Open Country
Page 41
“Oh, Hank. I love you, too, and I’m sorry I treated you so badly.” Reaching up, she looped an arm around his neck and pulled his head down to sweep his face with feathery kisses. After a moment, she released him and began loosening the buttons down the front of his trousers. “Did you make up all those lovely thoughts yourself?” When he didn’t answer, she looked up with a grin. “Or did you read them somewhere?”
“I read some,” he admitted, trying to stay focused.
Laughter danced in her eyes. “Some?”
“Most. All.” Realizing he’d lost ground, he redoubled his efforts on her breast, hoping to encourage her to hurry up with his trousers. “I thought that was what women wanted to hear.”
“Some women perhaps.”
“But not you.”
She smiled.
“Stand up,” he said.
When she did, he shoved his jacket the rest of the way off her shoulders, then tried to push the robe aside, too, but it was tied. Christ. “Then what would you like to hear, sweet Molly?” he murmured against her neck as he worked at the knot. “What do you want me to say?”
“That you love me—”
“I just did.” Goddamn knot.
“And that you want to marry me.”
He lifted his head and grinned down at her, thinking she was joking.
Her expression said she wasn’t.
“But we’re already married,” he reminded her, fumbling with the knot again. He hated knots.
“I am. But you’re not.” At his look of confusion, she gently stroked his cheek. “I married you, but you never got a chance to marry me. I took that choice away from you.”
“And now you’re giving it back?”
“And now I’m giving it back.”
“Hmmm.” He finally got the belt of her robe loose. “When do you need an answer?” he asked, pushing it aside.
Laughing that sexy, throaty laugh that made him forget everything but getting her on her back, she leaned forward and pressed her body against his. “Soon.”
Enough talk. “Okay. I want to marry you. Now strip.”
“Truly? You’ll marry me?”
“Sure. Here, let me help you get that robe off.”
A smile of delight split her face. “When?”
“Tomorrow. Whenever.” Tossing the robe aside, he started on the ribbon tabs of her gown.
“Oh, Hank.” She laughed and clapped her hands like a child.
Which interfered with his removal of her gown, but he managed. He paused to admire her fine body, then started tugging loose the buttons on his shirt.
“We’ll have a real wedding this time,” she expounded as he quickly divested himself of his garments, then swept her up and carried her to the bed.
“With bunches and bunches of flowers.” She wiggled down under the covers. “And everybody will be there, and Penny bombarding us with flower petals, and Charlie the proud ring bearer. Oh, I know! We’ll invite Reverend and Effie Beckworth . . . let him do the ceremony. Legally, this time. What do you think?”
“Fine. Whatever.” Sliding in beside her, he set about reacquainting himself with her fine, soft body.
“But if we’re going to have flowers, we’ll have to wait until spring.”
“Spring’s nice,” he said, slipping his head beneath the covers.
“If we do wait until spring, we could have it outside and . . .” She lifted the quilt. “What are you doing under there?”
“Practicing.”
“For what?”
“Our honeymoon.”
“A honeymoon too? Oh, Hank! Where? California. No, New Orleans. I’ve always wanted to go to—Oh my . . .”
And finally she shut up.
Epilogue
ANGUS FOLEY, EX-DEPUTY UNITED STATES MARSHAL AND now interim sheriff of Val Rosa since Sheriff Rikker died in his sleep two months ago, watched a group of buzzards dipping and soaring in the crisp April sky. He’d been watching them ever since he’d started down into the RosaRoja Valley and was pondering what might have brought in so many.
Maybe a cow or an elk. Even a griz. Something big. He reined his horse over to find out.
Knowing he was on Wilkins land and wanting to maintain some level of friendly concourse with the most powerful and influential family in the area—despite their hardheaded, high-handed ways—he figured reporting the carcass to the landowners would be the neighborly thing to do.
Besides, he was already headed out to the house.
He hadn’t been to the ranch since that meeting after Christmas, almost four months ago. And he hadn’t come face-to-face with either brother since the day he found Hank Wilkins standing over Daniel Fletcher’s crumpled body with his stepson in his arms. The older brother was a hard, ruthless sonofabitch. But Hank was downright frightening. Definitely not a man to cross.
Angus drew close enough to smell whatever the buzzards were after. It was pretty rank. Probably something in the gully he’d been following. It had been a slow melt this year, and there hadn’t been the normal rush of water coming down out of the canyons to wash these dry creeks clean. Might even be something that had lain frozen all winter and was just now thawing out.
As he neared, buzzards burst out of the ravine like black feathers thrown into the wind, making his horse sidestep and snort. Once he had calmed him, Angus reined him over to the rim of the gully and looked down.
A man, by damn. And a horse wearing a saddle with a rifle still in the scabbard. From this distance, Angus couldn’t tell what had killed the rider, but it was apparent the horse had a broken neck. Probably fell. As far as he could see, no obvious bullet wounds on either. Odd.
After securing his horse’s reins to a sturdy sapling, Angus tied his kerchief over his mouth and nose against the stench, then worked his way down into the gully.
The buzzards had been busy, as had various other scavengers. Most of the damage was recent, and from the look of it, the man had died some time ago before being covered over with snow until spring. Probably that three-day blizzard that had come through a day or so after Fletcher was killed. But there was enough of his scarred face left to give Angus an idea of the man’s identity.
Gordon Hennessey.
Other than a twisted leg, he had no noticeable wounds except for the damage done by predators after his death. Angus found several gold pieces in his pocket, so if Hennessey had died by foul means, it hadn’t been motivated by robbery. Then what?
Sitting back on his heels, Angus scanned the area, trying to piece together what had happened. At first glance, it looked as if both Hennessey and his horse had died when they’d fallen down into the gully. But two things struck Angus as odd.
There was no gun in Hennessey’s holster, or anywhere around his body.
And there was a glass medical syringe by his neck.
He knew of only two people in the area who would have medical paraphernalia—Doc O’Grady, who, along with him and Mr. Jones, had been stranded in Val Rosa during the same storm that had probably covered over Hennessey’s carcass—and Molly Wilkins, the woman Hennessey had been tracking.
Why had she been out here with Hennessey? And if she had killed him in self-defense—although the syringe hinted at a planned attack, rather than a defensive move—why hadn’t Wilkins reported it?
And finally, what was Angus going to do about it?
He thought for a while, trying to satisfy both his sense of duty and his need for justice. In the end, he decided to do the only thing he could do.
Wait and see.
After detaching the needle, he slipped it point first into the empty syringe, wrapped the syringe in his kerchief, and slipped it into his pocket. For now he wouldn’t do anything. Maybe he never would. But the syringe would be there, just in case.
The sun was starting its downward slide as he climbed out of the gully and mounted his horse. Realizing he’d dallied long enough, he kicked his gelding into a mile-eating lope, leaving the buzzards to do what they do.
TURN THE PAGE FOR
A PREVIEW OF THE FINAL BOOK IN
KAKI WARNER’S BLOOD ROSE TRILOGY . . .
CHASING THE SUN
COMING SOON FROM BERKLEY SENSATION!
San Francisco, March 1873
“DESIRE ETHERIDGE.” MR. MARKHAM FROWNED AT THE paper atop his desk in the tiny manager’s office behind the stage. “That’s an odd name. Desire.”
“Desiree,” Daisy corrected, pronouncing it Dez-a-ray. She pointed to the paper. “If you’ll notice, there are two ‘e’s on the end.”
He squinted up at her, rolling an unlit, well-chewed cigar stub from one corner of his mouth to the other. “You French or something?”
“I try not to be,” she quipped.
His teeth clamped down, snapping the cigar stub to attention. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“N-nothing,” she stammered, taken aback by his challenging tone.
“My mamma was French.”
No wonder he was cranky. “I didn’t know that.” Poor man.
“If you got something against the French, Missy, then you can just get your skinny ass out of here right now.”
Mortified by the reprimand, yet pleased that he thought her backside skinny, she forced a smile. “It was just a joke, Mr. Markham. I like the French. Really.”
“All right then.” The stub relaxed, rolled to the left side of his mouth and settled between his gum and cheek like a damp little rodent sliding back into its burrow. He returned to his perusal of her application. “Says here you been singing at the Silver Spur. That in the red-light district?”
“No.” But it was near enough to open the eyes of a farm girl from Quebec who had to walk past those busy doorways every night after work.
“Still, it’s a saloon,” Markham went on without looking up.
Since it wasn’t a question, Daisy didn’t respond. Besides, it seemed every time she opened her mouth lately it got her into trouble. How was she to know that that drunken lout who tried to stick his hand down her dress during last night’s chorus of Bridget’s Lament was the mayor’s wife’s second cousin’s son? The nitwit.
She studied the man before her, wondering if he was any better.
He was old, at least double her twenty years, judging by the gray in his whiskers and in the curly sideburns showing beneath his bowler hat. He seemed fit enough, but there was a weary slump to his shoulders. He reminded her of a sour old draft horse that kept plugging along, no longer caring where he was headed or where he had been, just getting through the day.
His head came up, a challenging thrust to his chin, the cigar stub battle ready. She watched his gaze slide over her, coming to rest on the bosom that always seemed to draw attention no matter how tightly she corseted. “You’re not a whore, are you?”
“Of course not,” Daisy sputtered, addled that he would say such a thing. Nervously she pressed a hand to her chest, wondering if a button had come undone and a breast had escaped, but both dress and breast were securely corralled.
“ ’Cause this is a legitimate theater company, Missy. We don’t take on whores.”
“I am not a whore,” she said with stringent emphasis. An unwed mother, perhaps, but not a whore. There was a big difference.
An oddly disappointed look came into his dark eyes. “You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.” What a crab.
The stub drooped. “Oh. Well.” He turned back to her application.
As Daisy waited, her gaze was drawn to the old playbills pinned to the wall behind the desk. Some of the names she recognized from earlier times when her mother, a frustrated singer herself, would declare a holiday from farm chores and take her to nearby Quebec City to see the latest theatrical productions passing through.
“Someday it will be you up on that stage, ma petite,” her mother would say. “It will be the name Desiree Etheridge on the posters out front.”
Daisy smiled, filling her mind with the lovely images her mother had painted so many years ago—the flickering light and oily smoke from the lamps along the front of the stage, the rapt faces of the audience staring up at her, the musicians poised, instruments ready, that hush of expectancy as she opened her mouth and the first glorious notes—
“Says here you got a kid.”
Daisy blinked. The images dissolved. Reality pressed like a weight against her throat. “Yes, a daughter.”
“Where’s her Pa?”
“Gone.”
“Gone where?”
“West.”
That narrow-eyed look again. “We are west, Missy. It don’t get any more west than San Francisco.”
Reminding herself how much she wanted—needed—this chance, Daisy hid her irritation behind a smile. “Australia.” At least that was where the bounder had been headed when he left over two-and-a-half years ago. Afraid her patience would stretch to the point of snapping if these useless questions didn’t end soon, she said forcefully, “I’m a vocalist, Mr. Markham. A good one. I can read music, I play the piano fairly well, and I also have a four-octave range and—”
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Never mind all that. Can you sing, girl, and loud enough to reach the back row of the balcony?”
Daisy let out a deep breath. “Yes, Mr. Markham. I can sing.” And she showed him—right there in his tiny office, without music, accompaniment, or proper acoustics—just how powerful her voice was.
She got the role.
A role, anyway. She wouldn’t know which until she returned tomorrow to audition for the director and the owner of the theater. But it was a start. And hopefully it would pay well enough to support her and her daughter and cover the raise in pay Maude Tidwell demanded to watch Kate while Daisy was working. If it came up short, Mr. Markham said she could make extra money by helping with the sewing chores in wardrobe.
He turned out to be a nice man after all, in a middle-aged, cranky sort of way. And he seemed to like her voice. Daisy smiled, remembering the astonished look on his face when she hit her high notes. The stub almost fell from his mouth. He had been most insistent that she return the next day, making her promise twice before he let her leave. It would feel good to be singing real music again. Saloon songs had been no challenge at all.
It’s really happening, she thought as she turned off Broadway onto Powell Street, taking the long way back to the boardinghouse to avoid the dangerous waterfront area. I’ll be singing on a real stage!
She giggled then laughed out loud, startling a drunk dozing behind a refuse bin outside a garment maker’s shop. “I’m going to be a star,” she called gaily to him as she hurried by.
She had dreamed of it, prayed for it every day since she had seen her first musical puppet show at a traveling fair fifteen years ago. To be able to sing arias rather than lewd ditties or maudlin ballads, to fill a hall with her own voice, singing music composed by the masters . . . she still couldn’t believe it.
At Commercial Street, she turned left, hoping it was still too early in the day to bring out the worst of the criminals that prowled the shadowed alleys like rats hunting fresh meat. A few blocks farther, and she breathed easier. Here on the fringes of the red-light district, the saloons and gambling dens catered to a richer, cleaner clientele, and the brothels were a little more discreet. Dirt and mud gave way to cobblestones, and the row houses were less shabby, although each year more of them boasted the red-painted doors and lamps that identified them as houses of ill repute. Perhaps if she did well in the theater company she could get a bigger role that would bring in enough money to move Kate to a safer neighborhood, maybe one with parks and other children to play with.
“Miss Daisy,” a woman’s voice called.
Looking over, she saw Lucy Frisk waving from the front stoop of a narrow four-story building that rented rooms by the hour—a bordello, although a clean one, run by a nattil
y dressed Southern gentleman named Stump Heffington who had lost everything in the Rebellion, including the greater portion of his left leg. As procurers went, he was benign. Having learned the value of contented workers during his slave-owning years, he treated his girls passably well. They considered themselves lucky to be in his employ, and by and large, were a clean, friendly lot. Lucy, in her early twenties and nearest in age to Daisy, always had a kind word for Baby Kate whenever they passed by.
“Hello, Lucy,” Daisy called back, angling across the street, delighted to have someone with whom to share her wonderful news.
Five years ago, when she had first arrived in San Francisco with her parents, she would have been shocked to find herself on such friendly terms with a harlot. But since then she had lost both parents to a mudslide, fallen in love, had her heart broken, and borne a child. In other words, she had grown up. And although she might still be a farm girl from Quebec, she had learned to value friends whenever and wherever she found them.
“You hear about Red Amy?” Lucy asked as Daisy neared the steps. Daisy could see she’d been crying. “No. What?”
“The Indian got her,” Lucy said in a quavering voice. “Took all that pretty red hair clean off her head then stabbed her twice through the neck. Damn bastard scalp-snatching son of a bitch.”
Daisy pressed a hand to her throat. “She . . . she’s . . . ?”
Lucy nodded and swiped at a tear. “Deader ’n a carp. Third this month.”
Daisy stood in stunned silence. Red Amy was the youngest in the house and one of her favorites . . . mainly because Daisy often saw a shadow of herself in the trusting, hopeful look behind the girl’s lovely brown eyes.
“I’m thinking of dyeing mine.” Lucy fingered the flowing, straw-colored tresses that were her best feature. “He don’t seem to like dark hair as much as blond or red. The Indian in him, I guess. Yours isn’t as light as mine, but I’d keep an eye out anyway, since he seems partial to young, pretty ones like you. Watch out for Kate, too, with those blond curls of hers.”