Emma and the Outlaw

by Linda Lael Miller

  “I only did it because he meant to hurt Emma—”

  “I understand that,” Steven broke in, as the young man hoisted himself onto his horse and dragged one arm across his wet eyes. “And I’m grateful to you for protecting her.”

  Nathaniel swallowed, but said nothing more. Steven made a silent vow to spend more time with the boy—if he was to be allowed to live out the rest of his life.

  They were leaving the stables, their horses properly attended to, when Nathaniel choked out, “Will I have to go to jail?”

  Steven shook his head. “It isn’t very likely that Macon will press charges, considering the circumstances. He might be a philanderer, but I guarantee you, he won’t want to explain to the whole parish why he was trying to rape his own sister-in-law.”

  Nathaniel nodded and scratched at a mosquito bite on his neck, and they went into the house together.

  Emma stood in the hallway outside the locked doors of Cyrus’s study, her ear pressed to the panel. She had a good mind to hammer at it with her fist until they let her in. After all, it wasn’t just Steven’s fate they were deciding, it was hers as well.

  She imagined the scene inside the room, weaving pictures from the words of the men.

  Cyrus was seated behind the desk, while Steven stood at the fireplace, one arm propped on the mantel, his back to the doors.

  “Garrick thinks I should jump bail and run for my life,” he told “>“Irandfather.

  A sound at the end of the hallway sent her fleeing back up the stairs to the guest room where she and Steven were staying now, her thoughts reeling. She’d known things were going badly in the trial, but she’d never guessed the situation was so hopeless that Steven’s own lawyer wanted him to run away.

  Panic seized her. Garrick was right, of course. An outlaw’s life would not be an easy one, but anything was better than seeing Steven hanged.

  Desperately, she paced, trying to get control of her raging emotions. It had been a truly terrible day, between the trial’s starting, her fainting, and Macon attempting to rape her, then getting shot before her very eyes. She drew a deep breath and let it out again.

  If it hadn’t been for Nathaniel, she might have shot Macon herself, and Steven’s .45 would have done a lot more damage than Nathaniel’s little derringer.

  She shuddered to think of what could have happened.

  Steven’s voice practically startled her out of her skin. “Get into bed,” he said. “You’re freezing.”

  “D-did you find Nathaniel?” Emma asked, obediently climbing between the covers, which were still rumpled from their lovemaking, and stretching out.

  Her husband nodded. “He was in the swamp, letting the mosquitoes chew on him.” Steven undid his string tie and tossed it aside, then shrugged out of his jacket.

  “Is he all right?”

  Steven sighed. “He’s in shock, like the rest of us. Did you look in on Lucy?”

  “Yes,” Emma answered, turning onto her side and watching as her husband undressed. She prayed she’d see this same sight every night until she was a hundred and ten. “I’m worried about her, Steven. She’s in worse shape than Macon.”

  He slipped into bed beside her and lay on his back, his hands cupped behind his head. “I know,” he said ruefully.

  Emma entangled a finger in the lush hair on Steven’s chest. “Has she always been so strange—wearing black dresses and playing with dolls?”

  “No,” Steven said sadly. “When I first knew Lucy, she was full of life, always laughing and always wearing the latest fashion. Whatever her problem is, you can bet Macon is at the root of it.”

  Emma nodded, wanting to ask Steven, again, if they could run away, but afraid to reveal that she’d been eavesdropping outside Cyrus’s study. She snuggled closer to him, her head resting on his shoulder, and continued her idle exploration of his chest, adding the occasional foray to his taut belly.

  “Are you scared?” she finally dared to ask.

  “I’d be a damned fool if I weren’t,” Steven responded, and a little groan escaped him as her fingertips strayed downward. He caught hold of her hand. “You little vixen—wasn’t the first time enough for you?”

  She shook her head, and he turned to her and kissed her. Soon she was astraddle of him, riem as though he were a bucking stallion, draining him—and herself—of every response, every moan and sigh and gasp.

  When he slept, though, Emma was still wide awake. She lay beside him, enfolding him in her arms. Time was running short, and Steven was determined not to run again, even if that meant his life. She was going to have to find a way to prove he was innocent, and soon.

  She suspected Macon of the crime more than ever, now that she’d seen how cruel and ruthless he could really be. But she was still convinced that the key to it all lay with Maisie Lee, who was too frightened of her husband to talk.

  Presently Emma fell asleep. Too soon it was morning.

  “I want you to stay here,” Steven told her as he stood at the bureau, arranging his tie. He’d already bathed, and he was wearing a fresh suit.

  Emma sat up in bed, a protest on her lips, but the look in Steven’s eyes silenced her. She lay down again, her arms folded. “I’m not sick,” she said petulantly, and before she could go on, a wave of nausea swept over her and sent her scrambling for the basin.

  Steven held her hair as she vomited, and he brought her a cold cloth and water to rinse her mouth when she was through. While the ever-vigilant Jubal carried the basin out, he put his wife back in bed and bent to kiss her forehead.

  “I don’t have the plague, Steven,” Emma insisted fitfully. “I’m just pregnant, probably. You need me at the trial—”

  “I need to know you’re all right,” Steven corrected, brushing her hair back from her face. “Please, Emma. If you love me, stay here. Don’t make me worry about you.”

  Her eyes filled with tears as she looked up at him. “I love you so much, Steven.”

  “And I love you,” he answered. He kissed her again, and then he was gone.

  Although she would have expected to toss and turn, doing nothing but fretting about the progress of the trial, Emma went right back to sleep again. When she awakened, several hours had passed, by her calculations, since the sun seemed high.

  She got out of bed, washed her face and cleaned her teeth, then braided her hair. All traces of nausea were gone, and she felt strong and determined as she put on the lovely floral morning dress Jubal had laid out for her. She would visit Maisie Lee Simpson again today, and no matter what she had to do, she would find out what the woman was hiding.

  The door to the master suite was open, but there was no sign of Lucy, and she wasn’t sitting with Macon or having coffee in the dining room, either. Assuming her sister-in-law had gone to the courthouse with Steven and Cyrus, Emma sat down at the long table and forced herself to consume the toast and weak tea Jubal pressed upon her.

  When she’d done that, she sent for a carriage.

  “You mustn’t go out, Miss Emma,” Jubal argued. “Mr. Steven say he don’t want you to. He say you stay here, where Jubal can see to you.”

  Emma didn’t like defying the kindly servant, but she had too much at stake to sit in the house and wait for her husband’ath sentence to be pronounced. She had to do something. She went outside, in back of the house, and sent one of the children who was playing around the kitchen building to ask for a carriage.

  The driver, an elderly black man with kindly eyes, came to her with his cap in his hands. ‘Is sorry, Miss Emma,” he said, “but Mr. Steven, he tell me no carriage for you. And no horses, neither.”

  Thoroughly exasperated, Emma dismissed Ebel and ventured into the kitchen, where Jubal and a half dozen others were already making preparations for supper. She’d set her mind on going to question Maisie Lee again, but she couldn’t very well walk into the city. It was miles to Miss Astoria McCall’s house, where Maisie Lee was probably working.

  Feeling like an intruder, Emma wa
ndered out of the kitchen again. When she next saw Mr. Steven Fairfax, she would give him a piece of her mind for leaving her stranded like this, with no way to get into town.

  She was crossing the lawn when inspiration hit her. With a loud and dramatic cry, she gripped her stomach and dropped to her knees in the manicured green grass. She only hoped she wouldn’t get stains on her skirts.

  Instantly she was surrounded by worried children. She felt guilty, scaring them that way, but there was no alternative if she was to carry out her plan. She moaned again as Jubal rushed to her side, summoned by one of the little ones.

  The fright in Jubal’s trusting face deepened Emma’s contrition, but she continued to moan and hold her stomach. “I need the doctor,” she murmured.

  Jubal snatched at one of the children’s cotton shirts. “You go and fetch Ebel,” she told the little boy. “Tell him bring the doctor for Miss Emma right now!”

  Emma sat up with pretended difficulty, one hand to her forehead. She was grateful Steven wasn’t around to witness this performance; he would have seen right through it. “No—I can’t wait,” she gasped out. “Ebel must take me to him.”

  And so it was that poor Ebel unknowingly defied Steven’s orders by bringing the carriage around and helping Miss Emma into it. When they’d reached the doctor’s downtown office, she let the driver help her out, then darted away toward a nearby cab.

  While Ebel hurried after her, politely calling for her to please come back, the other carriage bore her away.

  Luck was with her, it seemed. When she reached Miss Astoria’s house, Maisie Lee was there alone. Emma found her in the backyard, hanging up laundry. She gave Emma a fitful look and tried to ignore her, but her hands shook as she pegged a gigantic pair of knickers to the line.

  Emma could hear another carriage in the cobbled street, coming to a stop behind the one she’d hired. Ebel had followed her, and there was no telling how far he’d go to comply with “Mr. Steven’s” orders. Hurriedly she said, “Maisie Lee, you’ve got to tell me whom you’re protecting, please! Who was here that night?”

  Maisie Lee looked at her, but stubbornly. “Go ‘way. I ain’t gonna say nothin’. Jethro’ll thump my head if ‘n I do.”

  “You’re going to let a man die?” Emma whispered in amazement. “A man you know is innocent?”

  “I heared Miss Mary screamin’ that night,” Maisie Lee insisted angrily. “She was sayin’ his name—Mr. Steven’s name—over and over! She was real scairt, too.”

  “She was screaming his name,” Emma repeated, talking rapidly because she sensed Ebel’s approach. “Try to remember, Maisie Lee—please—did she say anything else?”

  Maisie Lee squeezed her eyes shut, remembering. “She say, ‘it was Steven.’ She say that two, three times.”

  “That means she was addressing somebody else, don’t you see?” Emma insisted frantically.

  Ebel was beside Emma now. He didn’t quite dare take her arm, but she could tell he wasn’t going anywhere until she agreed to return to Fairhaven with him.

  Maisie Lee’s eyes darted to Ebel, then came back to Emma’s face. “You go home, missus. You’ll find the killer right there in yo’ own house!”

  Macon. Emma sighed. There was no choice. She was going to have to confront Macon, and she knew even before she tried that it was a hopeless effort.

  Subdued, Emma allowed Ebel to lead her patiently around the crumbling McCall house, through the gate, and over the bumpy sidewalk. He handed her gently into the carriage, looking at her with baleful eyes when she offered a silent apology.

  During the drive back to Fairhaven, Emma was in despair. She’d find the murderer right in her own house, Maisie Lee had said, but that was useless information. She knew as well as Steven and Garrick did that Macon had strangled Mary McCall, and he would never confess.

  When Ebel helped Emma down from the carriage in front of Fairhaven, she walked despondently into the house, feeling like a prisoner, and made her way up the stairs.

  Passing the room she’d shared with Steven until the day before, she saw Macon through the open doorway. His eyes were wide, and his face was flattened into a mask of sheer horror. He was making an anxious little sound deep in his throat.

  Although she felt little pity for him, Emma could not pass by without finding out what was the matter. She stepped quickly into the room and was aghast to see Lucy approaching the bed with a pillow.

  While Emma watched, frozen, Lucy pressed the pillow to Macon’s face, using both hands and putting the weight of her small body into the task. “You’ve shamed me for the last time,” she said in a voice that sounded strangely sane. “First all those women, then you actually tried to rape your own brother’s wife. But then, I shouldn’t be surprised. Your conscience didn’t keep you from fornicating with Dirk’s intended. And Dirk was your own son, though God knows it wasn’t me who bore him for you, was it, Macon?”

  Jolted out of her stunned state, Emma found her voice and rushed into the room. “Lucy, no,” she pleaded, her voice surprisingly calm and evenly modulated. “He’s your husband—”

  “He’s a viper,” Lucy answered, making no move to lift the pillow. Maco struggled lamely beneath it.

  Emma tried to pull her away, but Lucy was incredibly strong in her madness. “Lucy, in the name of God, this is murder!”

  “He’s hurt so many people,” Lucy went on, as Emma tried again, in vain, to make her lift the pillow from Macon’s face. “All you have to do is look the other way, Emma. Pretend you didn’t see anything.”

  Emma was desperate. “They’ll put you in prison,” she reasoned. “And prisons are dreadful places.”

  “I know,” Lucy answered in a chillingly distracted way. “Steven will live out his life in one if they don’t hang him, and all because of Macon. Don’t you see? It’s only right for Macon to die.”

  Emma tried to keep her head, though she wanted to run from the room, screaming for help. “You killed Mary didn’t you, Lucy?” she asked quietly, playing a sudden hunch, remembering Maisie Lee’s assertion that she would find the killer in her own house, and how frightened the woman had seemed. Now Emma knew it was because she’d seen Lucy leaving Mary’s room that awful night.

  Macon was still writhing beneath the pillow, but he was so weak, it wouldn’t be long before he lapsed into unconsciousness and then death, unless Lucy lifted that pillow.

  Lucy looked back at her over one shoulder, frowning. Remembering. “Yes,” she said. “I had to. She was going to have a baby—Macon’s baby—and I couldn’t let her do that. I was never able to give him a child, you see. But it was my right. My right.”

  It was Steven, Mary McCall had screamed that night according to Maisie Lee. It was Steven. She felt faint, but nonetheless she laid her hand on Lucy’s arm. “Everything will be all right, Lucy,” she said softly.

  A tear streaked down Lucy’s alabaster cheek, and she let go of the pillow, which Emma quickly dragged off Macon’s face and tossed away. Her brother-in-law was purple and staring up at her in helpless terror, but Emma felt no obligation to reassure him.

  All her concern was for Lucy. She helped her sister-in-law to a chair and eased her into it.

  “The baby Mary was carrying was Steven’s,” Emma guessed, her voice wooden. She could come to no other conclusion, given the circumstances. It seemed remarkble that all along, as desperately as she’d loved him, he’d been lying to her.

  But Lucy shook her head. She was strangely lucid, now that she’d made the admission. “She was just saying that, the lying little tramp. It was Macon’s baby.”

  “It was—Dirk’s—” Macon rasped from the bed.

  Emma stared at him, and so did Lucy.

  He tried to sit up against his pillows but failed. Emma went to him, her eyes wide, her heart beating painfully fast. Steven’s life was safe now, but her trust in him was flickering like a candle on the sill of an open window.

  “The baby was—Dirk’s—“Macon insisted again, and
then he closed his eyes, whether from weariness or swooning, couldn’t know.

  She turned to Lucy, who was deathly white, her brown eyes enormous in her face. Her trembling fingers, pressed to her mouth, made Emma know Macon had been telling the truth.

  Steven wasn’t going to die; the whole universe turned on that axis. Steven wasn’t going to die.

  She knelt beside Lucy’s chair, taking her hand. “Do you want some of your medicine?” she asked gently, feeling no rancor toward the woman, only compassion. Things might have been so very different for Lucy if she’d been able to bear a child, if she had married a man capable of any compassion.

  Lucy shook her head, and a shaky smile formed on her lips. “Perhaps now God will forgive me,” she said.

  Emma felt tears burn her eyes. “I’m sure God understood all along,” she said softly. And then she wept—for joy, for grief, for all this woman and Steven had suffered, and for poor Mary McCall, who had died too soon and for the wrong reason.

  Jubal’s voice broke the heavy silence that followed.

  “Miss Emma? Miss Lucy? Is everything all right?”

  Emma turned her head to look at Jubal. “Someone needs to go to town and bring back the sheriff and Cyrus. Right away.”

  Jubal was obviously afraid. Her gaze strayed questioningly to Macon, who was lying with his eyes closed.

  “Mr. Fairfax is all right,” Emma assured her quietly. “Please do as I say. I’ll look after Miss Lucy in the meantime.”

  Lucy began to rock in the chair when Jubal was gone. “My baby,” she said. “I need my baby.”

  Emma looked at her in bafflement and agonizing pity. “Baby?”

  Lucy started to lift herself out of the chair, and Emma got awkwardly to her feet. She followed, after one anxious glance back at Macon, as Lucy walked steadily out of the room and down the hallway.

  Stopping in front of a door next to her own, she produced a key from the pocket of her black skirt and worked the lock. She stepped into the room, and Emma went in behind her.

  Sick shock struck Emma with the impact of a fist when she saw that the room was a nursery, outfitted with toys, a cradle, a rocking chair—every sort of item a baby would need. Lucy went, crooning, to the crib, and lifted out a stiff little form wrapped in a lacy blanket.