Silken Dreams

by Bingham, Lisa

  “Hold on,” he growled into her ear, and dug his heels into the animal’s sides.

  Lettie clung to the mane of the animal as they bolted into the rain. The stranger led his mount in a tangled course through the back streets of town, then out past the creek, and into the scrub.

  But Lettie paid little attention to where they were going. Instead, she tried to absorb the fact that she had just been abducted. By a man who looked very much like her Highwayman. With the warmth of his body against her back and the strength of his arm around her waist, Lettie was oblivious to the rain that pounded around them.

  Without warning, the stranger pulled on the reins and brought his mount to a stop. Finally lifting her head to gaze around her, Lettie realized that they were at the crossroads three miles out of town.

  The man behind her shifted. “I’m sorry, Letitia, but you’ll have to walk back.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, then grew still and tense. Although she had been entertaining fanciful imaginings about the man behind her, it was obvious that he was bent upon much more practical matters.

  The hand around her waist tightened, and he lifted her from the saddle. She stiffened, her fingers curling more tightly around the horse’s mane. Then she realized that this was not her Highwayman but a stranger. A cold, hardened man who had threatened to kill her.

  A chill wracked down her spine and she pushed away from the horse’s neck and slid to the ground. The moment her feet hit the earth, she began to run. But after only a few yards, she stopped and turned toward him. “Lettie. They call me Lettie.”

  His dark hair lay plastered against his skull. His azure eyes regarded her from a face that was all planes and angles. And Lettie knew she would never forget the expression that crossed his blunt-hewn features. There was no doubt that this man was hard and unyielding. But for a moment—one fleeting moment—she thought she saw a glimmer of something softer within his expression. Something that looked very much like regret.

  Gathering the reins, he turned his mount, then hesitated and glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t stay out here too long then, Lettie Grey. Go back to the house and get out of the rain. Promise?”

  “Promise,” she whispered, surprised and a little confused by his concern.

  His hand lifted, his fingers touching his forehead in a gentlemanly salute. Then his lips twitched in what she thought was a smile, and he rode away.

  Lettie wrapped her arms about her and blinked against the rain as the man who’d looked so much like her Highwayman disappeared into the trees. Finally, when she couldn’t distinguish his shape anymore, she turned and began to walk back into town.

  Halfway there, she was met by Jacob and six other men.

  When Jacob saw her, he galloped toward her, slid from his horse, and grasped her arms. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You’re sure he didn’t hurt you?”

  “Yes. I’m fine.”

  Jacob wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly to his chest as if to assure himself of her well-being, then he drew back. “When he left you, where was he headed?”

  Lettie hesitated only a moment before saying “Bluffdale.”

  It was the first time she could ever remember lying to her brother, and a twinge of guilt curled within her when Jacob apparently took her words at face value.

  “Rusty, take her home. We’ll meet you on the road to Bluffdale.”

  After gently squeezing her arms once again, Jacob helped her onto the horse behind his deputy, then mounted and signaled to his men. The posse thundered away.

  In the wrong direction.

  As Rusty turned his horse toward town, Lettie thought she saw a shadow moving in the trees beside the creek. The shadow of a man on horseback.

  Though she couldn’t explain her actions or her reasons, Lettie suddenly knew she’d done the right thing.

  Within an hour, Jacob Grey and his posse returned, having been unable to find any leads to the stranger’s whereabouts. After leaving his men at the jailhouse, Jacob mounted his horse and rode five miles out of town to the abandoned Johnston farm. Reining his mount to a halt beside a huge, lightning-blasted oak tree, he hesitated only a moment before withdrawing a metal canister and inserting a single piece of paper into the damp chamber. Then he replaced the canister and rode back in the direction he had come. Within two hours, he knew his message would be relayed to the other members of the vigilante group known as the Star Council of Justice:

  Proof positive that Ethan McGuire has entered the state of Illinois. Begin necessary procedures to notify the Star Council. Must know if evidence of guilt has been obtained. If so: apprehend through legal channels? Or deliver to the Star?

  Chapter 2

  Lettie never discovered what Jacob knew about the Highwayman—as she’d begun to call the stranger she’d encountered in the barn—but after that day, she didn’t see the man again. He disappeared from Madison as if he’d never come, and no one could tell her exactly who he was.

  But she wondered.

  And secretly, she wished he would return.

  Much to Lettie’s relief, Jacob never told her mother what had happened, although she’d had to suffer through one of his Lettie-you’re-too-trusting-and-too-much-of-a-dreamer lectures. In time, he seemed to forget the event himself and stopped staring at Lettie as if she’d be safer locked up in one of his cells.

  But Lettie didn’t forget. Each shimmering moment she’d spent with the stranger lay etched in her memory like a patch of ink that waited only for a drop of water before it emerged again, fresh and shiny. Tiny things triggered her thoughts: the smell of rain, the musty warmth of the barn, the texture of splintered wood against her palms.

  Without at first being conscious of the action, Lettie began to catalogue each day according to the memory. When she awakened in the morning she would think to herself: It’s been three whole days now. Two weeks. A month. Each night before she went to bed, she curled into the window case of her garret bedroom, intending to write her poems. Yet, time and time again, instead of writing, she’d find herself staring out at the barn, remembering the scent of his skin, the warmth of his grip.

  Always blessed with an abundant imagination, Lettie found her fantasies of the Highwayman becoming more lifelike than ever before. The locations of their meetings became more exotic, the anticipation more enticing.

  Each time she thought of him, her imaginings would end with a hint of a smile. That brief, gentle smile. Then the daydream would vanish, the image of the man would dissipate into the air like smoke in the breeze, and she would turn, expecting the stranger to appear behind her as he had once before.

  But he never did.

  Instead, she would awaken to her surroundings feeling… strange. Restless. Where once her dreaming had proven to be an escape, now her fantasies became an obsession until soon, without her being aware of the change, spring melted into summer and something blossomed within Lettie. Something… hungry.

  Hungry.

  Setting a basket of sodden laundry on the top step behind the boardinghouse, Lettie paused to swipe back a lock of honey-brown hair from her damp forehead and squinted up at the sun that drooped wearily on the edge of the horizon. As if a tangible echo to her thoughts, her stomach rumbled noisily, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since sunrise, and now the day was nearly over.

  Shrugging away the impulse to grab a piece of bread to tide her over until she could fix something a little more hearty, Lettie grasped the basket and determinedly marched down the back steps. Though it was getting late, she’d finally finished the last batch of laundry. All that remained of the task was clearing the clothesline of the items that had dried in the hot summer air and exchanging them for those in her basket. And by darned, she wasn’t going to take a moment longer than necessary! She wanted the task done as soon as possible. Then Lettie could find herself something to eat and slip upstairs to finish her latest poem, “Ode to a Highwayma
n,” while the sheets and pillowslips dried on the line before dark.

  A hot gust of air tugged at her skirt and the tail of her braid, seeming to tempt her into returning to the house, but Lettie would have nothing of it. Somewhere along the chain of years she’d spent washing linens in boiling baths of lye, Lettie had come to the conclusion that dirty clothes were a bit like rabbits: If left untended long enough, they multiplied to three times their original number.

  Dropping the basket onto the grass beside the clothesline, Lettie swatted her thick plait over her shoulder and began unpinning the garments that had been drying since late afternoon. On the outer lines were the men’s slacks and workshirts. Moving inward were the table linens and dishcloths. Then, discreetly separated by a line of bath sheets, were items of feminine clothing, the more delicate unmentionables properly shielded from view by the long, voluminous petticoats of Miss Alma Beasley, one of the maiden ladies who’d lived at the boardinghouse for years.

  Despite her efforts to hurry, Lettie huffed in irritation when the wind seemed to mock her, whipping at the clean laundry and trying to snatch it from her fingers before she could fold things and put them in one corner of the basket, exchanging the dry for the damp.

  She’d finished little more than a third of the clothesline when, peeking over the top of the wires, Lettie noted Mr. Randolph Goldsmith lumbering through the grass toward her like a white-suited tug boat in full steam, his hairpiece slightly askew on top of his head and his forehead bathed in perspiration. Behind him, like a tall, slender shadow, trailed Ned Abernathy, his assistant, carrying their sample cases of buttons and lace. They’d evidently left their buggy in the barn after a full day of drumming in some of the neighboring towns.

  “Trouble with the wind, Letitia?” Mr. Goldsmith intoned when he caught sight of her behind the flapping garments.

  Lettie fought back a smile and reached for another clothespin. “No, I can manage. Thank you.”

  Mr. Goldsmith nodded, then grabbed for his hairpiece when it slid dangerously forward on his head. Flushing a brilliant shade of crimson, he pushed his hair back into place and wheezed to a stop. “Even so, you’d best hurry if you’re to make the poetry reading at the social hall.” Still gasping from the exertion of walking up the hill, he reached into his pocket for a huge handkerchief, then used it to blot some of the moisture from his brow.

  Lettie reached for another clothespin, more slowly this time. The mere mention of the poetry reading still managed to jab her with a sharp pang of disappointment and frustration. “I won’t be going.” Despite her effort to sound unaffected, her words emerged clipped and filled with the dregs of her private anger.

  “What? Not going?”

  “No.” She jerked a pair of socks from the line and savagely rolled the tops so that the mates would stay together. “Someone has to stay at the boardinghouse,” she answered curtly, too embarrassed to admit that she’d been forbidden to attend by her mother, due to the “suggestive elements of the poet being presented.” But she couldn’t admit that fact to these men, so she waved her hand in a sweeping gesture. “Besides, there’s all this yet to do and… you know how busy things can get sometimes.”

  “Oh. I always thought… what with all that poetry you write…” Goldsmith gazed at her first in confusion, then in dismay. After a moment, he glanced at his assistant, who towered above him by a good six inches. “Ohhh,” he breathed, as if just now realizing her confinement in the house was by force, not by choice. Then he turned to regard her again with blatant pity. “Oh, we’re sorry. So sorry. Aren’t we sorry, my boy?”

  Lettie glanced again at Mr. Goldsmith’s assistant. Although Ned offered her a brief, sympathetic nod, she couldn’t read much in it. For as long as she’d known him, Ned Abernathy had existed with a quiet, sober expression that seemed to have been carved from a gaunt tree branch, making him seem much older than his twenty-three years.

  Mr. Goldsmith slipped his watch from his pocket, then wheezed. “My, we’ll be late if we don’t hurry.” He threw Lettie a guilty glance, then cleared his throat. “Come along, Ned. Evening, Letitia.”

  Goldsmith lumbered toward the back stoop and Lettie moved back to her laundry, but after a moment, she became aware that Ned hadn’t moved. Turning, she found him watching her with his almost colorless gray eyes. Lettie waited, expecting him to speak, but when the air around them lay unbroken but for the snap of the laundry and the low moan of the wind, she finally prompted, “Ned?”

  Finally, his eyes flicked to the setting sun, then back. “There’ll be a storm,” he murmured, his voice low and slightly husky, as if he weren’t accustomed to speaking aloud much.

  Lettie smiled, glanced at the clear, cloudless sky, then shook her head. “Oh, I don’t think so. There’s a bit of wind, but the sky is clear.”

  “You be careful tonight,” he murmured as if she hadn’t spoken. Then, after throwing her a quick half-smile, he turned, climbed the steps, and disappeared into the house.

  Lettie watched him, her fingers curling into the trousers she held until they wrinkled. A sharp gust of wind tugged at her skirts and caused the laundry to snap like a bullwhip, forcing her to return to her task. Although she tried to banish Ned’s warning, she couldn’t help noting the twisting contortions being made by the grass at her feet and the heavy weight of the sun in the sky.

  The screech of Madison’s incoming passenger train reverberated against the stone stationhouse and weathered walkways with a strength to wake the dead. Then the thick evening air stifled the noise, leaving only the breathless pant of the engine and the whine of brakes as the six o’clock express ground to a weary halt.

  Almost immediately, travelers began to disembark, greeting family and friends before moving toward the baggage-collection area. Those passengers who were not stopping in Madison emerged as well, taking advantage of the fifteen-minute waterstop to stretch their legs or grab something from the cafe to eat.

  From within the last passenger car, Ethan McGuire waited until most of the travelers had disappeared toward home or the scant comfort of the stationhouse. He watched them scurry away from the train like soot-stained ants intent upon the anthill, until all that remained were a few harried porters and those too tired to step from the cars.

  With a loose-limbed grace that belied his dusty clothes and disreputable beard-darkened jaw, Ethan pushed himself to his feet. His eyes swept the railroad car, with its leather-tufted seats and faded chintz blinds, but those passengers who remained on board paid him no mind.

  Denying the weariness that cloaked him as surely as the tenacious layer of soot on his jacket, Ethan bent to scoop his hat from the seat, settled it over the dark, ash-brown waves of his hair, then reached for the saddlebags he’d brought with him for his trip. Slinging another small valise over his shoulder, Ethan moved down the length of the railroad car onto the rear platform.

  For a moment he paused to study his first glimpse of Madison in nearly a month. He breathed deeply of the heavy air, thick with its scents of dust and heat.

  Since he’d met up with Jacob Grey on his last pass through Madison, Ethan had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t come within twenty miles of the sleepy town until he had a pardon from the governor safely tucked into his pocket, a pardon for Ethan’s more youthful peccadilloes—mainly his overt skill at opening safes and removing their contents.

  Nearly ten years before, Ethan had developed that skill into an art form, making a certain trademark for himself and his work. A trademark more distinctive, and damning, than a personal signature could ever be. His daring midnight robberies had caught the attention of lawmen and journalists, preachers and sinners alike. Even the newspapers had given outlandish accounts of his exploits and coined Ethan with the title of the “Gentleman Bandit.”

  But now someone else was using that self-same trademark to trap Ethan like a rat in a hole. And after nearly three months of trying to find the person responsible, Ethan kept butting head-on with the fact that all of the
thefts had occurred within a twenty-mile radius of Madison—while Madison itself had remained untouched. And damned if Ethan didn’t have a horrible idea of just who might be responsible.

  The fact that his stepbrother had been rooming at the Greys’ boardinghouse for nearly a year now had not escaped Ethan’s attention. And ten years before, Ned had known every detail of Ethan’s methods.

  Ethan had tried to see Ned on his first trip through Madison, but Jacob Grey had prevented the meeting before it could ever happen. Since he’d been unable to talk to his stepbrother, Ethan had tried to dismiss the robberies as a fluke coincidence, reassuring himself that the thief would be captured in a matter of days.

  But three robberies had occurred in the past two weeks alone, all using the methods of the Gentleman Bandit. Each heist had proven to be more damaging to Ethan’s “retirement” and the well-being of his pardon. And it was only a matter of time before some of the more experienced lawmen began remembering that their most likely suspect for the Gentleman years before had been Ethan McGuire.

  Ethan’s eyes narrowed and his gaze swerved in the direction of Madison’s city jail. Marshal Jacob Grey would be one of those lawmen. Five years before, as a part-time deputy in Chicago, Jacob Grey had been the first man to come within spitting distance of catching the Gentleman Bandit in the midst of a midnight robbery. Yet because of a careless act on the deputy’s part, Ethan had escaped unscathed, and the only thing Jacob had been able to salvage from the evening was his suspicions.

  But Ethan had lived too long on the edge of the law to discredit the other man as harmless—even though Jacob Grey had never come forward during the years to apprehend him. Regardless of the passage of time, Ethan couldn’t help wondering when Jacob would realize his theories had indeed been fact. But most of all, Ethan couldn’t help wondering if Jacob could also uncover the means of proving his guilt.