While Megan and Skye knew at least something about their origins, knew they were the twin daughters of a servant girl, Megan doubted that Christy and Bridget had made any such discovery.
Megan reached out, squeezed Christy’s hand, then looked at each of her other two sisters, lovingly, one by one. “You’ve all been so kind—”
“How else would we behave?” Skye replied, the McQuarry pride staining her cheeks and snapping in her eyes. “You’re our sister, and we love you. This is a great occasion.” She paused, drew in a breath, and rushed on. “I will buy the silk, Bridget can contribute her lace trim, and Christy her pearls. We’ll all do the sewing—make a day of it. How about tomorrow, at my house?”
Megan had been wanting to visit—Jake and Skye’s house had been built after she left Primrose Creek—and she was touched to the soul by her sisters’ eagerness to make her wedding day memorable. “Thank you,” she said with a little sniffle, quickly quelled. “Thank you—all of you.”
“We’re glad to have you home,” Bridget said, smiling.
“I told them about our mother,” Skye confessed, a bit guiltily. “How we’re twins and everything.”
Bridget sighed. “It’s all so strange,” she murmured. “I still can’t believe it sometimes.”
Christy nodded in agreement. “All my life, I’ve thought Granddaddy hung the moon, and I still believe he did what he believed was best for us. Just the same, I lie awake sometimes, racking my brain for even a scrap of gossip I might have gleaned somewhere along the way—”
“Caney knows,” Bridget stated quietly, and now there was a spark of fury in her cornflower-blue eyes. “She says she doesn’t, but I can tell when she’s lying.”
Christy nodded again. Sighed. “All we can do is make sure our children know us,” she said. “I’ve been keeping a journal, so that someday—”
Megan got up and poured more hot water into the plain crockery jar that served as a teapot. Webb would never have thought to purchase such a frippery when all he drank was coffee. Such was life in a bachelor’s house. “I think that’s a wonderful idea, keeping a diary.”
“As long as you’re not doing it because you don’t expect to be around for a long, long time,” Skye said, studying Christy narrowly.
Christy laughed. “We’ll all live to be ancient,” she said. “We’ve got Granddaddy’s blood in our veins, remember?”
It was comforting to think of that. Looking around the table at each one of her three beautiful sisters, Megan could see their grandfather in all of them. “You’re the reason I want to marry and have a family of my own,” she said. “All of you, separately and together—I’ve learned what’s truly important by watching you.”
A silence fell, broken only by a few sniffles, quickly dispensed with.
“I still miss him so much,” Skye confided, at some length, and her voice was, for that moment in time, the voice of the child she had been. “Granddaddy, I mean.”
Bridget nodded. “Sometimes it seems as though he’s still around somewhere, close by, looking after us. We’ve been through a lot, each one of us, and I’m not sure we could have survived without help.”
Christy made a steeple of her fingers and frowned thoughtfully. “Granddaddy’s with us, all right,” she said after a brief pause, “but in here.” She touched her heart. “He left us more than the land. We have his courage, and I don’t care if that sounds vain.” The look in her eyes dared them, or anyone, to challenge her, and they all smiled, because it only proved she was right.
After that, they discussed Megan and Webb’s wedding, agreeing that it ought to be held right there, in the house the newlyweds would share. They made plans to begin work on the dress the next afternoon at Skye’s and decided that Bridget should bake several of her coconut cakes to serve after the ceremony.
Twilight was coming on, and the rain had decreased into a soggy mist by the time they all got into Skye’s surrey and took their leave.
Megan stood in the dooryard, the loyal Augustus panting at her side, until they were clear out of sight.
Then, feeling a little lonely with her sisters gone and Webb out riding with Zachary, she went back inside, lit more lamps, and put some leftover soup on to heat. She and Augustus would have their supper, and then she’d gather the damp laundry hanging all over the house, to be pressed in the morning. After that, since she had the house to herself, she would take a lovely bath in steaming hot water.
The plan went off without a hitch, but barely. She had just gotten out of the bath, dried herself, and put on a flannel wrapper, donated by Christy, when the door opened and Webb stepped into the kitchen, looking wet and exhausted. He glanced at the tub, still full on the hearth, and grinned in a way that tugged at her heart and made her want to fuss over him. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you were out with the posse.”
“No luck,” he said. “We’ll be heading out again in the morning.” He let his gaze drift over her. “I just wish I’d gotten back a few minutes sooner.”
She rather liked his teasing, though she was enough of a lady not to admit as much, at least while she was standing there in a wrapper and nothing else, with her feet bare and her hair trailing, still damp, in spiral curls around her waist. She raised her chin and tried not to smile. “Have you eaten?” It was hard to be businesslike in such a state of dishabille.
“Had some jerky out of my saddle bags,” he said. He took his sweet time, hanging up his hat, pulling off his leather gloves, shedding his coat. “It was no feast, but I’m full.”
“Coffee, then?” she pressed, but cautiously.
He sighed. “That sounds fine,” he said, and crossed to the hearth.
While she was brewing fresh coffee, he dragged the bathtub to the side door and emptied it into the mud, then hung it in its place again.
“Are the men coming in later?” she asked, getting a mug down from the shelf, fetching the sugar she knew he liked to add.
Webb was in front of the fireplace again, crouching there, scratching Augustus behind the ears and murmuring to him. Augustus sneezed heartily, as if to let it be known that he, too, had endured a cold, wet, and difficult day.
“They’ll be spending the night in camp,” Webb answered. “I’ll go and join them. I just stopped by to look in on you and say that I’m going back out with Zachary tomorrow. We might be gone several days this time.”
Megan set the cup and the sugar bowl down on the table. She’d forgotten, by then, that she was not properly dressed, and later she would wonder about that. For the moment, she was busy worrying. “You’re going to be a deputy?”
“Just until this business is settled,” he reiterated quietly. “There’s been a lot of thievery around here lately. Zachary needs help.”
She could hardly beg him not to offer much-needed assistance to her sister’s husband, but she wanted to. Her mind was spinning with images of Webb being shot or injured, or simply catching his death in the damp weather. “I see,” she said, and bit her lower lip.
He smiled. “I’m glad you’re here, Megan,” he said gruffly. “I’d forgotten what it was like to have a woman around.”
Megan blushed, though she knew his comment was not meant to be a disrespectful one. “There’s—there’s something I need to know,” she said, taking herself by surprise. “Did she love you? Ellie, I mean.”
He gazed at her steadily for what seemed a long time. Then he answered. “I thought so once,” he said, and she believed him. “It was all wrong, though—I see that now, though I was too young and hotheaded back then to get my mind around the idea. A thing that’s wrong at the start can’t be expected to turn out right in the end, can it?”
She shook her head. “No,” she agreed. “This is all so confusing—feeling these things—finding out that Bridget and Skye are my sisters—”
He arched an eyebrow, and she realized she hadn’t told him about Granddaddy’s elaborate scheme to keep his family together, and no one else had, eith
er. While he sat at the table, sipping hot, fresh coffee, she explained it all, or what she knew of it, anyway.
At the end of the story, he gave a low whistle of exclamation. “A man’s got to admire that kind of gumption,” he said. “Seems like it skipped a generation, though—passed from your grandfather to you and your sisters.”
“I always wonder about that. How such fine people as Gideon and Rebecca McQuarry could produce the sons they did.”
He leaned over, kissed her lightly, innocently on the forehead. Harmless as it was, that kiss took fire and blazed through her blood. “And I’ll always wonder,” he replied, “how a son-of-a-bitch like my old man could have had a fine son like me.”
They both laughed.
“Maybe we can make sense of things, if we work together,” Webb said, more seriously. “What do you say, McQuarry?”
She almost said it then, almost admitted that she was beginning to love him, against all will and reason. The words welled up from within her, as if springing from the root of her soul, but she held them back. What did she know about love? She’d already proven herself to be anything but an expert on the subject, believing Davy’s lies the way she had. “I say we ought to try,” she answered very softly, and she knew her eyes were shining, that she hadn’t entirely hidden what lay in her heart.
“I’d better go,” he said, nearly sighing the words. “Do you know what a temptation you are, in that nightgown, with your hair down?” He let a strand slide between his fingers. “Soft.”
Megan closed her eyes, swayed slightly. What was it about this man that made all the strength in her body seep down into her feet and then soak into the floor? No one, certainly not Davy, had ever affected her in such a way.
He kissed the top of her head. “Good night,” he said, and stepped back.
“Good night,” she managed. She didn’t want him to go, not because she was frightened of being alone, not because she would be diminished without him, but because she was so much more vividly alive when he was nearby. He brought a shape and a substance to her life that simply were not there without him.
He cupped her cheeks in his hands. “I could stay.”
She called upon all her McQuarry determination. She wanted their marriage to be right, from the first. “Better if you go,” she said.
His blue eyes were remarkably tender as he looked down at her, and at the same time they blazed with a heat that rivaled the flames on the hearth. “You’re right,” he said with a sigh. “I hate to admit it, but you’re right.”
Having said that, he bent his head and kissed her with a sort of reverent hunger. Once again, the floor undulated beneath Megan; once again, she held on to the reins of her emotions, but they were slipping. Fast.
“Go,” she gasped when she drew back.
He nodded, went back to the door, and took his hat and coat down from the pegs on the wall.
Megan’s head cleared, and she remembered that he was rejoining the posse in the morning. “You’ll be carrying a gun, won’t you?”
“I can borrow a rifle from Zachary if I need one,” he said.
She nodded. “Be safe,” she said.
He didn’t answer, didn’t promise he wouldn’t be hurt, and that troubled Megan, irrational as it was. Of course, he couldn’t make a vow like that—no one could—but she still wanted to hear it. She wanted to storm the gates of heaven itself, pounding with her fists, demanding to know that no bullet would find Webb Stratton while he searched for rustlers or at any other time.
When he’d gone, she latched the door, put out all but one lamp, and retreated to her room, with its narrow, lonely bed. Augustus padded after her and curled up on the floor at her side with a long and philosophical sigh. She was deeply moved, sure he sensed her loneliness and wanted to lend what comfort he could.
“He’ll be all right,” she told the dog, rolling onto her side and bending down to stroke his silken coat.
Augustus whimpered, as though he had his doubts, but his presence was comforting to Megan, and she soon drifted off to sleep.
She awakened to a low growl and sat up, blinking. She’d secured the main door, but there was someone in the house, all the same. Webb? No—Augustus would have gone to greet him; instead, he lay on his belly, forelegs in front of him, making that grumbling sound.
Before she could arise, she saw a man’s form take shape in the shadows of her doorway—she’d left it open in case Augustus wanted to leave again during the night—and although a scream rose in her throat, she strangled on it. She was literally too frightened to cry out, or even to move.
Augustus’s growl turned to a snarl. He raised himself onto his haunches, and even in that thick darkness, Megan could see that his hackles were up. His teeth gleamed, more ominous than the fangs of a snake.
The shadow man stiffened. “Settle down, boy,” Jesse said. A gun whispered against leather as he drew.
“Jesse?”
Augustus slumped to the floor, but Megan was still annoyed, and frightened, too.
“No,” she said, urgently and with force. “If you kill this dog, Jesse Stratton, you’d better be ready to kill me, too.”
She heard the pistol slip back into its holster. Augustus didn’t move, but Megan knew he was poised to spring. Knew he would have gotten himself shot in the attempt to protect her, the dear, foolish thing.
She sat up, pulled on her wrapper, struck a match, and lit the lantern on the little table next to her bed.
Sure enough, Jesse was standing in the doorway. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, and, remarkable as it was, Megan believed him. He looked pale and sick, and that aspect of his appearance alarmed her more than any threat to her own safety could have done.
“What is it?” she demanded, bolting to her feet. “Has something happened to Webb?”
Jesse thrust a hand through his hair, in a gesture very reminiscent of his older brother. “No,” he said. “Not yet.”
“What do you mean, not yet?” Megan reached down to stroke Augustus’s head, hoping to calm the animal, but she was far from calm herself, and the dog must have sensed that. Like a child, he took his cues from what she did, not what she said.
“It’s all a trick,” Jesse said miserably. “All of it.”
Megan’s stomach dropped, bounced into the back of her throat. “What is a trick, Jesse? Damn it, tell me.”
“Those men Webb hired. My friends. It’s them Webb and the marshal have been looking for. They’re here to steal the herd.”
Chapter
8
Megan’s heart lay heavy and cold, half frozen with fear. For a long moment, she was so furious, so stricken, that she couldn’t say a word to Jesse, but, being a true McQuarry, she soon found her tongue. She thrust both palms hard into his chest, not giving a damn that he was half again as big as she was.
“You betrayed your own brother?” she demanded. “How could you do a thing like that? Webb trusted you, welcomed you. He gave you a job!”
Jesse looked downright gray, and even younger than he was. His eyes seemed huge, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He was obviously ashamed, and remorseful, too, but as far as Megan was concerned, the damage was done. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”
“You didn’t think,” Megan mocked, shoving him backward into the kitchen, toward the main door. “Damn you, Jesse, if I had the time, I swear I’d take a buggy whip to you. You go out to the barn and saddle a horse for me—this instant—and don’t give me any backtalk!”
Jesse backed, blinking, over the threshold, into the damp, windy night. “A horse? You can’t—”
She pushed him through the opening and slammed the door in his face. “Saddle that horse! Now!” she yelled through the heavy panel, then hurried back to her room and began pulling on the first clothing that came to hand, a black velvet evening gown, trimmed in pink sateen, that she’d worn on the stage. It was highly impractical for the task at hand, and heavy, too, but it would provide warmth and a deg
ree of shelter from the weather. As she dressed, she regretted being so prideful as to refuse her sisters’ repeated offers to lend her clothing.
When she and Augustus reached the barn, perhaps ten minutes later, Jesse was leading out a little bay mare, chosen from the string of horses Webb kept to train and sell. Even in the relative darkness, she saw the startled expression on Jesse’s face when she mounted, nimble as a monkey, Webb’s rifle in one hand, and nudged the mare into motion with her knees.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Jesse shouted through the rising wind. The rain had stopped for a little while, but Megan knew the worst of the storm was yet to come.
“Never you mind where I’m going,” Megan yelled back. “You go and fetch Jake Vigil,” she said, pointing to the rise on the other side of the creek. “Then Trace Qualtrough. Tell them what you told me.”
Jesse was trying to mount up, too, but the process was a protracted one, since his slat-ribbed sorrel gelding had turned fitful and taken to dancing a fancy sidestep that had Jesse hopping along with one foot in the stirrup and one still on the ground. “You’re heading out to the herd!” he accused, as fresh, ice-cold rain began to slice down upon them. “You let me do that. You go fetch those fellers, whoever they are!”
“Do as I tell you,” Megan called over one shoulder, reining her horse westward, toward the place where Webb had told her the herd was gathered, “and maybe I’ll try to talk the judge out of hanging you for thieving!”
She thought Jesse might pursue her, and maybe he considered it, but when she reached the edge of the woods and looked back, she saw him and his horse splashing across the creek. She prayed he would obey orders—having no real reason to believe he would—because she was going to need Jake and Trace’s help to stop those rustlers from driving off the herd. She wished she had her own mare, Speckles, but she, like the land, had been sold long ago. As she rode, she silently cursed the day she’d laid eyes on Davy Trent.
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