Touched by Fire

by Gwyneth Atlee

  That meant she must have stopped at Shelton Creek. The idea chilled him, despite the unseasonably mild weather. If she’d done that, she might have already killed Malcolm. He might find her locked in jail, or even worse, she could be dead.

  No, not that. He refused to think it. His Hannah was alive, and he would find her. He’d go as quickly as he could. A visit to the local livery stable yielded him the rental of an enormous bay gelding with black stockings that rose halfway up his walnut-colored legs. The liveryman promised speed and strength, and though Daniel had never been hard on his mounts, he planned to make use of both qualities this afternoon.

  o0o

  Adam Bloom didn’t like the idea of loaning her a horse.

  “I’ll pay you a fair price for her use,” Hannah promised. She stroked the mare’s gold neck and swept the long, black forelock from her eye. The horse nudged her, demanding another pat.

  “That’s not the point. Women can’t just go cavorting around the countryside. Tell me where you need to go, and I’ll drive you there.”

  “You don’t have time to escort me all over Sells County tracking down my uncle and my cousins. I heard you telling Mrs. Bloom at breakfast how it would take you half the day to set up your office things, and my business already took your morning and past lunch. Besides, I don’t need your buggy for this trip. I ride as well as any man, and I don’t want to fool with wheels stuck in the mud. Just let me use the mare  what did you call her?”

  “Tillie. She’s a favorite with the boys, as gentle as a lamb.”

  “We’ll get along just fine. I’ll take good care of her.”

  Bloom sighed and nodded. Women were his weakness. Margaret had him wrapped around her finger, and he thanked God he didn’t have to deal with females in court.

  He thought of one last argument that might dissuade her. “Mrs. Bloom doesn’t ride, so there’s no sidesaddle on the place.”

  “Good,” Hannah answered. “I can’t abide the things. This skirt of mine’s wide enough.”

  “But the ladies will —”

  “—Gossip? Let them. It’s about time I gave them something new to talk about.”

  o0o

  Malcolm was exercising his favorite stallion. Normally, the chore would be left to Joseph Went, his manager, or a favored stable boy, but his best boy had slipped and broken an arm on February’s glassy ice. Besides, Malcolm enjoyed Honor, his old scapegoat. He considered the Arabian his first partner in crime.

  When he glanced up, he noticed a strange boy loitering not far from the gate. The young fellow’s eyes lingered on the muscular black horse Shelton was straining to control. On a fine day after a long winter, Honor felt like lightning under saddle. He should have opted for a lunge line instead of riding.

  The stallion bucked as he dismounted. Despite landing on his bad leg, Malcolm retained his footing without even a stumble. He turned Honor loose and laughed as the horse bucked and plunged about the paddock wildly.

  “He’s a beauty, mister,” the boy remarked. He was so taken with the horse, he hadn’t even glanced at Malcolm’s face.

  Shelton smiled in recognition of the quick gleam in the lad’s brown eyes. The dark hair reminded him of himself at about that age. What would it be? Maybe twelve. If only Hannah had given him a son like this, how different both their lives would be. He tried to imagine it, the two of them together with a boy who looked like him. Hannah gentle as she’d been when they had married. And his fantasies would never have turned dark. Bringing pain would not be his only avenue to pleasure.

  God, he hated her for all the joys she’d stolen. Yet somehow, the presence of this child eased the ache a bit.

  “I’m getting too old to fool with Honor’s spring shenanigans. Would you like to have a go?”

  Malcolm watched a grin spread across the lightly freckled face. It faltered for a moment when the boy saw the burn scars, but enthusiasm triumphed.

  “Would I ever!” he all but shouted back. He hopped onto the gate and shimmied over. “Oh, almost forgot. I’m Jack Lee, and I’ve got a message for you from my pa.”

  Dutifully, he handed a crumpled note to Malcolm. Jack Lee? He’d be Roger’s son, and that was Hannah’s cousin. Malcolm’s heart thumped faster. What would Roger want from him? The Lees had steadfastly ignored him after the divorce.

  “Should I go catch the horse, sir?” Jack’s voice rose hopefully.

  Malcolm ignored him in favor of the paper in his hands. A slow smile spread across the unscarred portion of his face. Hannah had at last arrived, and that fool, Bloom, had her staying in his home. Roger thought he might want to know.

  Malcolm nearly laughed aloud. Roger, selfish Roger, hadn’t wanted Hannah to return. Shelton had heard about the Lee’s odd problems with their dead aunt’s will. Unfortunately, Adam Bloom wasn’t the sort of lawyer who understood how easily, how profitably, old papers could be torn. Now Roger was hoping Malcolm might make his problem go away.

  By the time he looked up, Honor was snorting into Jack’s outstretched hand. The boy smiled at him almost shyly. “They say I’ve got a way with horses.”

  “Do you?” Malcolm asked him. He limped closer and took the stallion’s reins. “Why don’t you climb aboard and see?”

  o0o

  Hannah hadn’t meant to visit any members of her family. Roger’s denunciation had convinced her of their hatred, and Adam Bloom’s explanation of her aunt’s will convinced her that she owed him nothing. But Hannah hadn’t counted on Nettie’s shriek of recognition as she rode down Bloom’s street, past a respectable buff-colored house with deep brown trim.

  “Hannah! Hannah Lee! Oh, my goodness! It’s enough to put me in a faint!” The petite woman bobbed her head as if looking for a place to swoon. If the years had been unkind to Roger, they’d left Nettie nearly untouched. She still moved like a sparrow, and she remained so thin a tight-laced corset might fall down to her knees.

  Hannah lifted the mare’s reins and turned Tillie toward the woman. Unsure of her reception, she said nothing.

  Nettie put down a sack of flower bulbs and peeled off gardening gloves. “What’s the matter? Don’t you recognize me? I haven’t changed that much.”

  Laughing, Hannah slid down from the horse and took her reins. “You haven’t changed at all. It’s just that —I saw Roger.”

  Nettie made the same rude hiss she had when they were children. “Roger! Don’t mind that cad. He’s just mad about the money. He has an awful lot of debts. Couldn’t be satisfied unless he and his wife had all the finest, but a stationmaster’s salary won’t cover the cost. So what do you suppose he did? Borrowed, borrowed, borrowed —nearly sold his soul for all those fancies. He talked Father into pestering Aunt Hilda, and worst of all, he tried some scheme to separate her from her savings. Made her so mad, she disinherited us all. As far as I’m concerned, Roger ought to be in jail.”

  Hannah impulsively stepped forward to hug her cousin. “Is that why Aunt Hilda did it? Oh, Nettie, I thought you’d hate me, too.”

  “Hate you?” Nettie’s voice shrilled in her ear as she squeezed back. “Of course not. I was sorry back when all that situation happened with your husband. It seemed to me no one listened to your side. It’s like that for us women.”

  “It would have helped me if you’d listened. I always thought you were my friend.”

  Nettie pulled back and lowered her blue eyes. “I —I’m sorry if I hurt you. It’s just that I had a reputation to maintain, and it happened during my confinement. I had twin girls, you know, Rose and Anabelle. They’re inside now with Christopher’s mother. She’s come to live with us.”

  Hannah couldn’t imagine where on that thin body Nettie could have carried twins. She tried to smile tolerantly at her cousin’s excuses. There was no use arguing about slights from the past.

  “Nettie, it isn’t fair that Hilda punished you and Alice over Roger. Maybe I should —”

  “—Hush. I won’t hear a word of it, though it’s kind of you to o
ffer. I can’t speak for my sister, but if that old crone wanted to disinherit me, I don’t give a lump of coal. Christopher and I do fine.”

  This time, Hannah’s smile was genuine. Nettie hadn’t changed a bit.

  Her cousin’s head bobbed upward, her eyes bright with enthusiasm. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll prove to you I’m not like those other women. I’ll invite you in my home right now, in front of my mother-in-law and all the children. You come inside and have some tea with me. We’ll talk. You can tell me anything you want. I won’t care who finds out.”

  Perhaps it was because she had been too long without acceptance from any family members. Perhaps the thought of the risk she faced compelled her. Hannah chose to ignore Nettie’s disloyalty and instead chance her acceptance.

  “Before I go inside,” Hannah said, “I want you to know something. Malcolm lied. He didn’t want me, but he needed the farm. If you can’t accept that, I’d better not stay.”

  Nettie stared at her a moment before her eyes widened. Their lower rims glistened with fresh moisture. Then she nodded so rapidly, her beaver tail chignon bobbed against her neck. “I do believe you, Hannah. Maybe I can help you, too.”

  o0o

  Daniel wasn’t sure about his next step. If he asked around for Hannah here in Shelton Creek, could he endanger her? He rode down the main street, lined with shops, a blacksmith, and two livery stables. He could tell right away he’d come to a town that considered itself civilized. He saw two schools, three churches, but no saloons or bawdy houses in evidence. He’d bet his bottom dollar they were here, tucked away somewhere along a back alley or a disreputable thoroughfare along the outskirts. Men’s appetites didn’t change that much from place to place.

  Right now, he would have liked a drink to clear his head. But, as before, thoughts of Hannah pushed back the temptation. How could he find out about her without stirring up more trouble? The more he concentrated on the problem, the better he liked the thought of a saloon. At least there he could hear the talk of local events and glean a little information without raising suspicion.

  He dismounted near a general store with the neatest boardwalk he’d ever seen. The wood, free of scars from loggers’ caulked heels, was also clean of tobacco. A well-polished spittoon stood self-righteously just outside the door. Hannah hailed from a pretty fancy place, he decided.

  A man with slicked black hair and what Daniel thought of as a dandy’s suit stepped outside the building. In his arms he carried a small box filled with bottles of varying sizes.

  “Excuse me,” Daniel said. “I was wondering if you knew a place a man could buy a drink.”

  The young gentleman shared an oily smile. “If you’re in need of refreshment, let me offer you instead my tonic. I’ve been selling this for three years, and let me assure you, it’s a fine cure for the temptations of drink and cheap company. At only two dollars a bottle, it’s a bargain.”

  Daniel couldn’t resist playing along with the fellow. He’d seen grown men get pie-eyed on remedies like this. He pulled out a bottle of the tonic and twisted off the lid. “So what’s in this stuff?”

  “The finest ingredients, secret extracts discovered in Siam. The recipe, I believe, was smuggled from the land of pyramids and elephants.”

  “That’s an awful lot of far-off places,” Daniel remarked. “How do I know this works on Americans?”

  “Why, I give it to my own, dear mother,” the young man answered. “She says it’s done wonders for her health.”

  Daniel sniffed. “Smells like alcohol to me. Seems like the saloon might be cheaper. How about those directions?”

  “Are you insinuating my sainted mother is a drunkard?” The smaller man stiffened.

  Daniel had to frown to keep from grinning. “Naw. She probably takes it from you just to be polite, and pours the stuff out the back window as soon as you go out. But some of those other folks that buy it, they just might be drunks.”

  The smaller man stormed off, and Daniel had to ask another fellow for directions to the drinking house.

  o0o

  “I might hire that boy, Jack Lee, to help exercise the horses,” Malcolm told his wife as he changed his clothes. Usually, he didn’t share the details of his business with Melissa, but he considered the boy such a find that he felt nearly exuberant. Besides, this evening, thanks to Roger’s help, Malcolm planned to end his problems.

  “Can we afford it?” Melissa asked timidly.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you believe I can provide?” He turned a hard gaze on her, and she shied from it. She’d been difficult when he insisted that she swear that he had been home when he wasn’t. She was an honest woman, and he’d had to slap her hard to make her see the sense of his request.

  He never used to lay a finger on his women, but after Hannah, he’d discovered the act had a kind of sickening appeal, like tearing off a scab or dispatching a diseased foal. He’d taken Melissa after he’d returned, and in its way he found that struggle far more satisfying than her usual limp submission.

  Even the whispered threat of force now made her muscles stiffen and sudden tears spring to her eyes. She wouldn’t tell, of course. What woman could complain of a husband using rape to take what, in all fairness, belonged to him already? She’d be laughed out of town, despite her father’s money. No, Melissa had been easily defeated. When the authorities asked for his whereabouts this evening, she would dutifully provide him with an alibi.

  An alibi for murder.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Hannah tied the mare in a thickly wooded copse nearly one-half mile from the farm. She had grown up running through these tree-lined hills and pastures. She remembered every draw and outcrop, every creek that gurgled with the late winter’s run-off. She hiked through shrubs and grasses whose moisture soaked the bottom of her dress, whose soil changed the deep green, trailing fabric to a muddy brown. More than once, a thorny arm of bramble snagged a coat sleeve and tore the filthy skirt. No matter. If her gambit failed, even the attire of queens would never save her; if she instead succeeded, she could buy or sew another dress.

  As she picked her way close to the house, she breathed a prayer that the copy of her father’s will still lay hidden in the place where she had stored it. Her father had insisted that she have it and that she tuck it away, in case anything happened to his lawyer, Alan Ryan.

  Something had happened to Mr. Ryan, all right, not long after her father’s death. He had passed away after a brief illness and left his records to a successor, Borden. The unscrupulous little worm had easily joined Malcolm, Judge Clark, and Jacob Handley and their unholy alliance. With his fall went her last chance, she’d thought.

  “We’ll slide this inside here.” Her father lifted a false bottom out of a bottom drawer in her oak dresser. She’d never realized it was there before. “And you needn’t mention it to anyone, not even Malcolm. Chances are you’ll never need it anyway,” he said.

  She’d thought it was strange, the way he particularly mentioned Malcolm. Though he never said another word to confirm it, she had the oddest feeling he didn’t trust her spouse. At the time, she’d shrugged away the intuition and forgot about the hidden copy. She had other things to think of soon enough.

  Far grimmer things, like the horse’s kick that took her father’s life. Honor had been her father’s joy, but the stud-colt had been high-strung from the start. After the accident, Hannah, in her grief, wanted to destroy the horse, but Malcolm had persuaded her that her father would not have wished it. Malcolm, the very man who’d come across the gruesome scene.

  She’d decided to keep Honor, knowing in that case, Malcolm had been right. Any horseman knew the dangers: a snapped neck or a crushed pelvis, a hard kick or a crippling fall. All were risks assumed when dealing with animals that outweighed them five or more times over. Her father understood, and he never would have wanted his moment of uncharacteristic carelessness to cost a fine, young animal his life.

  Tonight, she would reclaim Honor
, and all the rest as well. Slipping among trunks in a stand of pine trees, she caught her first glimpse of the house. The second story balcony, the white scrollwork against yellow brought tears to her eyes. Home, her heart cried. Home!

  She settled back amidst dry needles, determined to bide her time in silence. She hoped, she prayed, that Malcolm and his new wife would go out. On this night every week, some of Shelton Creek’s biggest hypocrites steadfastly attended a deacons’ meeting, and their wives met too, to gossip over shortcomings, real or imagined, of the congregation’s members. When Malcolm left with her replacement, Hannah planned to go inside and take the hidden will.

  If he didn’t leave, the task would be far riskier. She still intended to slip into the house. Within a month of Hannah’s father’s death, he’d insisted he and Hannah move into the master bedroom. They’d used her parents’ furnishings and left the dresser, with its precious, hidden document, in one of the smaller bedrooms down the hall. She prayed it remained inside the bedroom with the second story balcony, the one she’d so loved as a girl.

  That upstairs door had never been kept locked. Once, before her Robert left for war, she’d climbed down from that balcony to meet him for a walk. She smiled at the memory of their stolen kiss, so many years ago. Afterwards, she climbed the porch railing and onto the porch roof before hoisting herself back to the balcony and the safety of her bed.

  She only hoped she might be so limber now.

  o0o

  Melissa was brushing her straight, gold-streaked hair into an elegant upsweep. She’d put on one of her more attractive dresses, the tight-waisted burgundy affair that he’d once liked so much. Only twenty-five, she still had a girlish look about her he’d found so fetching. Now Malcolm felt only irritation as he watched her prepare to leave the house.

  “We aren’t going tonight,” he said.

  She turned toward him, with a frown. “But you’ve dressed to go out.”