Rue squeezed her eyes shut and dragged in a series of slow, deep breaths in an effort to keep her cool, all the while feeling like a one-woman riot.
If she got stuck in this place, she vowed silently, she would pay Elisabeth back by moving into her house like a poor relation. She would stay for fifty years and consciously work at getting more eccentric with every passing day.
Rue brought herself up short. She refused to worry about the future or about the missing necklace. It was time to stop thinking about problems and start looking for solutions.
The first order of business was to find Elisabeth. Once she’d done that, once she knew for a fact that her cousin really wanted to stay in the Victorian era, she could worry about getting home. Or about making a life for herself right there in old Pine River.
With Farley.
She imagined cooking for him, pressing his shirts, washing his back.
The images stirred hormones Rue hadn’t even known she had, and a schoolgirl flush rolled from her toes to the roots of her hair in a single crimson wave.
Good grief! she thought, bolting upright on the cot. Cooking? Ironing? Washing his back? What’s happening to me? I’m regressing at warp speed!
Rue sighed and rose from the bed. Lying around in her room in the middle of the day was a waste of daylight. She would check on Alice, then go out and retrace her steps again. Maybe she would find the necklace, or maybe some earth-shaking idea would come to her.
Miss McCall was still sleeping, and some of the color had returned to her cheeks, so Rue knew the aspirin was doing its work. She closed the door of Alice’s room carefully and turned toward the front stairway.
Mr. Sinclair was standing there, barring her way, a worrisome smile on his face. He was a portly man, with gray hair, shrewd brown eyes, florid cheeks and a somewhat bulbous nose.
“Miss Claridge,” he said, as though Rue might have forgotten her name and he was generous enough to enlighten her.
Rue retreated a step, feeling uneasy. She’d seen that look in a man’s eyes many times during her travels, and she knew the banker had decided to make a pass. “Good afternoon,” she said warily, with a little nod.
“Exploring the house?” He crooned the words, and somehow that was more unnerving than if he’d shouted them.
Rue raised her chin a notch, still keeping her distance. “Of course not,” she said with cool politeness.
“Your room is on the first floor, I believe.” Sinclair’s eyes never linked with hers all the while he was speaking. Instead, his gaze drifted over her hair, her throat, her shoulders and then her breasts.
“I was looking in on Miss McCall,” Rue said, folding her arms to hide at least one part of her anatomy from his perusal. “She’s suffering from—feminine complaints.”
In the next instant, the master of the house reached out with one beefy hand and took hold of Rue’s jaw. While his grip was not painful, it was definitely an affront, and she immediately tried to twist free.
“Now, now,” Sinclair murmured, as though soothing a fractious child, “don’t run away. I wouldn’t want to have to tell Farley I caught you going through my personal belongings and get you thrown back into jail.”
Rue felt the blood drain from her face. This kind of bore was easy enough to deal with in her own time, but just then the year was 1892 and Sinclair was probably among the most influential men in town. “What do you want?” she asked, hoping she was wrong.
She wasn’t.
He ran a sausage-size thumb over her mouth. “Just an hour of your time, Miss Claridge. That’s all.”
Rue thrust herself away from him. “I wouldn’t give you a moment,” she ground out, “let alone an hour!”
Smiling genially, Sinclair hooked his thumbs in his vest pockets. “That’s a pity. More jail time will surely ruin what little is left of your reputation.”
Rue inched backward toward the stairway leading down to the kitchen. “I’ll deny everything. And Farley will believe me, too!” She wasn’t too sure about that last part, but she wanted to keep Sinclair distracted until she was out of lunging distance.
His bushy eyebrows rose in mocking amusement. “Silly child. What the marshal believes doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. Not against the say-so of a man who controls everybody’s finances.”
Knowing she had reached the stairs, Rue whirled and raced down them. She snatched her bag from the little room she had occupied so briefly and fled out the front door.
Now, for all practical intents and purposes, she was homeless. She couldn’t go back to her own century because she’d lost the necklace, and since Farley would probably take Sinclair’s word over hers, arrest was no doubt imminent.
Much as Rue enjoyed Farley’s company, she wasn’t about to be locked up again. One stretch in the hoosegow on trumped up charges was more than enough; she had no intention of serving another.
Even so, Rue was forced to admit to herself that she was drawn to Farley’s quiet strength. She made her way through the deep grass behind the mercantile and the Hang-Dog Saloon, stopping now and then to crouch down when she heard voices. After nearly half an hour of evasion tactics, she reached the little barn behind the marshal’s house and slipped inside.
Farley’s horse, a big roan gelding, nickered companionably from its stall.
“At least somebody around here likes me,” Rue said, looking around the small structure and deciding the loft would make the best hiding place.
After letting out a long sigh, she tossed her bag up and then climbed the rickety ladder—not an easy task in a long skirt.
The hay in the loft was sweet smelling, and afternoon sunlight flooded in through a gap in the roof. Rue sat cross-legged and automatically unzipped the side flap on her bag, since that was where she had hidden her money.
The currency, like Aunt Verity’s necklace, had vanished.
Rue gave a little cry of frustration and fell backward into the hay. A few minutes later, she checked the main compartment of the bag, but nothing was missing. Evidently the thief—possibly even Sinclair himself—had stumbled upon the money first and been content with that.
Despite her fury, Rue had to smile, wondering what the robber would have made of her miniature candy bars and other modern inventions.
Following that, she took the advice her grandfather had given her long ago and quietly accepted the fact that she was in big trouble. As much as she would like things to be different, the reality was that her money was gone, one of Pine River’s most prominent citizens planned to accuse her of stealing, and she’d lost the only means she’d had of returning to her own time. Only when she’d faced these problems squarely would solutions begin to present themselves.
At least, she hoped solutions would begin to present themselves. Nothing came to her right away.
The sun was setting and crickets were harmonizing in the quack grass outside the barn when she heard sounds below and rolled over to peer through a crack between the floorboards of the loft.
Farley was there. He filled a feedbag and slipped it over the gelding’s head, then began currying the animal. The graceful play of the muscles in the marshal’s back and shoulders did odd things to Rue’s heartbeat, but she couldn’t help watching him work.
The lawman caught her completely off guard when he suddenly whirled, drew his pistol and pointed it at the under-side of the loft.
“All right, just come down from there,” he ordered. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”
Some days, Rue reflected dismally, it just didn’t pay to get out of bed.
“Don’t shoot, Marshal,” she said. “It’s only me, Rue Claridge, Pine River’s Most Wanted.”
When Rue peered over the top of the ladder, Farley was just sliding his pistol back into its holster. He’d hung his hat on a peg on the wall, and his attractively rumpled brown hair glimmered even in the fading light. “What the hell are you doing up there?” he demanded, setting his hands on his hips.
Rue sigh
ed and swung her legs over the side of the loft, gripping the pink sports bag in one hand. “Holding, of course. When Mr. Sinclair put the moves on me, I told him to get lost, and he said he’d have you arrest me….”
Farley scratched his head, obviously impatient and puzzled.
Rue tossed her bag to the floor and then climbed resignedly down the ladder to face her fate. “Here.” She held out her hands, wrists together. “Handcuff me.”
The marshal looked sternly down his nose at Rue. “You’ve gone and gotten yourself thrown out of the only boardinghouse that would have you?”
Sudden color pulsed in Rue’s cheeks. “Didn’t you hear a word I’ve said? Sinclair wanted me to—to be intimate with him. I refused, of course, and he said he’d have me arrested for robbing his house.”
Farley’s turquoise eyes narrowed. “Let’s see that satchel,” he said brusquely.
Rue resented the invasion of privacy, but she also knew she had no real choice, so she handed over the bag.
The marshal turned it end over end, trying to find the opening, and Rue finally reached out and pulled back the zipper herself.
Farley stared at the small mechanism as though it were a bug under a microscope. “What the—”
“It’s called a zipper,” Rue said with a sigh. “They won’t be invented for another twenty-five or thirty years, so don’t bother looking for them in your favorite store.”
Now Farley studied Rue with the same thoroughness as he’d examined the zipper on her neon pink bag. “You don’t talk like anybody I’ve ever known before, except for Mrs. Fortner, of course. Where did you come from?” he asked quietly.
Rue folded her arms. She might as well tell the truth, she decided, since nobody was going to believe her anyway. “The future. I came from the far end of the twentieth century.” She snatched the bag from his hands, suddenly anxious to convince him, to have one person on the face of the earth know what was happening to her. “Here,” she said, pulling the paperback spy novel out and thrusting it in Farley’s face. “Look. Did you ever see a book like this before, with a soft cover? And read the copyright date.”
Farley turned the book in his hands, clearly amazed by the bright red cover and the gold-foil lettering spelling out the title and the author’s name.
“Nobody can come from the future,” he insisted stubbornly, but Rue could see that the paperback puzzled him.
“I did,” she said. After setting the bag down, she politely took the book, opened it to the copyright page and held it out again. “There. Read that.”
Farley took in the printed words, then raised baffled eyes to Rue’s face. “It’s a trick,” he said.
“How could it be?” Rue demanded, growing impatient even though she’d known she would never convince him. “Paperback books and zippers don’t exist in 1892, Farley!”
“You could have gotten those things at some fancy science exhibition in St. Louis or Chicago or somewhere.” Clearly, Farley meant to stand his intellectual ground, even though it was eroding under his feet. “All I know is, it’s got to be some kind of hoax.”
Rue rolled her eyes. Then she bent and pulled out one of her precious snack-size candy bars. “How about this?” she challenged, holding out the morsel. “Did I get this at an exhibition, too?”
Farley frowned, examining the wrapper.
“You have to tear off the paper,” Rue prompted. “Then you eat what’s inside.”
Farley looked suspicious, but intrigued, also. He tore away the paper, letting it drift to the floor.
Rue picked the litter up and crumpled it on one hand, while Farley carried the candy bar over to the doorway and studied it in the last light. The look of consternation on his face was amusing, even under the circumstances.
“Go ahead, Farley,” she urged. “Take a bite.”
The marshal glanced at her again, then nibbled cautiously at one end of the chocolate bar. After a moment, he smiled. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered, then consumed the rest of the candy. “Got any more of those?”
“Yes,” Rue answered, thrusting out her chin, “but I’m not going to let you wolf them down. Especially not when you’re about to arrest me for something I didn’t do.”
“I’m not going to arrest you,” Farley replied reasonably, looking at Rue with curious amusement. “We’ve only got one jail cell here in Pine River, as you know, and it’s already occupied. I’ll just have to give you my bed and bunk out here in the barn until you get on that stage next Tuesday.”
Rue didn’t protest, nor did she turn the conversation back to the reality of time travel. Farley was still telling himself he was the victim of some elaborate prank, no doubt, but at least she had the satisfaction of knowing she’d planted the seed of possibility in his mind. Maybe after some rumination, he’d begin to take the idea seriously.
It the meantime, they were clearly going to pretend nothing out of the ordinary was going on.
If someone had to sleep in the barn, Rue reasoned, better Farley than she. She lowered her eyes. “There’s a problem with my leaving on the stage,” she confessed. “Somebody snitched all my money.”
Farley sighed. “With luck like yours, it’s purely a wonder you ever managed to win at poker the other night,” he said, gesturing toward the door. “Come on, Miss Rue. Let’s go in and rustle up some supper. We’ll figure out what to do with you later.”
Rue picked up her bag, straightened her shoulders and preceded him through the doorway of the barn. An inky twilight was working its way down the timbered hills toward them, and there was a bite in the air.
The inside of Farley’s log cabin was cozy and surprisingly neat. Books lined one whole wall, from roof to floor, and a stone fireplace faced the door. An attached lean-to housed a small kitchen area, and Rue suspected the tattered Indian blanket hanging from the ceiling hid Farley’s bed.
She went to stand beside the fireplace, hoping the warmth would dispel the sweet shivers that suddenly overtook her. She had a peculiar sense, all of a sudden, of being a piece on some great celestial board game, and she’d just been moved within easy reach of both victory and defeat.
“Hungry?” Farley asked, clattering metal against metal in the lean-to kitchen.
“Starved,” Rue said, too tired, confused and frustrated for any more deep thought. She’d missed both breakfast and lunch, and the candy bars weren’t taking up the slack.
Farley came out of the lean-to. “The stew’ll be warmed up in a few minutes,” he said. As he went around the cabin lighting kerosene lamps, he seemed uncharacteristically nervous.
Rue, on the other hand, felt totally safe. “So you’re a cook as well as a reader,” she said, wanting to hear him talk because she liked the sound of his voice, liked knowing he was there.
He grinned and shook his head. “No, ma’am,” he replied. “My food is provided as a part of my wages, like this cabin. The ladies of the town take turns cooking for me.”
The thought made Rue violently jealous, and that was when she realized the horrible truth. Somehow, she’d fallen in love with Farley Haynes.
Talk about Mr. Wrong.
“Oh,” she said finally.
Farley shook his head and crouched to add wood to the fire. “Maybe you shouldn’t stand so close,” he said, and his voice was suddenly hoarse. “Ladies have been known to catch their skirts afire doing that.”
Rue moved away to look at Farley’s collection of books, and her voice shook when she spoke. “Have you really read all these?”
“Most of them more than once,” Farley replied. She heard him retreat into the lean-to, then he called to her to join him. “Stew’s warm,” he said.
After drawing a deep breath, raising her chin and pushing back her shoulders, Rue marched into the tiny kitchen.
Farley had set a place for her at the small, round table, and there was a lantern flickering on a shelf nearby. The atmosphere was cozy.
He ladled stew into two bowls, set a loaf of hard bread on a platter
and sat down across from her.
Once she’d taken several bites of the stew, which was delicious, Rue was a little less shaky, both inwardly and outwardly. She smiled at Farley. “This is quite a place you’ve got here.”
“Thank you,” Farley replied, “but I’ll be glad when I can take up ranching and let somebody else wear my badge.”
A bittersweet sadness touched Rue’s heart. “Have you got a place picked out?” she asked, breaking off a piece of bread.
Farley nodded. “There’s a half section for sale north of town. I’ve almost got enough for the down payment, and the First Federal Bank is going to give me a mortgage.”
“Mr. Sinclair’s bank,” Rue murmured, feeling less festive.
Farley was chewing, and he waited until he’d swallowed to answer. “That’s right.”
An autumn wind tested the glass in the windows, and Rue was doubly glad Farley had taken her in. “If there was any justice in this world, you’d go right over there and arrest that old lecher right this minute for sexual harassment.”
A modest flush tinted Farley’s weathered cheekbones. “He hasn’t broken the law, Rue. And that means he can’t be arrested.”
“Why?” Rue demanded, only vaguely registering the fact that Farley had called her by her first name. “Because he’s a man? Because he’s a banker? I was innocent of any crime, and that didn’t keep you from slapping me behind bars.”
“I’ve never slapped a woman in my life,” Farley snapped, looking outraged.
Rue sat back in her chair, her eyes brimming with tears she was too proud to shed. “It’s hopeless,” she said. “Absolutely hopeless. You and I speak different languages, Farley Haynes.”
“I would have sworn we were both talking English,” he responded, reaching calmly for his glass of water.
“I give up!” Rue cried, flinging out her hands.
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