“Come on, General.” He headed the gelding down the narrow wagon trail toward town. “Wouldn’t be the first time a woman hasn’t liked what she saw of me right off,” he muttered to his horse. “But sure as hell’s the first time a woman’s ever plain run me off. Not good for a man’s spirit.”
Chapter Two
From the double swinging door of the Golden Partridge saloon, Wash took in the cobwebby walls, then the expanse of tobacco-sticky plank floor. Cowpunchers crowded three-deep around the poker table, but the barroom was so smoky he didn’t see Rooney right off. When he did spot him, Wash wished he hadn’t.
Hell’s holy hobnails, Rooney was gambling again. The place reeked of whiskey and sweat, and underneath the sour smell lay a tension so thick it clogged his lungs.
His gray-haired sidekick was absorbed in a game of blackjack with five other men. Three were obviously ranch hands—hair slicked down, fresh-shaved, clean shirts and polished boots. The other two were older men with paunches and gray in their beards. Ranch owners, maybe. After all, it was Saturday night. He hoped they were all drunk enough that they wouldn’t watch Rooney too closely.
Too late. A fresh-faced kid leaped to his feet, revolver drawn. “You’re cheatin’, mister! That card came from your sleeve.”
Wash saw the kid’s trigger finger tighten. He put a bullet through the kid’s hat and the other men at the table swiftly rose, hands in the air, knocking chairs over backward.
“Pay up, Rooney,” he ordered in a quiet voice. “Now. Before you get yourself killed.”
“Hey!” the barkeep yelled. “Thought you was a lawyer-man.”
“That’s right,” Wash replied evenly. “But even lawyers can shoot straight.” He holstered his Colt. “Come on, Rooney, you’re holding up my supper.”
With a scowl, Rooney began to divvy up his pot.
Wash had to laugh. After the war, when he’d soldiered at Fort Kearney, he’d picked up Rooney Cloudman as his part-Indian army scout. It was Rooney who had helped him give up serious drinking. He was a good man except that he’d never been able to walk past a poker table with a card game going.
Every man had his weakness, Wash supposed; when he was younger he’d had the same hunger for whiskey and taking chances, for “riding close to the cliff” his father had said.
He no longer had the carefree heart he’d had at twenty-one; it had taken him three years of prison in Richmond and another year chasing the Sioux before he’d realized he was as close to self-destruction as a man could get. Even now, some days, he felt like a walking corpse. He didn’t seek human interaction beyond keeping his poker-playing partner out of trouble, didn’t want to dance with any of the ladies at the hoedown every other Saturday. And he didn’t want to feel anything except pleasure over his breakfast coffee and bacon.
Dried up as a sun-parched cornstalk, Rooney said.
Rooney was right. The heart he carried around in his chest was dead. Pretty, blue-eyed Laura Gannon had been his first love, the kind that hurt the most. She’d also been his last. He’d never loved anyone like he’d loved Laura, but she’d jilted him the night before he’d left for the War. For damn sure he’d never risk wanting a woman again.
With shaking fingers, Jeanne Nicolet crammed a cartridge into the rifle and propped it with a satisfying thunk on the wooden gun rests over the front door of her tiny cabin.
“Are you going to shoot someone, Maman?” Manette craned her neck to inspect the rifle.
“Non, ma petite. Not unless I have to,” Jeanne said between clenched teeth. Not unless another strange man trespassed in her lavender fields. No one from town ever rode out to pay a call, friendly or otherwise, not since she’d shot the sheriff’s hat off when he’d questioned her right to the land. She had darted into the cabin, dug the deed out of the Bible on her nightstand, then returned to unfold it under the man’s large nose.
He’d stepped forward, saying he wanted to look closer at the document, and that’s when she’d pulled the derringer from her apron pocket and fired. Since then, no one had ventured past her gate.
Until now. She did not know what to think about the tall man who had come. What did he want? All she knew was that she did not trust him, especially since he was not only tall but had a nicely chiseled face and attractive, unruly dark hair.
When Henri had been killed, she’d wanted to get as far away from New Orleans as possible. The men who had survived the War were uncouth and pushy, particularly when they learned she was a widow. It had not been difficult to leave, even though she was completely on her own, the only one to provide for herself and her daughter.
Sometimes she felt so frightened she wanted to crawl into her bed and pull the quilt over her head. But she could not. She must have courage. She must move on with her life, no matter how difficult.
The climate in Oregon was perfect for growing lavender and, thanks to the New Orleans War Widows fund, she had scraped together enough money to buy the narrow strip of land that ran the length of the small valley and the abandoned prospector’s cabin that had come with it. She had known no one; half the time she was scared to death of people, especially the men, but she had managed.
And she had the deed to prove it, now safe in the bank vault in Smoke River. Once each week she saddled up the mare and rode into town to trade for supplies; and once each week she stopped by the Smoke River Bank and smoothed her hand over the strong box where her precious document rested.
Green Valley was the only land she’d been able to afford, and nobody, nobody, was going to stop her from growing her lavender. French lavender. English lavender, Spanish lavender. Her family had grown lavender back in France; she knew more about lavender than she knew about ladies’ fashions.
Her lavender field was the only source of income for herself and Manette. She reached up and patted the rusty barrel of the rifle mounted over the door. She would fight to protect what was hers, even if she had to shoot the first man since Henri who had made her heart jump. All the more reason not to trust him.
The following morning, Wash and Rooney rode out to Green Valley, drawing rein at the rise overlooking the valley. Beside him on his frisky strawberry roan, Rooney grunted. “You see what I see down there?”
“Yeah, I see it. Damn cabin built on railroad land. Who’d expect to find a squatter way out here?”
Rooney patted the neck of his mount and surveyed Wash with narrowing black eyes. “A better question is what’re you gonna do about it?”
Wash blew out a long breath. “If I knew the answer to that, maybe I would have slept some last night.”
Sykes had ruled out Scarecrow Hill because the railroad owned no right-of-way there. Wash had to get Green Valley surveyed, then get Miz Nicolet off that land before the clearing crew arrived. Problem was, she’d set to farming on land she didn’t own. Most likely she thought she owned it; probably paid that cabin owner $2.50 an acre and he gave her a ginned-up deed and skedaddled before the law caught up with him. It had happened before.
He watched gray smoke puff lazily from the stone chimney into the summer air. Poor misguided woman. Her entire crop of whatever that purple stuff was would have to be ripped out. It looked like a nice, neat little farm. Pretty spot, too, with walnut and sugar maple trees covering both sides of the steep hills that enclosed the valley, and the sun bathing her crop in a glow of golden light.
His belly tightened. He hated to see things destroyed, whether it was Reb trains or ammunition dumps or Georgia plantations. Or little farms, like this one.
He’d try not to think about it.
Rooney nudged Wash’s elbow and pointed. The French woman was out beside the cabin, hanging up laundry on a sagging clothesline: four white flounced petticoats and three girl’s pinafores and…
He sucked in a breath. Leaping lizards…underwear! Lacy chemises and ruffled white underdrawers so small he could bunch up a dozen and stuff them in his pocket.
He shut his eyes to block out the sight, steeling his mind agains
t the sensual tug of those delicate lace-trimmed garments and the woman he imagined wearing them. His groin heated anyway. Gritting his teeth he worked to squash the feelings he’d kept buried all these years.
Abruptly he wheeled the black gelding away. “Come on, Rooney, let’s ride back into town and get some whiskey. The railroad can wait.”
But the railroad couldn’t wait, and Wash knew it. All the way back to town he cursed the problem unfolding before him.
“Ain’t ’xactly her fault,” Rooney observed when they had settled themselves at the Golden Partridge’s polished wood bar.
“Widow lady on her own, speakin’ a foreign language. Coulda been took by a swindler easy.”
Wash snorted and sipped his whiskey. “Maybe you should mind your own business.”
Rooney paused long enough to empty his own glass. “Or maybe you should mind your business and get that lady off the railroad land before the sheriff arrests her for trespassin’.”
“I don’t think the sheriff would do that.”
“Somebody’s gotta do it. That’s why Sykes’s railroad company is payin’ your salary. Think about it. Why else would they hire a lawyer with courtroom smarts to supervise railroad crews?”
God knew he didn’t want to think about it. He especially didn’t want to think about those slim bare legs flashing through that purple field.
Late afternoon shadows stippled the trail as Wash guided General back to Green Valley. He didn’t fancy returning, but Rooney was right: he had his orders.
When the path narrowed and began to slope downward, he fought off an attack of belly butterflies. Pretty ironic, to have lived through Laura’s betrayal and then the War, the Yankee prison in Richmond and Sioux-Cheyenne skirmishes near Fort Kearney only to find his entire frame laced up with nerves over one lone woman. A woman who had no legal claim to the land she sat on.
Now on a level with the thick, waist-high field of bushy growth, he reined General to a stop and dismounted. It had to be done; he’d best get it over with.
Dropping the reins where he stood, Wash patted the animal’s neck and made his way toward the small cabin at the far end of the valley. The greenery on either side of him was so close to the uneven footpath his elbows brushed against the purple fronds. A pleasant spice-like scent rose. Lavender! That’s what she was growing. Looked damn nice in the hazy sunlight, like an ocean of blue and purple waves.
He raised his head and glimpsed a movement on the cabin porch. Miz Nicolet had seen him.
He didn’t slow his pace until he was maybe twenty yards away, and then suddenly she pulled a rifle from behind her skirt and aimed it at his heart.
Wash put his hands in the air. “It’s me, ma’am. The jackrabbit hunter, remember?”
She said not a word, and he kept walking toward her, the slight hitch in his gait more noticeable now. When he was close enough to see the dark curls escaping the blue kerchief tied over her hair, he stopped.
“You do remember me, don’t you?”
Her mouth opened. “Oui,” she snapped. “I remember you. What do you want?” She moved the gun barrel an inch to the right. If she pulled the trigger at such close range, she couldn’t miss. His heart would be splattered all over the path.
“I’d like to talk to you, ma’am. About your farmland.”
The teal-green eyes narrowed. “I own this land. It is not for sale.”
“Oh, I don’t want to buy it…well, yes, I do, in a way, but let me explain. You see—”
“You are trespassion—trespassing,” she corrected. “I ask you to leave.”
“I can’t do that, ma’am. See, I’ve been ordered to—”
“Go away,” she interrupted. “Or I will shoot.”
Frantically Wash racked his brain for some words in French. Bonjour? No, that didn’t fit. Au revoir? Not yet. Not until she had heard him out. Comment ça va? That would do.
He pushed his stiff lips into a smile, but it was dicey with that rifle trained on his shirt buttons. “Comment ça va?”
Her gaze widened. “I am quite well,” she replied, her voice tightening. “But I am not patient. Go!”
He waited three heartbeats. “My name’s Washington Halliday, ma’am.”
He took another halting step forward, and then another, until the toes of his boots stubbed the bottom step. At each step she adjusted the angle of the gun to accommodate his position. He was so close now he could see those odd flecks of gray in her eyes.
Wash drew in a long breath and began to recite the first French words that came to mind. “O, claire de lalune…” Damn. He wished he hadn’t switched his long-ago college language class to Latin.
She frowned and tilted her head, obviously puzzled.
“Mon ami…” On the word ami he charged straight up the single step toward her and knocked the gun barrel upward. It went off with a crack, the shot skimming off into the trees where a chatter of birds broke the quiet.
She gave a little cry and Wash grabbed the gun out of her frozen grasp and checked the chamber. She backed away from him until he clunked the rifle flat on the porch beside her, and then she stopped, one hand covering her mouth.
“Sorry I had to do that, ma’am. But it’s hard to talk sense if you’re dead.”
Her throat convulsed in a swallow.
“Talk about what?” Her face was white as limestone.
“Ma’am, you got any whiskey? I think you need a shot.”
“Non. No whiskey.”
“How about tea? Coffee?”
All at once her legs gave out and she sat down hard on the porch, her skirts fluffing up around her. “Café,” she said. Her voice sounded shaky. “Inside. Mais, je—I cannot…”
He strode past her into the tiny cabin and headed for the potbellied stove. The place was as neat as his mother’s parlor, he noted. Nothing out of place except for a child’s exercise book on the kitchen table, propped between a sugar bowl on one side and a white ceramic cream pitcher on the other.
“Coffee,” he muttered. His own hands were shaking by the time he found the coffee mill and a small bag of coffee beans. He chunked up the fire, brewed the coffee extra strong and found two patterned china cups. He grabbed the bubbling pot off the stove and carried it through the doorway.
She was still sitting where he’d left her. Trying to control her trembling hands, she reached for the cup, then quickly set it down on the porch and blew on her fingers. “Hot,” she explained.
“Couldn’t find any saucers,” he said more calmly than he felt. He settled himself not too close beside her.
“There are no saucers. They were broken when I came in the wagon from New Orleans.”
“Drink it black?” He had a hard time getting the words out; being this close to her made his heart beat in an odd, ragged rhythm.
Her forehead wrinkled. “Pardon?”
“Do you want milk or sugar? Du lait? Sucre?”
Her frown lifted. “Ah, non.”
A long, awkward silence fell. He let her drink her coffee while he gazed over the purple fields and tried to gather his thoughts. She’s sure not gonna like what I’m going to tell her.
A heavenly scent invaded his nostrils—probably the lavender. He leaned imperceptibly toward her and drew in another breath. No, it was her. Soap and something spicy.
Wash gulped his coffee and tried to think of how to tell her about the railroad.
Chapter Three
Jeanne could scarcely swallow the hot coffee the tall man had poured into her grandmother’s china cup, but it was not because it burned her tongue or tasted like scorched peppercorns. Her throat was so tight she could not even swallow her own saliva.
He’d come to talk about her farm, the only mainstay she’d found in five years of widowhood, outside of her daughter. And outside of her handed-down family knowledge about growing lavender. How precarious her life seemed at times. Whether she and Manette managed in this untamed, rough land depended solely upon her skill as a farmer. Their
survival hung by a thin stalk of lavender.
Gingerly she lifted her cup from the porch and tried again to sip it, mostly just to gain some time. It was lukewarm now, but still the tightness closed her throat. Strange, but he seemed as ill at ease as she did. Three times his mouth opened to form a word, and three times his jaw snapped shut with a decisive click. Mon Dieu, what did he wish to say?
Once more his lips opened and this time she couldn’t help but notice how nicely shaped they were—not too full but… She calmed an odd flutter in her chest…sensual.
This time some of his words tumbled out. “I’m sure glad you didn’t shoot me, ma’am.”
“I meant to,” she said in a quiet voice. “I do not like strangers.”
“How long have you been farming out here, Miz Nicolet?”
She looked up sharply. “How is it you know my name?”
“I asked around in town.”
For an instant she forgot to breathe. “Why?”
He hesitated. “Well, because it seems like…” He smiled at her, his teeth white against his tanned skin. “Seems like you’ve settled on land you don’t own.”
“But I do own it, monsieur. I have the deed to prove it.”
He slurped down a mouthful of coffee. “Problem is, Miz Nicolet, you’ve been swindled.”
“Swindled? What is that?”
“Hoodwinked. Gulled.”
“Hood—?”
“To put it straight, ma’am, you’ve been cheated.”
“Ah, non. I paid all my money for this land, and Monsieur Lavery shook my hand and brought the deed to show me.”
“I’m sure he did.”
The man’s usually rich voice sounded odd. Did he not believe her? “Yes,” she reiterated, “he did.”
The man chuffed out a long breath and stared out over her lavender fields. “I don’t exactly know how to tell you this, Miz Nicolet, but—”
“Then do not.” Her hand shaking, she lowered her half-empty cup onto the porch beside her. “Please, do not say anything that will make me feel sad about what I did. Please, Monsieur…?”
“Halliday. Wash. Short for Washington, but just call me Wash.”
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