Jade Star

by Catherine Coulter

  “Byrony, listen to me!” He clasped her face between his large hands, shaking her until her eyes focused on his face. “I’m going to help you, do you hear me? No, don’t close your eyes. Look at me, Byrony! Here’s what you’ll do.”

  He felt her tears wet his hands and wanted to weep himself. For her, for Jules. For poor Robert Gallagher, who’d been run down by a carriage six months after Saint had saved him from being cut open by Old Hook Nose.

  Dear God, what was happening? Sunlight poured through the bedroom windows. He glanced a moment toward the clock.

  “We got company, Mr. Wilkes,” Hawkins said, poking his head into the cave. “Six, seven men, riding slow, tracking.”

  “Ah,” Wilkes said, his eyes turning toward Jules. He saw the wild hope in her eyes. “No, my dear, it won’t be your husband, at least it shouldn’t be. He wouldn’t leave a woman in labor, now, would he?”

  “I bet it’s that gambler Hammond, the man who started the nigger town.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. They’re all so honorable, aren’t they?”

  “They aren’t scum like you,” Jules said.

  “Now, little girlie—” Hawkins began.

  “Shut up, both of you,” Wilkes said, and got to his feet. He cursed the damned pain, but managed to keep his expression impassive. He wanted more opium, needed it desperately, but he couldn’t allow himself to escape, not yet. He said to Jules, “You will stay put, my dear, or I will kill Mr. Hammond. Hawkins, you come with me.”

  Jules watched the two men leave. She scrambled to her feet, looking about frantically for a weapon, any kind of weapon. She feverishly clawed through the bedrolls. Nothing. She felt dirty, her bones ached from sleeping on the dirt cave floor, and she was more afraid than she had ever been in her life. Before, it had been just her. Now it was Brent.

  She crept toward the cave opening and peered out. She could see Wilkes’s back, Hawkins just behind him, and Grabbler off to her left in the notch of a pine tree. She saw the ocean beyond, calm, gray like a whitetip reef shark.

  “This is it,” Josh said, his voice low, nearly a whisper.

  “Yes,” Brent said, nodding. He looked up at the cliff above them and scanned the wall. He heard a horse nicker. He held up his hand for silence, then rode forward a bit.

  He called out, “All right, Wilkes. We are here. What the hell do you want?”

  “Hammond?”

  “Yes, of course. You know that Jules’s husband is with my wife. What do you want?”

  Jules, Wilkes thought blankly. How odd. It sounded ridiculous. He much preferred “Juliana.” Had her damned husband given her that nickname? He wanted to kill him.

  “You may be certain I don’t want you,” Wilkes shouted. “I want you and your niggers to take a message back to Saint Morris. He’ll come here alone, or he will never see her again.”

  “Why didn’t you just wait until he would track his wife?”

  “Very simple, Hammond,” Wilkes called out. “She wasn’t out of his sight and wouldn’t be until your dear wife started her birthing pains. He would not allow his innocent wife to be present, of that I was certain.”

  Brent cursed softly. Why had he imagined all sorts of wily, bizarre plots on Wilkes’s part? It was all so simple really. And Wilkes was right, completely right. It was the first time Saint had let Jules out of his sight. Saint and Thackery had dogged her every step.

  “Now, as I figure it, Hammond, by the time you get back to that town of yours, your baby will be born, that or your precious wife will be dead. In any case, Saint Morris will be free to come after his wife. Give him my message.”

  Brent felt his jaw tighten until pain seared his face. What the hell could he do? Byrony, no! You won’t die. Saint promised.

  Jules felt her blood run cold. Wilkes not only wanted her, he also wanted to kill Michael. She couldn’t, wouldn’t allow it. She didn’t know what to do. Suddenly she yelled at the top of her lungs, “Brent, don’t get Michael! He wants to kill him. Don’t let him leave Byrony!”

  “Jules, are you all right?” Brent yelled back. His horse shied sideways, and it took a moment of his concentration to get him back under control.

  “I’m all right,” Jules shouted back. “Don’t let Michael come here!”

  Wilkes was beside her, pulling her roughly back into the cave. He flung her to the dirt floor. “You keep your mouth shut, Juliana, or I’ll kill Hammond, and his niggers can deliver my message to your precious husband.”

  She stared at him, hatred for him filling her. She wanted to spew her hatred out to him, but at that moment she saw his face pale, saw him clutch at his belly. My God, she thought, he’s ill!

  “You stay put,” Wilkes said again, his voice low, his teeth gritted, “or I’ll plow your belly in front of your precious husband. You understand me?”

  “I understand,” Jules said. She was silent a moment, then said very quietly, “Do you want my husband for revenge or do you want a doctor?”

  “Interesting question,” Wilkes said, and laughed. “Don’t move, Juliana!” He walked from the cave, not looking back, for there was nothing she could do. Nothing.

  Saint ripped off the sheet that covered Byrony. He couldn’t allow it to go on any longer. He had to do it. “Mammy,” he said curtly, “take her hands and hold her steady. Byrony, you’re not going to give up, you’re going to push with all your strength.”

  She made a soft mewling sound. “No, I can’t,” she whispered.

  “Damn you, Byrony, do as I tell you!”

  He thought he saw a ghost of a smile on her white lips. He saw the contraction and splayed his hands over her belly. “Push!” he shouted at her, and bore down with his hands. Almost, he thought, hope welling up in him. “Again, Byrony!” This time he slipped his hand inside her. He felt the baby’s head, gently found the tiny shoulders and pulled. He shut his mind to Byrony’s screams and eased the baby from the birth canal. Damn him for a fool, he should have given her more chloroform, but there hadn’t been time.

  “My God,” he said, cuddling the slippery little body against his chest, fierce joy filling him, “it’s a boy you’ve got, Byrony. A beautiful boy.”

  Byrony was unconscious.

  “Mammy, bathe our little fellow here. Ah, that’s it. A lusty cry. He’s ready for the world. Then wrap him in a warm blanket.”

  “I know,” Mammy said, affronted, and Saint smiled. The old woman was as exhausted as he was, but still feisty as hell.

  He worked over Byrony, more mechanically now, because she would be all right. He’d taken the risk and she’d survived. It was Jules who filled his thoughts. Had Brent found her? What had happened? “Damn,” he said softly. So many questions and no answers. He realized his hands were shaking, fear washing through him in great relentless waves.

  Mammy Bath handed him the baby some minutes later. The child was a carbon copy of Byrony, not Brent. Honey-colored hair, fair-complexioned. Perhaps there was divine justice, he thought. Byrony had done all the work, suffered more than a human being should ever have to, so it was only fair that her child look like her.

  He smiled down at the wizened little face, his finger under the tiny chin.

  “I’ll brings a sugar tit for that little man,” said Mammy Bath. “His mama won’t have no milk for a while yet.”

  “Good idea,” Saint said. And he began to pace the bedroom. He was still pacing when Brent Hammond burst through the door two hours later, his face drawn and tense, his eyes going immediately to his wife.

  Saint said quickly, “She’s all right. You have a son and he looks like Byrony.”

  “She’s all right?” Brent repeated slowly. His throat felt suddenly very scratchy, and tears burned his eyes. He gulped. “She’s not moving.”

  “You wouldn’t be either. She’s asleep. Your son is in the next room with Mammy Bath.”

  Brent dragged his fingers through his hair. “We’ve got trouble, Saint, dammit.”

  “Tell me while you look at yo
ur son,” Saint said, forcing himself to remain calm.

  31

  The men rode steadily south, high on the cliffs above the ocean, Brent beside Saint at their head.

  “Have you any ideas, Saint?” Brent asked.

  Saint shook his head, his eyes straight between his horse’s ears. “None other than getting my hands around that bastard’s neck.” Why, Saint continued to wonder, did Wilkes want him? If it were revenge in the man’s mind, it was chilling. He had Jules, why him? Why the elaborate ruse?

  Brent well understood his feelings, and merely nodded. They had plenty of time to devise some sort of plan. He said finally, “I thank you for saving Byrony.”

  “She did all the work,” Saint said, drawing himself from his thoughts. He quirked an eyebrow at Brent. “She was pleased that the baby looks like her and not you, a swarthy pirate.”

  “Gambler, not pirate. Hell, I wouldn’t have cared if the baby looked like you, Saint!”

  “The perfect child indeed. Incidentally, Brent, go see Maggie before you begin relations again with your wife. I suggest contraception. Another child in perhaps three years, then I’d be satisfied and call a halt.”

  “I don’t want her to go through that ever again,” Brent said, his face growing pale with remembered anxiety.

  “That’s up to the both of you.” Saint fell silent, and Brent knew his thoughts had returned to his wife.

  It was early afternoon when they reached the cliff.

  “You can’t just go up there, Saint,” Brent said again. “He wants to kill you.”

  “He won’t,” Saint said. For a moment he wondered why he’d said it with such confidence. Hell, he had no reason to be confident. It was just that he had this feeling . . . So many things about Wilkes didn’t make sense.

  Brent sighed. “The two men he’s got, we’ll try to pick them off. Josh is the best shot I know, after Thackery.”

  “Thackery can give him lessons in another week or so. That man’s as strong as an ox, thank God.”

  “I still don’t like this,” Brent said.

  Saint shrugged, his thoughts moving ahead to his confrontation with Jameson Wilkes.

  Jules felt numb. She’d spent the entire morning hating herself for her wretched helplessness. Hawkins had eyed her again, but she realized she wasn’t afraid of him, nor was she afraid of Wilkes, not anymore.

  She was afraid for Michael. He would come, she knew he would come. She didn’t know what to do.

  “Ah,” Wilkes said, an odd relieved tone in his voice, “I do believe your precious husband has arrived.”

  Jules bounded to her feet and rushed toward the cave entrance, screaming, “Michael! No! Go away!”

  Wilkes jerked her backward and she landed in the dirt on her bottom. She scrambled to her feet.

  “You stay put or I’ll put a bullet through him before you can even see him.”

  Jules believed him. Oh, Michael, she thought, closing her eyes a moment, why did you come? Why do you have to be so noble?

  She prayed that Byrony was all right.

  Then she heard his voice, strong and deep, coming from below.

  “Wilkes! Can you hear me?”

  “Good afternoon, Dr. Morris,” Wilkes shouted down. “I see you brought your friends. Leave them down there and come up alone!”

  I’ve got to do something! Without conscious thought, Jules rushed at Wilkes, clutching at the gun in his belt. He whirled about, caught her hand, and struck her with the flat of his palm.

  She staggered back, and he came toward her, drawing his gun as he stalked her.

  Saint felt the barrel of the gun in the small of his back. He didn’t pause, but continued walking until he came into the cave entrance.

  “Here he is, Mr. Wilkes,” Hawkins said, and gave Saint a shove.

  Saint blinked rapidly to adjust his eyes to the dim interior of the cave. Wilkes was holding Jules in front of him, one arm across her breasts, the gun in his other hand.

  “Hello, Dr. Morris,” Wilkes said. “I have wanted to meet you, indeed I have. I believe it was you who clipped my jaw.”

  “I was hoping,” Saint said calmly, his eyes boring into Wilkes’s face, “that I’d broken your jaw that night at the Crooked House. Did I?”

  “No, no, you didn’t. Of course, I have heard that you aren’t a violent man,” he added, his eyes boring into Saint’s.

  “I’m not. But I realized months ago that I should have killed you.” He shrugged, his eyes roving over his wife’s strained face. “Then again, I’m supposed to save lives. You have always posed me a difficult problem, philosophically, at least.”

  “Stay where you are, Dr. Morris!” Wilkes pressed the gun against Jules’s left breast.

  Saint didn’t move. He met Jules’s wildly frightened eyes. “Are you all right, love?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes, yes, of course. You shouldn’t have come, Michael,” she said, her voice an agonized whisper.

  “I’m your husband, little fool.” He met Wilkes’s eyes. “I am her husband, you know, in all ways. Now, what do you want, Wilkes?”

  The gun jerked and Saint froze.

  “You took her from me,” Wilkes said in a low, hoarse voice, the pain in his belly nearly bending him double. God, he’d just had as much opium as he could take and still be coherent. “I wanted her and you stole her from me!”

  “That isn’t how I seem to remember it,” Saint said slowly. “You were selling her. Hardly the same thing. All you lost was money.”

  “I would have gotten her back.”

  “Would you have? Really? After she’d been raped and abused? And what would you have done with her, Wilkes? Raped and abused her more?”

  “Shut up, damn you! You know nothing about it, nothing!”

  “I know that you are not . . . thinking straight.” His eyes look odd. His flesh is gray. The flesh around his eyes and mouth is scored with pain. “Let her go, Wilkes. If you kill me, she will kill you. Perhaps not today, but tomorrow or the next day.”

  “She is mine!”

  “Like hell she is.”

  Jules could bear it no longer. “Michael, I’ll go with him, please, just leave. I don’t want you hurt . . . please leave.”

  He merely smiled at her, shaking his head. “He wouldn’t let me leave even if he trusted your promise, sweetheart.”

  “No,” Wilkes said, the pain so bad now that he spoke through gritted teeth. “No, Doctor, you aren’t leaving.”

  Jules felt him jerk behind her.

  It was then Saint saw the spasm of pain on Wilkes’s face. It was fearful, his mouth working like a death rictus. “Has she already tried to kill you?” he said.

  “No, damn you! Oh, my God! My belly . . .”

  Jules felt him ease his hold on her as his body bent forward with pain. She didn’t think, merely acted. She sent her elbow into his stomach, and he yowled with agony. Jules grabbed at the gun. In the next instant, Saint jerked away her hand, pulled the gun from Wilkes’s unresisting fingers. He met Wilkes’s glazed eyes. He felt a spasm of pity.

  “You’re dying, aren’t you?” he said very softly, knowing that only Wilkes could hear him.

  “I didn’t need you to tell me, damn you!” Wilkes was panting, his breathing an agony. He staggered backward.

  “No,” Saint said, “no, you didn’t. How long have you lived on opium? How long have you had none to ease the pain?”

  But Jameson Wilkes couldn’t answer. His mind was clouded with agony, with strange broken images of the ravaged face of his wife, long dead.

  Then Saint knew. He was on opium, to his limit.

  “Michael!”

  Saint whirled about at Jules’s shout, saw Hawkins looming in the mouth of the cave. He fired. There was another shot, and Jules saw a bullet slam into the wall of the cave. She watched, frozen, as Hawkins, a bewildered look on his face, stumbled forward, then fell on his face.

  There was a loud shout from outside the cave. Then a rapid staccato, at lea
st six more shots.

  Suddenly Saint felt Wilkes’s hands clutching at his wrist, bearing downward. Again he looked into Wilkes’s eyes, and saw madness and more pain than a human being should have to suffer. Stomach cancer, he thought, a slow, agonizing death. He saw something else in his eyes, something he couldn’t yet understand. Then he did. He realized, deep in his soul, that Wilkes could have shot him in the confusion. He saw another pistol lying in the dust very close to Wilkes and knew Wilkes could easily have grabbed it. He knew that Wilkes had made a decision. For a split second Saint wavered. He closed his eyes, knowing what was to happen, what the dying man wanted to happen. He let him bring the gun between them.

  Jules was weeping softly. “No, please, no.”

  There was a muffled shot.

  Jules screamed.

  Neither man moved. Then Saint very gently eased Wilkes’s limp body down to the cave floor.

  Jules backed away, turning her head, unable to bear the fixed gaze in Jameson Wilkes’s eyes.

  Brent burst into the cave, drew up short, and slowly slipped his gun back into its holster. “He’s dead?” He nodded toward Wilkes’s body.

  “Yes,” Saint said. Just as he wanted to be. Thank God, he didn’t linger, even for a moment. Jules couldn’t have borne that.

  “Josh shot the other man. I see you got this scum,” he added, nodding toward Hawkins’ body.

  Saint nodded. He looked one last time at the man who had caused so such suffering, lived with such suffering, then walked slowly over to his wife. “Love,” he said, taking her into his arms. “It’s all over now.”

  Jules leaned against him, beyond tears now. She wrapped her arms around his back, burrowing her face into his shoulder, feeling his strong heartbeat against her. He rocked her, gently stroking his hand through her tangled hair. He looked over at Wilkes again, a strange sadness filling him. Had Jules somehow become twisted in his opium dreams into a fantasy to save him from himself? Or had he wanted her with him when he died, to complete some eerie ritual, some twisted dream? Saint shook his head. He doubted he would ever understand. He certainly wouldn’t speak to Jules about it. She’d suffered too much already. And most of it had been for him.