow had none of those things on hand; she could offer nothing but tea.

  Dove smiled and stepped inside the house, tugging at her fine kid gloves as she came. “This is a right nice place,” she said, in that musical voice of hers, looking around. “Of course, I’ve never been inside before.”

  Willow didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing at all. She simply started toward the parlor and assumed that Dove Triskadden would follow.

  Which she did.

  There, in that spacious and only partially furnished room, Dove settled herself into a chair and sighed. Almost immediately, her round, spirited eyes fell upon the piano. “Do you play?” she said, mostly, Willow suspected, to put her hostess at ease.

  Willow did not know whether to sit or stand. “A little,” she confessed.

  Dove laughed. “I play a little, too. That’s all it takes to make Devlin beg me to stop.”

  Willow leaned forward, forgetting her awe and confusion for a moment. “Do you know ‘My Love Lies Dead on a Sawdust Floor’?” she asked, her eyes wide.

  Again, the green eyes danced. “Now why would a sweet little thing like you want to play a bawdy tune like that? It’s a drinking song, sung in saloons, and it isn’t often heard in a lady’s parlor.”

  Willow blushed, but something in this woman’s manner told her that she could be honest, so she blurted out, “My husband, Gideon, asked me if I could play it. I think he was teasing, but I’d love to surprise him by learning the piece.”

  Dove’s full lips quivered with restrained amusement. “It’ll be a surprise, all right. But, sure, I’ll show you the notes.”

  “Thank you,” said Willow, delighted.

  With that, the two women went to the piano, and by the time Willow had mastered the boisterous and somewhat suggestive song, they were fast friends.

  After numerous cups of tea and much chatter, Dove came to the point of her visit.

  “Your father and I,” she announced crisply, “are going to be married as soon as it’s proper. That’ll be about a year yet, but I wanted you to know.”

  Willow reached tentatively across the kitchen table and touched Dove’s soft, jewel-laden hand. “I’ll welcome you as a stepmother,” she said.

  Dove suddenly stiffened, and her rouged lips puckered into a circle. “Oh, mercy, I almost forgot. When I said I was on my way out here, Charlie Evans overheard me and asked if I’d bring this wire.” She opened her beaded handbag and began rummaging through it, finally drawing out a folded piece of paper. “It’s meant for your husband, but you’ll see he gets it, won’t you?”

  Willow felt some unaccountable alarm tickle its way down her spine, just touching the telegram, but she smiled and promised to give Gideon the message the moment he got home.

  Long after Dove took her leave, Willow was drawn again and again to that sealed missive lying in the middle of the kitchen table. She was a ninny, she told herself, even to think about it, and nosy, too.

  Finally, though, when the feeling of foreboding became too great to bear, she peeled away the wax seal and unfolded the crumpled white paper. The message was hand copied, and it read:

  Gideon. Father detained in San Francisco. Hilda and I will arrive soon. You have some explaining to do. Daphne

  Daphne. The very name made Willow ache all over. Until this moment, she had denied herself any thought of the woman who had been engaged to Gideon, but that luxury was no longer possible. Daphne had obviously seen fit to fight for what she regarded, with some justification, as hers.

  Tears welled in Willow’s eyes and she slumped into a chair, her chin propped in her hands. What chance was she going to have against someone like Daphne, someone raised in a cosmopolitan city, someone educated in the finest schools, someone who knew how to behave as a lady should?

  Willow tried to comfort herself with the memory of Gideon’s lovemaking that morning, in—she flushed to recall her own lusty responses—the yard. The reassurance this gave her turned quickly to biting mortification. Good Lord, what man wouldn’t avail himself of a pleasure so wantonly offered, with or without loving her?

  Seeing that telegram through tear-blurred eyes, Willow knew for a certainty that Gideon had used her and that love had had no place in that using.

  After a few minutes of recovery, Willow heated the wax seal with a match and pressed it back into place. When Gideon came home from town, she was at the parlor piano, playing the song Dove had taught her with a gusto designed to hide her broken heart.

  Gideon laughed with amused recognition and came to stand behind her, his strong hands warm and wounding on her shoulders. When he bent to kiss the length of her neck, she shuddered and nearly burst into tears. Willow hammered at the keys.

  He sat down beside her on the long bench, his thigh hard against hers, and she felt those inquisitive eyes raking her, reaching inside her, searching the secret regions of her heart and soul. Gideon caught her chin in his hand and made her face him, and the music died away in miserable discord.

  “What is it?” he asked, frowning. “Willow, what’s happened?”

  Willow’s vision was blurred and shifting, but her pride sustained her. “You have a wire, from San Francisco,” she said, amazed that she sounded so calm.

  Gideon’s withdrawal was instant, and it was alarming. The color drained from beneath his tan and his hand fell slowly from her chin. Only a moment later, he was rising from the piano bench, looking down at Willow as though she were a stranger, an intruder.

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  Willow managed an idle shrug, though on the inside she was already breaking into a thousand splintery pieces. “On the table,” she answered with dignity, “on the kitchen table.”

  He hurried toward that room with an earnestness that wounded Willow even further. In less than a minute, Gideon was back again, though it seemed to Willow that a month had passed.

  “Daphne is on her way here,” Willow said, making no attempt to hide the fact that she’d read the wire intended for her husband.

  “Yes,” he replied, in a faraway, expressionless voice.

  Willow lifted numb, bloodless fingers to the piano keys and began to play. The song was too sad to share, and Gideon promptly left the house.

  8

  The Marshall house was out in the open, except for a stand of cottonwood trees rising around the pond, and it was there that Vancel Tudd took refuge in the predawn hours of a summer morning. Just after the sun came up, he saw the husband leave by the back door and stride toward the barn.

  Vancel thought dispassionately that for once the storekeeper, McCullough, had been right about something. Gideon Marshall was big enough to fight grizzlies with a butter knife, and he was probably meaner than
hell, too. Here, the bounty hunter reflected, was a man who, for all his obvious polish and good looks, was tough clear through. It was there in the way he moved, the way he carried himself.

  He wasn’t afraid of anybody.

  Marshall came out of the barn presently, mounted on a dancing black gelding, and tossed one lingering look toward the house before riding out.

  Vancel, still safely hidden from view, sighed. The weather was cold, since it was so early, but, as the day wore on, it would get hot, even under the shelter of those whispering cottonwood trees. Sometimes he wondered if Steven Gallagher’s hide was worth all the trouble and discomfort he’d already endured, not to mention the danger. That Gideon Marshall fella hadn’t looked like the kind to cotton to finding a man idling on his property and watching his house.

  Especially when he had a little woman in there, all by herself.

  Hatred and the twenty-five-thousand-dollar bounty on Gallagher’s head sustained Vancel. All he ever had to do, when he started having doubts, was to remember that time in Bannack, when the outlaw had surprised him in a whorehouse. He’d been wearing a nightshirt, Vancel had, and Steven Gallagher had literally nailed that garment to the wall—with Vancel still inside it.

  Vancel seethed with the remembered humiliation of hanging there, six inches off the floor of that whorehouse bedroom, bound by his own clothes. One way or another, no matter what he had to do, he would see Steven Gallagher dead. In the final analysis, it didn’t matter whether the bastard was shot or hanged, just as long as he died.

  Painfully, of course.

  Over the coming half hour or so, Vancel took pains to calm himself. If he was going to keep a clear head, he couldn’t be thinking about how much he hated Gallagher. No, sir, the thing to do was keep an eye on the man’s sister.

  She was the key to everything.

  When the rider first appeared, Vancel laid a hand to the butt of his pistol. He flexed his fingers, though, when he saw that this caller, whoever he was, was a stranger, a dark-haired man with fine clothes, tailor made to fit him.

  “Who the hell . . .?” muttered Vancel, squinting into the bright sunshine. But he still didn’t recognize the man.

  The rider dismounted at the front gate of the Marshall house, tethered his mount to the picket fence, then took off his fancy round-brimmed hat to run one hand through his hair.

  Vancel grinned, relaxing a little. Whoever he was, that feller sure looked nervous. Maybe that saucy little bundle inside the house was more like her old daddy than people thought. Sure would be interesting if the man with the big shoulders was to come back right about now, the bounty hunter thought. Sure would, indeed.

  * * *

  If Zachary Marshall had had any doubts about the advisability of calling on Gideon’s bride, they were dispelled by the puffiness around her pale amber eyes and the pallor in her cheeks.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked at the door, with a directness that neither surprised nor unsettled Zachary.

  “I’m looking for Gideon,” he lied, easily. He knew that his brother was already in town, involved in some kind of consultation with Mitch Kroeber, the marshal. “Is he at home?”

  The small, defiant chin lifted and there was a suspicious light in the gilt eyes. Willow’s dark honey hair had been pinned up loosely, and it appeared ready to fall down around her shoulders. Zachary’s fingers ached to pick forbidden fruit even as he reflected mundanely that Gideon and his heart-stopping little wife would surely have fair-haired children. “My husband has gone to town,” she said stiffly.

  Zachary flinched and worked up an engaging grin. “I see you haven’t forgiven me for my part in that unfortunate episode two years ago,” he said, properly sheepish.

  The lovely face relaxed a little, humor leaping in the dark-lashed golden eyes. “You were a scoundrel to take part in such a thing,” she announced, “and so was Gideon. Frankly, I’m surprised that my father hasn’t shot both of you dead.”

  Zachary felt it was safe to laugh. “He would have been justified in doing that, I’m afraid. The judge must be a generous-minded man.”

  Willow’s full breasts were tantalizing as they pressed against the fabric of her modest cambric dress; Zachary was careful not to look at them, even though they were bared in his imagination. Damn, that Gideon was a lucky bastard, and Zachary wondered if his brother had the good sense to realize that.

  She was about to close the door in his face, Willow was, and Zachary moved quickly to block it with his right boot. At the same time, he was careful to look ingenuous.

  “Couldn’t I come in, Mrs. Marshall?” he enjoined. “It’s a long ride back to town—”

  “At least ten minutes,” she retorted, with acidic humor, but then she stepped back out of the doorway and admitted Zachary to his brother’s house.

  “You must be pretty bored out here, all alone,” Zachary observed cautiously, as he removed his hat and followed Willow into a spotless parlor full of morning sunshine.

  Again, she gave him a suspicious appraisal with those remarkable eyes. Way back when, he’d envied Gideon this young woman’s obvious adoration. He’d gladly have played the groom’s role at the wedding two years ago, even knowing, as his brother hadn’t, that the ceremony was authentic. “What is the real purpose of your visit, please, Mr. Marshall?”

  Of course she didn’t trust him, and why would she?

  On the other hand, she didn’t seem to have any trouble trusting Gideon, now did she?

  Quiet, keen resentment surged through Zachary.

  He was the firstborn son, the rightful heir to the Marshall legacy, but Gideon had always been the golden boy, the bold one who acted first, who never hesitated to speak up and offer an opinion. Right from the first, it was simply assumed that Gideon would be the one to do great things.

  Zachary, for his part, was the charmer, the bon vivant, the good-natured but spoiled womanizer, of whom little or nothing should be expected. His mother, always and forever doting on Gideon, had merely tolerated him, often remarking that he was more like his father’s side of the family than her own.

  He shook off the troubling thoughts and took a seat in the chair he suspected would be Gideon’s favorite. He eyed the piano in a surreptitious glance and again felt envy, imagining Willow playing soft ballads at the instrument for the pleasure of her husband. “My name is Zachary,” he insisted, “not Mr. Marshall, and I want, to be honest, to get to know my new sister-in-law, that’s all. You’re not afraid of me, are you, Willow?”

  She seemed to be weighing him again. “No, I’m not afraid of you,” she answered, after several moments. “You do get your way with the ladies as a general rule, I rather think. No doubt you depend on flattery and the like, though, instead of force.”

  A muscle in the pit of Zachary’s stomach knotted tight and then leaped. Sweet triumph washed over him, only to be instantly displaced by the sound of boots on the front porch.

  As Gideon entered the house, Zachary sank down deep in the chair and devoutly wished that he’d spent the morning hunting rabbits—or doing just about anything else.

  * * *

  Willow’s throat constricted as she looked into her husband’s face. She had known a moment of hope that they might be able to talk. God knew the night before had been a miserable and lonely one, with them sleeping in separate bedrooms, but the cool flash in Gideon’s eyes boded ill. There would be no tender reconciliation this day.

  “I wasn’t expecting you until dinnertime,” she said, because someone had to make an effort. Besides, they had company, even if it was only Zachary, who was not, in her opinion, a person of substance.

  “I can see that,” said Gideon, his gaze fixed on the slouching Zachary and then slicing back to Willow herself.

  It was a moment before she realized what he was implying. When she did, she was furious, but before she could give voice to her outrage, Zachary rose diplomatically out of his chair and faced his brother.

  “Gideon, calm down. I ca
me out here to see you, not to court your wife.”

  Gideon’s broad shoulders relaxed just a little, though there was no change in his face. “Who is that fool hiding by the pond?” he asked, giving Willow a cool inspection.

  Willow lifted her chin high. Gallagher high. For Lord’s sake, did the man think she had a lover lurking on the property? “Unless you’ve been there yourself, I wouldn’t know,” she replied.

  Zachary gave a snort of laughter and then wisely recovered himself.

  Gideon was seething. Without a word, he strode to the closet in the hallway and pulled a pair of holstered .45s down from a high shelf. He strapped on the gun belt and then calmly loaded each pistol.

  “Christ,” breathed Zachary, “you hunting bear, or what?”

  Gideon’s answer was double-edged and sharp as a new razor. “Nobody creeps around on my land without giving me an explanation,” he said. “A damned convincing explanation.”

  Zachary paled a little. “Damnit, Gideon, it’s probably just some poor yokel watering his horse. You mean to gun down a man for that?”

  A muscle in Gideon’s hard jawline twitched ominously. “You’d be surprised at what I’d gun a man down for, Zach. Or maybe you wouldn’t.”

  The warning wasn’t lost on anyone in the room—it sent an ominous chill skittering down Willow’s spine—but when Gideon walked out of the house to investigate the trespasser, Zachary followed him.

  When the time came, Willow would be furious with her husband; for now, she was quietly afraid for his safety. The man by the pond would feel called upon to defend himself, and surely he was armed. What if he shot Gideon?

  The very possibility made Willow’s blood run icy cold through her veins. Gideon was a rake and a rounder, but she loved him too much to see him die.

  Let him live, God, she prayed, as she ran for the back door. Please. Even if he means to leave me and go back to San Francisco with Daphne, please, please don’t let him be hurt . . .