Nor did he speak during the drive into town.
When they reached Devlin’s front door, Gideon knocked hard. His manner was cold and deliberate and he remained as silent as a stone, except for the knocking. Why didn’t he rage at her? Why didn’t he indicate, in some way, whether he understood what she’d done?
She’d had no choice but to pretend that Steven was dead.
Devlin himself opened the door, looking sleep-fogged and gaunt. He’d pulled on a pair of trousers, but his shirt was misbuttoned and left much of his chest bare.
Looking at him, in that brief moment while he tried to absorb the fact that he had guests in the middle of the night, Willow suddenly realized the full depths of what her father had suffered, was suffering still. A compassionate word from her would have saved him so much pain.
Impatient, Gideon gave her a slight push forward. The command was silent, but it was not to be disobeyed.
“Papa,” Willow blurted out, “I-I have something to t-tell you.”
Devlin peered at her, yawned, and ran one hand through this thick, graying hair. And suddenly he was completely alert. “Come in, then,” he barked, leading the way into his study.
There he lit the lamps and fastened the study doors while Gideon sank into a chair, looking quietly fierce, and Willow paced back and forth along the hearth.
“Well?” demanded Devlin Gallagher, perched on the edge of his desk. Obviously, he sensed that the visit was important, but he could have no way of guessing just how important.
Willow flung one desperate look at her husband and knew that she would find no help from him. No sympathy. “The-the man in that grave across the s-street isn’t Steven,” she said.
Devlin tensed, glaring at his daughter. After a moment of thunderous silence, he stood, crossed to her, and stayed her pacing by grasping her shoulders and looking right into her eyes. “What are you saying?” he rasped, and she could see that he wanted desperately to hope, but was afraid to. “You can’t mean?”
Tears began to trickle down Willow’s cheeks. “Steven is alive, Papa,” she said, ashamed. Why hadn’t she told him? Why hadn’t she listened to Daphne and Steven, who had argued that Devlin had a right to know?
A hoarse sob came from the depths of Devlin’s powerful chest and rumbled in his throat. “God in heaven, how?”
Willow could not speak for her misery, and Gideon did not seem inclined to intervene.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Devlin asked, croaking out the words.
“I was afraid,” Willow managed to reply, shaken in the face of her father’s obvious anger and shock. “I thought word would get out, that Vancel Tudd would go after Steven again, with a vengeance, and succeed this time—”
Shaking his head, Devlin cut her off. “Where is Steven now? He’s well? Safe?”
“I don’t know where he is, Papa. But he is well and as safe as can be expected.”
“When did you see your brother last?”
Willow felt bereft, as though the two men in this room had set some sort of barrier between themselves and her. Perhaps neither of them would ever love or trust her again. “Steven comes to the pond s-sometimes,” she finally admitted, casting one frightened look in Gideon’s direction. “I’ve been meeting him there.”
For the first time since their arrival at her father’s house, Gideon spoke. “That’s why you’ve been wandering outside,” he said. He wasn’t asking, though. He was confirming something he’d already guessed on his own.
Willow nodded.
“God in heaven,” moaned Devlin distractedly. “I should have guessed!”
Willow searched his face for any sign of forgiveness. “Papa, I . . .”
He withdrew a step, looking at her as though she were a stranger. “Willow, I have grieved,” he marveled brokenly. “I have wept and paced and anguished over the loss of my son, over all the ways I failed him—”
“I thought I was doing the right thing, Papa!”
Gideon made a gruff, disgusted sound and stood up. “Anything for Steven,” he said, on his way toward the closed doors of the study.
Willow knew a swift, slicing fear, then stretched out a feeble hand toward him. “Gideon, wait, please.”
He turned, surveying her in one scathing glance, and then smiled grimly at her father. “I leave you your daughter, sir,” he said to Devlin. “God help you, my friend.”
With that, Gideon was gone and the room seemed to pulse in reaction. Devastated, Willow looked up at her father’s face, certain that he, too, would turn away from her. “Papa.”
Devlin sighed and embraced his daughter. “I know, sweetheart,” he conceded, after a moment. “I know you believed you were doing the right thing.”
* * *
The next morning, Gideon made his way back to the Gallagher house, though he hadn’t come there to see Willow.
Standing in the sunlit kitchen, he flung the careful records that Marshal Mitch Kroeber had kept directly in front of Jack Roberts, nearly upsetting the man’s coffee cup. Maria, who had been about to serve the guest his breakfast, fled the room instead, her eyes downcast.
“Look for yourself,” Gideon rasped. “You’ll see that I’m telling the truth.”
Roberts perused the neat entries on the first page of the first book. “I believe you,” he said wearily, and at some length. “If the truth be known, Gideon, I’m too undone by all this battling with my daughter to think clearly.”
Gideon sighed and helped himself to a cup of coffee at the stove. “Is she still pretending to be sick?”
Roberts nodded. “What’s a man to do with a daughter like that?” he complained. “She’s been meeting this damned outlaw—”
“Steven Gallagher,” confirmed Gideon, with a meaningful glance at Kroeber’s journals. “He’s innocent of any crime beyond being a nuisance, Jack.”
“Would you understand if I said I’d like to see the rounder hanged anyhow?” sighed Jack Roberts, looking distracted and two years older than dirt.
Gideon smiled grimly. Maybe he’d have a daughter someday. If he did, he hoped he wouldn’t have to go through the things Jack and Devlin had suffered. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d understand. You’ll come to Helena with me, to speak to the governor? Get all this cleared up, once and for all?”
“I’m not doing any good here,” admitted Roberts, looking ruefully down at the plate of bacon, fried potatoes, and eggs he’d been about to tuck into before Gideon’s interruption. Clearly, the man’s appetite was gone. “Might as well.”
Half an hour later, the two men rode out together.
* * *
Daphne, clad in a long white nightgown, flung back the covers and sat up in bed, staring at Willow, her lavender eyes wide. “Oh, Willow, I told you so!” she cried, after she’d heard her friend out. “I told you Gideon would be furious!”
Willow hadn’t slept at all after Gideon had stormed out of the house the night before, leaving her behind in her father’s care. Now, she hung her head and sat slump-shouldered on the end of Daphne’s bed. “I know he’s never going to take me back,” she said. “Never, ever.”
Daphne, feeling no need to feign sickness while alone with her coconspirator, sat down beside her and draped one arm over Willow’s stooped shoulders. “This is my fault, too. I’ll take part of the blame.”
“That won’t help where Gideon’s concerned, will it?” agonized Willow dispiritedly. “I’ve lost him forever.”
“No,” Daphne interjected. “Gideon loves you. He’ll understand, once he’s had time to think things through.”
Willow remembered the cold, callous way in which he’d dismissed her, and she began to cry. “I’ll have to leave Virginia City,” she sniffled. “Oh, Daphne, I couldn’t bear to live here, in this house, while Gideon lives apart from me, out there on the ranch.”
Daphne gave her friend a sympathetic squeeze. “Gideon loves you, Willow,” she reiterated. “He won’t be able to stay angry very long.”
Will
ow recalled the tender, uncertain look on Gideon’s face when he had presented her with the mechanical monkey only the night before, and felt bereft. She could not credit that the very same man had walked away from her without looking back. “He was so quiet, Daphne, so cold. I would give anything if he’d shouted and raved instead of leaving me—well, quietly—the way he did, like he’d given up, like it didn’t matter anymore.”
Daphne sighed. “We’re a pair, you and I. And we’ve made a grand mess of this whole situation, haven’t we?”
Willow nodded, and the two women cried together, one loving the wrong man, the other estranged, perhaps permanently, from the right one.
* * *
Attending the play with Zachary for their escort was Daphne’s idea; Willow only went along on the outing because she needed the distraction from her churning thoughts. As it happened, the traveling theater troupe’s production of Richard III was anguish, in and of itself, so badly did the actors bungle it.
Willow whispered excuses to Daphne and Zachary and left after the first act, pausing outside Virginia City’s impressive playhouse—Virginia City had its aspirations, as well as its pretentions—to draw in deep breaths and wonder where Gideon was at that moment. Had he returned to their ranch? Was he with a woman?
Her shoulders sagged slightly. It wouldn’t be long, given Gideon’s fondness for lovemaking, before he found someone else. And what of Willow herself? Could she ever love another man the way she loved Gideon, or would she burn with unfulfilled desire every night for the rest of her life?
“Willow?”
She felt the light touch at her elbow and turned to see Zachary standing behind her, dapper in his dark suit, his hat in his hands.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Glumly, Willow nodded. “Please. Go back and watch the rest of the play with Daphne. I can get home on my own.”
“Unthinkable,” argued her brother-in-law smoothly. “When I take a lady somewhere, I do my best to see her home again when she’s ready to go.”
Willow caught the veiled reference to the night of the supper dance, when she had left Zachary without explanation, and winced inwardly. “In that case,” she responded, with asperity, “you certainly wouldn’t consider abandoning Daphne here, with no one to escort her back to our house.”
Zachary hid his annoyance well, though not quite well enough. “I’ll come back for her,” he suggested.
Willow was tired of arguing, and she did want to return to her father’s house, where Maria was. Her childhood nurse would be a great comfort now, alternately scolding and pampering. “Do you promise?” she asked.
“Of course. Contrary to what my brother has probably told you, Willow, I am a gentleman.”
“I doubt that very much, Zachary Marshall. But I do want to go home and, since you won’t allow me to walk there alone, as I have done, I might add, a thousand and one times if not more, I’ll trust you to drive me directly to my father’s house.”
He laid a guiding but undemanding hand on the small of Willow’s back, and ushered her toward his rented buggy. The seat squeaked as Zachary climbed in beside her and took up the reins, and she was filled with memories of another buggy, on another night. Her face flamed in the darkness.
In front of the judge’s deserted-looking house, Zachary abandoned his smooth manner so swiftly that Willow had no time to prepare. His left hand cupped her chin and his mouth came plundering to hers.
Revulsion and rage filled Willow; she flailed and struggled, desperate to break Zachary’s hold. He was much stronger than she was, of course, and he pressed her hard against the buggy seat, never breaking the kiss.
Willow made a whimpering sound in the depths of her throat and squirmed. His tongue entered her mouth, territory belonging only to Gideon, and wild to escape, she bit down hard, until she tasted blood.
Swearing and sputtering, Zachary drew back at last, but his hands still held Willow firmly against the dusty leather seat. She was trying to summon the breath to scream when he brazenly cupped her breasts in his palms. “You little wretch,” he rasped, “you lovely, fiery little wretch, I knew you could be like this.”
At last Willow had the breath to scream, though it was a high, squeaky sound, unlikely to penetrate the thick walls of her father’s house.
Zachary trembled in a frightening way, lifted one of his marauding hands, and slapped Willow so hard that she tasted blood again. This time, it was her own. She spat at him and he straddled her lap, grappling with her as she twisted feverishly to get free of him, strong in her fear. Instinctively, she brought her knee up, hard, into Zachary’s groin.
He moaned and grasped himself, off balance, and Willow took advantage of the moment, shoving him with all her strength. He fell, cursing and flailing his arms, onto the ground beside the rig,
Even if there was help inside her father’s house, which she doubted, since Devlin was probably with Dove, and Daphne’s father had gone off somewhere with Gideon, Willow dared not tarry long enough to find out. She grasped the reins in both hands, yelled to the already-fidgety horse, and was off, turning the small rig in a wide arch in the middle of that normally quiet street and racing back toward the main part of town.
Daphne was standing in front of the playhouse when Willow arrived, looking bewildered and a little worried, and Willow hailed her breathlessly, hardly stopping the buggy long enough for her friend to scramble inside.
“Willow!” Daphne gasped, holding on to the seat with a death grip as the rig bolted onward again. “What on earth is happening? Where have you—?”
“Zachary,” Willow managed to sputter, shaking now, but driving that buggy as earnestly as Ben Hur would have driven a chariot. She could still feel Zachary’s hands on her breasts, taste his tongue as it plunged deep into her mouth, invading her. Filling her with terror and with fury. Her lower lip, bruised by his slap, throbbed. “Like a fool, I let him drive me home. He promised to come back, for you—”
“Oh, Willow!” Daphne whispered, her eyes wide in the light of the saloons, brothels, and hurdy-gurdy houses they were passing. “He-he tried to force himself on you?”
“Yes,” Willow managed to reply, somewhat more calmly. But she did not slacken the pace she was setting for the poor horse pulling the rig.
“Where are we going?”
“To Dove Triskadden’s house,” answered Willow, who had not, until that moment, known what she planned to do. Simple logic precluded their returning to her father’s place, where Zachary might still be lurking, and the ranch was too isolated, too far away. “I’m praying that my papa will be there!”
If Daphne was shocked at the idea of venturing to such a notorious quarter at that hour of the night, she didn’t show it. She was probably thinking, as Willow was, that neither she nor her friend had much right, or reason, to be worrying about propriety.
There were lights in the downstairs windows of Dove’s two-story house, and Willow and Daphne felt hope as they sprang out of the buggy and bolted up the walk and onto the porch, side by side.
Daphne rang the bell, since Willow was overcome by a residual bout of the trembles, and when Dove opened the door, something very much like alarm leaped in the depths of her eyes.
“Is my father here?” Willow asked, with as much decorum as she could muster.
Dove stiffened. She was wearing a dressing gown, and her lush blond hair, usually so elaborately curled and coiffed, looked unkempt. “No, no, Devlin isn’t around tonight.”
Something quivered in the pit of Willow’s stomach; she felt the same basic, instinctive fear she had known during her struggle with Zachary. “Dove, is-is something wrong?”
“No!” Dove cried quickly, her eyes darting to the road and back again, as though to warn her callers away. “Now please leave; this is such an intrusion, and I’m tired.”
Both Daphne and Willow stood stock still, staring at her. Both regretted the indulgence, only moments later, when Dove was suddenly flung backward out of th
e doorway, and Vancel Tudd loomed in the opening. With a quickness Willow wouldn’t have believed possible, given his size, he caught each of Dove’s visitors by one wrist and hauled them inside, kicking the door shut behind him.
“How dare you!” cried Daphne.
“Where is my father?” demanded Willow simultaneously. “Have you hurt him?”
Tudd let go of his captives, chewing on something. He smirked at Willow and then gestured toward Dove’s satin-upholstered sofa. “Sit down,” he commanded.
Daphne and Willow exchanged a look and then sat. It would be fruitless, they had silently agreed, to try to reach the door and escape. Tudd would have shot one or both of them before they crossed the small porch.
Standing behind the sofa, Dove said gently, “Your papa is all right, Willow. Thank God, he hasn’t been here tonight.”
“Shut up!” yelled Vancel Tudd, glaring over Daphne’s and Willow’s heads to Dove.
Prudently, Dove obeyed, and there was a silence filled with fear and the cloying stench of Tudd’s unwashed body.
“What do you want with us?” Daphne finally asked, her chin at a defiant angle.
Tudd was pacing back and forth, making the smell worse.
“Don’t be a ninny, Daphne,” Willow replied, “he wants Steven.”
Tudd paused, favoring Willow with a lingering once-over and another smirk. “Now that’s right smart thinkin’, little lady.”
“How did you find out you killed the wrong man?” demanded Willow.
“I had my suspicions almost from the first,” Tudd answered airily, rocking slightly on the worn heels of his boots. Filthy and self-satisfied, he dragged greedy eyes over Willow once more before going on. “Then I happened to be in Lot Houghton’s office the afternoon when he came back from the telegraph office with a judge’s order to have the body in Gallagher’s grave dug up. He said he’d bet we’d find Silas Blanchard in that coffin, not your brother, and I figure he’s right.” Tudd was pacing again, rubbing his stubbly chin with one hand. “The bounty on Blanchard is respectable,” he reflected, “but it sure as hell don’t come near what’s offered for your big brother.”
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