Lady Sundown (#1 of the Danner Quartet)

by Nancy Bush

  She laid her head on his chest, tears squeezing from her eyes. Her heart lay heavy inside her breast. What if he didn’t awaken? What if he’d used his last reserves of energy saving Harrison?

  “Damn you, Tremaine,” she sobbed quietly, wrapping her arms around him, burying her tear-stained face in his neck.

  He sighed heavily. Lexie’s heart jerked at the feel of his hand tingling in her hair. “How can I sleep with you swearing at me all the time?” he muttered wearily. “Didn’t I tell you I was fine? Now leave me alone, Sundown.”

  Lexie’s tears changed to joy. Tremaine wasn’t going to die! “Blackhearted bastard,” she whispered cheerfully and laughed aloud at his disgusted groan.

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  Tremaine’s words proved even truer than Lexie could have hoped. The Danners were tough. Tremaine managed to recover so quickly that Lexie was almost embarrassed by her fears of losing him. Harrison’s arm began to improve. Though Tremaine warned him it would never be completely useful — there had been too much nerve damage — he would probably be able to lift it and his hand would even have some movement. Harrison’s comment was, “Thank God I’m left-handed. Breverman would kill me if I couldn’t finish my studies.”

  Eliza’s recovery was slower but when her blue eyes opened Lexie was at her side. “Mother,” she said in a wobbly voice, scarcely believing her mother was actually going to survive. “I love you.”

  Eliza hadn’t been able to answer but the warmth in her eyes spoke clearly. Two fat tears traveled down her cheeks, and Lexie clasped her hands and sobbed uncontrollably for long minutes.

  When she finally pulled herself together and Eliza had fallen asleep, Lexie went blindly back to her own room. She was drained, emotionally and physically. The last week had been a nightmare and only now did she feel she would ever truly awaken.

  “Lex.”

  It was Tremaine’s voice, from the doorway. Lexie saw his beloved reflection in her oval mirror. She smiled at him tenderly. Since that night when she thought she might lose him, they hadn’t had any time together alone. Her lips curved lovingly. She actually turned toward him, wanting him.

  “I have to leave for a few days,” Tremaine said. “Pa can take care of Eliza and Harrison while I’m gone.”

  “Leave?” She was stunned. “You can’t leave! You’ve barely recovered! Where are you going? How can you leave?” she demanded in a shaking voice. “What could possibly be more important than making certain your family survives?”

  Tremaine was maddeningly uncommunicative. “Pa can handle any crisis. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  If Lexie thought she could argue with him, she was soon disabused of that notion. Within the hour Tremaine, astride Fortune, was on his way in the direction of Rock Springs.

  Lexie was serious, but no one else seemed to find his departure particularly newsworthy. “Tremaine’s all right now. And he’s got a life in Portland,” Harrison reminded her.

  Jesse added, “There’s not much more he can do here.”

  Even Samuel remarked, “Pa knows as much about medicine as Tremaine does.”

  Surprisingly, Lexie found the most sympathy from her mother. “Don’t worry so, Lexington,” she whispered. “He’ll be back.”

  She sounded so positive that Lexie asked, “Do you know something I don’t?”

  “Tremaine is settling scores,” was her rather disturbing answer.

  Five days later Tremaine did return. Lexie was instructing Annie on how she wanted the table set when the sound of pounding hoofbeats announced someone’s arrival. The hoofbeats went right on past the house toward the stables and Lexie knew it was Tremaine.

  “Set another place,” Lexie said, gathering her skirts and hurrying outside. She couldn’t decide whether to throw herself into his arms or kill him. How could he just up and leave when there was still so much to resolve between them?

  The air was sultry and thick; the smell of wild roses and dusty field grass combining in a curiously sensual mix. Lexie, who had taken special care with her appearance tonight for lack of anything better to do, cursed the thick petticoats and folds of her skirt as she went to meet Tremaine.

  The lantern was already lit in the stables as she opened the creaking Dutch door. Tremaine was just closing the gate on one of the box stalls. He turned to greet her but before a word was out of his mouth, Tantrum’s head thrust forward and he snapped at Tremaine’s shoulder.

  “Tantrum!” Lexie cried in delight and the gelding tossed his head and whinnied.

  “Beast,” Tremaine muttered, smiling. He eyed the gelding distrustfully. “He never will learn any manners.”

  Lexie rubbed Tantrum’s velvety nose. She was nearly speechless with gratitude and, when she turned to Tremaine, he swept in a breath at the love and joy on her face. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I don’t know how you found him, but thank you.”

  Tremaine’s smile was full of unspoken mirth. “Silas Monteith was happy to turn him over to me.”

  Lexie gazed at him quizzically. “Why? He was delighted with Tantrum when I sold him to him.”

  “Monteith thinks I have information that could — er — cast aspersions on his already suspect reputation.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Tremaine grinned like a pirate. “It means I blackmailed him.”

  “What? How?”

  “Never mind. Monteith’s in for a big surprise, however. Between my testimony and a few others’, I think he may be in jail soon.”

  Lexie blinked in disbelief. “For what?”

  “Murder.”

  Lexie’s head whirled. She realized belatedly that she’d been unfair to Tremaine. Mother was right. He had had his reasons to leave. “So that’s what you were doing in Portland.”

  “Among other things.” Tremaine thought about his vain search for Victor Flynne, but the wily investigator had moved on. Probably for the best, considering what he thought of the bastard.

  Slowly, his expression changed and his hands encircled Lexie’s arms, pulling her toward him. For a moment his gaze dropped to the milky mounds of her breasts peeking above the daringly square neckline of her gown. “Were you expecting company tonight? You look — ravishing.”

  Lexie peered at him from beneath her lashes. “Tremaine, I…” She trailed off at the whisper soft kiss he brushed against her lips.

  “You know,” he murmured. “I wanted to kill you when you left me in Katieville. I figured you for another untrustworthy woman.”

  “Something changed your mind?”

  “You.” He regarded her in deadly earnest. “The way you helped me with Eliza and Harrison. The way you would’ve gone with Gainsborough to save your mother.”

  His words of praise lifted her heart in a way she wouldn’t have thought possible. She couldn’t help smiling. “How long would you have kept me in Katieville?”

  He growled lasciviously. “As long as it took.”

  His kisses were growing longer, each more soul-stirring than the last. “Took for what?”

  “Took to get you out of my blood and Gainsborough out of Rock Springs. Looks like I failed at both.”

  This was such a bold confession that Lexie struggled against his restraining arms. “What do you mean?” she demanded breathlessly. “You’re not saying that — that you care about me, are you?”

  “You know I care about you. Let me show you…”

  “How do you feel about me, Tremaine?” She held his arms back, searching his face. “Please. I need to know.”

  In all the experience Tremaine had had with women, he’d never faced such supreme honesty and openness. He sighed, fought back years of self-deception, and said, “You are everything to me, Lexie. I can’t seem to stand being away from you. You are the most aggravating, bullheaded, bewitching woman I’ve ever had the misfortune to know, yet I can’t live without you. Whenever I’ve thought of taking a wife, I’ve endowed her with all your qualities.” He smiled crookedly, a bit embarrassed. “If tha
t’s love, then I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

  Her utter silence was ego-shattering. When long moments had passed and she still hadn’t answered, Tremaine grew impatient. “Well?” he demanded. “I bare my soul and you say nothing?”

  “I was just wondering.” Lexie smiled at him, her green eyes alight with mischief. “Was there a marriage proposal in there somewhere?”

  “Wretch,” he muttered, dragging her soft body against the hardness of his. “Yes, there was a marriage proposal in there. What’s your answer?”

  “Yes,” she said sublimely, lifting her lips to his.

  Tremaine laughed and took what she offered so beguilingly. After several long moments, he murmured, “Let’s go back to the house and announce our news.” He slipped his arm around her waist and led her to the door. “By the way, your friend, Celeste, is getting married, too, I understand. To Peter Caldwell.”

  Lexie snorted. “She’s no friend of mine.”

  “Did I ever tell you how she tried to force me to marry her? No? Well, it wasn’t much of a story anyway.”

  Tremaine doubled over with laughter at the hard fist that slammed into his stomach.

  Epilogue

  Denver, Colorado

  Summer, 1884

  Tremaine held up the squalling red-faced infant, scrutinizing it as if for flaws. “Looks like his mother,” he pronounced.

  Lexie, from her seat by the window, laughed. Jamie was a week old and Tremaine was still bemused by his noisy son. “I should have known he’d be a boy. You Danners are notorious for siring sons.”

  “You’re a Danner, too. Again,” he reminded her dryly. “And soon to become a horse doctor.”

  Lexie sighed in perfect contentment. Though he’d initially been unsure about the idea, in the end Dr. Breverman had been the soul of understanding; first, about letting a woman apprentice, second, for not allowing her pregnancy to interfere. And Tremaine had been wonderful about working at a Denver hospital so she could finish her training even though the clinic in Rock Springs was waiting for him. “Only a few more months and we can go home,” she said aloud. “Do you really think Harrison’s serious about wanting me to work with him? The Rock Springs farmers aren’t going to take kindly to having a woman horse doctor. Pa’s right about that.”

  “Harrison has a right arm and hand that work, thanks in part to you. Yes, he’s serious. The farmers will come around.”

  “And Billy Greaves? Are you really going to bring him to Rock Springs to work with you?”

  “He’s already there, my love. Staying with Pa and Eliza.” Tremaine brought Jamie to his mother, and Lexie cuddled the child to her breast. Jamie nuzzled her breasts and when Lexie offered one to him, he sucked greedily.

  She smiled enticingly at Tremaine. “Like father, like son,” she murmured.

  Tremaine kissed her lips and grinned. “You know, Sundown, as much as you try to hide it, you are a lady.”

  She smothered a sound of mirth. “A lady horse doctor?”

  “Exactly.” He grew serious. “I love you, Lexington Danner.”

  Her eyes misted with the ready tears of a new mother. “And I love you, Tremaine Danner. I always will.”

  He looked at her tenderly. “You always shall,” he corrected her.

  And they both laughed.

  The story continues…

  Turn the page for a thrilling peek inside Book II of the Danner Quartet

  MIRACLE JONES

  An excerpt from

  MIRACLE JONES

  The Cascade Foothills

  September 1893

  Miranda “Miracle” Jones slapped the reins on her slope-backed team. Curse and rot them! The miserable beasts could barely put one hoof in front of the other. The hot September wind shrieked around her peddler’s cart. Bottles and tin ware rattled inside the wagon as Gray and Tillie momentarily picked up the pace, only to fall back into a depressingly slow clop, clop, clop.

  Miracle sighed in disgust and was answered by a steady snore from behind the wagon seat. Uncle Horace was dead to the world and had been since long before noon. Miracle had tried to change the old reprobate’s ways time and again but to no avail. Now she almost envied his drunken peace with the world. She was tired, too. They’d been on the road for hours, and her spine hurt.

  “Giddyap, you,” she muttered to the plodders. Night was falling, and Miracle wanted to be safe in Rock Springs before it grew dark.

  The snapping of a twig somewhere to her right made her whip her head around. She peered through the dusky evening shadows, searching the thick fir forest. Branches waved, throwing dark flickering images across her path, but no one was there.

  Drawing a sharp breath, Miracle frowned. She’d been warned in the town of Malone about the highwaymen who hunted this stretch of road. Several young women from neighboring towns had disappeared before reaching their destination; one body had been found floating facedown in the Clackamas River; another had never been seen again.

  Even knowing the risks, Miracle had chosen to set off for Rock Springs. She was used to taking care of herself. Hadn’t she done so for most of her nineteen years? Neither “Uncle” Horace Jones, who had befriended her after he’d caught her attempting to filch a bright shiny buckle from his peddler’s wagon, nor his sister, “Aunt” Emily Darcy, the lonely old woman who’d raised Miracle, had ever succeeded in fully taming her. She’d run wild when she was a young child amid the remnants of a once-powerful Chinook tribe, and she’d never completely adjusted to the white man’s rigid social structure.

  “Giddyap,” she urged again, slapping the reins. She wasn’t really afraid, but there was no need to tempt fate. The team responded with a woefully weak burst of speed, settling back again as soon as Miracle loosened the lines. “You’re lucky I don’t sell you both for horse meat!”

  Uncle Horace snored on blissfully. Useless old bounder, she thought with a smile. Miracle, who’d learned a great deal about being a half-breed in a white man’s world, was quite prepared to protect herself. Her eyes darted to the Colt .45 lying on the seat beside her. If she had to, she would use the revolver, but truthfully she wasn’t all that handy with a gun. She was better with a knife and consequently had one strapped against her upper thigh beneath her crinoline skirt.

  The rhythm of the wagon was comforting, a rhythm Miracle had grown used to during the years she’d sold elixirs and potions with Uncle Horace throughout Oregon’s rural countryside. She’d been called everything from a quack to an angel of mercy to a shaman. She knew more about herbs and medicine than half the so-called doctors in the state. And she knew more about love and grief than all of them put together.

  For years she’d thought both her parents had died when she was young. No one, neither the white men nor the scattered tribe of Chinook Indians, had told her about her birth. Aunt Emily, who had known the truth all along and later confided in Uncle Horace, had kept the lie well hidden. Only when one of the town bullies had spat on Miracle and called her dead mother an “Injun whore” had Miracle forced Aunt Emily and Uncle Horace to confess.

  “Your mother was a whore,” Uncle Horace had admitted gently. “A goodhearted woman, but a whore nevertheless.”

  Miracle’s blue eyes had widened in hurt and shock. She refused to believe him, turning instead to Aunt Emily, silently pleading for it not to be so.

  “She was no whore,” Aunt Emily had maintained sharply, shooting Horace a quelling look that would have turned a lesser man to stone. “She loved your father, but he wouldn’t have an Indian bride. He was a cold, callous man who thought a tin box of money was payment enough for her services.” She sniffed her indignation. “His soul is blacker than hell. Promised her marriage time and again, but he was already married. He sired you, then left her for good. She never was the same.”

  The news has been a staggering revelation to Miracle. “You — knew my mother?”

  “She was a beautiful girl who stole our hearts,” Uncle Horace admitted softly. “We only knew
her a short while. Didn’t see her, or your brother, much after she took up with your father. But she was a special woman.”

  “My brother?” Miracle could scarcely believe it.

  “Blue was ten when you were born,” Aunt Emily said, tight-lipped. “He’s your half-brother and only part Chinook. Your mother knew a few men, Miracle, but had the poor sense to love your father.” Unlike Miracle, Aunt Emily felt the circumstances of the girl’s Indian birth should remain buried. For Miracle’s sake, she thought it would be better if she acted as if she were white. “And he was a proper little hellion. So jealous, he tried to cut out your heart when you were born. That’s what your mother said. That’s why you have that scar.”

  Miracle had often wondered about the small moon shaped scar above her left breast. “Where is he now?”

  Aunt Emily shrugged carelessly, but Uncle Horace said, “He left the Chinooks soon after he attacked you.”

  “Tell me more,” Miracle had pleaded, and Uncle Horace then related all he knew about her heritage, which wasn’t all that much more. She soon realized he was carefully omitting any further reference to her father, however, and it only served to pique her interest.

  “Who is my father?” she demanded. “What’s his name?”

  The hesitation between Uncle Horace and Aunt Emily was telling. “We don’t know, dear,” Aunt Emily finally admitted. “He was a mystery to your mother, too. He just came to her at his convenience, and she never had the strength to turn him down.” At that point she had glanced around guiltily and made the sign of the cross, as if the weakness of the flesh were some insidious disease which could be caught by gossiping. “Your mother died giving birth to you,” she added in a lower voice. “She left you the money.”