Secondhand Bride

by Linda Lael Miller

  She closed the book with a snap and snatched off the glasses. “Well,” she said imperiously, “you’re back.”

  He exercised forbearance and did not point out the obviousness of that statement. He even took off his hat. “Have you been crying?” he asked, though he hadn’t intended to voice that particular thought.

  “No,” she said.

  “Liar.”

  “If you’ve come here to insult me, Jeb McKettrick, I will thank you to leave. I’ve had quite enough disturbing news in the past twenty-four hours.”

  He sighed, drew up another chair, and sat facing her so that their knees were almost touching. “I’m not here to bother you, Chloe,” he said truthfully. “I was hoping we could talk. Without tearing into each other, I mean.”

  “Inconceivable,” she said, but her mouth twitched a little at one corner and, in the next instant, she actually hauled off and smiled. “You look very handsome,” she added.

  It wasn’t the first time Jeb had been told he was handsome—he’d been trading on it for years—but the effect was entirely new. He felt shy as a schoolboy all of a sudden, and oddly tongue-tied, and that unnerved him. “You don’t look so bad yourself,” he said.

  She gave a pealing laugh.

  He turned his hat between his fingers and searched for words that might be accepted in a peaceable spirit. “Chloe, you said there was a child—”

  She looked away.

  “Is there?” he pressed, but without rancor.

  She met his gaze, shook her head. “No,” she said, and he thought he heard a note of regret in her voice.

  He hung his head for a moment, surprised by the depth of his disappointment.

  “You want that ranch very badly, don’t you?” Chloe asked. He might have expected recrimination, since she’d already accused him of using her as a means to an end; but she spoke gently, almost tenderly.

  He looked up, searching her face. If he lived to be a thousand, he’d never figure this woman out, and that was part of her appeal. She was a mystery, a challenge, and a pure hellcat between the sheets. “Yes,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me the real reason you wanted to get married?” She reached for her teacup, but it rattled in the saucer, so she turned loose of it and folded her hands in her lap. “I thought it all happened awfully fast. Our courtship, I mean.”

  “I guess I figured you’d tell me to go to hell,” he answered. “Say you were a woman, not a broodmare, or something along those lines.”

  Her smile was strangely fragile. “Well, I might have,” she admitted. “But the truth is always best, don’t you think?”

  He considered the question and refrained from pointing out that she hadn’t been such a believer in telling the straight story back in Tombstone. “Not always,” he said, and left it at that. “Chloe, why were you crying? Was it because of John?”

  She nodded. “Did you know he was my father?” she asked, almost meekly, as if she feared the answer.

  He shook his head. “No.” He reached out, took her hand. “Come on,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t balk. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  She didn’t try to pull away, which was encouraging, but as he ran the pad of his thumb across her fingers, he realized that the ring he’d given her was gone, which was discouraging. Not that he’d worn his own; it was tucked away in his bureau drawer at home. He’d wanted to toss it in the creek more than once, but something had stopped him.

  Damn, but it was a complicated business, this being a man. Women had it easy.

  9

  It didn’t escape Chloe’s notice, for all her befuddlement of feelings, that when Jeb led her out of the hotel for their evening walk, he headed in the opposite direction from the cemetery. The street was quiet, the store-fronts dark, though the Bloody Basin was doing a rousing business, with tinny piano music pouring past its swinging doors.

  Perhaps thinking, as she was, that it would be better if they didn’t talk about themselves, and thus their differences, Jeb pointed out various landmarks.

  “That’s the jailhouse, over there,” he said, indicating a pockmarked facade with brick sidewalls and a single dimly lit window. “Looks like Sam Fee has a prisoner, or he’d be gone home by now.” He stopped, surveying the place, and shook his head. “Kade was marshal for a while, after John took sick. Damn near got himself killed, but we’d have lost the Triple M for sure if it hadn’t been for him and Mandy.”

  Chloe made her way past the mention of John, though it brushed against her spirit like a shadow. “What happened?” She wasn’t ready to talk about her father and all the years that had been wasted because she hadn’t known who he really was. The resentment she felt toward her mother would need some time to heal, too, and she’d be demanding an explanation first chance she got, for sure and certain.

  “It’s complicated,” Jeb said, taking her hand and moving on again. “What it boils down to is, there were some outlaws trying to start up a range war. They stole some gold that belonged to us, and Kade and Mandy got it back.”

  The next stop on the grand tour of Indian Rock was Mamie Sussex’s rooming house. “Mamie has a flock of redheaded kids,” Jeb said, with amused affection. “Harry’s a special favorite of Kade’s—used to help him with his marshaling sometimes. He made a fair deputy, for a ten-year-old.”

  Chloe smiled at the mention of children; as a teacher, she naturally had a special affinity for them. “They must keep their mother busy,” she observed. She was trying not to think about how good it felt to be talking about ordinary things with Jeb, with her hand resting in his. Best not get too cozy, though.

  “It would be a mercy to her and the whole town if they were in school,” Jeb said, with a slight grin. “They’re full of mischief. There isn’t any teacher, though.”

  She supposed she should have told him she meant to inquire about the job, but she didn’t. She was enjoying the temporary cessation of hostilities a bit too much.

  “The town council’s been trying to hire a schoolmarm for a while now,” he went on. “No luck. Indian Rock’s pretty isolated, and the pay isn’t much, so I guess the pickings are slim.”

  Chloe felt a little trill of excitement, but caution made her tamp it down. Yes, she was a qualified teacher, a damn good one, in fact, and yes, she most certainly needed work, since her funds were all but exhausted, but word of her ignoble dismissal in Tombstone would surely catch up to her, sooner or later. As desperate as they were, the committee might turn her down flat.

  She’d have no choice then but to go crawling back to Sacramento and live alone in Mr. Wakefield’s vast house. The prospect made her shudder, but with two divorces behind her, she’d be a pariah just about anywhere she went. “Tell me about Rafe and Emmeline,” she said, when the gap of silence had widened too far for comfort.

  Jeb smiled, a mite wistfully, Chloe thought, and they sat down on a bench in front of the closed mercantile, still holding hands. “Now there’s a story,” he said. “When Pa informed us, on his birthday, that the first one of us to get married and present him with a grandchild would run the ranch, Rafe sent away for a bride, and Emmeline came out from Kansas City. Things were pretty rocky between them for a while, so he wrote off for another bride, just in case Emmeline didn’t work out.” He paused, chuckled. “Kade did the same, once he found out. The agency got mixed up and sent six of them. When they got here and found out Rafe was taken, they all set their caps for Kade. That made for some merriment, but most of them are gone now. Abigail stayed—she and Mamie run the rooming house together, and Sue Ellen Caruthers keeps house for Holt Cavanagh. I imagine he’ll marry her one of these days, just for something to do.”

  Chloe mused a while, enjoying the comical picture Jeb had painted in her mind. It was purely a relief, after all her heavy thoughts. “What about you?” she asked presently. “Didn’t any of the brides fix their sights on you?”

  He hesitated. “No,” he said. In profile, he looked serious, and when he turned his gaze on Ch
loe, she saw sadness there. “I told them I was already married.”

  Chloe had spoken in haste; now, she could repent the impulse at leisure. “I see,” she said, changing the subject, sensing that there would be another storm if she didn’t. “Holt referred to you as his brother last night. Why does he call himself Cavanagh, and not McKettrick?”

  Jeb’s jaw tightened. “He’s a half brother,” he said, somewhat tersely. “Pa was married to his mother, back in Texas. When she died, Pa left Holt with relatives and came up here, with a herd of cattle, to settle the Triple M. He met Ma, they got married, and Rafe, Kade, and I were born. Somehow, Pa neglected to mention, to us anyway, that he had another son.” He sighed, and the tension in his shoulders slackened a little. “Holt never forgave Pa for leaving him, I guess, and he took the name Cavanagh out of spite, most likely.”

  “You don’t like him,” Chloe said.

  “I don’t trust him,” Jeb replied. “He doesn’t have much to do with Pa, or any of us for that matter. He came here to make trouble, plain and simple, and it’s hard to like a man for that.”

  “Maybe he just wants the rest of you to acknowledge him,” Chloe suggested carefully. She’d only met Mr. Cavanagh once, but she’d liked him instinctively. He was a gentleman, she knew that much, and she sensed a bold and stalwart spirit in him. And, like his half brothers, he wasn’t hard on the eye.

  “It’ll be a while,” Jeb said grimly. He stared at the ground for a long time, and another silence settled between them. Chloe decided it would be a mistake to argue Holt’s case, though she was sorely tempted. People like Jeb, with strong families and deeded ground under their feet, tended to take such things for granted. Most likely, they didn’t know what it was to feel lonely.

  It was Jeb who broke the impasse. “Guess I’d better get you back to the hotel,” he said. “Winter or summer, the high country gets cold at night.”

  For her part, Chloe would have been glad to stay right there, close to Jeb, but it was a foolish notion, and she knew it. She’d built walls around her heart, after John Lewis left Sacramento that last time, and both Jack Barrett and Jeb McKettrick had breached them, taking her unawares. The result had been pain, humiliation, and the loss of a job she’d loved.

  She wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

  Except that Jeb kissed her, without warning, right there on the street. As before, her bones melted, and her blood thundered through her veins.

  She pushed him away.

  He caught her chin in his hand, made her look at him. “Remember how it was with us, Chloe?” he asked, his voice raspy and gruff.

  She twisted free. “Are you willing to acknowledge me as your wife?” she demanded.

  He didn’t answer.

  Chloe turned away and headed for the hotel, hoping he would call her back, hoping he wouldn’t.

  He didn’t.

  10

  The stagecoach was just too much of a temptation, stopped alongside the moonlit trail the way it was, and Jack Barrett couldn’t resist a chance to line his empty pockets. He reined in when he saw the rig from a tree-lined ridge, pulled his bandanna up to hide the lower part of his face, and yanked his rifle from its scabbard.

  Besides the driver, who was squatting next to the coach, cursing a broken axle, there seemed to be only two passengers, a woman and a little girl, both of them wearing calico and bonnets. No telling who might be inside, though—Jack proceeded with caution. He’d been on a losing streak lately, and he wanted money, not trouble.

  The driver wasn’t carrying a sidearm, Jack made sure of that first thing. As he rode up, he leaned in the saddle to look through the coach window: empty. He smiled behind his bandanna.

  The woman and child stared at him in curious alarm, while the driver straightened and tried to bluff his way through the hopeless hand he’d been dealt.

  “There’s no money on this stage, mister,” he said. “You’re taking a hell of a risk, and it won’t pay you.”

  The little girl stepped forward, evading the woman’s grasping reach, and turned her face up to Jack, bold as you please. He figured she was seven or eight years old, ten at the most. He hoped he wouldn’t have to shoot her; he’d never gunned down a kid before, and he didn’t know how it would set with him.

  “Are you a bandit?” she asked.

  “Lizzie,” the woman said, sounding scared and angry. “Get back here. Now.” She was a good-looking lady, but shrill. Jack didn’t reckon he’d mind putting a bullet or two into her; he’d be doing a service to some man.

  Lizzie didn’t move. “Answer my question,” she said, the brazen little snippet.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw the driver make a move toward the step leading into the box of the coach. No doubt he had a rifle or a pistol tucked away under the seat.

  Jack turned the rifle on him and pulled the trigger, watching with satisfaction as the old codger fell, bleeding, to the ground. “That answer enough, little girl?” he asked.

  The woman caught the child by both shoulders and drew her back against her skirts. “Please,” she said. “Don’t hurt us. I’ve got some jewelry, and some money, too. Take it and ride out.”

  “Get it,” Jack said shortly, “and don’t do anything stupid, because, begging your pardon, ma’am, I’d as soon shoot you as spit.”

  Her face was snow-pale, even shadowed by the brim of her bonnet. “I won’t. Just, please—”

  The little girl was too young for good sense, it seemed, for she stood her ground. “You did a bad thing,” she said. “When my papa finds out, he’ll hunt you down and lynch you for sure.”

  Jack chuckled. The kid was an irritant, but he got a kick out of her brass. “That so?” he countered, keeping a close eye on the woman while she fetched her reticule from inside the coach. “What’s your papa’s name? I’ll be sure and look him up.”

  “Don’t you dare say a word, Lizzie Cavanagh,” the woman warned, and then bit her lip, realizing, too late, that she’d betrayed the very thing she’d wanted the kid to keep quiet about. She cast a worried glance in the direction of the inert driver, then handed up a drawstring bag, a fancy thing, made of velvet, and heavy.

  While Jack was fumbling to open the purse, the woman drew a derringer from the pocket of her skirt and pointed it at him, her aim true. He barely dodged the bullet, heard it tear a chunk out of the coach, and retaliated with the rifle. The woman fell, the girl screamed and ran to her, and Jack jammed his gun back into its scabbard and swung down from the saddle.

  “Aunt Geneva!” the child cried, shaking the woman with her small hands.

  Jack retrieved the derringer, dropped it into his coat pocket, and scrambled up into the driver’s seat, in search of the strongbox. He broke the lock with the butt of his.44, lifted the lid, and congratulated himself for taking the trouble. There must have been a couple of thousand dollars in there, neatly stacked and tied with string. He cast a contemptuous glance at the lying driver, dead for his sins, shoved it all into his pockets, and whistled for his horse. The animal drew up alongside the stage, and he eased himself into the saddle.

  The little girl looked up at him, her small face streaked with tears, her eyes defiant. The woman was bleeding from the throat, staring sightlessly at the sky.

  Jack tugged at the brim of his hat. “You tell your papa, when you see him, that he owes me a favor,” he said.

  She jutted out her obstinate little chin. “What for?” she demanded.

  “Not killing you,” he answered. With that, he rode off into the night, wondering if he was doing the right thing, leaving a witness to tell the tale. He almost turned back, at one point, but in the end he decided against it. If the cold didn’t finish the kid off, the cougars would.

  He was miles away before he remembered that he hadn’t checked under the stagecoach seat for a gun.

  Maybe she had a chance after all.

  11

  Unable to face the long ride back to the ranch, Jeb spent the night at the Arizona Ho
tel, though, regrettably, not in Chloe’s bed, and he didn’t sleep well. He was on the way to the livery stable, to collect his horse and go home, when he ran into Sam Fee, the marshal.

  “Sam,” he said, with a cordial nod. He would have gone on past, but for the look of consternation on the lawman’s face. “Something wrong?”

  “Stagecoach didn’t come in yesterday afternoon,” Sam said. “I figured they were just running late, but they should have been here by now.”

  Jeb felt a pinch in the pit of his belly. “You heading out to find them?”

  Sam was already moving toward the stables. “Yup,” he said. “I reckon I’d better. Could be they threw a wheel or ran into some other kind of trouble.”

  “I’ll ride with you,” Jeb said, matching his stride to Sam’s.

  “Obliged,” Sam said. There’d been some trouble between him and the McKettricks, specifically Rafe, when Gig Curry burned the Fee homestead to the ground and left the Triple M brand on a tree for a kind of calling card, but that was behind them now.

  They were a couple of hours south of town when they found the coach and team of six fretful horses just off the trail, and there were two bodies on the ground.

  Jeb cursed and jumped down from the saddle, with Sam only a step behind him. He crouched beside the woman, but he knew before he touched her that there would be no pulse. She’d been shot through the throat, and the ground was awash in blood.

  Sam, in the meantime, squatted by the driver. “Dead,” he said.

  “Son of a bitch,” Jeb muttered, and just as he was about to stand up, he spotted the barrel of a pistol, probably a Colt .45, gleaming in the window of the coach.

  “Don’t you try anything,” a small voice warned. “I’ll shoot you dead if you do.”

  Jeb squinted, hardly trusting his eyes. The speaker was a little girl, wearing a calico bonnet, and he figured she meant business.

  He put his hands out from his sides. “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “Sam here is the marshal. We’re not going to hurt you.”

  “You might be an outlaw,” the kid insisted. Her eyes were big with fear and red-rimmed from crying, but she was a brave one, for sure, and meant to stand her ground.