Bound for Sin

by Tess LeSue

  “I heard he turned into a wolf,” the redhead said lightly.

  Matt shrugged. He didn’t know where the idea had first come from, but people sure did seem to warm to it. He didn’t know how they could even consider it, it was so dumb, but they did. With relish. “Maybe he did. But if so, he turned back into a body afterward, because I buried it.”

  “I’ve read all those books,” Herb Tasker said, “and I find it hard to believe that someone could shoot him that easily. I reckon you got the wrong Indian.”

  “I knew him a long time. It was definitely him,” Matt said tightly.

  “You were friends?”

  He didn’t like the way that redhead was looking at him. She was sharp, like a bird of prey.

  “We traveled together sometimes.”

  “Are you an outlaw too, Mr. Slater?” she teased. Only it wasn’t all teasing. There was a thread of malice in it.

  “Matt’s no outlaw!” Matt’s defender was no other than Phineas Fairchild Bee Blunt. Or his brother. He was wearing one black boot and one brown boot, so Matt couldn’t tell which one he was. “You can’t go calling honest gentlemen outlaws!”

  “It’s defamation!” his brother agreed.

  Even dusty and with their faces sticky with toffee, they were like little lords. Their clipped accents just dripped disdain. Defamation. What kind of kid even knew what defamation was, let alone bandied the word about in conversation?

  “I do beg your pardon.” The redhead looked like she wanted to laugh, but kept her tone courteous. “I was simply surprised that Mr. Slater would travel with the Plague of the West. After all, he’s a known menace.”

  “Was.” Matt stressed the past tense. He had a hard time not defending his friend.

  “You knew the Plague of the West?” The boys were in awe at that.

  “Did you see him shot?”

  “I heard there was blood everywhere!”

  “And brains! Were there brains?”

  “I bet they were everywhere!”

  The little lords had evaporated, replaced with bloodthirsty barbarians.

  “Boys! What on earth are you talking about?” Matt hadn’t heard Georgiana come up behind him.

  “Matt saw his friend be shot in the head!”

  “What?”

  “Imagine the mess!”

  “Phineas!” She was furious, he saw. “Come here. Now!” She seized the boys and dragged them a few steps away. Even though she kept her voice low, Matt and everyone else in the group could hear from her tone that she was well and truly blistering their ears.

  When she brought them back to the group, they were hanging their heads. She gave them a poke.

  They looked up at Matt, miserable.

  “I’m very sorry,” one mumbled.

  “We are sorry for your loss,” the other agreed.

  “I do beg your pardon,” Georgiana apologized to the entire group, as well as to Matt. “You must think they were raised in the wilds.” She was flushed. “That was certainly no way for them to speak about your friend’s death. You have our condolences,” she told Matt formally. She shot the twins an evil look. “How they could speak of it that way is beyond my comprehension.”

  “Don’t be too hard on them,” the redhead told her. “It was my fault: I brought the subject up. And Mr. Slater had just finished telling us that he and the Plague of the West weren’t really friends. They just traveled together.” She sounded amused at the distinction.

  “The Plague of the West?” Georgiana’s mouth fell open. “You were friends with the Plague of the West?” She turned horrified eyes on Matt.

  “No,” the redhead disagreed, still sounding amused, “they just traveled together.”

  “You traveled with the man who shot up the Hudson’s Bay trading post by Birchville?” Georgiana sounded appalled. “The man who terrorized the Fuller party the whole way along the Oregon Trail?”

  “He what?” Matt had never heard such nonsense.

  “I read about it! In those books!”

  “Those dime novels are garbage,” he snapped. He was sick to death of hearing such nonsense spouted about his friend. “There isn’t even a place called Birchville out that way. It’s all made up.”

  “Made up?” the redhead sounded shocked. “You’re really going to claim that Rides with Death never terrorized the Fuller party?”

  “I doubt he even heard of them!”

  The redhead gave him a scornful look. “I’ll have you know, I heard it from Fordham Fuller himself!”

  “I don’t care if you heard it from God himself; it’s a lie,” Matt said stubbornly. He wasn’t about to stand by and let Deathrider be . . . defamed.

  “How can you defend him? He was a rapist and a murderer!”

  “He ain’t a rapist! And if he ever murdered anyone, they probably needed murdering.” Matt could have bitten his tongue off. What was he doing? He could see the shocked looks he was getting. He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, that was out of line. But those books are pure rubbish, and I ain’t going to agree they’re anything else.”

  “Rubbish!” The redhead was irate now. “How dare you! And when that man held Susannah Fuller captive! He raped a child of thirteen!”

  “Raped!” Georgiana gasped.

  Matt wasn’t going to be able to keep his temper if that woman accused Deathrider of raping a child. “Excuse me,” he said, struggling to keep the anger out of his voice, “but it’s time we got the kids to bed. It was nice to meet you, miss.”

  “Miss Archer,” she told him, her voice as sharp as a needle.

  Matt felt his blood turn to ice. “Archer.”

  She nodded.

  “A.A. Archer?”

  “Ava Addison Archer.” Her smile made him think of a snake.

  He wasn’t sorry to leave her. If he’d stayed, he might have said something he’d regret. The last thing he wanted was to end up in one of her dime novels. He had no doubt it would be as the villain.

  * * *

  • • •

  WENDELL WAS DETERMINED to help round the kids up and get them back to the hotel. He wasn’t about to let Georgiana be alone with Matt, to her immense frustration. He refused to let Matt near Wilby, scooping the sleeping boy up, quilt and all.

  “Do you want me to come help put them to bed?” Becky asked. She was shooting longing looks at the courthouse steps, where LeFoy and his girls were standing next to the piano.

  “I can help,” Matt and Wendell said simultaneously.

  “Are you sure?” Becky seemed torn.

  “I’ll be fine,” Georgiana assured her, giving her hand a squeeze. “Enjoy the dance. You look beautiful.”

  Becky gave her a grateful look.

  “You don’t need to help,” Wendell told Matt sharply. “I’m more than happy to.”

  “As her fiancé, I think I should,” Matt said, and Georgiana thought he was needling Wendell. “Besides, my hotel room is right opposite. It ain’t out of my way.”

  Wendell scowled.

  Georgiana felt immensely grateful for the charade of their engagement. The last thing she felt like was being alone with Wendell Todd, and he could hardly protest her fiancé being with her wherever she went. It made Matt the perfect shield.

  “We’ll meet you back at the hotel after the LeFoys finish,” Phin said casually, leaning against the tree.

  Susannah wailed. “I want to see them too!”

  “Nice try,” Matt told the twins, “but none of you are staying to watch. It’s time to go.”

  “But they’re so good,” Phin complained. And it was true. As they left the square, the LeFoy girls started singing, and they were amazing.

  “They’ll still be good next week,” Matt told the children. They pulled faces but went along.

  Georgiana held Susannah�
�s hand tightly as they walked back to the hotel. The sweet blend of the LeFoy girls’ voices singing “The Rose of Alabama” drifted through the cooling night.

  “I’m exhausted by this journey already, and we haven’t even left yet,” she said to the two men, once they’d deposited the children in the hotel room.

  “Me and Kipp are more ’n happy to help get everything organized,” Wendell said. He was holding his hat in his hands and giving her a sycophantic look. She remembered all too well how he’d threatened her back in New York. She didn’t trust this new Wendell one bit.

  “Good night,” she told him firmly. But he wasn’t leaving. Not while Matt was still standing in the hallway too. Matt was staring at him, waiting for him to go.

  They just stood there, staring each other down.

  Georgiana rolled her eyes. Men. She didn’t have the energy for them tonight. Even though she’d been longing for a moment alone with Matt, it didn’t look like it would happen.

  “Good night,” she said regretfully. And then she closed the door on them and the whole disappointing night.

  16

  IT ONLY TOOK a couple of weeks for Matt’s party to book out, and after that, his days were full of provisioning, hiring scouts, auctioning Luke’s horses and doing everything in his power to avoid Georgiana Bee Blunt. Deathrider had come through the worst of his infection and was driving Matt crazy with his constant complaining and his refusal to stay in bed. Matt was glad they’d managed to keep him locked in the room until Ava Archer had left town, or things might have got even more interesting.

  “Stop fussing about it,” Deathrider snapped when Matt barred him from leaving. “I’ve never met her! So it’s not like she’d recognize me.”

  “Just because you haven’t met her, don’t mean she hasn’t seen you. And I didn’t go through this whole circus for you to get found alive now.”

  He was such a pain in the ass. He was still running fevers and battling headaches, which made him ornerier than a bee-stung bear, but he refused to stay put in the room. He spent the day following Matt about, making a general nuisance of himself; he poked into Matt’s business, criticized him constantly and seemed peevishly entertained by Matt’s fake engagement. He was at great pains to update Matt on what his fiancée was up to at all times.

  “I don’t want to know,” Matt snapped at least a hundred times.

  “Yes, you do. You just don’t want anyone else to know that you want to know.”

  “That’s the most wrongheaded thing I ever heard.”

  “It is. But then, you’re a wrongheaded person.”

  “That ain’t what I meant!”

  “Wendell’s teaching her how to fire a rifle,” the ornery Indian said one day, helping himself to Matt’s coffeepot. Matt was closeted up in his office at Mrs. Tilly’s, trying to make the account that had just arrived from Cavil’s add up. He had a feeling he’d been overcharged on flour again.

  “He what?” Matt looked up sharply.

  “He’s teaching her how to shoot. She’s in those new travel clothes that she and Mrs. Tilly’s girl sewed up. They do some wonders for her figure.”

  Matt glared at him.

  Deathrider shrugged. “Wait till you see. It’s not something a man can fail to notice.”

  “Did you want something? I’m trying to work.”

  “I’m just here to give you your daily update. Which is, she’s looking fine, and she’s armed and dangerous.”

  “I don’t care.” Matt still couldn’t get the numbers to add up. But that might be because he kept picturing what on earth Georgiana could be wearing that would make Deathrider say such a thing. They do some wonders for her figure. The woman had so many fancy clothes already. What was so special about these new ones? “Why’s she learning to shoot anyhow?” he asked irritably.

  “Because she’s going to Oregon.” Deathrider gave him a sideways look.

  “California,” Matt snapped. And the sooner the better. He didn’t think he’d had a decent night’s sleep since he met her. It was all dirty dreams all night long. It wore a man out.

  “These make no sense,” he growled, standing abruptly. “I’m going to ask Cavil about it in person.” He grabbed his hat and was out the door, the accounts under his arm. He was aware of Deathrider following him.

  “They’re in the paddock behind the blacksmith’s,” Deathrider said.

  “I don’t know what you mean. I’m going to Cavil’s.” But Matt couldn’t stop himself from taking the long way, which went straight past the blacksmith’s. “I need some nails,” he grumbled, but he knew Deathrider didn’t believe him. Especially when he went straight past the blacksmith’s and round to the back paddock.

  Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Matt came to a dead stop when he saw Georgiana, out there behind the smithy, aiming at old cans with a rifle about half the size her body. It wasn’t the rifle that gave him pause. It was her goddamn travel clothes. In place of her usual bell of a skirt was a narrower heavy one that drew attention to the natural line of her hips. But it wasn’t that either that had him hot under the collar. It was the leather vest she was wearing. The thing was obscene. It was tightly fitted and cinched in at the waist. It was similar to the one Ava Archer wore, but on Georgiana it looked less practical and more . . . suggestive. The leather clung lovingly to the impressive swell of her breasts. Her large, firm, thrusting breasts. The dramatic dip of her waist beneath them only made them seem bigger. Hell. A man couldn’t look away.

  Wendell Todd certainly couldn’t. Matt’s fists clenched. Look at the way the idiot was staring. Especially when she hefted the weapon and threw her shoulders back.

  Goddamn it, no! He wasn’t doing this.

  Matt left the paddock like the devil himself was after him. He couldn’t be around her, not when she was wearing a vest like that. He was sweating with the effort of not going over there, throwing her over his shoulder and making for the nearest hayloft.

  “You forgot your nails,” Deathrider called after him.

  After seeing her behind the smithy, Matt was on guard never to run into her. Occasionally, he saw her from the corner of his eye, always wearing that damn vest. The vest he took to dreaming about. Only in his dreams she was wearing nothing but the vest, the full curves of her breast swelling over the neckline and visible through the armholes when she lifted her arms. Which she did to pull him down to kiss her.

  Goddamn, it made him itchier than a jackrabbit.

  That vest was so tangled up with his lustful fantasies that he couldn’t risk seeing her in person. He spoke to her through Wendell, which made Wendell happy. The idiot ran back and forth between them like a messenger boy, eager to do everything he could to keep them apart, and even more eager to use any excuse that he could to spend time with her.

  “How are you going to keep this up on the trail?” Deathrider asked him the week they rolled out. The two of them were packing the chuck wagon while Seb double-checked the tents.

  Matt ignored him.

  “Especially considering you’re supposed to be her fiancé. People have noticed, you know. It’s not normal for a man to avoid his bride-to-be. Especially when the bride-to-be is as comely as Mrs. Smith.”

  “It’s just pretend.” Matt threw a bag of corn at Deathrider, harder than he needed to. It thudded into him and Deathrider laughed.

  “And I’ve been busy,” Matt said.

  “Sure. But come roll out, you’ll have all those long days, with nothing to do but travel. Together.”

  “Piloting a train is busy work,” Matt grunted.

  “You might wear yourself out so you can get some sleep, at least,” his friend said dryly. “I’m only glad I won’t have to listen to you toss and turn when we’re on the trail. Those hotel bed springs squeal like an angry pig.”

  They squealed again that night. And all the nights until they left Independence
. Despite working himself ragged all day, getting every supply wagon packed and checked and visiting with all his people to make sure they were ready to go, he couldn’t sleep. The last night in town was the worst night yet. He didn’t even almost sleep. And it was mostly due to the very last visit he’d paid.

  He’d left it till last because he couldn’t quite face it, but that had turned out to be an immense mistake, because it meant he’d come knocking so late. Being alone with her in the quiet of the house, by the flicker of lamplight, had been a challenge, to say the least. He’d known it was foolhardy the minute she’d opened her door. She’d been brushing her hair and still had the hairbrush in her hand. He’d never seen her with her hair down before, and the sight took his breath away. It was like getting kicked in the stomach by a mule.

  Her glossy dark curls fell heavily down her back and over her shoulders. Shorter curls clung to her face and neck. He had the urge to reach out and touch them. He had to clasp his hands behind his back to stop himself from giving in to the urge. At least she wasn’t wearing that leather vest. That would have been his complete undoing.

  “Matt,” she said softly. She was clearly surprised to see him, as they hadn’t spoken directly in days, maybe weeks.

  “I need to check your wagons,” he said curtly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He scowled. He’d thought it would get easier being around her after not seeing her for a while. It hadn’t. It was worse than ever. God, he wanted to kiss her.

  “Your wagons,” he managed to say. “I just need to check you’re all packed properly. Go over any last-minute questions.”

  “Oh. Of course.” She frowned. “But surely you spoke to Wendell about it?”

  Wendell. She said his name like he was already her husband.

  Well, that was his own fault. He was the one shoving them together.

  Like he was supposed to. That was the deal. Damn it.

  “I did. But they’re your wagons, and I think you should know what’s happening with them. I’d hate for you to get out on the trail and for something to be missing.”