She sensed he was feeling the pressure of it all almost as painfully as she was. His regard for her welfare was touching, but his worries were getting the best of him.
“I appreciate your concern. But I’m not an invalid. I am quite able to receive a visitor or two.”
“In a few days, perhaps.”
His guilt for what had happened played some part in his overprotectiveness, but he couldn’t shield her from the world forever.
Not wanting to make matters worse, she’d relent to his temporary ban on company. A few more days of rest would do her good. Her need for laudanum was waning, and she preferred to be clearheaded when she faced the curiosity of visitors.
There was one person she was eager to see, though, regardless of her condition. “With the exception of Jacob Squires, of course,” she said. “You’ll be sure to let me know when he calls?”
“Forget about Jacob Squires.”
Daisy narrowed her eyes. “But the man he saw—”
“Was not the man in your sketch. Remember?”
“We still need to get a description.”
“I don’t want you involved anymore,” Jackson said.
“Pardon me?”
“You heard me, Daisy. That’s the end of it.”
She stared incredulously. That’s the end of it. She’d heard these vexing assertions all her life. That she was now hearing them from Jackson, the one person from whom she’d never expected to hear them, vexed her even more. She leaned forward. “That’s the end of it?”
“I don’t want you involved.”
“I’ve been shot, Jackson. I’m already involved.”
The reminder was like fuel on a fire. She all but felt the heat of his anger before he replied.
“Exactly. You took a bullet meant for me. That was my fault. I know it. You know it.” He flailed an arm toward the window. “Everyone in town knows it. I’m not risking your safety again. I don’t need that on my head.”
She sighed, staring in silence. Forever thinking of himself. Despite her fruitless hopes, he regarded her as nothing more than a responsibility, a duty. He’d spent a lifetime shirking cumbersome demands, and he considered Daisy one of them.
“No, I suppose you don’t,” she said. “Rest assured, I’ve no intention of adding to your burdens by getting myself killed. But, I am a grown woman, and you have no right to tell me what I can and cannot do.”
“I am your husband!”
“For the time being!” Her chest heaved. How dare he toss his status as husband in her face? She’d spent her entire life under the control of other people. She had no intention of letting this man control her too. Come autumn he’d be long gone. And he expected her to bow to his will because he was playing husband now? “I will do anything I can to find the man who orphaned Andy Wendell. Anything.”
His face turned to steel; his voice was like ice. “I don’t doubt your determination. Or your commitment to your plans.”
He was no longer speaking of Andy or the Morgan case. True, she wanted a child. She’d made no bones about that. But she’d made love to Jackson because she wanted him more. The admission caused a pinch in her chest. It wasn’t the dangling carrot of a child that had led her to make love to him every chance that she got. It was her love for him.
And she was no more than a burden.
She felt like a fool. “Then we’re two of a kind, aren’t we? We both have designs. I want a child, and you want to carouse in St. Louis.”
He narrowed his eyes as he pushed from the chair. “You’ve spelled it out nicely,” he said as he stood. She lifted her chin against his hard tone as he moved toward the door. “Our ambitions are clear. And we’re using each other to attain them.”
Chapter 19
Jackson spent the next several hours downstairs, keeping company with a bottle of whiskey. Two glasses into it, he still couldn’t drown out Daisy’s words, but he was giving it his best shot.
You want to carouse in St. Louis. He’d been faithful to Daisy. Hell, since they’d married, he’d never considered taking a mistress or even partaking in a brief affair with another woman. His monkish behavior surprised even him. How could he expect Daisy to believe it?
But the truth was he wanted no one but Daisy. Pity his wife-for-the-time-being didn’t want him. She took advantage of every opportunity to remind him of their deal and his impending departure for St. Louis.
She’d have his bags packed and waiting for him by the door as soon as she conceived. Then she’d casually send him down the road as though he were a studhorse.
Why she wanted his child was beyond his comprehension. He was a wastrel, a rake, a wanderer. He supposed she’d found those very traits would serve her well. With her errant husband living miles away, she’d maintain the independence that was so important to her. Yes, Daisy was a clever woman.
But not so clever as to see he was merely trying to protect her. Her involvement almost got her killed. The woman was too damn stubborn for her own good. Had been from the day she’d first learned about the tragic story of how Andy was orphaned. Jackson had sought Daisy out for her help, for his own selfish reasons, but even after he’d tried to dissuade her involvement, she’d insisted on going to Barston with him to help the boy. And what had she gotten for her trouble?
Jackson had seen the blame in the faces of the sheriff and the people who’d stopped to wish Daisy a speedy recovery. He knew what they were thinking. He’d thought it himself. He’d brought nothing but grief to her quiet life in Misty Lake.
Everyone was concerned for her, and with good reason. Her husband had nearly gotten her killed. Jackson tensed. Even Lansing, an old man, had been a better husband than Jackson turned out to be. His jealousy of a dead man incited his anger. Daisy was safe and sound when Jackson had met her, and he would make sure that he left her that way.
Jackson had given Kotterman explicit directions to allow Daisy no visitors. For all Jackson knew, the man who shot Daisy could be one of her neighbors. Tom Wyman or Curtis, even Cuffy.
Jackson shook his head again. His mind was working double time. He was being irrational, and he was dead tired. Resisting the urge for another drink, he returned to the cursed file he’d been studying for weeks. He mulled over endless pages of notes he’d taken, starting from the day he first visited Randal Morgan in jail. He had to be missing something.
He flipped through the pages to his notes on Morgan’s movements and the route he’d traveled that morning. Perhaps Morgan had passed the killer on the road to Barston that day. It was possible. And it would explain how the stolen items landed in Morgan’s wagon.
Corine had seen the man in the sketch on a horse. A black horse with white socks. Despite the distinguishable description, tracking down the animal would be damn near impossible. Feeling defeated, Jackson tossed the file aside, then ran a hand through his hair.
He didn’t know what to think anymore. But he knew the sheriff was wrong. No one from Jackson’s past had fired that shot. Easterly hated him, but he’d taken his wife and moved overseas.
Perhaps the man who shot Daisy was merely someone angry at him for pursuing the case and not the man who killed Wendell. Leaning back, he rubbed his burning eyes. For the briefest of moments, he was tempted to accept, like everyone else had, the fact that Randal Morgan was a murderer. It sure as hell would be easier than pursuing the alternative.
As long as he continued this losing battle to prove Morgan’s innocence, he was putting Daisy in danger.
He recalled with disturbing clarity the night she was shot, all the blood, her terrified face. When she’d collapsed in his arms on the dock, he’d thought she was dead. He swallowed hard as his stomach turned at the sickening memory of it.
Shaking his head to clear the images from his mind, he closed his eyes in his need for sleep. Nothing seemed worth putting Daisy at risk—what she’d already been through.
Not even honoring his deathbed promise to Randal Mor
gan.
* * * *
The next morning Jackson awoke with an ache in his head and his heart. Yesterday, after his discussion with Dannion, he’d actually tried to convince himself he could stay in Misty Lake. Was it possible, as his brother had said, that Jackson loved Daisy?
The question had haunted him throughout his dreams that night and greeted him when he woke in the overstuffed chair in the library. He still had no answer, and the fact made him surlier than ever.
He knew nothing of love, but he knew Daisy was special. She was beautiful, yes, but she was so much more. Her heart overflowed with compassion for others. So much so, she blamed herself for things she’d had no control over, and she’d had little control over much in her life. No wonder she refused to heed his demands. Even her quest for independence was admirable, though it hurt like hell to be a casualty of it.
When breakfast was ready, he brought it up to her, as usual. He entered the room and set the tray on the small table next to the bed. Daisy stood, gazing out the window. Her color had improved, and she looked better today. She also looked angry. She spared him barely a glance, then turned back to the window.
“Jacob Squires is downstairs,” he announced.
Her eyes flashed wide.
“You’ll eat first,” he said. “Then I’ll bring him up.”
She straightened her spine but didn’t protest. He’d relented to the visit; how could she argue? The defiance in her eyes faded as she accepted the truce. “All right.” She sat at the table, and he joined her.
She poked at her eggs, the tense silence between them like an invisible curtain. “I will be fine, Jackson. It’s not as if I’ll be performing circus tricks. I’ll merely be sketching.”
She was right, of course, but he felt no reassurance. He didn’t want her involved in the case anymore, but he needed her help. His desperation had driven him down a path he hadn’t wanted to go. Or perhaps it was Daisy’s determination to help, her unwavering support, no matter her motives, that had urged him to do what was necessary to succeed.
He was treading in unknown territory on this quest to finish what he’d started. He’d never felt an inclination to prove anything to anyone, and he feared the attempt to prove something now would be his undoing. He nodded, pointing his finger to the breakfast tray in front of her. “Eat.”
* * * *
Jacob stood in the doorway behind the large bouquet of wildflowers in his hand.
Daisy returned the timid smile on his bushy face and straightened in the chair. “Come in, Jacob,” she said.
Jackson loomed behind Jacob as he entered the room, then handed her the flowers. “I heard what happened to you, Mrs. Gallway. I’m happy to see you’re all right.”
“Thank you, Jacob,” she said. “I am recovering nicely.”
He took a seat in the chair across from Daisy while she inhaled the aroma of the flowers. “Mmm, these smell wonderful. I shall have them placed downstairs so they’ll scent the whole house.”
“I’ve already spoken to Jacob on the time and place of the sighting,” Jackson said as he placed her sketch pad and pencils in front of her.
Daisy arranged the pad on the table, then turned to Jacob. “So are you ready to give me a description of the man you saw the day before the fire?”
Jacob nodded. Jackson strolled to the window and gazed out. His mood was still grim, but she was relieved he’d come to his senses by allowing her to sketch the man Jacob had seen. She only hoped it would help.
She situated herself to begin. Once Jacob started talking, she could barely keep up as he recited with great detail the facial features of the man he’d seen near the Rhodes’s house.
She sketched and listened and sketched some more. To her surprise, she didn’t need to coax the memory from him at all, and the details poured freely from Jacob’s mouth to Daisy’s pad. “You have a good memory, Jacob,” she said. “Most people are unable to recall so easily a face they’d seen for so brief a time.”
“I never forget a face,” he said proudly.
Daisy had always considered this an attribute of her own. Even as she drew, she had a distinct feeling of familiarity with Jacob. A closeness with this stranger she barely knew. The fondness for the man stemmed, of course, from the jubilation she’d felt upon meeting him for the first time.
Jacob was responsible for finding little Andy after the fire. The desperate search for the boy and her overwhelming fear he had perished in the fire had ended because of Jacob. Daisy’s gratitude for his returning Andy safe and sound had etched Jacob’s wooly face on her list of things she’d remember always.
When she finished the drawing, she held up the sketch pad. “It’s definitely not the man in the other sketch,” she uttered to Jackson.
“I’m sorry if it doesn’t help.” Jacob scratched his bushy head. “But that’s the man I saw.”
Daisy stared down at the face on the pad. A thin man with a receding hairline, pointy nose, and jutting chin stared back at her.
“I still want to know his identity. A lead is a lead,” Jackson said. “We are not ruling out anything at this point.”
Jacob nodded. “I should get back to the missus. I don’t like to leave her alone for too long.”
“Her health suffers?”
“For years now. I moved her here from Pennsylvania hoping the fresh air in the mountains would help her condition, but she hasn’t improved much.”
He lowered his gaze behind his thick spectacles, and Daisy was touched by his loving care of the ailing woman. Had Daisy loved Lawry the way she loved Jackson, perhaps she’d have minded less about the endless sacrifices she’d made on his behalf.
“I’m so sorry, Jacob,” she said. “Please send our regards. I look forward to meeting her one day,” she added with a heartfelt smile.
Jacob smiled too. “I best be on my way.”
“Thank you for coming, Jacob,” Jackson said, patting the man on the back.
Jacob tipped his hat to Daisy before Jackson led him from the room. A few minutes later, Jackson returned.
“I hope Jacob doesn’t land in hot water for trying to help us,” Daisy said.
“He’s new in town, and this won’t make him any friends if Curtis finds out.”
“The poor man. Running a farm can’t be easy while taking care of an ailing wife.”
“The man has his hands full, that’s for sure.”
“When all of this is over, I will pay him and his wife a visit.”
Jackson nodded, straightening a stack of notes on the table before stuffing them into a file.
“May I?” Daisy asked.
He handed her the hefty file. “That’s everything I have on the case.”
She shuffled through the pages on top, skimming the material with a critical eye. “Who is Patty?” she asked.
Jackson shrugged. “I never found out who she was.”
Daisy continued to read. “So, Mr. Morgan told you that only you and Patty believe in his innocence?”
“He mumbled that on the night he died. I never got to question him further on it. He was drugged and not making much sense. I assumed at first that Patty was his wife, but found out later that his wife’s name was Margaret, not Patty or Patricia. And Margaret died ten years ago.”
“What about his children? Have they any idea who she could be?”
“He’d been estranged from them for some time. They weren’t too eager to answer my questions, but they told me they hadn’t a clue who Patty is or why their father had mentioned her on his deathbed.”
“A lover?”
“I asked a few of Morgan’s fellow salesmen in Troy if Morgan had a woman, but if he did, they weren’t privy to who she was.” His brows narrowed in thought. “Unless… What if…”
Daisy tilted her head. “What if…”
Jackson leaned forward. “What if Patty is a man?”
Daisy blinked. “Paddy?”
“It
’s possible. And it would explain why I’ve been unable to find out anything about a mystery woman.” He leaned back in his seat. “I’ve always had the feeling that the killer was someone Morgan knew. A salesman, like Morgan, or even a friend.” He stood, stuffing the papers into the file. “I’ll have to go to Troy soon to do some more digging. But first, I’ll go to Barston to retrace Morgan’s route the day Ray Wendell was killed.”
“Be careful, Jax. There’s someone out there who wants to stop you from solving this crime, please remember that.”
He glanced at Daisy’s sling. “I’m unlikely to forget.” He tucked the file under his arm. “I’ll be back tonight. I’ll send for Dannion and Tessa. They can stay with you until then.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Daisy—”
“Go, Jackson. Kotterman will take fine care of me. I won’t leave this room.”
Jackson eyed her skeptically.
“I promise.”
Jackson nodded. “There’s a gun in the desk drawer in the parlor. I’ve already told Kotterman where it is, and now I’m telling you. Kotterman is not to answer the door for anyone.” He pointed his finger. “Not the nosy Wymans or any other neighbors bearing get well wishes, do you understand?”
“I understand,” she assured him. “Now go.”
Chapter 20
Jackson rode to Barston on horseback. If he found himself in a position to escape danger, he felt safer mounted on a horse that could run at breakneck speed. The gun in his coat pocket reassured him he’d be prepared for trouble. Jackson was a fine shot, the one skill he possessed that he could truly be proud of. He wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to plug a bullet in the man who’d shot Daisy.
Once he reached the main road into Barston, he took a left at the intersection to follow the route Morgan had traveled the day of Ray Wendell’s murder.
Morgan had several regular customers in town and a few farther up the mountain. Most people were eager for news from the city, so the length of Morgan’s visits varied, depending on the level of interest for said news and the customer’s current workload.
The Lady Who Drew Me In Page 16