Shay emitted a loud sigh, closed his eyes, and held the bridge of his nose between two fingers, as though his head hurt. “That’s the charge,” he said. “Indecent exposure.”
Aislinn wasn’t about to stand still for such a thing. “If I’m guilty, so are all those women over at the Yellow Garter. Why aren’t they behind bars?”
“Would you like to share a cell with them?” Shay countered, in ominously quiet tones. “It can be arranged.”
“That will teach me to try to help!” Now it was Aislinn who paced.
Shay smiled grimly. “We can only hope,” he said. Then, after exchanging a look with Tristan, he tossed the cell key into the air, caught it in his palm, and dropped it into his shirt pocket, with the derringer. Without another word, he turned and left the jailhouse.
Chapter 5
AISLINN SLUMPED FORLORNLY to the edge of the jailhouse cot—God knew who’d slept on it, and what sort of vermin they’d left behind—rested her elbows on her knees and propped her chin in her hands. The skirts of Liza Sue’s dress made a tattered froth of ruffles all around her, and she might have wept, but for the knowledge that she had only her own foolish and reckless self to thank for the predicament she was in. Much as she would have liked to blame Shay McQuillan for everything, she knew it wouldn’t be right or fair. Sure, he’d proved himself downright ungrateful for her concern on his behalf, but then, he hadn’t asked her to come to the Yellow Garter in the middle of the night, dressed in somebody else’s clothes. Eugenie had been right: he hadn’t needed—or wanted—rescuing. He was not, after all, one of her younger brothers.
She sniffled miserably. She’d let impulse dictate her actions—something that was quite unlike her—and now her job at the hotel was well and truly gone, for even if Eugenie were willing to let her stay on, it would be dishonorable to do so. The older woman’s authority would be forever undermined; her rules would mean nothing.
She sighed. She might be able to live on her savings for a while, but she couldn’t buy the homestead, and sending for her brothers was out of the question. They were unhappy at the school in Maine, but they were getting regular meals back there, and had decent clothes to wear, and clean beds to sleep in. For the time being, at least.
“He’s trying to protect you, you know.”
She looked up to see Tristan standing on the other side of the bars, wearing a half-smile and holding out a steaming cup as a peace offering. She’d forgotten he was there, and a moment or two passed before she worked out that he was explaining why Shay had thrown her into jail.
She nodded glumly and let out a sigh of resignation.
“Have some of this coffee,” Tristan urged. “It might raise your spirits just a little.”
She rose, crossed the small space between the bed and the impenetrable iron bars, and accepted the cup. She took a sip of the brew and found it surprisingly good. Even the aroma was restorative, a nutty vapor that brought back pleasant memories of her dear father, who had always enjoyed a stout blend of coffee with his breakfast.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I told you,” he answered. “My name is Tristan Saint-Laurent.”
“And you’re the marshal’s twin brother?”
“That’s a fact,” Tristan confessed, with a sigh of his own. The grin flashed, blinding as sunlight on a bright surface. “Personally, I don’t see the resemblance.”
In spite of everything, Aislinn laughed.
“That’s better,” Tristan said gently. When she went back to perch on the side of the cot, he dragged over a chair and sat down, facing her from the other side of the bars. He rested one foot on the opposite knee and settled back, regarding her thoughtfully. When he spoke, there was no hint of accusation or judgment in his tone, only bewilderment. “Just exactly what were you planning to do, going into a saloon dressed like that?”
“The idea made sense when I first thought it up,” she answered ruefully. “I knew Shay—Marshal McQuillan—had gotten into it with Billy Kyle today, out on the street. Billy’s wiry as a snake, and he’s mean, too. Anyway, we—Liza Sue and I—heard shots from the saloon, and all of the sudden I was just sure Shay was going to die. And—” This part was hard to say, “I couldn’t bear knowing that, and not trying to do something about it.”
Tristan was plainly trying not to grin again. He raised one eyebrow and said nothing. The silence itself was eloquent.
“I know it sounds like a paradox,” Aislinn went on, “but I figured I’d attract less attention, in a place like the Yellow Garter, if I was dressed like the other women. So I put on Liza Sue’s dress and set out. I was going to decide what to do when I got there.”
“And when you did? Get there, I mean?”
Aislinn blew out a loud breath. “Shay was perfectly fine. He’d handcuffed Billy to a rail in front of the bar and he was playing pool.”
“Ah,” said Tristan, with portent, as though some great dilemma had been resolved. His chair creaked when he leaned forward. “Who’s Liza Sue?” he asked.
Aislinn explained how she had found her friend huddled between two buildings only the night before, sobbing and injured, smuggled her into the employees’ dormitory at the hotel, helped her land a position as a maid.
“You make a habit of this sort of crusade?” Again, there was no derision in Tristan’s voice; he was merely curious, sifting coolly through an assortment of facts.
“No,” she answered, and lowered her head. While it was true she went out of her way to help other people whenever she could, she mostly had her hands full looking after her own concerns. She’d felt sorry for Liza Sue—who wouldn’t have?—and as for the march upon the Yellow Garter to save Shay, well, she still didn’t completely understand the forces that had compelled her to do that. It was as if something had taken her over from the inside and driven her to it.
Tristan got up, went to the potbellied stove, and poured a mug of coffee for himself. He held up the pot and Aislinn, knowing he was asking if she wanted more, shook her head. It was odd, having someone offer to wait on her; in the last three years she’d worked ten and twelve hours a day, six days a week, filling cups and carrying plates, and no one had served her anything.
Returning to his chair, Tristan swung it around backward and straddled it, his right arm draped across the high back, the cup in his other hand.
“How long have you felt the way you do toward my brother?” he asked.
Aislinn stared at him. “What way?”
He leaned forward again and widened his eyes at her in good-natured mockery. “The way that makes you put on duds like those and charge into a saloon with a derringer in your hand.”
Aislinn subsided a little, pondering the undeniable implications of what the man had just said. “I don’t know,” she answered, at some length. “Yesterday, I didn’t even like him.”
Tristan chuckled appreciatively. “I see,” he replied. He got up, returned the chair to its place by the wall. “Is there anything I can get you from the hotel? A change of clothes, maybe?”
She looked at him in weary appeal. “If you want to help, you can persuade your brother to let me out of here, tonight. I’m in enough trouble as it is, without the whole town seeing me leave the jailhouse in the bright light of day.”
He seemed genuinely regretful. “I don’t know Shay too well,” he confided, “but it seems to me that there’s a stubborn streak in him. When he turns you loose, ma’am, it will be because he’s decided that’s the right thing to do, and for no other reason.”
“You’re probably right,” Aislinn agreed, dejected.
“What about the clothes?”
She shook her head. She yearned to change out of the ruffled dress, but by now Eugenie and most everyone else who worked at the hotel would be fast asleep. Sending Tristan to awaken them could only make bad matters worse. “If there’s another blanket around someplace—”
He found one of scratchy wool, but clean, and handed it through the bars. Then, after bidd
ing her a courtly good night, he went back to the chair behind the desk, settled himself there, and began to read the book he had set aside earlier.
Aislinn was full of questions about Shay and Tristan—had been ever since she’d first seen them together—but it wasn’t the time to make inquiries. She was exhausted, both emotionally and physically, and reluctant to pry, though she suspected that last was a temporary state.
She spread the blanket Tristan had given her over the cot and, with a little grimace, lay down upon it. She supposed stretching out on a jail mattress was no worse than wearing that particular dress. The garment surely had a history of its own; one she didn’t care to examine.
“Do I have to dunk you in the horse trough again, Billy, or are you going to conduct yourself like a gentleman?” Shay asked, crouching beside the youth with the key to the handcuffs at the ready.
“I just wanna go home, that’s all,” Billy whined. He kept his eyes averted, but Shay knew what was in them all the same: the hope of murder. The converse and bitter realization that, for the moment at least, he was outmatched. “Just let me go home. My pa will be gettin’ real worried long about now.”
Shay blew out a breath and rubbed his chin in a show of deep contemplation. His beard was coming in, and it itched something fierce.
“I’ll see he gets out to Powder Creek all right, Marshal,” volunteered the man Shay had been beating at pool earlier in the evening. Jim O’Sullivan was the foreman on the Kyle ranch, and the old man often sent him along to town to play nursemaid to the boy. Not that it appeared to do much good.
“Well, now, Jim,” Shay said, “I’ll hand him over to you on one condition: that you keep him out of Prominence for a while. Me and Billy here, we’re not on cordial terms these days. We need some time apart.”
O’Sullivan nodded his agreement quickly; no doubt there would be hell to pay if he went back to the Powder Creek spread without the joy and delight of William, Sr.,’s heart.
Shay pretended to consider that, knowing all the while that he couldn’t lock Billy up, since Aislinn was already occupying the only cell. “You got your temper under control?” he asked, and examined the small key between his fingers at great length, as if he’d never seen it before. Billy’d come at him with that bowie knife of his as soon as he’d stepped through the saloon doors earlier that night, after the first encounter with Aislinn, there on the hotel porch. There’d been a scuffle, and Shay had subdued Billy, with more effort than he liked to recall, and finally cuffed him to the boot rail.
During the pool game, which Aislinn had interrupted at the worst possible time, he and O’Sullivan had been discussing the wreck of the stagecoach eighteen months before. The Powder Creek foreman had been getting steadily drunker with every break of the balls, and even though he’d never admitted to knowing anything about the robbery and murders, it had been plain from the sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead and at the base of his throat that he had some idea who’d been behind it all.
Shay had been real interested in O’Sullivan’s opinion on the matter, but when Aislinn appeared, wearing that god-awful getup and looking scared and defiant, both at the same time, the confessional mood was broken.
He opened the handcuffs and stood, dragging Billy along with him. He flung the boy forward, into O’Sullivan’s arms. “Get him out of here,” he growled.
Billy started to say something he shouldn’t, but O’Sullivan took him by the elbow and headed for the doors.
“That boy’s the sort to shoot a man in the back,” Jake observed, from behind the bar. He was smearing a dirty glass with an even dirtier rag, and when he met Shay’s eyes, it was clear enough that he had a few specific prospects in mind for the honor of receiving Billy’s bullet.
Shay rubbed the back of his neck. It had been a long day, and he was ready for it to be over and done with. He ignored Jake, scanned the saloon in case anyone else was of a mind to offer up their view. To his relief, nobody did so.
The night air was sultry when he stepped outside, and the stars hung low, gleaming like a shower of silver coins fixing to rain down on the earth. Shay smiled at the fanciful thought and headed for the jailhouse.
Tristan was at the desk, reading by the light of a kerosene lamp. At Shay’s entrance, he put a finger to his lips, then pointed toward the cell, where Aislinn lay in a pile of frayed purple ruffles. He crossed to the bars and looked in, and something happened inside him, all of the sudden, a sort of shifting slide that changed the terrain of his soul. He suspected the sweet pain he felt was a lasting and elemental proposition, as much beyond his control as that spill of stars he’d admired moments before, and that scared him more than anything ever had. This was an impervious force, beyond the reach of his wits or his fists or his .45.
After a while, he turned, resigned to utter mystification, and went back to the desk. “You’d better go and get some sleep,” he said to Tristan. “It’s late.”
“Thanks,” Tristan said, low, and with a small grin. “You want to read me a story and hear my prayers?”
Shay didn’t bite the hook; it was too late and he was tired to the bone. He tossed a brass key onto the desk. “My room is on the second floor, over at Miss Mamie’s boardinghouse. In the back, to the right of the landing. She’s used to me coming in late, so she won’t bother about you.”
Tristan looked at the key for a moment, then shrugged and picked it up. “I guess one of us might as well get some rest,” he said, and stood. “You have any luck over at the saloon?”
Shay glanced ruefully toward Aislinn, slumbering so peacefully in the cell, and couldn’t forestall a brief twitch at the corner of his mouth. “I was making a little progress,” he said, “until Miss Lethaby decided to save me from the forces of evil.”
Tristan laughed quietly and slapped his brother’s upper arm. “Don’t worry,” he said, in an exaggerated whisper. “I think that was Saint Aislinn’s last miracle.”
“Get out of here,” Shay said. He hoped Tristan was right—he didn’t want or need Aislinn or any other woman taking stupid chances on his behalf—but he knew stubbornness when he saw it, and she had a plentiful supply of that.
Shay blew out the lamps, settled himself in the desk chair, put his feet up and closed his eyes. “Night,” he said.
“Night,” Tristan responded, and went out, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
Shay meditated on the fact that if it wasn’t for Aislinn, he’d have been sleeping in his own soft bed, sober as an angel, instead of that hard chair. Miss Mamie kept strict rules in her establishment, and she could smell whiskey on a man from an alarming distance, which was why he’d passed many a night on the jailhouse cot. He shifted in the chair, trying in vain to get comfortable, and sighed, listening as the town settled down around him like a creaky old house.
He hadn’t been asleep long when the sound of the back door being forced open brought him back to the surface of consciousness. He swung his feet down from the desk top, silent as an Indian, and rose. The .45 was in his hand before he thought to reach for it.
“You must be loco, messin’ with that marshal,” whispered one of the two shadows lurking back by the cell. Shay couldn’t make out their features, just the shape of their framework, but he knew who they were all right.
“You saw him leave,” Billy told O’Sullivan impatiently.
“I still don’t like this. I’m tellin’ you, it ain’t right.”
There was, Shay reflected, a moralist in every bunch.
“We’ll get the girl and leave. That’ll teach McQuillan a thing or two.”
“Teach him? You’re the one with a dick for a head, Billy. You didn’t learn nothin’ that other time, apparently.”
That other time. The phrase was a crooked twig, shoved through Shay’s gills. He waited, hoping the exchange would continue, but once again Aislinn got in the way.
“Who’s there?” she demanded crisply. There was a tremor of fear in her voice, but it was so faint you h
ad to listen hard to hear it. Shay admired her grit even as he suppressed an intense desire to put a gag on her.
“Hell,” said O’Sullivan. “What if she screams?”
Billy ignored the question. “It’s your new beau, ma’am,” he said, with what he probably conceived of as ironic charm, “come to take you home. It won’t do, a pretty little thing like you, sitting here by her lone-self, all dressed up for a party.”
Shay’s palm sweated where he gripped the handle of the .45, but his hand was steady.
“Damn it, Billy,” O’Sullivan grumbled. “Have you lost your brain someplace along the line? Let’s get out of here before the marshal shows up. Swearin’ off the bottle ain’t done his disposition any good, in case you didn’t notice.”
“We couldn’t leave the girl here even if we wanted to,” Billy argued, making sense for once in his life, “now that you went and said my name.” There was a brief, thoughtful pause. “Where do you suppose he keeps them keys of his?”
Shay cocked the .45. “Right here in my pocket, boys,” he said, all friendly and accommodating. “Drop whatever you’re carrying and put your hands up. I’d hate to have to shoot you just because I wasn’t clear on your intentions.”
“Son of a bitch,” O’Sullivan groaned, and there was a clunking sound as his pistol hit the floor.
“Damn it,” Billy added, after adding to the clatter with his own weapons, “I watched you leave here an hour ago!”
He’d seen Tristan, of course, but Shay felt no compunction to clear up the misconception. His brother had been right: having an identical twin had its advantages, disturbing as it was to find out that even though you were a whole man in your own right, you were also half of something else. Keeping the .45 trained on the visitors, he used his free hand to take the glass chimney off the kerosene lamp on his desk, strike a match and light the wick.
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