Kit Gardner

by Twilight

  French snorted his agreement. “What am I doing here? My wife’s got herself all but apoplectic about some God-almighty savage-looking fellow out at the Wynnes’ and I find a man running around the prairie without his pants, lost in romantic delusion.”

  Rance scowled and shifted his shoulders. “The hell I am,” he growled, distinctly uncomfortable with all this.

  “Call it what you will, Stark,” French replied, examining Rance’s book of poetry, left upon a nearby hay bale. “Keats and Byron. An educated, romantic farmhand. Odd. You’ve got me wondering why you’re here, Stark, a man like you.”

  “To do a job,” Rance replied, retrieving his hammer and nails from beneath the makeshift sawhorse, where Christian had last played with them.

  “What the hell? There’ll be getting no answers out of you that you don’t want to tell me. Why is it Louise finds that so difficult to understand? What do you say I give it up for the day, take off this damned coat, and help you out. Truth to tell, I’ve never built a thing in my life.”

  “That’s fair. Neither have I.”

  French stared at him a moment, then grinned. “I’ll be damned. So what do you think, Stark, couple hours of this and then we can go back to that stream and take a good long swim. The women will never know. We could even fashion a couple poles and fish awhile. Good fishin’ around here, or so they say. I never can seem to find the time.”

  Rance found himself agreeing. He had to, of course. Making friends with the local attorney seemed the sound thing to do, given his circumstances. Yet it was difficult to deny that he liked the fellow. Even more difficult to recognize the tightening in his gut for what it was. He’d never imagined deception could weigh so heavily upon him.

  * * *

  “Are you quite certain your Mr. Stark wouldn’t care for some tea, Jessica?”

  For the fifth time in as many minutes, Jessica assured Sadie McGlue that no, her Mr. Stark would rather linger outside, despite the heat and the sun and Sadie McGlue’s firm insistence otherwise. Funny, but both Hubert McGlue and John French had taken themselves from the stuffy parlor and outside, as well, soon after they’d arrived, leaving Jessica alone with Sadie and Louise French to weather the heat and the vapid conversation indoors. The tea was tepid, thankfully, and was served on the most delicate white-and-pink porcelain tea service by a charming older gentleman who’d discreetly removed himself once he deposited iced cakes upon the lace-covered table. Sadie had proceeded to devour one after another of these cakes, between bites firing all the pertinent questions at Jessica regarding, of course, her Mr. Stark. Every now and again she would pause to peer through the sheer lace curtains at the tallest of the male figures just beyond.

  Of course, Jessica found herself doing the very same, as if her eye were drawn by some mysterious power—or perhaps it was simply maternal instinct. After all, Christian was out there with Stark, playing some game that necessitated scrambling about on all fours beneath the buckboard, in the dust, of course. Dressing the child in something the least bit presentable never failed to provoke him to muss it beyond repair within minutes of putting it on.

  A hot promise of a breeze barely ruffled the lace curtains. A trickle of sweat worked a torturous path down Jessica’s back and between her breasts, beneath her high-necked muslin dress, which she’d washed and pressed three times just for this occasion. Too heavy, it was, and she’d known it, for so miserable a day, but she had nothing better in which to attend her first afternoon tea. Though she doubted even the filmiest capped-sleeved cotton frock could have eased the heat pulsing like a living thing within her. This fire he stirred.

  Her eyes again found him. The manner in which his legs moved in those denims roused a pagan hunger in her that had absolutely no business here at Sadie McGlue’s lovely tea table. The way the sunlight set the loose curls of his hair aflame with blue-black, his affable manner with the other men, the relaxed curve of his full lower lip as he smiled.

  Jessica squirmed and recrossed her legs.

  So at ease he was. How natural to find herself staring at him and not, as she might have expected, at the multitude of collectibles gracing every available space in Sadie McGlue’s parlor, enough to make any woman who was the least bit proud of her own parlor insanely envious.

  Something pinched her arm, and she jumped and looked entirely guilty of a most heinous crime. Louise, of course, slanting Jessica her hundredth wicked glance of the afternoon from beneath her lace-fringed bonnet as she sipped from her tea. She’d given Jessica the same impish glance when Jessica told her that Stark would be accompanying them to the McGlue’s, as Avram had taken to his bed for the day with dyspepsia. An overindulgence in the widow Mabel Brown’s gingerbread, his note had said. It made perfect sense, after all. Nowhere in all of Twilight was the stomach of a man put in such constant peril as in Mabel Brown’s kitchen. Odd that Jessica wasn’t positively brimming with her usual concern for Avram and what was becoming chronic dyspepsia. Indeed, she’d felt a certain relief at the news, a relief that had no doubt managed to affix itself upon her face. Little wonder Louise was slanting her all these curious looks.

  Dear friend that Louise was, and despite her insistence that something was definitely afoot, Jessica still couldn’t confide in her that she’d been beset with thoughts better suited to women of ill repute and little or no morals. That she was betrothed, and not to the man who inspired such thoughts, was actually the least of it. Who would possibly forgive or understand such a thing? How she had somehow managed to reconcile this within herself, she hadn’t a notion. Perhaps she hadn’t reconciled it, but simply refused to contemplate it. An easy enough task, when Stark’s presence was sufficient to keep her mind fogged for the better part of the day. Yet that knowing gleam in Louise’s eye disturbed her to the extreme, as much as it stoked a deep ache for a woman’s guidance and experience. Surely her friend wouldn’t wish her to dishonor Avram, risking a certain future with him, all for the sake of a whiskey-eyed stranger who’d never promised her a thing? And this would surely be the case if she refused to marry Avram. Dishonor. Scandal, no doubt. Even more of all that twittering of gossip. Postponing the wedding indefinitely, however...now this seemed the proper course. If only it didn’t require a certain duplicity on her part.

  Avram, I simply cannot marry you. You see, I ache with every fiber of my being for another man.

  The banging of a heavy door shook the house, rattled every porcelain cup in its saucer, and jerked Jessica from her thoughts. Footfalls pounded down the hall, and then Hubert McGlue’s bulbous figure ambled past the parlor and down the hall, not even pausing at his wife’s shrill command.

  “What the blazes are you doing, Hubert?”

  “What was that, Sarah?” came the muffled response.

  Sadie’s eyes widened, and her tiny mouth pursed with outrage. “Blasted man. Always up to no good when he calls me that.” She swiveled about as best she could in corset and all that taffeta. “I say, Hubert, surely you’re not rummaging about looking for that shooting contraption again.”

  “Can’t hear ya, Sarah,” came the reply, along with the sound of much rummaging. “Hell and damnation, woman, where’d ya hide it this time?”

  “I did not hide anything, Hubert, particularly that contraption. I wouldn’t lay a finger upon it for fear of blowing myself up. Perhaps you misplaced it. Be thankful you did, Hubert. Your uncle Chester will now rest in peace, what little he deserves. You could have killed us all with that—”

  “Aha!” Hubert whooped. He appeared in the parlor doorway, a smug grin creasing the doughy folds of his face. The few hairs his head boasted poked directly skyward, as though he’d just searched head down in some enormous trunk. In his fist he clutched what looked to Jessica to be some sort of short-barreled firearm with a strangely flaring muzzle. “I found it,” he boasted in a manner that somehow reminded Jessica of Christian. “And all the gunpowder, as luck would have it.”

  “Hubert, I forbid you—”

  �
�We’re off!” Hubert boomed, producing a peculiar three-cornered black hat, which he jammed upon his head before scurrying off, coattails flapping behind him.

  Again, porcelain rattled beneath the slam of the door.

  Sadie shuddered and closed her eyes.

  “That was a gun,” Louise observed.

  “A blunderbuss,” Sadie corrected with a weary sigh. “Inherited by Hubert, along with that silly hat, when his English uncle Chester passed on many years ago. The family jewels and all the money went to the other nephew, in Boston, of course. Hubert got the blunderbuss. And I do believe he prefers that he did. The man thinks himself some displaced English country gentleman. What he wouldn’t do to mount up and go off to shoot fowl and fox. That’s why we came here, of course. To shoot all the wild animals and pretend we’re English country folk. No, Hubert wants nothing to do with steel and railroads and managing the family business in Boston. English country gentlemen don’t bother themselves with such nonsense, do they?” A certain sadness invaded Sadie’s drooping eyes, as though she’d long ago grown weary of such things. “Dear heavens, what a woman must endure—and him a New England McGlue. We could be in Boston, dining with the Rockefellers—”

  A tremendous explosion shook the house. Jessica leapt from her chair, shoved the lace curtains wide and poked her head from the window. A cloud of black sulfur engulfed her, choking her, and bringing tears to stream from her eyes. She spun about, collided with Louise, and all but tripped over a chair.

  “They’re shooting—” she croaked.

  Another explosion rocked the house and sent Sadie flapping from the room like a squawking chicken, Jessica and Louise at her heels.

  They found the men in a cloud of sulfur not twenty feet beyond the back door, pointing at something shiny, about a hundred paces farther out into the open prairie.

  The gun discharged in another belch of smoke and a tremendous boom that nearly sent Hubert McGlue to his backside.

  “Get the hell back in the house, Sarah,” Hubert said, without even glancing at his wife. “Damn and blast, but I missed.” Adjusting his hat entirely lopsided upon his head, he stuffed something down the muzzle of the firearm and handed it to Stark. “Here ya go, Stark. Take good aim, now. I got a buck says ya don’t come closer than I did. And that’s about a foot.”

  Sadie gave a vociferous gasp. “Hubert, how dare you? To shoot the gun is one thing, but to...to... Why, y-you’re gambling and in our very yard!”

  “Quiet, woman. After this we’re going to play cards. Stark is going to teach me to play faro. Now, go back inside and drink your tea.”

  “Make that two bucks,” John French added with a boyish grin.

  This behavior, of course, compelled only one response in the women, and that was a goodly amount of annoyance, replete with clucking tongues. Even from Louise.

  “John, might I ask why you’re engaging in such shenanigans?”

  But John’s grin only widened, and he pointed out into the prairie. “See there, Louise? I nearly hit the can. Came closer than Hubert, even. Ah, but Stark here, something tells me he’s a master, even with an old relic of a firearm like this, beauty that she is.”

  “Then why did you wager against him?” Louise said through her teeth.

  John all but thumped his swelling chest. “Competitive spirit, my dear. Alive and well, as it should be in all men. You wouldn’t want me to be outdone now, would you?”

  “Good heavens, no,” Louise replied, decidedly unimpressed, as she shot Jessica a sideways glance. “We women can’t have that, can we, Jessica? By all means, John, anything...just so you won’t be outdone in sport.”

  John, obviously missing the entirety of her sarcasm, gave a swift, satisfied nod and folded his arms over his chest.

  “I shot the gun, Mama!” Christian whooped, appearing from behind Stark’s legs.

  Jessica snatched her son close and whisked a lace kerchief from her reticule to wipe the smudges of smoke from his face, a task made all the more difficult when he squirmed away from her.

  “Logan helped me, Mama.” He was beaming, gazing up at Logan Stark with unabashed adoration. “We almost hit the can.”

  Jessica stared at the back of that tousled black head and felt annoyance drain like water from her limbs. He stood with booted legs braced wide, thighs bunched. She watched his white cotton shirt flatten against his belly beneath a sudden gust of wind, felt her own chest compress when that ridged length tightened into etched ripples. Her breath was trapped somewhere in her chest as she felt his catch, sensed the surety of his fingers about that gun, the expertise of his aim, a century’s worth of knowledge...

  On tiptoe, she peeped beneath the length of the gun, directly at the tin can glimmering like some forbidden jewel out there on the prairie.

  He would hit the can, obliterate it with his one shot, send it spiraling into the sky....

  And then she saw it—or perhaps it was merely the sun vanishing behind a cloud, then reappearing to reflect off the barrel of the gun. But his aim seemed to shift ever so slightly to the right.

  The gun exploded. Stark barely flinched with the gun’s tremendous retort.

  “Right!” Hubert whooped, peering through the smoke. He then commenced dancing his version of some sort of English country gentleman’s jig in the dust. “A good two feet to the right. Pay up, Stark.”

  “I’ll be damned,” John French muttered with a lighthearted chuckle. “Are you sure you once rode shotgun guard for the Wells Fargo line, Stark? Must have been years ago, when you still had all your eyesight. Little wonder you’re only fit to be a farmhand. Damned barn’s going to end up crooked if you don’t get yourself some eyeglasses.”

  Stark shot French a lopsided grin then shrugged and muttered something half to himself as he dug several bills from his pocket. He stared for a moment out at the can. And then he hoisted the gun to his shoulder and aimed so swiftly, with such surety of movement and intensity of spirit, Jessica felt something peculiar wriggle through her. Suspicion.

  He’d purposely missed.

  He lowered the gun. And his eyes met hers. She looked away, her fingers wrapping with a mother’s firm gentleness about Christian’s upper arm.

  “But, Mama, I don’t want to go yet. I want to shoot the gun again. Mama...”

  Jessica didn’t even glance back at Logan. “Mr. Stark. Shall we?” She heard his unmistakable footfalls behind her, and quickened her pace toward the buckboard.

  “Good heavens, don’t you dare leave now!” Sadie McGlue huffed, panting along beside Jessica. “We cannot allow the men to spoil our fine afternoon. I shan’t allow it, I tell you.”

  “The men had nothing to do with it,” Jessica replied, pausing to face Sadie. “Those clouds out west look like a storm to me. And with heat like this, it’s certain to be bad. I’d like to get home before it hits.”

  Sadie McGlue whirled to the west, saw the advancing mass of purple-black and let loose with a yelp. “Go, go, dearie!” she panted, urging Jessica along to the buggy. “Yes, get yourself and the little one home. Can’t stand the storms myself. Scare the devil out of me.”

  “Me too,” Christian mumbled, clutching at Jessica’s thigh, beneath layers of muslin. “Hurry, Mama. Tell Logan to hurry, Mama.”

  “I will—” Jessica’s voice caught in her throat when she turned to glance at Stark, only to find him directly at her back. With one sweep of his arm, he hoisted Christian to his shoulder and grasped Jessica by the elbow, helping her along faster.

  “I have sheets on the line drying,” Jessica said softly. “And all the windows are open.”

  “We’ll outrun it,” Stark assured her, placing Christian upon the buckboard’s seat. And then his hand slid with a certain familiarity about her waist to assist her aboard.

  In her haste, her foot caught in her skirts and she stumbled. God help her, but she all but fell into his arms, nearly swooning when they tightened about her, and for one dizzying moment all else ceased to exist but this man
and the lovely torment he inflicted on her. And then her feet left the ground and her rump landed soundly upon the seat.

  “Good heavens, get the poor dear home before she faints dead away,” Sadie McGlue graciously advised Stark. “I, too, feel quite overcome with terror.”

  “You’ll lay where you fall, woman,” Hubert McGlue warned her with a tip of his three-cornered hat as Stark swung up close beside Jessica. They bade a hasty farewell and Stark slapped the reins.

  The buckboard leapt forward so suddenly, Jessica clung to that which was nearest at hand, which proved to be her son’s narrow waist and Stark’s biceps, as her luck would have it. The realization that she clutched at him, and with a glorious abandon, at that, hit her the precise moment he covered her hand with his own, anchoring it there upon that swell of sinew.

  “Don’t be afraid, Jess.” His voice was so close above her, as if spoken into her hair, even as the buckboard raced out into the open prairie, directly into the jaws of the advancing storm.

  Oily black clouds descended from the heavens, their roiling underbellies stirring the dust into a wall of choking dinge. Jagged sticks of lightning sliced through the inky black farther out on the horizon. Thunder grumbled in a low, wicked promise.

  Jessica swallowed, gathered a trembling Christian close against her, and pressed herself the slightest bit nearer to Stark’s side. “I’m not afraid. Truly. Not the least bit. Why, this sort of thing happens all the time. Just worried, is all.”

  “About your sheets, of course,” he replied.

  “Indeed. Nothing more. Just the sheets. But do hurry, Stark.”

  Chapter Nine

  Rance shoved the back door open, took one step, and slammed one toe into a kitchen chair. He growled a curse into the bundle of sheets he carried, kicked the door closed with his injured toe, and attempted to navigate his way around the chair and the table and through the kitchen without allowing one bit of sheet to drag on the floor.

  “You’re dragging the sheets on the floor.”