Gabriel's Lady (Leisure Historical Romance)

by Charlotte Hubbard

  Billy rested his corded arms on the top plank of the white fence, which stretched as far as they could see. “Hasn’t been easy,” he replied. “If Mike Malloy hadn’t given me the breeding stock to get started with, I wouldn’t have made it. Glad I went with his wisdom about raisin’ horses instead of cattle, too. That market’s cost a lot of ranchers their shirts lately.”

  He held out his hand to the nearest cluster of bays, whistling low to coax them over. “A man with any ground’s always gonna need good horses,” Billy continued, “and townspeople need reliable mounts. I’m thinkin’ we could get into more trainin’—ridin’ lessons, even—if Solace stayed on to handle that for me.”

  Gabe nodded. It felt good to rest against the fence, wearing old pants and an open-collared shirt, with no one expecting anything of him. Nobody accusing him. Not much likelihood of Letitia haunting him here, either, as her world had been so totally different from this one. He might finally sleep through an entire night.

  As he stroked the muzzle of the bay in front of him, Gabe grinned at the contrast in textures: the velvety smoothness of its skin and the spiky whiskers, the glossy muscles of the horse’s neck and the power in its sleek body. It struck him that he’d forgotten so many of the sensations he’d been familiar with as a boy.

  “Handsome mount here,” he murmured. “They’re all so sleek and healthy—and I can’t tell you the last time I saddled up. Cranks, the butler, drove me to the office or the court house each day.”

  Billy grinned. “This here’s Owen’s horse, Jesse. Named for the outlaw, of course.”

  “Boys find that profession fascinating, even in the city.” Gabe glanced sideways, taking in the lean profile of his best friend and the way those blue eyes still sparkled. Years in the wind and weather had etched inroads around his brow and mouth, but Billy Bristol was a handsome man in his rough-cut way. He wouldn’t look right with his auburn hair cut short or slicked back—not that the current styles in clothing or hair were of any concern to him.

  “It hurt you to punish that boy,” Gabe observed. “I thought you were going to crack with every slap of that paddle, even though I was standing too far away to read your expression.”

  “Good thing Owen couldn’t see my face,” Billy agreed with a pensive grin. “But I can’t let him get the upper hand with Gracie—not the way Wesley did with our teachers, and with Mama. One hardened criminal’s enough in this family.”

  “Must’ve been a horrendous shock, to have your own brother charge at you with a loaded gun.” Gabe tried to envision that awful scene at the Triple M ranch, but his mind had undergone enough torture lately, so he let go of those images. “I missed out on a lot while I was apprenticed to Bancroft.”

  “Yeah, well, watchin’ your long-lost twin turn on ya—seein’ the cold cruelty in eyes just like your own—isn’t an experience I’d recommend to any man.” Billy let out his breath. “Hard to believe that’s been ten years ago.”

  Gabe nodded. For a few moments they watched a pair of yearlings kick up their hind legs and challenge each other to a playful race. Only a matter of time before his best friend—his blood brother—asked the obvious questions about how he’d been doing since Letitia’s death, so he posed a question of his own. It was a diversionary tactic that served him well in the courtroom. “Are you concerned that Olivia might find out Wesley was her father?”

  Billy let out an undignified snort. “I wonder every single day if we’ve waited too long to tell her. Scares me half to death that if she finds out, she won’t…won’t want to think of me as her daddy anymore.”

  Raw emotion—naked fear—rarely welled up in his friend, but Gabe could feel the tug-of-war taking place in Billy’s heart. “It’s a wonder somebody hasn’t already told her. Like your mother, perhaps.”

  “She and Carlton have hired a manager for the hotel, so we don’t see ’em as much. But yeah,” he said with a nod, “Mama says it’s high time Olivia knew the truth. Eve’s as wary of letting that cat out of the bag as I am, though. She’s got her hands full, paintin’ portraits and keepin’ up with Bernadette while she rides herd on our boy. Olivia’s always been as good as gold. We hate to upset her beliefs about who she is.”

  “You’ll find the right way. The right time,” Gabe assured him. “You’re the kindest, most patient man I know, Billy, and I admire the way you’ve taken responsibility for so many people. Why, I couldn’t even make a wife happy, let alone answer to so many other family members.”

  An odd expression overtook his friend’s face. Billy straightened up from the fence and started walking; although he appeared to have no particular destination in mind as they strolled across the lawn alongside the white house, Gabe sensed they were on a private journey. A journey Billy couldn’t share with just anybody.

  As they approached a small cemetery surrounded by a spiked iron fence, Gabe tightened. A large river rock marked the grave of Billy’s father, Owen Bristol, and the headstone beside it was his twin brother’s, but Gabe hadn’t expected to see two small stones with statues of lambs resting on top.

  “Didn’t know how to say this—and didn’t know if it was any of my business,” Billy said softly. “I didn’t know Letitia, ’cept for seein’ her at your weddin’…but my gut said she’d never be happy, no matter who she married. Partly on account of her overbearin’ mama, and partly because she was just…fragile. Not long for this earth.”

  He slung a loose arm around Gabe’s shoulders then, and his voice thickened with emotion. “I know you truly loved her though, and I’m real, real sorry you lost her, Gabe. I’m guessin’ you’ve passed through a valley of the shadow like none of us’ll ever know.”

  Gabe closed his eyes against tears that dribbled down his cheeks. When would he climb off this emotional seesaw? Would he ever hold a conversation about his wife that didn’t make him feel the loss and guilt and torment all over again? His pulse thudded, much like that dull, hollow sound of the dirt hitting Letitia’s casket in the grave.

  “You’re not the first to say that,” he admitted with a sigh. “I-I knew she tippled too much from that flask of nerve tonic. Suspected her mother would interfere at every turn. But I thought I could accept those things. I thought if I could introduce Letitia to new interests—like starting our family—but she just—she just—”

  “Too scared, prob’ly,” Billy offered. “Didn’t want to feel fat and ugly. Didn’t know how she’d handle a cryin’ kid in the night. Didn’t—”

  Didn’t want to bear my child. Gabe’s thoughts mocked him for the hundredth time. But he couldn’t tell Billy the awful truth he’d read in his wife’s diary. Couldn’t expose that deep, throbbing wound even to his closest friend.

  “—wanna give up bein’ a child herself.’ Cause once you’ve had a baby or two,” he added with a fond shake of his head, “there’s no gettin’ around bein’ a grown-up. No goin’ back to bein’ responsible just for yourself, or pleasin’ yourself, when there’s backsides to wipe and tears to dry.”

  Gabe sighed heavily. “I try to convince myself it was for the best,” he muttered. “I can’t understand what God wanted when He brought this situation to pass, because—because Letitia was about five months along, carrying our firstborn—”

  His voice broke. He paused to compose himself. “We’re taught that the Lord’s working out His purpose even in the most painful, unexpected situations. So I try to believe that. I get no comfort from it, but I try to believe it.”

  “You can’t tell me God gets any good outta one of His children dyin’.” Billy’s sigh sounded so forlorn, Gabe looked over—and saw two huge teardrops spilling out of those blue eyes. “Nearly killed Eve to have this little girl—Jennie, we named her—die in her arms just three days after she was born. We were thankful Bernadette came along shortly after, but then Matthias was stillborn.”

  “I’m sorry, Billy. I had no idea. I don’t know how you and Eve can stand that agony.” Gabe hooked his arm around Billy’s neck and for several
moments they stood in their silent sorrow, gazing at tiny tombstones that seemed cold and hard even when surrounded by the soft green grass and warm sunshine of a spring afternoon.

  “Makes you grateful for what you’ve got, I can tell ya that much.” Billy swiped at his face with his sleeve and put on a smile. “But I didn’t mean to heap more grief on top of yours, Gabe. You came here to sort things out.”

  “And I can feel it happening already. You can’t imagine how oppressive that household in St. Louis felt to me,” he explained. “It all piled up on me after the funeral…the house her parents gave us…the job as her father’s partner…the two domestics hand-chosen by Henrietta. I earned a very respectable living, yet I didn’t have a thing that truly belonged to me.”

  He sucked in a deep, cleansing breath. “I felt the pull of invisible strings dictating Letitia’s every move—every thought—as if her mother were a puppeteer. Her laudanum bottle drowned out any inclination to think for herself, or to listen to my suggestions.”

  “Nasty stuff, opium. Hard habit to break, the way I understand it.”

  “You’ve got to fight to overcome its power and…Letitia had no inclination to give it up,” Gabe said with a sigh. “She couldn’t imagine a day without her ‘tonic.’ Got agitated when her supply ran low. I had no idea how many flasks she had stashed around the house. It was within her reach every hour of every day.”

  “She had every privilege, that woman did—and she had you, Gabe,” Billy added staunchly. “I hope you’ll let go of any notion that her death came from somethin’ you said or did to her. Or somethin’ you could’ve changed.”

  They were circling the crux of the situation again, as if Billy was slyly luring a confession from him. He’d used this strategy himself while arguing some landmark cases. As much as he wanted to, Gabe couldn’t purge himself of his odious knowledge about the exact nature of Letitia’s death. Not yet, anyway. The facts still felt too raw.

  At the sound of hoofbeats out by the barn, Gabe’s melancholy mood vanished. Solace, clad in pants and a tucked-in shirt, was leading matched bay geldings around the corral with halter ropes. She trotted backward as she talked to them—a feat in itself—and the horses followed her low voice with their ears pricked forward. Their gait became perfectly even.

  “Good boys!” she crooned, still backpedaling. Off to one side, her dog, Rex, sat watching attentively. When his ears pricked up, his dark markings resembled a mask—or a butterfly.

  “I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” Gabe murmured. “That girl—well, she’s no girl anymore—and those animals are so in tune with each other—”

  “You got that right!” Billy replied. “And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! When I gave her those geldings last year—Lincoln and Lee, she calls ’em—I had no idea ’bout the performance they had in ’em. Always had a way with horses myself, but Solace makes me feel pretty humble.”

  Billy’s face eased into a grin as the two bays circled the corral again in perfect, measured step. “It’s like she casts a spell, and they’ll do anything she wants,” he remarked in a faraway voice. “Same way with Rex—and he’s just a mutt, far as breedin’ goes.” This spectacle seemed to relieve his sadness, too, so the two of them stood in awed silence to watch Solace work.

  When she looked satisfied with the horses’ performance, she draped their lead ropes loosely over their necks. Then, with a snap of her fingers, Lincoln and Lee resumed their circling of the ring without her. Gabe had never seen horses keep in step so well—even teams who’d pulled wagons together for years had their occasional lapses. But the two bays continued to circle the corral with their ebony manes and tails flowing at the same graceful angle.

  When Solace glanced over at her dog, Gabe grinned. “He’s a lot like your Snowy and Spot, isn’t he? I suppose Hattie and Boots are long gone by now.”

  “Yeah, it’s been a few years, but they lived out happy lives there at the Triple M,” his friend replied in a sentimental tone. “It was a dang good thing Emma left your two dogs behind,’ cause they were everything to Solace after I came back to this place.

  “Good thing Mike found that ornery white dog makin’ a nuisance of himself in town, too,” he added with a chuckle. “Solace was heartbroken when our other dogs passed. And now Rex, he’s the king. Just like his name says.”

  The small white collie—no doubt a border collie mixed with something else—slipped under the bottom rung of the corral at Solace’s silent hand signal. Gabe nipped his lip, anticipating something wonderful. The dog’s intent expression as he watched the two horses told him Rex was about to make his move.

  Crouched like a small white fox, the dog let the horses canter past him. Without missing a beat, he fell into step with Lincoln and Lee, and then he leaped onto the inside horse’s back.

  “Holy cow! It’s like having a circus right here in your own yard!” Gabe marveled in a whisper.

  “Oh, it gets better.” Billy’s pride shimmered brightly in his eyes as he followed the geldings and the mounted dog around the corral. “Solace makes it look easy, but I can’t tell ya how many hours she’s spent bringin’ her act this far. And there she goes—”

  Solace, too, fell into the rhythm of those eight prancing hooves, while Rex spanned the short distance between the horses’ moving backs. His tongue was hanging out and he appeared to be grinning at his mistress, urging her to join their game.

  Solace lunged then, mounting the unsaddled inside horse by landing on its shoulder and swinging her leg over it. She sat for only a moment before drawing her feet up under her lithe body, while grasping the two ropes. Then she stood up on her mount’s back, balancing without any apparent effort.

  “This is too much,” Gabe whispered. He wiped the lenses of his spectacles on his shirt sleeve, shaking his head in amazement. “She doesn’t even seem to be thinking about—”

  “There’s more. But it gets tricky here. We’ve gotta be ready to run over there if she slips.”

  Solace held the ropes so they dangled slightly, and then carefully—carefully—she stepped sideways so she had one foot on each of the two cantering bays. Rex had inched forward, to crouch low on his horse’s shoulders—

  And then Solace bent her knees and urged the two horses faster. And faster yet!

  The look on her face held Gabe Getty spellbound. Her sorrel hair streamed behind her in waves that caught the afternoon sun, while her slender body flowed as though she were an integral part of the horses. Or were the horses an extension of her? With her face uplifted in a victorious grin, Solace Monroe was flying without wings. Soaring in ways few humans ever knew.

  “This is absolutely incredible,” he whispered.

  She’s a woman like no other. A woman you could love, Gabe.

  Gabe held his breath. Where had that come from? As he glanced sideways at Billy, he had no indication his best friend had said a word, yet he had clearly heard a voice. These past few weeks had presented him with so many new decisions—so many unexpected directions—that he’d gone to bed each sleepless night in total confusion about what he should do next and where he should go.

  But this voice had spoken directly to him.

  He shifted, needing to change focus. Something felt absolutely wrong about having such thoughts of love for another woman so soon—let alone for Billy’s kid sister!

  Never mind that Solace Monroe was no blood relation to Billy, and that she was a young lady of eighteen now. It was unthinkable to look at her in a romantic light. He was twenty-seven. His years in St. Louis as a lawyer and a husband gave him nothing in common with this acrobat circling the ring—

  “If you’ll put your eyes back in their sockets, Mr. Getty, I’ll have Solace show ya her best trick,” Billy teased. “Believe me, after ya see the way she handles a gun, you’ll wanna stay on her good side! Not that Solace would harm a flea,” he added quietly. “And not that you’d care about which side of her you’re on.”

  Gabe met his friend’s gaze and didn’t
know what to think about that remark. But he couldn’t miss the lights dancing in Billy’s blue eyes as they walked to the corral.

  Chapter Seven

  “Lookin’ real good today, Solace,” Billy said as he clapped her on the back. “Someday, when you’re rich and famous, ridin’ in some fancy Wild West show, don’t forget who set you in a saddle ’fore you could even walk.”

  Solace laughed. “I’ll thank you forever for not snitching to Mama about how I was practicing behind the barn. And where would I be without Lincoln and Lee?”

  “Oh, prob’ly sittin’ in some ole rich guy’s house, eatin’ bonbons and bossin’ the household help. That’s what you were born to do, isn’t it?” Billy ruffled Rex’s head when the dog placed its front paws on his knee. He flashed Gabe a conspiratorial wink. “Lemme get you an apple, so’s you can show our citified friend what you and this worthless mutt are really made of. Get your pistol, honey.”

  It was nothing unusual for Billy to brag about her, but Solace couldn’t miss the undertone in his words. And as he walked to the root cellar for that apple, she noticed Gabe Getty’s nervous grin. It flickered across his lips like lightning bugs on a summer night, as if he wanted to say something but the cat had his tongue. Imagine that, from a lawyer!

  Rex let out an imperious woof and then held up a front paw.

  “You’re right, pup, I’ve forgotten my manners! This is Gabe Getty, Rex, and I’ve known him since I was—well, since I was no taller than you are!”

  The dog’s ears fanned out and he looked up at the tall man’s face with bright, assessing eyes.

  “And before Solace was that tall, I had a Border collie very much like you,” Gabe crooned. “Except Hattie was mostly black—and while she was the best friend a kid ever had, she never rode a horse. That was some show you put on, Rex!”