CAROLINE AND THE RAIDER

by Linda Lael Miller

  He didn’t answer her question, maybe because he didn’t hear, and maybe because he didn’t know what to say. He spurred his gelding a little ahead of Caroline’s mare and dismounted in front of the marshal’s office.

  Seaton was thinner than Caroline remembered, and his knuckles were white where he gripped the bars of his cell. Caroline looked into his eyes and was frightened by the fact that all she felt was numbness.

  “I knew you’d come,” he said, reaching out for her with one hand. His dark eyes, so expressive and bright, seemed to caress her.

  Caroline kept her distance, though she did manage a faltering smile. Her first impulse was to confess that she’d given herself to Guthrie, not just once but several times, but she checked it. This was neither the time nore the place for such confidences, but she couldn’t delay breaking off the engagement for another moment; her conscience wouldn’t let her.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” she said, in a breathless rush. “We can’t be married.”

  Behind her, in the marshal’s office, she could hear Guthrie talking quietly with the lawman.

  Seaton’s voice was plaintive, his skin waxen. “What?”

  “I still mean to help you,” she whispered, taking a step closer in her earnest desire to make reparation for sins she’d thought better of confessing.

  Without warning, he reached out and caught hold of her braid, pressing her close to the bars, wrenching her head back a little too roughly. All of this took place before she could catch a breath, let alone cry out.

  There was something urgent in the way his lips crushed hers, devouring them. When his tongue invaded her mouth, her secret places didn’t flower the way they did with Guthrie, and she laid both hands to Seaton’s chest and pushed him back.

  He looked at her in anger and wounded surprise.

  “No, Mr. Flynn,” she said, speaking to him in the formal way he’d always preferred. “Things will have to be different between us from now on.” She knew her cheeks were flaming, knew he believed her chagrin stemmed from virginal innocence. And she thought the glorious disgrace of her behavior with Guthrie would finish her off.

  The door to the office opened, and Guthrie stood beside her.

  “Flynn,” he said. That single word was at once a question and a statement and a summing up.

  Seaton’s beautiful dark eyes narrowed. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  Caroline braced herself for an explosion, but it didn’t come. Guthrie’s voice was icily cordial. “My name is Guthrie Hayes,” he said.

  Seaton’s gaze moved for Caroline to Guthrie and back again, and she told herself it was impossible for him to know they’d been intimate just by looking at them. “What’s your business, Mr. Hayes?”

  “We’ll discuss that when we’re alone,” Guthrie replied, catching Caroline in a sidelong glance. She lingered, since she’d already determined that the other two cells were empty.

  Finally, Guthrie cleared his throat pointedly.

  Caroline laid a hand to her chest. “You don’t mean—but this was my idea—”

  “Out,” Guthrie said.

  Caroline hesitated, but then she remembered that Seaton’s fate was essentially in Guthrie’s hands. She couldn’t afford to flout his orders, however much she might want to do that. Keeping her chin high, and being careful not to make eye contact with either man, Caroline left the jail as though it had been her own choice to do so. She proceeded regally through the marshal’s office, but the moment she reached the sidewalk, she ran around to the back of the building.

  Since there was no glass in Seaton’s window, just bars, Caroline could hear well enough through the opening.

  “—why I’m innocent,” came Seaton’s voice. His tone was at once accommodating and bristly.

  “I’m afraid it’s going to take more than your word to convince me,” Guthrie responded quietly. “The territory has a good case against you.”

  Caroline thought she heard the cell bars rattle and, in her mind, she saw Seaton’s strong hands tightening around them again. “Damn it,” he rasped, “I want to know what you’re doing, traveling with Caroline.”

  Her heart practically stopped beating while she waited for Guthrie’s answer. “Let’s just say I work for the lady,” he replied, after a long time, and Caroline let out her breath. “She seems to think you’re husband material.”

  Seaton didn’t sound reassured. “Still, a man and a woman, alone on the trail—”

  “Caroline’s a woman all right,” Guthrie said evenly.

  Caroline closed her eyes. Her own wanton cries of the night before echoed in her ears, and she could feel the smooth boulder beneath her breasts and her belly, and the fiery strokes of Guthrie’s shaft as he pleasured her. Just before the final thrust, he’d clasped the undersides of her knees in both hands and pressed them up and wide apart, and the universe had splintered before Caroline’s eyes.

  “If you’ve touched her,” Seaton said, “I’ll kill you.”

  There was a smile in Guthrie’s voice, a slow and insolent smile. “Considering that I’m probably the only thing standing between you and a noose, you might want to be more diplomatic in the future.”

  Tob appeared at Caroline’s side just then and whimpered, nudging her thigh with his nose. He probably wanted whiskey, the shameless sot.

  “Be that as it may,” Seaton countered seriously, “I meant what I said.”

  Guthrie passed off the threat—and Caroline—with an idle chuckle. “Don’t worry, Flynn. Skinny schoolmarms with tongues like cross-saw blades don’t appeal to me. I like my women soft and sweet and warm.”

  Stung, Caroline rushed around to the front of the building again. She was just stepping onto the sidewalk when Guthrie came out the door.

  His gaze came unerringly to her, and his lips tilted as he noticed her flushed face and flashing eyes. “If you don’t want to hear things that might upset you, Wildcat,” he said flatly, “you shouldn’t eavesdrop under jailhouse windows.”

  With that, he slapped his hat against one thigh and he and Tob disappeared into the saloon next door.

  Caroline went a few steps toward the swinging doors herself, then stopped. She wouldn’t be any help to Mr. Flynn if she was in jail herself, and in many towns it was illegal for a woman to enter such an establishment.

  She crossed to the other side of the street and angrily paced back and forth along the wooden walk, heedless of the stares she drew.

  After Fisk’s moonshine, and the headache it had left him with, Guthrie didn’t care if he never saw another glass of whiskey as long as he lived. He bought a drink for Tob and set it in the sawdust so he could lap it up right out of the glass.

  Leaning back against the bar, Guthrie assessed the clientele. Business was slow; there were two cowboys at the pool table, and the railing edging the upstairs mezzanine was lined with exotic wildlife in brightly colored dresses.

  Guthrie chose a sturdy redhead, because she was the least like Caroline, and she sashayed down the stairs, the pea green feathers in her hair bobbing over her painted face. Her dress was a vivid shade of blue and, coupled with the feathers, its effect was jarring.

  Reaching him, the soiled dove cuddled up close to his chest and purred, “My name is Cozy. What’s yours?”

  Guthrie couldn’t help chuckling. “Did your mama name you that,” he drawled, “or did you make it up yourself?”

  She wriggled against him. “It was give to me,” she said. “I liked it, so I kept it. Don’t you think I’m cozy?”

  He was still weak in the knees from last night’s session with Caroline, but Guthrie had never been one to purposely hurt a lady’s feelings. “Cozy as hell,” he replied. He sure hoped Caroline hadn’t gone and spoiled fleshy women for him with her wildcat ways. “Listen, darlin’, for right now I just need some questions answered.”

  She linked her arm through his and led him behind a curtain into a shadowy enclosure containing a chaise and a big, dusty potted palm. “
Ask away, honey,” she said, sitting down on the velvet upholstered lounge and patting the place beside her.

  Guthrie removed his hat and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. His head was turned toward Cozy, and his smile was affable. “You know a man named Seaton Flynn?”

  Cozy’s big white shoulders, bared by her low-cut dress, moved in a shudder. “He’s that handsome bastard with the dark eyes—the one that killed the stagecoach driver.”

  “You seem pretty sure he’s guilty.”

  “I am. And I’m pretty sure he’s a bastard, too.”

  Guthrie turned his hat by the brim. Before he stood up with Adabelle, he was going to have to get himself a new one. He took a silver dollar from the pocket of his vest and tossed it into Cozy’s broad lap. “Tell me about him.”

  “None of the girls like to take him,” Cozy sighed, smoothing her satin skirt and palming the dollar in the same motion. She warmed the coin in her hand for a moment, then tucked it into the bodice of her dress. “He’s mean. Likes to make a lady holler a little, and not because she’s wanting more, neither.”

  Guthrie’s stomach twisted as he imagined Flynn hurting Caroline and, for the first time since he’d found Annie all broken and bruised, he wanted to kill. He calmed himself with the silent reminder that many men were gentle with wives and rough with whores.

  Cozy wasn’t bothered by his stillness. “Flynn killed that driver, all right. And he gambled away some of the gold right here in the Green Goat.”

  Guthrie frowned. “He had a law office up in Bolton. People looked up to him, thought he was making a good living.” People? Guthrie scoffed to himself. Caroline.

  “He’s no more a lawyer than I am,” Cozy said. “But he’s talked about some woman he knew up there. Made some of the girls answer to her name whilst he was with them.”

  It wasn’t necessary to ask the name; Guthrie knew it only too well. He patted Cozy’s hand, with its big, cheap rings. “Thanks, darlin’,” he said, rising from the lounge and putting his hat on again.

  He scanned the shadowy interior of the saloon once, out of old habit, before stepping past the curtain, half expecting Caroline to be peering at him through one of the murky windows.

  Instead, she was pacing up and down the sidewalk on the other side of the street.

  There was something about her that made Guthrie want to grin, even in the damnedest circumstances. He composed his face, summoned the dog with a slap to one thigh, and stepped out of the Green Goat Saloon.

  Caroline stopped her pacing, arms folded, and waited while Guthrie crossed the street. “Well?” she snapped.

  “Well, what?” Guthrie countered, leaning forward so far that his nose was practically touching hers.

  “I’m not paying you to dally around in saloons!” Caroline hissed.

  “As I’ve told you before,” Guthrie pointed out, “you’re not paying me at all. And you’re not going to have to, Teacher.”

  Caroline would have sworn she felt the sidewalk buckle beneath her feet. “Y-you’re leaving?”

  Guthrie straightened, his hands resting on his hips. “I told you I’d make my decision after I’d talked to the marshal and Flynn himself, and I’ve done that. He’s guilty, Caroline.”

  She was already shaking her head. Seaton couldn’t be guilty, she wouldn’t accept it. She would have known. “Guthrie, please—”

  He took her arm and propelled her down the walk. Although his jaw was set tight as a bear trap, he dispensed a few grimacelike smiles to passersby. “Wire home for money, Wildcat,” he said, when they stopped in front of the doors to the bank, with their green shades. “You’re going to need a stagecoach ticket back to Bolton.”

  Caroline stopped him when he would have strode away. “That’s it?” she said miserably. “You’re just going to leave?”

  Guthrie was as cold and expressionless as if they’d been strangers. “Yes.”

  To her mortification, Caroline could feel tears burning behind her eyes. “I see,” she said, holding them back.

  “Good,” he replied, turning to walk away.

  “Give my regards to Adabelle.”

  He stopped, his back stiff, then looked at Caroline over one shoulder. “I imagine you’ll meet her, once I’ve brought her home.”

  Not for anything would Caroline have let him see how those words injured her. “I imagine so,” she said.

  “You will go home, won’t you?”

  Caroline knew there was only one way to truly let go of Guthrie and make some sort of life for herself from the ruins of her dreams. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I’ll go home.”

  She saw mingled pain and relief in his face. “As for what happened between us—”

  Caroline stopped him because she couldn’t bear to hear him out, knowing what he’d say. “There’s no need for either of us to think about that again, I guess,” she said. “Or talk about it.”

  Guthrie nodded. “Good-bye, Caroline,” he said hoarsely. And then he had his back to her, and he was striding down the sidewalk, and this time he didn’t turn around.

  Caroline stood in front of the bank, sucking deep breaths in and blowing them out until she was sure she could speak without breaking down and weeping. Then she went into the building and asked a clerk to wire the bank in Bolton for a part of her funds.

  After that, she hurried across to the general store and bought herself a pair of denim trousers, as well as a set of men’s long-handled underwear, a broad-brimmed hat, a derringer, and bullets.

  With all her purchases wrapped in a paper bundle and tied with string, she proceeded to the hotel, where she secured herself a room and asked that fresh, hot water be brought up for a bath. Once she was clean, Caroline dressed in the trousers and shirt, saving the underwear for the trail, and put on her own boots. Then she took the clothes she’d brought along on the trip to a Chinese laundry to be washed and pressed.

  She drew her share of stares, being clad like a man, but Caroline didn’t pay them any mind. She had more important things to think about than Laramie’s opinion of her personal appearance.

  She was dining in the hotel’s small restaurant when, as luck would have it, Guthrie ambled in. He glanced at her once in passing, then whirled around and gaped.

  “Caroline?” he demanded, in a disbelieving whisper, narrowing his eyes at her.

  She smiled. “Hello, Mr. Hayes,” she said warmly. “Won’t you sit down?”

  He had already been dragging back a chair when Caroline began to speak. Now, he dropped into it. “Why the devil are you dressed like that?”

  Caroline took a bite of her steak and chewed thoroughly before answering in dulcet tones, “I can’t imagine why my clothes would matter to you, one way or the other.”

  “They don’t,” Guthrie barked. There was a window beside the table and Tob was on the other side of the glass, his paws on the sill, his expression pitiful. “It’s just that, well, no lady ever goes around in men’s clothes.”

  She arched an eyebrow and ignored the remark. “Don’t you ever feed that poor dog?” she asked, as Tob began to whine and slobber.

  “He eats better than I do,” Guthrie grumbled. “Caroline, I want to know what you’re up to.”

  “I’m minding my own business,” she replied, cutting another piece of steak. She was only too aware of Tob watching its progress from her plate to her mouth. “It’s an approach I highly recommend, Mr. Hayes. You really ought to try it yourself.”

  Guthrie swore, though it was not clear whether he was annoyed with Caroline or the dog. Pushing back his chair, he stood, stormed into the kitchen, and returned a few minutes later with a large soup bone. He went outside and tossed it to Tob before rejoining Caroline at the table.

  “You are going home?” he demanded, narrowing his eyes at her again.

  Outside, Tob was chewing ecstatically on the bone. Caroline had finished her dinner, and she pushed her plate away. “Yes,” she said. “I am going home.” She just didn’t add that s
he meant to take care of a few details first. She sighed. “And you’re going to Cheyenne.”

  “Yes.” Guthrie sounded almost defensive, as though he expected her to protest. “But I’ll be back in Bolton in a week or two.”

  Caroline had a sip of her tea. She had decided to leave Bolton, once Seaton was cleared, and start an active search for her sisters. Only that knowledge made the prospect of Guthrie’s arriving with Adabelle bearable. A waitress came to the table before she had to say anything, and Guthrie ordered a bowl of beef stew and some fresh bread.

  “You’re not planning anything stupid, are you?” he asked plaintively, when the waitress was gone again.

  Caroline smiled. “Of course not,” she assured him. Just a little jailbreak, she added mentally, as she pushed back her chair and stood. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get some rest. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

  Guthrie reached out, quick as a snake striking, and caught hold of her wrist. Without apparent effort, he forced her back into her chair. For all of that, the expression on his face was a contrite one. “Caroline,” he said quietly, “I’m sorry. About making love to you, I mean.”

  He might just as well have stabbed her with a fork as apologized for that, but she managed to smile as though it didn’t hurt. “Don’t worry, Mr. Hayes. I’m not planning to greet Adabelle at the edge of town with an account of our time together.”

  “Damn it,” he rasped, looking around to make sure none of the other diners could hear, “that isn’t what’s bothering me. I took advantage of you when I knew nothing could come of it, and I’m sorry.”

  “I was there, so you used me,” Caroline agreed in a bright undertone, pushing back her chair again. “Believe me, I never once thought I meant anything to you, Guthrie, so kindly keep your bumbling apologies to yourself. And if you try to stop me from leaving again, I’ll scream so loud your eardrums will split.”

  Color stained Guthrie’s neck, and he set his jaw, but he didn’t move when Caroline rose to walk away.