Two Brothers

by Linda Lael Miller

  Dorrie handed the lamp to Aislinn and began clearing the surface of the chest. The hinges shrieked when she raised the cover at last, and Aislinn felt a shiver wind its way down her spine. For a moment, she could almost imagine that they were about to peer into a coffin.

  Covered in cobwebs, Dorrie took the lamp back and looked inside the old trunk. Something skittered in the bottom. “There it is,” said Dorrie, in a state of harried, fragile triumph. “Hold the lamp again, will you?” When her hands were free, she reached inside to retrieve some object Aislinn couldn’t see. It turned out to be a heavy strongbox—the sort merchants and other business people used to store valuables and important documents.

  The pit of Aislinn’s stomach wobbled a little. “Dorrie, I don’t think—”

  Dorrie had already hunkered down on the floor to fiddle with the catch on the box. Curiously, there was no padlock, but whoever had hidden it probably hadn’t thought such a precaution would be necessary, given the difficulty of reaching the hiding place.

  The top of the box fell back and revealed stacks and stacks of currency; there must have been thousands of dollars there. Aislinn gasped and pressed her free hand to her heart, nearly dropping the lamp. “Good heavens, Dorrie,” she choked out. “You shouldn’t keep such a sum at home—it isn’t safe!”

  Dorrie looked up. “It’s not my money. Nor is it Cornelia’s.”

  “Then—?”

  The other woman’s eyes gleamed in the gloom, feral and bright, and Aislinn was forced to review her prior appraisal of Dorrie’s sanity. “Billy Kyle took it from the stagecoach, that one that fell down in the ravine. Grace died that day. She was a sweet thing. Real sweet, and pretty, too.”

  Aislinn swayed slightly, reached out to grasp the edge of the chest to hold herself upright. “What does Cornelia have to do with what happened?” she asked carefully.

  “She knew how Shamus loved Grace. She wanted to take away his reason for staying here in Prominence.”

  “My God in heaven,” Aislinn murmured.

  “You see, Papa loved Shamus the best of us all. He left him the house and the store—all of it. He knew he could trust him to look after Cornie and me. Shay didn’t have much interest in any of it, though, until he met Grace. Then he started to talk about settling down.”

  Aislinn groped for a crate and sat, unable to trust her knees to support her any longer. “Dorrie, you’re talking about murder, here. Not just robbery, which is bad enough, but murder. If you knew these things, why in the name of all that’s holy didn’t you tell someone?”

  A tear shimmered in the light as it slipped down Dorrie’s cheek. “I wanted to pretend it wasn’t true. Like I wanted to pretend about Leander.”

  Aislinn knelt beside the other woman on the cold dirt floor and wrapped her arms around her. The lantern sat nearby, within reach. “Oh, Dorrie—Dorrie.”

  Dorrie began to cry, and the sound was heart-wrenching, childlike and at the same time as ancient and elemental as rain. “Tapa should have left us alone, Leander and me. If only he’d left us be.”

  “Shhh,” Aislinn said, weeping too. “It’s all right. Everything will be all right.”

  A spill of daylight from the top of the steps made both women turn their heads and gave the lie to Aislinn’s assurances. Cornelia stood in the doorway above, a shadow, a figure rimmed in fury. “Theodora, what have you done?”

  Aislinn stood, hauled Dorrie up, too. God help us, she thought.

  “I’ve told, that’s what,” Dorrie cried defiantly. “Aislinn knows what you did, how you got Billy to blow up that bridge when the stagecoach was passing over it and kill all those people. Shay’s right to hold that monster and his father in jail, but you should be in there with them!”

  Cornelia didn’t say a word. She merely took another lantern down from the wall, lit the wick and tossed it to the bottom of the stairs. Flames flared instantly to life, gobbling the rotting cloth that covered the furniture, catching easily on wooden boxes and even on cobwebs draped from the ceiling in great looping scallops.

  Through the smoke and blazes, Aislinn saw Cornelia shut the upstairs door, heard the bolt slam into place. Dragging Dorrie by the hand, she looked wildly around for a path of escape.

  A fire. She had worked so hard and come so far, only to perish in an inferno, precisely as her parents had. Her brothers would truly be alone in the world now; in time they’d be dismissed from their school, sent to live in an orphanage or even turned out onto the streets to make their own way as best they could. Worse still, she would never see Shay again, never lie down with him, never carry his baby in her body.

  “Is there an outside door?” she shouted to Dorrie, over the din of the fire, reasoning that if the entrance to the kitchen had a bolt, there must be a way into the house from the yard.

  Dorrie was coughing violently, and the heat of the flames was already blistering. “Cornelia had it boarded over a long time ago,” she choked out. “She said she didn’t feel safe of a night, after Papa was gone.”

  “Get down,” Aislinn cried, remembering something her father had once told her, about how the air was better down close to the floor, since smoke tended to rise, like heat. Crouching, she turned to look into Dorrie’s face. “A window—Dorrie, is there a window?”

  They were surrounded by flames by then; tongues of fire danced all around them like demons, consuming the air, licking at the support beams overhead. Dorrie did not answer, but simply collapsed in a spasm of coughing. Aislinn searched frantically for a way out, but the smoke made it impossible to see clearly.

  It was in that instant of her greatest despair that she heard the blessed sound of shattering glass, heard her name shouted. Shay. The voice belonged to Shay.

  “Here!” she cried out, and the word seemed to scrape her throat raw, like the rusty bristles of a steel brush. “Over here!”

  He was a figure, a shape and nothing more, moving through the shifting smoke; she saw his hair, saw that he wore a bandanna over his nose and mouth, bandit-style. He took Dorrie’s arm in one hand and Aislinn’s in the other, and headed back through the fire. Aislinn felt herself being lifted, was aware of hands grasping her from outside the window casing. Gloried in the cool, soothing sanction of fresh air.

  Someone—Eugenie, she realized after a moment—wrapped her in a blanket; she had not known her clothes were smoldering until then. “Shay—” she gasped, raising her head, looking for him. All she could see was legs and boots and tall grass.

  “There’s Miss Dorrie out safe,” Eugenie said. Then she smiled. “And here’s Shamus. He’s a mite singed, but pretty as ever.”

  He was beside Aislinn in a moment, Shay was, bending over her, sooty as a chimney sweep. His blue eyes stood out vividly in his blackened face, still bruised and swollen from his ride behind that cowboy’s horse. “Are you all right?” he rasped, and from his bearing and his tone and the look of him, her answer was the most important thing in the world to him.

  She nodded. It was hard to breathe, and she’d suffered a few minor burns, but she was going to be fine. She coughed and tried to sit up; he grinned and pressed her gently back down.

  “Hold it,” he said. “Now you get to be the patient, and I’ll be giving the orders. You just lie there a minute, until you catch your breath.”

  Tears smarted in her eyes, happy ones. She was alive, and so were all her dreams. “How did you know?”

  “One of my deputies went over to the store to get a bag of tobacco and found it locked up tight, right in the middle of the day. When he told me that, I knew something had to be wrong, because Cornelia won’t miss a chance to make a nickel if she can help it. So I came over here, and found smoke billowing out from under the porch.”

  “But you knew Dorrie and I were downstairs.”

  “That was a guess. Cornelia was sitting on the front porch, rocking in Mama’s old chair and smiling like she’d misplaced her wits. I left her for Tristan to tend to and ran inside, yelling and looking in every ro
om in the house. By that time, there was smoke coming up between the floorboards, and the paint was blistering on the walls. When I got to the kitchen, I saw that the cellar door was bolted, and that was all I needed to know. I tried to get to you that way, but the stairs were gone, so I went outside and broke out that window.”

  She closed her eyes, absorbing all those images, reveling in the blessed rhythm of her own heartbeat and the rising and falling of her chest as she drew in breath after delicious breath. Then, when she could delay it no longer, she told him what Dorrie had shown her.

  “The stagecoach money is in there,” she said slowly. “Cornelia put Billy up to the robbery and the killing. She was afraid you would want the house and the store, since you were going to be married.”

  Shay thrust a hand through his hair and swore. Only then did Aislinn become aware of the commotion all around them, of the townspeople battling the fire.

  “I’m sorry,” Aislinn said. She found his other hand, clasped it tightly in her own.

  He leaned down, kissed her lightly. “You’re here,” he said. “I’m here. That’s enough. I love you, Aislinn. I want to marry you.”

  She laughed.

  “That’s funny?” He tried to look injured, but his blue eyes were dancing.

  “No,” she said. “I’m just happy, that’s all. I thought I was going to have to propose to you, and you would never have let me hear the end of it.”

  His grin was bright and broad. “Well? Is that a ‘yes’?”

  Aislinn nodded. “It is indeed,” she answered.

  He frowned. “I’m not going to turn in my badge,” he warned. “That’s got to be understood, right up front.”

  “I understand,” Aislinn said, with a little sigh. She was ready to sit up then, and that time he didn’t try to stop her. The house fire seemed to be out, and she immediately caught sight of Dorrie, blackened and singed like Shay, but sitting under a tree, calmly sipping water from a ladle held by Liza Sue. The rest of Eugenie’s girls were there, too, helping out in various ways.

  Shay curved a finger under her chin and brought her back to face him. “I have things to do,” he said. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  She wished they were alone, so she could put her arms around his neck and kiss him. Then she decided the circumstances were special, given that both of them had nearly died, and kissed him anyway. He tarried until Tristan came along and reminded him that there were prisoners at the jail and the judge’s killers were still out there somewhere, waiting to be caught.

  Cornelia was taken to the doctor’s office, being in some kind of trancelike state. Eugenie took charge of both Dorrie and Aislinn, squiring them over to the hotel and installing them each in a room of their own. Dorrie was overwrought, Liza Sue reported later on, and had been given a sedative and put to bed. Aislinn, having come so near to death, felt exuberantly, exultantly alive, full of hunger and happiness.

  She took a bath in tepid water, soaking away the smell of smoke, and shampooed her hair with lavender soap. She ate ravenously from the tray of cold chicken, bread and spiced pears Cook sent up from the kitchen, chattering while Liza Sue towel-dried and then combed her hair. Liza Sue smiled as she listened and wound the still-damp tresses into the customary plait.

  A black skirt and pristine white shirtwaist were brought from the general store, a spontaneous gift from Tristan, and they were a perfect fit. Aislinn was standing in front of the mirror, imagining herself as a bride, when the blast came, rattling the window, shaking the walls, causing the very floor to tremble beneath her feet.

  Chapter 10

  THE EXPLOSION SPLINTERED THE WHOLE FAÇADE of the jailhouse, bellying the windows outward, like the sails of a ship, before they shattered, sending the deputies posted by the door hurtling into the road in a shower of clapboard and glass. Horses from one end of Main Street to the other pranced and whinnied and pulled at their tethers, eyes rolling, while a cloud of smoke rose against an otherwise placid blue sky.

  Shay saw the whole thing from the window of the hotel dining room, where he and Tristan were seated across from each other, eating the early lunch Eugenie had insisted they accept.

  “Shit,” Shay cursed, knocking his chair over backward in his haste to leave the table.

  “I hope you’ve got the back door covered,” Tristan put in, rising with a little more grace and somehow managing to get to the sidewalk before Shay did.

  The deputies were just picking themselves up, with a little help from cautious bystanders, as Shay ran past them. One had a splinter the size of an ax handle embedded in his shoulder, but they were standing upright and breathing. For the moment, that was all that concerned him.

  From behind the jail, he heard the sounds of retreating horses. He yelled for someone to fetch his gelding from the livery stable and picked his way into the ruined building, moving carefully through the wreckage toward the cell at the rear. He’d expected the prisoners to be gone, and was startled to find the rancher kneeling among the debris, his bandaged head bent, clasping Billy’s limp body in his arms. They were both covered in mortar dust, which gave them a peculiar aspect, like ghosts, or statues come partway to life.

  “He’s gone,” Kyle said, disbelieving.

  Shay knew at a glance that the rancher was right; his son had perished in the blast that was probably intended to set them both free. “I’m sorry about that,” he said, and he meant it.

  Kyle was silent for a long time. Then, as Shay stepped over the fallen bars of the cell and began tossing aside beams and boards, he spoke again. “He would have hanged.”

  “Yes,” Shay agreed quietly. “Did you order that circuit judge killed?”

  The rancher stroked the boy’s head, which lay back over his arm at an angle that suggested a broken neck. “No,” he said, and Shay believed him. People didn’t usually lie in circumstances like these. “I reckon the boys thought that’s what I’d want, though.” Somberly, he surveyed the damage around them, then lowered his gaze to Billy’s face. “They meant to help. All the same, I’ll cut their fool livers out if I ever catch up to them.”

  Tristan was making his way toward the center of destruction, pistol drawn, as were several other men, the doctor among them. Reluctantly, the aging rancher surrendered his son’s body to them, let Shay help him to his feet after they walked away.

  “Why?” Shay asked quietly.

  Kyle didn’t pretend not to understand what he was asking. He stood proudly, a shorn Samson in the ruins of the temple, his big, meaty hands loose at his sides, his head encircled in a dirty bandage. “I didn’t know about the stagecoach until after it was all over,” he said. “Then I wanted to protect Billy.”

  “And Cornelia?” He knew the truth, had learned it from Aislinn, but he wanted Kyle to confirm the tale of his own accord.

  The rancher smiled humorlessly. “She put him up to it, looking to drive you away from Prominence once and for all. You didn’t think Billy had the imagination to come up with a scheme like that on his own, did you?”

  Shay shook his head. He would form a posse and ride after the Powder Creek men, of course, but essentially the case was settled. He felt no triumph, just an overwhelming sense of sadness and loss and, yes, pity. Pity for Billy, who’d done what he had out of stupidity, mostly, and a need to impress the world with his manhood; for the old man, whose actions, though undeniably wrong, were also understandable. He even felt a little sorry for Cornelia, whose reasons were the cruelest, coldest and most pointless of all—selfishness, jealousy, fear.

  Tristan laid a hand to his shoulder. “You all right?” he asked quietly, as two members of the town council took William Kyle into custody. The rancher would be locked up in a storeroom at the livery stable until they could figure out what to do with him.

  Shay nodded and raised his eyes to see Aislinn standing at the edge of all those fragments of boards and bricks, her hands clasped in front of her, her face anxious. He moved toward her.

  “Are you hurt?
” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Billy’s dead, though. And from the looks of Kyle, he won’t last long enough to stand trial.” He glanced back over one shoulder, saw Tristan helping some of the other men clear away the heaviest beams. “It’s been a hell of a day, hasn’t it?”

  She slipped her arm through his. “What now?”

  “I’ll wire every marshal and sheriff I can think of to look out for O’Sullivan and the others, but by now they’ve scattered in every direction.”

  Aislinn’s face was translucent with hope. “You aren’t going after them?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “I imagine the mayor and the town council will have an opinion on that. Right now, I’ve got to find out what kind of shape Cornelia’s in, and Dorrie, too.”

  “Eugenie said the house wasn’t too badly damaged,” she told him, still holding his arm as he started in the direction of the doctor’s office, which was down near the Yellow Garter. He recalled the bucket brigade that had formed while he was getting Aislinn and Dorrie out of the cellar. “Tristan recovered his money, too. It was just a little scorched.”

  Shay managed a crooked smile. “He didn’t mention that. But, then, things have been a little wild around here this morning.”

  Entering the doctor’s office, they were met with a disconcerting sight. Billy Kyle’s body lay uncovered on a table, the glazed and lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling, while Cornelia occupied a chair next to the wall. Her fists were clasped in her lap and she rocked back and forth, as though filled with energy she could not contain, but when her gaze rose to meet Shay’s, he knew she was as sane as anybody.

  She’d known full well what she was doing when she arranged Grace’s death, the deaths of the others aboard that stagecoach. And when she’d tried to kill Dorrie and Aislinn, too.

  “I didn’t want your goddamned money,” he said. “Or your house or your general store.”