She decided to do her pleasant business first. Since small towns were notorious for gossip, she thought news of her presence might already have reached her grandfather. Apparently he lived like a hermit, because he was both disbelieving and disgruntled when he opened the door to his room at Pearlie Mae’s Boardinghouse and found her standing there.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
Patch revised her expectation that this was going to be a pleasant visit. She realized she was nervous, and her pulse fluttered erratically as she announced, “I’m Patricia Kendrick. Your granddaughter.”
She saw a brief spark of acknowledgment in his eyes. Then he scowled. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“Well, you’ve talked to me.”
If Patch hadn’t put her foot in the door, she would have found herself standing in the hall with the door slammed in her face. “How do you think my mother, Annarose, would feel if she knew you were treating me like this?”
His eyes flickered to a framed picture on the dry sink, then back to her. “All right. You can come in. But if you once mention your father’s name, I swear I’ll throw you out on your fanny so fast the wind’ll whistle.”
Once she had bullied her way inside by invoking Annarose’s name, Patch closed the door behind her and stood toe to toe with her grandfather, matching him glare for glare. Which gave her a good chance to look him over.
Corwin Marshall had aged as lean as she suspected he must have been as a young man. He stood tall and proud and obstinate before her, dressed in a plaid shirt and store-bought trousers held up by bright red suspenders. His full head of white hair needed a trim. His lips were thin, his nose prominent, his eyebrows as bushy white as his hair. His eyes reminded her of her own. They were a startlingly vivid blue. His face was lined, craggy almost, and his jowls sagged a bit. Otherwise, he looked as hard as she suspected his life had been.
Patch had worn her rose red traveling outfit, complete with gloves and feathered hat and iron rod down her spine, because she had wanted to impress her grandfather with how well she had turned out. She had never dared to ask her father how her mother had died, because any mention of Annarose always made him so sad. But she intended to find out the details from her grandfather. And she wanted very much to see that picture the old man had glanced at before he let her in.
“You are my grandfather, aren’t you?” Patch asked when it seemed the old man had no intention of speaking.
He searched her face, looking for familiar features. “I suppose I must be.”
“May I sit down?”
There was a small, square table by the window with a chair on either side of it. Her grandfather gestured her toward it. “Be my guest.”
He seated her and took the chair on the other side of the table for himself. He began packing a pipe with tobacco from a small pouch. He didn’t seem in any hurry to talk.
A checkerboard and checkers sat on the table, along with a deck of cards. A quick survey of the room revealed that her grandfather lived a neat, if Spartan, life. His bed was made, a pair of Sunday boots stood against the wall, and his clothes hung on pegs on the back of the door. A kerosene lamp stood on the table beside the bed, which also held a book. Patch tried to make out the title, but it was turned the wrong way.
On the other side of the room stood a dry sink with his shaving equipment and a pitcher and bowl. A framed photograph of a woman was angled toward the bed. Patch hoped it was her mother, Annarose. Nell had said her grandfather had a picture he could show her. She resisted the urge to get up and go over and look at it and purposely turned her head to gaze out the window. She didn’t want her grandfather to think that seeing a picture of her mother was the only reason she had come.
Sunlight streamed through faded gingham curtains that Patch supposed had been put there by the landlady. The window was open, and she could hear sounds from the street a floor below her—a bawling bullock, the creak and rattle of a wagon, the stomp of boots echoing on the boardwalk. The smell of fresh manure swept in on the breeze. She peered down and saw a hitching rail to the left of the window with a bay gelding canted on three legs. The swish of its tail kept a swarm of flies from enjoying the manure without constant interruption.
She could feel the loneliness in this room. It was almost a presence. How sad that Corwin Marshall was living the last years of his life in this solitary way. She wondered why her father had never mentioned her grandfather’s existence. And whether the old man would even want to know her now.
When she turned her attention back to her grandfather, she caught him staring at her. Unfortunately, she had no idea whether he liked what he saw. “Well,” she said. “Where shall we begin?”
“You look like your mother.”
Patch forced a smile. “Nell said the same thing.”
Her grandfather’s brow furrowed. “Nell who?”
“I’m sorry. I thought you two knew each other. Nell Hawk. I’m staying at the Double Diamond, keeping house for Mrs. Hawk until she’s feeling better.”
“That’s not a fit place for you to be.”
Patch’s neck hairs bristled. “Why not? Nell is a perfectly respectable—”
“It ain’t Nell Hawk I’m concerned about, it’s that no-good, gunslinging outlaw son of hers.”
Patch leapt from her chair, ready to do battle on Ethan’s behalf. “You take that back!” she shouted. “Ethan is as fine a man—” Patch cut herself off. She had risen to Ethan’s defense just as she had to her pa’s when she was twelve and the whole town had believed Seth Kendrick was a coward. But she wasn’t twelve anymore. And her grandfather had a point. Ethan Hawk was a man fresh from prison with a years-old crime still hanging over his head.
She slumped back down into her chair. “I’m sorry for flaring up at you like that. Only, you see, I love Ethan Hawk. I’m convinced he’s innocent of everything he was accused of doing. And I’m going to do my best to see that his name is cleared before I marry him. Even if it isn’t, I’m going to marry him anyway,” she said defiantly.
Patch was breathless by the time she had finished. Her grandfather said nothing, simply struck a match and puffed at his pipe until it was lit. He shook the match out and laid it on the table in a spot that she could see had been blackened by the practice.
“How is Nell Hawk? I didn’t know she was sick.”
Patch was disconcerted by the change of subject but answered, “She says it’s just an upset stomach.” Patch leaned forward to confide in her grandfather. “But I think it’s something much worse. She doesn’t look good, and she’s been ill for almost two months without getting better.”
Corwin Marshall grunted. And changed the subject again. “How’d you find out about me? When he left town, your father swore I’d never see hide nor hair of you again. Did he have a change of heart?”
Patch fiddled with the strings of her velvet reticule. “Well, no, he didn’t.” She could almost feel the old man stiffen on the other side of the table. “He probably knew you didn’t want to see me,” Patch ventured.
“Not want to see you? When Annarose died, I begged him to let me have you. He was no fit—”
Patch had already started to rise from her chair again when her grandfather stopped himself. She sank back down. “I don’t know what went on between you and my father,” she began, “but don’t you think it’s time you settled things between you?”
“Your pa murdered my girl. I’ll never forgive him for that!”
Patch was appalled at the fury and vindictiveness of the old man’s voice. Her grandfather seemed so sure of what he was saying, yet she knew it had to be impossible. She rose immediately to her father’s defense. “My father loved Annarose Marshall so much that when he finally married again, he did so with the understanding that his heart was already taken. Are you telling me he murdered the one person he loved above anything else in this world? I don’t believe it!”
“He never told you, did he?”
“Told me what?”
“Your father shot Annarose and killed her,” he said flatly.
Patch gasped. “If he did, it must have been an accident, he—”
“Oh, he claimed it was an accident, all right. I suppose he didn’t see her in the dark,” the old man conceded grudgingly.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“Your pa was a Texas Ranger, and some Mexican bandidos he’d been chasing ambushed him here in town. Your ma was supposed to be safe at home. But you’d gotten sick, and she’d come into town hunting the doctor. Your pa was standing on the boardwalk in front of Doc Carter’s office when he heard something behind him and thought it was one of the bandidos. To keep from being back-shot, he turned and fired into the dark.
“When the Mexicans fled on horseback, your pa discovered that when he’d fired into the dark, the person he’d hit was your mother. She’d been shot twice in the chest. My daughter was still breathing when your father found her, but it didn’t take her long to die.”
“Oh, my God. How horrible for him!”
“For him! What about me?” Corwin said in a ragged voice. “I lost my girl, and then he took you away, all because I threatened …”
Patch waited for him to finish. When he didn’t, she prompted, “Threatened what?”
“To take you away from him. After Annarose died, he was never without a bottle. He left you alone, sometimes all day. Come to find out later he was hiding Ethan Hawk at that place of his, letting that murdering rapist take care of you!”
“Ethan is not—”
“Be that as it may,” her grandfather interrupted, “your pa disappeared without a trace. Where did he take you?”
“We moved around for a while, especially during the war. We ended up in Fort Benton, Montana. It’s as far north as the Missouri River runs, practically to Canada. Pa’s a doctor now. He’s remarried and has two stepchildren and a seven-year-old son by his wife, Molly.
“Grandpa Corwin …” Patch hesitated, waiting to see if he would object to the familiarity of the address. When he didn’t, she continued, “Grandpa Corwin, I thought you might like to be my grandfather for real. I mean, now that I’m going to be living in Oakville, we could see each other often.”
The old man harrumphed. “What is it you want from me?”
“I don’t really know,” Patch said. “I’ve never had a grandfather before.” She gave him a gamine smile and said, “I thought you might have some ideas.”
“Grandpas usually dandle the young’uns on their knee.” He gave her a look and said, “That’d be a bit of a chore now.”
Patch laughed. “I promise you can dandle your great-grandchildren on your knee. I’d like us to be friends. Is that all right with you?”
He stared out the window and puffed on his pipe, creating a cloud of cherry-scented smoke. “All right,” he said through teeth clenched on the pipe stem. “Friends.”
“Thank you, Grandpa Corwin!” Patch was around the table and on her knees beside her grandfather before she thought about what she was doing. She put her arms around his waist and hugged him tight. His shirt smelled of cherry tobacco.
When his hands folded around her shoulders, she felt a band tighten in her chest. “There’s one more thing,” she said, her voice muffled against his shirt.
He reached out with a shaking hand and gently smoothed her hair. “What’s that, girl?”
She leaned her head back and met his eyes, which looked rheumy now with age. “Nell said you had a picture of my mother. May I see it?”
He dropped his hands and sat back, staring out the window. “It’s on the dry sink.”
She rose and crossed the room. She picked up the daguerreotype in its brass frame. “Oh,” she said in a trembly voice, “she does look like me.”
Patch turned to her grandfather and saw through a blur of tears that he had set down his pipe. His eyes were closed tightly, and he was pinching the bridge of his nose as though he were in pain.
“You must miss her terribly,” she whispered.
“Every day,” the old man grated in a hoarse voice.
A moment later she was on her knees again at his feet with her arms wrapped tightly around his waist.
She said nothing.
Neither did he.
Patch made a silent vow to get her grandfather out of this lonely place. She wasn’t sure how she was going to accomplish that goal, but she knew she had to try.
“Will you come visit me sometime at the Double Diamond?” she asked.
“I don’t know …”
“I won’t leave until you promise.”
“All right,” he said with a sigh of resignation. “I’ll come.”
Patch took leave of her grandfather shortly thereafter and headed for the hotel. She sat down at the desk in the lobby and wrote a quick letter to her parents, letting them know she had met her grandfather and chastising her father for not telling her about him sooner.
Meanwhile, Gilley hauled her trunks from the room where she had left them when she arrived in Oakville and put them in the wagon she had brought to town for that purpose.
Patch realized she had spent more time with her grandfather than she had intended, and that she would have to hurry if she didn’t want to worry Ethan by a too-long absence. He had given her strict orders not to dally in town. “There’s no telling how Trahern will react to the news you’re staying at the Double Diamond,” he had warned. “So finish your business and get back here as quick as you can.”
It wasn’t that Patch had ignored his counsel on purpose. But once she had started talking to her grandfather, the time had simply gotten away from her. She still had one more stop to make before she was ready to head back to the ranch. Actually, two stops. First the post office to mail her letter and then the sheriff’s office.
She folded her letter and addressed the envelope, then stood and adjusted her hat. “Everything all set, Gilley?” she asked the clerk, who was once again manning his post behind the hotel desk.
“All finished, Miss Kendrick,” the clerk answered. “Two trunks, three carpetbags, and five hatboxes all loaded into the wagon.”
Patch remembered how much trouble it had been to keep secret from Molly the things she was packing in the bottom of her trunks that had nothing to do with her trip to Boston. She hadn’t planned on coming back to Montana, so she had brought a few mementos of her past, as well as some items from her hope chest to start her new life with Ethan. In those trunks, under all the fashionable clothes Molly had insisted she would need for her social life in Boston, were the treasures she had collected for the home she planned to make with her new husband.
Some of the things she could use right away, the linens and such. There were other things—Patch blushed at the thought of the lacy nightgown she had bought in St. Louis—that would have to wait until she was married. Because she had packed so much extra, there hadn’t been room to hide boots and trousers. Thus, her necessary stop at the mercantile her first day in town.
Patch crossed to the desk to give Gilley something for his trouble. “Thank you, Gilley. By the way,” she said, “where will I find the sheriff this time of day?”
“Careless? Probably be in his office. He usually eats at his desk, mostly ’cause the town pays for his meal if he’s working at noontime.”
Patch smiled. “Thanks, Gilley.”
The jail was across the street from the mercantile. It was made of rock and surrounded by three huge live oaks, one of which, Ethan had told her, had actually been used for hangings in the past. Patch wasn’t superstitious, but she just knew there had to be ghosts that haunted the place at night.
Patch decided to post her letter before she paid her visit to Careless Lachlan. As far as she knew, Ethan hadn’t been in to see him yet, and it couldn’t hurt to let the sheriff know that the investigation of that long-ago incident was being reopened.
Patch had stepped off the boardwalk where it ended to allow access to an a
lley when a hand reached out and grabbed her by the wrist. She was yanked into the cool, murky shadows and slammed up against the wall. A hard male body pressed up against her and a callused hand stifled the scream on her lips. The abrupt change from sunlight to darkness momentarily blinded her. She was terrified until she heard a familiar male voice.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Patch?”
“Mmmmp,” Patch replied. The hand came away and she snapped, “I was walking down the street! Or at least I was until you yanked me into this alley. What’s got into you, Ethan? What’s wrong?”
“I told you to get your bags and get back to the ranch. You left right after breakfast. It’s practically noon. What the hell have you been doing all day?”
Patch relaxed. He was worried about her. She played with a button on his shirt with her gloved fingers. “I went to see my grandfather.”
Ethan had the oddest sensation he was being undressed, even though the buttons remained in place. It was a fantasy he had been fighting the past week, Patch undressing him. Here she was doing it—or rather, not doing it—in the middle of town. He forced his mind back to the subject at hand. “I thought Corwin Marshall was dead.”
“No, he just sold his ranch and moved into town. And guess what, Ethan?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“He’s going to come visit me at the ranch sometime.”
“Patch, there’s no sense getting any more people involved in my situation than already are.”
“He’s not involved. He’s just a lonely old man, Ethan, and I want to spend some time with him.”
“Patch—”
“Have you talked to the sheriff yet, Ethan?”
“No, but—”
Her gloved fingers walked up his shirt toward his collar. “Could I go with you?”
He grabbed her wrist. “No.”
Her lips pouted. “Why not?”
He smoothed them out with his thumb. “I told you, it isn’t safe.”
Outlaw’s Bride Page 8