CAROLINE AND THE RAIDER

by Linda Lael Miller

  Before he could tell them about the woman he intended to marry, and the house he planned to put up for her, something struck the bottom of his chair. After a moment of confusion, he realized it had been Caroline’s foot.

  Obviously, his hostess didn’t want him to mention his plans to bring a bride to Bolton. “Mr. Hayes is single,” she told the old women resolutely. “Shall we eat?”

  Caroline watched Guthrie out of the corner of her eye as he accepted a china bowl brimming with creamy mashed potatoes. He seemed as surprised by the abundance and quality of the food as she was by his striking good looks.

  Under that layer of mine dust and all those whiskers was a very handsome man, despite the eye patch. Not that his appearance made any difference in her plans, of course. And just because his kiss had made her feel as though the world had picked up speed and flung her right off into the stars …

  “Teachers make very good mothers, of course,” Miss Ethel remarked, as she buttered a biscuit with a delicate motion of one wrist.

  One side of Guthrie’s mouth quirked in that way it had. “Yes, ma’am,” he said politely, ladling gravy onto his potatoes. “I imagine they do.”

  Caroline lowered her eyes for a moment, embarrassed by the way her guardians were shoving her at Guthrie like a slice of choice roast beef. She knew she would have to go along with the charade if she was to explain keeping company with Mr. Hayes. It would take time to plan Seaton’s rescue properly.

  “Have you ever been married, Mr. Hayes?” Miss Phoebe wanted to know.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Guthrie said again.

  Caroline choked on the delicate bite of chicken she’d just swallowed, and Miss Ethel immediately reached out to slap her on the back.

  Their dinner guest smiled as Caroline recovered her composure, gazing at him over the linen napkin she’d pressed to her mouth.

  “Did I neglect to mention that, Miss Caroline?” he asked indulgently.

  Caroline glared at him and lowered the napkin slowly to her lap. “Yes, Mr. Hayes, I believe you did,” she replied, as mildly as she could manage. Perhaps this was another lie, like the eye patch.

  “Is your wife alive?” Miss Phoebe asked, looking concerned. She made no pretense of eating.

  Looking into Guthrie’s face, Caroline saw a deep sadness pass over him, like the shadow of a cloud. “No,” he replied. “She died a few years after the war ended.”

  Caroline was stricken by his words; for a moment, his grief was her own. She mourned the unknown girl just as she would have Lily or Emma, or either of her guardians. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “You must have been very young when you enlisted,” Miss Phoebe observed practically.

  Caroline could see that Guthrie was grateful for the change of subject.

  “I was sixteen, ma’am,” he replied, helping himself to another piece of chicken.

  Miss Ethel made a tsk-tsk sound. “Too young to go a-soldiering, I’m sure,” she said.

  “There were a great many such tragedies on both sides,” replied Miss Phoebe.

  After supper, Caroline cleared away the dishes and brought out a fresh-baked apple pie. She set it down directly in front of Guthrie and sliced the first piece for him.

  Miss Phoebe cleared her throat discreetly. “Perhaps you could serve dessert to Mr. Hayes on the front porch, dear,” she said, consulting the little watch pinned to the bodice of her white shirtwaist. “Sister and I are due at choir practice, and it wouldn’t be proper for you and Mr. Hayes to be alone in the house, of course.”

  Guthrie winked at Caroline, unbeknownst to the Maitland sisters, and pushed his chair back. “I’m sure Miss Caroline wouldn’t want to do anything that would stir up talk,” he said pointedly. He was making private allusions, of course, to her scandalous visits to the saloon and to his mining camp.

  Caroline would have liked to kick him; instead, she smiled, baring her teeth. “One must guard one’s reputation,” she said.

  While Miss Phoebe and Miss Ethel were crossing the street to the First Presbyterian Church, Caroline carried hot coffee and slices of pie out to the front porch on a tray. Guthrie was sitting in the bench swing, his feet outstretched, a look of utter contentment on his face.

  Caroline set the tray down on the little wicker table in front of the swing. For some reason, she was feeling all shivery with excitement, and her voice shook a little when she spoke. “Miss Phoebe and Miss Ethel seem to like you.”

  Guthrie watched her with a glint in his eye and a wry twist to his mouth as she sat down beside him in the swing, taking care to leave a generous wedge of space between them. The sun was going down, and the first stars were popping out in the sky, surrounding a thin wafer of a moon.

  “They’re pretty anxious to marry you off,” he said.

  Caroline fairly shoved Guthrie’s pie into his hands. “They think my heart is broken,” she told him. “They want me to go on with my life. And to them, that means finding a husband.”

  Guthrie accepted the pie and took a bite. His face registered unreserved approval. “Is it?” he asked, chewing.

  Caroline had lost her train of thought, being so close to him and everything. “Is what?”

  “Is your heart broken?”

  The question took her by surprise. “Of course it is,” she said, affronted.

  Guthrie enjoyed another bite of pie, and there was something almost unbearably sensual in the way he took his time, savoring the morsel. “You don’t feel much passion for this beau of yours, do you?”

  A delicate film of perspiration moistened the place between Caroline’s breasts, and it was an effort to keep from fanning herself. She was careful to look away from Guthrie. “You’re wrong, Mr. Hayes.”

  “Umm-hmm,” Guthrie agreed, with skeptical good humor. He set the pie plate on the little table and spoke in a low drawl that was something of a caress in and of itself. His hand rested lightly on Caroline’s nape, setting all the rest of her flesh a-tingle. “The way you responded when I kissed you last night tells me different, Teacher.”

  Caroline stiffened and turned her head to glare at him. “You are insufferably arrogant, Mr. Hayes!” she hissed. Organ music swelled into the twilight from the church across the street, and a dozen discordant voices tumbled out after it.

  His thumb made a slow circle on the delicate skin at the back of her neck. “If a man can’t make a woman breathe hard and whimper and then explode like ten tons of dynamite dropped straight into hellfire,” he said, without the slightest compunction, “she shouldn’t marry him, because she’s not going to be happy.”

  Heat climbed Caroline’s face, but she couldn’t pull away. In fact, her breasts felt heavy, their tips jutting against the muslin of her camisole, and her womanly place ached.

  Guthrie was still caressing her nape. He must have felt the tremor that went through her, Caroline couldn’t bear to look at his face and see. She let her eyes drift closed.

  “You didn’t tell me you’d been married,” she said evenly, after a scandalously long time. She needed to put some distance between herself and Guthrie Hayes before she melted.

  The porch swing creaked slightly as Guthrie lowered his hand from the back of her neck, and the music from the church was a reassuring hum. “I had no reason to,” he answered evenly.

  “What was her name?” Out of the corner of her eye, Caroline saw Guthrie shove his fingers through his hair.

  “That isn’t important.”

  “I imagine it was to her. And to you.”

  Guthrie gave a sad sigh. “Anne. Her name was Anne.”

  Caroline folded her hands in her lap and propelled the swing into motion by bracing one heel against the floor of the porch and pushing. “Did you love her?”

  “Isn’t that kind of a personal question?” He wasn’t prickly, exactly, but he sure sounded reluctant.

  Caroline had not spent the last several years dealing with stubborn children without learning a thing or two about persistence. “Probably,” s
he agreed. “But I still want to know.”

  Guthrie’s jaw tightened slightly, and he turned his head, taking an exaggerated interest in the forsythia bush growing in a far corner of the yard. “I loved her.”

  Instinct warned Caroline to lighten the moment. “Was she fat?”

  He gave a burst of laughter that was only partly amusement; in large measure, Caroline knew, it was relief. “No. Why the devil would you ask me that?”

  Caroline’s shoulders lifted in a coquettish little shrug. “You’ve made it very clear that you prefer fleshy women.”

  Guthrie grinned. “I was nineteen, going on twenty, when I married Anne. At the time, I didn’t know I had preferences—I liked all women.”

  Emboldened by the fact that there was little illumination, except for the transparent moon and a block of light strained by the parlor curtains, Caroline reached out and gently pushed the black eye patch up onto Guthrie’s forehead.

  She wasn’t surprised to see a perfectly healthy green eye gazing back at her. Her cheeks heated when Guthrie winked, and she retreated slightly.

  He chuckled at her reaction. “I’m sorry,” he said, in a husky voice. “I was planning to tell you.”

  “Why on earth would you want to wear that thing when you didn’t have to?”

  Guthrie stuffed the patch into the pocket of his clean but crumpled shirt. “I’ve been on the move for a long time,” he said, leaving the swing to stand with his back to her and grip the porch railing. “Because of the things that happened during the war, I had to be careful about running into people who might remember me.”

  Caroline’s heart stopped for a moment, then started up again. “Are you wanted for some crime?” she asked, her voice soft with dread.

  He turned to look down at her, his arms folded across his rock-hard chest. “Not exactly. But I didn’t make a lot of friends among the Yankees.”

  “You did something,” Caroline insisted. She knew that as well as she knew her schoolroom, though she couldn’t have said how.

  Guthrie sighed. “I killed a man.”

  “There was a war—”

  “This was afterward, Caroline.”

  She looked away, her fingers woven together in her lap. “Surely you had cause.”

  “That depends on your viewpoint,” Guthrie answered. “And, frankly, I’ve never been particularly inclined to discuss the incident with a Union judge. Until I met Adabelle and then struck copper up there in the hills, I intended to keep moving for the rest of my days.”

  Caroline was stung by the reminder that the woman waiting in Cheyenne had been the one to turn Guthrie’s life in a new direction, though she knew she shouldn’t have cared. “I need to know the circumstances of the killing,” she said, standing to face him. “Tell me what happened. Please.”

  He was still leaning against the railing, and his arms remained folded. Although that would have been the perfect opportunity to take Caroline into his arms and kiss her, as he had in his camp, he didn’t move. “Why?”

  “Because I can’t keep company with a murderer,” she answered, with quiet reason.

  In the wispy light from the windows, Caroline saw a muscle tighten in his jawline. “Why not? You don’t seem to have any misgivings about marrying one.”

  Caroline held her temper. However much she might dislike Mr. Hayes on a personal level, she needed his help, and she couldn’t afford to offend him too deeply. “That’s because I firmly believe Seaton is innocent,” she said, with dignity. “But you admitted, straight out—”

  Guthrie put up both hands in a bid for silence. “The man I killed was someone I knew during the war,” he said. His voice was low, even, and adamant. “And he needed killing.”

  “I could go to the sheriff,” Caroline pointed out, though she knew even then that she’d never follow through. It was only after the words were out that she realized Guthrie had inadvertently handed her a weapon to use against him.

  “You don’t have any proof,” Guthrie said. His eyes were watchful, though she couldn’t read their expression.

  She shrugged, operating on pure bravado. “Somebody, somewhere, probably does.”

  Guthrie stepped forward suddenly and gripped her upper arms in his strong, calloused hands. Then, as quickly as he’d taken her, he let her go again. “What I said before stands, Caroline,” he said, after a long, uncomfortable silence. “If I decide Flynn’s guilty, he’ll hang if I have to put the noose around his neck myself. Thanks for supper.”

  With that, he turned and strode down the steps onto the walk. His horse was tethered to a hitching post just beyond the picket fence.

  Caroline hurried after him. “I want to go with you,” she blurted out. “When you go to Laramie, I mean.”

  Guthrie’s shoulders tensed, and he turned slowly to face Caroline, the process of mounting his horse forgotten. “No,” he said.

  “Yes,” Caroline replied, setting her jaw.

  Chapter

  The next morning, Guthrie hitched up the buckboard and drove to town to buy supplies, Tob riding like visiting royalty in the back. Perhaps as a concession to Caroline, or maybe just because he was tired of running from the long tentacles of the war that constantly reached out to entwine him, Guthrie tossed the eye patch into some scrub brush as he passed.

  There was a letter waiting for him at the general store, scented with lavender water, and he smiled as he tucked it into his shirt pocket. No matter what Caroline said, he assured himself, Adabelle definitely wasn’t fat. She was plump, in the same pleasant way as a Christmas turkey.

  While the storekeeper, a skinny little man with wisps of red hair surrounding his bald, freckled pate, took the items on Guthrie’s list from the shelves and put them into boxes, he browsed. A selection of books lined a shelf, over in one corner, and he examined the titles with narrowed eyes, running one finger over their sturdy spines.

  More than anything else, shelves full of books meant wealth to Guthrie. They made him miss Willow Grove, the McTavish plantation in Virginia, and mourn certain gracious aspects of the South that were probably gone forever.

  His throat was constricted as he took a volume of Swinburne into his hands, but a grin lifted a corner of his mouth as he wondered how many of the ranchers, miners, and sheepherders around Bolton enjoyed reading poetry. The answer was in the layer of dust that wafted up from the book when he opened it.

  He blew away the worst of it and flipped to the first page. When he built his house at the edge of town, there’d be a whole room reserved for reading and the like, just as there had been at Willow Grove.

  “I’d be willing to give you a bargain on that there book,” the storekeeper said earnestly, startling him out of his reflections.

  Guthrie figured he must be slipping, since he hadn’t heard the man approach. It was probably his just due for getting involved with a woman like Caroline in the first place. “How much?”

  “Five cents,” was the firm answer.

  “Sold,” Guthrie replied, handing the little man the book and moving to the nearest window. There he caught his thumbs under his suspenders and gazed out.

  Tob was waiting patiently in the back of the wagon, though he was eyeing the Hellfire and Spit Saloon, just down the street. He probably had a bowl of good Irish whiskey on his mind, Guthrie thought with a grin.

  He was just about to turn away when he saw Caroline walking purposefully down the sidewalk on the other side of the road. He didn’t know whether to call out to her or duck out of sight, and before he could make the decision, she spotted Tob sitting in the wagon.

  A moment later, she was cautiously wending her way across the road, looking primly pretty in a plaid dress with white lacy trim of some kind.

  Guthrie stepped out onto the sidewalk, telling himself there was no way to avoid her. In truth, he didn’t want to. “Why aren’t you teaching school?” he asked, briefly touching the brim of his hat and speaking as cordially as if they hadn’t had words the night before, in front of Caro
line’s house.

  Her chin came up a notch, and he had a momentary sensation of tumbling head over heels into the saucy brown depths of her eyes. He set his feet a little farther apart on the splintery boards of the sidewalk to brace himself.

  “It’s Saturday, Mr. Hayes,” she explained. Although her manner wasn’t exactly cold, her lips didn’t curve into a smile. “I’m happy to see you’ve gotten rid of that silly eye patch.”

  Guthrie had a sudden vision of himself laying Caroline gently on the lush green grass beside a stream and teaching her lithe little body every note in the scale of pleasure. There was a grinding sensation deep inside him, and he felt himself harden.

  Then he remembered Adabelle and slapped his hand over the letter in an effort to make some kind of contact with her.

  Caroline’s gaze dropped to the scented envelope only partially hidden by his fingers and then rose to his face again. He saw a spark of fury in her eyes and, to his own confusion, he reveled in the sudden insight that she was jealous.

  “From Adabelle?” she inquired sweetly.

  Guthrie smiled a fond smile and then nodded.

  Caroline rolled her eyes, but her words and tone of voice were concessionary. “I hope you’re still planning to help me,” she said.

  Actually, Guthrie had been hoping their argument the night before had made her forget her crazy ideas about getting her beau out of jail, but now, in the bright light of day, he realized he should have known better.

  Although he knew it was cowardly, he fell back on Adabelle as an excuse. “I’m not sure my future wife would approve.”

  Caroline’s eyes narrowed, and she took a step closer to him. She smelled of sunshine and vanilla, and Guthrie’s groin tightened further. “I know your future wife wouldn’t approve of that kiss you gave me the other day,” she intoned.

  Guthrie jerked his hat off, then put it back on again. Tarnation, if this woman wasn’t irritating. “If you don’t quit threatening me, Miss Chalmers,” he breathed, “you and I are going to have a little set-to. And I promise you, I’ll win!”