Touched by Fire

by Gwyneth Atlee

  She would only take a minute before she left her stolen home.

  o0o

  Rifle tucked beneath an arm, Malcolm collapsed heavily into a kitchen chair. “Melissa!” he bellowed.

  She scurried down the stairs.

  He noticed she’d been crying, but said nothing. She cried a lot of late. Maybe it was one of those woman things he’d never understood. He couldn’t be bothered to keep up with her monthlies.

  “What happened?” she all but shrieked on seeing him.

  “A damned road agent,” Malcolm told her. “At least I shot the bastard, but I’m plenty hurt. I think he cracked some of my fingers.”

  “Should I go down the road and ask Mr. Went to fetch the doctor?”

  “Hell, no. I’ve had enough of his kind to last me my whole life. Just get me some whiskey, and clean up this eye. I’ll need cold water from the springhouse if I’m to soak this hand.”

  She rushed into his study, and he heard a crash. “For God’s sake,” he roared, “do you have to break the tumblers? What’s wrong with you tonight?”

  She appeared with one whole glass and a whiskey bottle. “I —I’m so sorry. I’m just worried about you. First leaving the way you did, and then coming back this way. I’ll clean up the mess later. Let me go get your cold water. You can soak your hand while I tend to that eye.”

  She took a piece of crockery out of the cabinet and left the house.

  Something thumped above his head. Painfully, he pushed himself onto his feet and walked into the parlor. Melissa’s cat sprawled across the sofa. He resisted the impulse to curse it and looked up.

  If the cat hadn’t made that sound, who had? Could Mouse Melissa have dared to take a lover? Righteous fury boiled in his blood. If it were true, he’d kill them both! He rechecked to see the rifle was loaded and stalked carefully upstairs.

  o0o

  Hannah heard the deep rumble of his voice, floating upward through the floorboards. After his first shout for his wife, she distinguished nothing except an angry tone. She had to hurry, before he came upstairs! With all the courage she could muster, she turned her back toward the open doorway and knelt before the dresser.

  She held her breath as she pulled out the drawer on the lower right. It caught, and she yanked harder. The stubborn drawer pulled free. Tossing aside an unfamiliar quilt, she clawed for the false bottom, prised it up.

  Please, she prayed, let it still be here.

  She heard paper rustle beneath her fingertips before she felt it. With a great sigh, she pulled it free. A glance assured her it was the precious copy, duly signed.

  “Thank you,” she whispered —to God, to her father, to Melissa, who had spared her life and allowed her a few moments more to search. After replacing the false bottom and the quilt, Hannah rolled the precious paper and slipped it into her skirt pocket, beside the derringer. Slowly, she tried to shut the drawer. It stuck again, and she pushed it somewhat harder than she should have, for it suddenly slammed shut. A vase atop the dresser fell with the concussion and toppled to the floor.

  Moments later, just above the whoosh of her pulse roaring, Hannah heard a creak. Her blood ran cold as she remembered. The second step gave only beneath the weight of a grown man.

  o0o

  His rifle raised, Malcolm moved in wraith-like silence down the hallway toward the master bedroom. He cursed the doorways along the way that he must check, for a gut feeling insisted the intruder was in the master bedroom. Melissa, with all her cowering and weeping, must have invited another man into their bed.

  Who could it be? he wondered. Joseph Went? His farm manager, a quiet, modest blond man, had been close at hand during Malcolm’s long absence. But Went seemed so devoted to his wife and growing brood . . . Maybe Jacob. Handley considered everything that wore a skirt fair game. Malcolm’s vision darkened with fury at the possibility of his friend’s treachery. The ungrateful bastard! Had he no loyalty?

  The fingers of his injured left hand brushed a hallway table, and Malcolm yelped in unexpected pain. Below, the door banged shut. He heard Melissa’s voice float up the stairs.

  “Malcolm?” She sounded tense and scared. The bitch.

  Another possibility made him swallow hard. Could it be Hannah? Hannah —here? He blinked, considering. Aldman had been looking for her, thought he knew where she was.

  Would she dare come here for him?

  A bolt of fear leapt through his chest. If Hannah had come, she’d come to kill him. What other reason could there be? Was she hidden up here, waiting behind a door, a knife or gun clutched in her hand?

  He felt his heart slam against his chest. Maybe she would shoot him, if she had the chance. He no longer believed she wouldn’t dare, or that she couldn’t do it. Something in him almost hoped that she would try. A lurid fantasy edged past his terror. He could catch her, ravage her once more before he slit her throat and bled her like a hog.

  With the rifle barrel leading, he approached the doorway of the bedroom on his left. Melissa had left a lamp burning on the nightstand. What had she been doing in this room? Cautiously, he stepped around the bed and found nothing amiss. His sore stomach ached as he bent to peek beneath the bed. He nearly screamed at the sight of a gun barrel, aiming toward him.

  Then he realized there was no one holding it.

  Kneeling, he swore and nearly laughed at his mistake. His “gun barrel” was an old cane, fuzzy with thick dust. Nothing here to fear except the ghost of Hannah’s dead grandmother.

  Straightening, he pushed open the door across the hall. He had once lived in this room, with Hannah. He remembered how he’d suffered with her father’s suspicions. Merritt Lee had once accused him of some silly fling that Malcolm had with Widow Toole. In this room, Shelton had made his plans to become the master of this household. Despite his nervousness, he almost smiled with the memory.

  “Malcolm!” Melissa’s voice again, this time laced with panic.

  After a perfunctory check of that room, he shouted down to her. “Get up here.” If she had any part in this, he wanted her beside him, so she could pay the price.

  “Why?” Her query fluttered nervously near the bottom of the stairs.

  “I said, come here.”

  Her steps were slow, as if with dread.

  When she appeared, her face gleamed pale as her white apron. “Is —is there something wrong? Your water’s downstairs. You should let me wash your face.”

  “Take the lamp and walk ahead of me into our room.”

  “What? Why would you —”

  “—Just do it!”

  She trembled but complied. He followed.

  “What is it?” she asked as he looked under the bed, inside the wardrobe, behind the brocade curtains.

  “I heard something up here.” Malcolm began to feel slightly foolish in his failure. “You haven’t dragged home another one of your damned cats?”

  “I only have the one.”

  “Something must have fallen, maybe in the attic after all.” He watched carefully for signs of her relief, a noisy exhalation, a drooping of her shoulders. He saw nothing but her ever-present fear.

  “You scared me. I thought —”

  “—Don’t bother. Thinking’s never been your greatest strength. Come downstairs and make me some coffee. I have to soak this hand. It’s swelling like a goddamned udder.”

  o0o

  Hannah said every prayer she could think of as she lay trembling beneath the bed of her old room. Half didn’t make sense: prayers of grace, thanksgiving, and blessings for the dead. The other half were desperate pleas, offers of all sorts of wild pledges in return for her deliverance. She hoped, if she survived, she could remember what she’d promised God.

  When she heard Malcolm and Melissa’s voices below, she crawled out from beneath the four-poster and brushed the dust off of her front. Her nose twitched, but she willed away a sneeze. The balcony door gave the same quiet squeal it had when she’d entered. Ignoring it, she pushed her way outside.
>
  A full moon shone not far above the treetops, painting the whole farm with colorless, pale light. Incredibly, Hannah realized, the place seemed wrong now, steeped in memories of blood and deep betrayal. She swore a silent oath she would restore it as her father would have wanted.

  She swung one leg over the railing, and began to lower herself to the porch roof. And then disaster struck.

  With an earsplitting crack, the railing of the balcony gave way. Hannah slid helplessly down the porch roof and tumbled off its edge.

  o0o

  She must have blacked out for a moment when she fell, flat on her back. Something hard and round jabbed at her cheek. Opening her eyes, she tried to brush aside the cold intrusion. Her hand jerked away, as if burnt, when her eyes focused on the rifle barrel pointing in her face. Somewhere nearby, she heard weeping. It sounded like Melissa.

  She had fallen in the rectangle of light. Malcolm stood above her, brandishing the gun.

  All deals are off, she told God silently.

  Something dark, perhaps blood, streaked the left side of Malcolm’s face.

  “That Aldman you were going to marry,” he explained, as if in answer to her unvoiced question. “He attacked.”

  His use of the past tense sent a wave of nausea rippling through her. Daniel must have come to look for her.

  “The idiot waylaid me on the road to Hampton Falls,” he continued, “but he didn’t count on this.” He lifted the weapon’s tip in victory. “I shot the bastard off his horse.”

  “You’re lying!”

  The scarred man shrugged. “Believe what you like. Maybe he’ll be waiting for you at Hell’s gate.”

  Daniel wouldn’t go near Malcolm, Hannah told herself. He’d promised. Oh, God, why hadn’t he stayed in Peshtigo, the way she’d planned? Tears of rage slid down her face, rage at Malcolm, and perversely, even more for the man that she had loved. Why had he followed her?

  “You murdered my father.” She pushed herself into a sitting position. Father, Daniel, both the men that she had loved. In her mind, even Robert’s ghost shouted accusations. Hadn’t Malcolm brought the news of that death, too?

  He ignored her charge. “Get up, Hannah. We’re going inside, to my study. Melissa, go upstairs. My first wife and I will need some privacy.”

  Dear God, he meant to rape her once again. How could he, with his own wife in the house?

  “I can’t,” Hannah lied. “I think my hip is broken.”

  Her right hand slid down it, down the pocket with the gun. A derringer against that long, steel rifle. She knew already that she didn’t have a chance.

  No matter. She’d rather provoke Malcolm into firing, rather die, like Daniel, than be touched again by her ex-husband.

  The rifle barrel slammed into her right shoulder, knocking her back to the ground. Heedless of the pain, her hand plunged downward, toward the weapon.

  A shot tore through the night. She blinked in disbelief as Malcolm thudded sideways to the ground. Beside him, arms highlighted by that pane of light, stood Melissa. A revolver smoked in her outstretched, trembling hands. Hannah glanced down. Gore seeped from a hole in Malcolm’s temple, which rested in a puddle of dark blood. His staring eyes were wide and round, as if with surprise.

  “I —I couldn’t —couldn’t let him. Not again.” Each word seemed caught in Melissa’s throat, nearly strangled by her sobs.

  Remoteness settled over Hannah like a shroud. Barely feeling her own body, she rose and went to Melissa, then put her own hands on the younger woman’s shoulders.

  “Let me take the gun,” whispered Hannah.

  She relinquished it without protest. “I killed him. I killed him.”

  “No.” Hannah shook her head. “He shot himself. When he learned I was taking back the farm, he couldn’t stand it. You tried to stop him, but it was already too late.”

  “Too late,” Melissa echoed. “Too late from the time I married him.”

  “Do you understand?” Hannah put the revolver into Malcolm’s right hand. His fingers still felt warm, and even now, she found his touch unnerving. She removed the rifle that lay beside him on the ground. “He committed suicide. Let me put this away. I remember where he kept it.”

  Hannah took the rifle back inside. When she returned, Melissa had knelt beside the body. She rocked slowly on her knees and moaned.

  “He did kill himself . . .” Melissa wiped her hands on her apron, over and over, as if to remove what she had done. “He started it the same day he went after you.”

  “I have to leave.” Hannah pulled her by the arm onto her feet. “I have to find Daniel. Don’t stay here. Can you go to a neighbor’s to get help?”

  Melissa nodded, but her damp eyes looked blank.

  “Remember,” Hannah told her. “This was suicide. And, Melissa?”

  The blond woman’s gaze snapped toward her.

  “Thank you.” Hannah embraced the younger woman. “I’m so sorry for my part in this.”

  Melissa shook her head. “We shouldn’t be sorry. We should hope he burns in Hell.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I killed Daniel, realized Hannah. I killed him by coming here. She’d known how much the earlier attack had cost him. He’d promised to always keep her safe, said that in his eyes, they were wed. What else could he do but follow her, to make certain Malcolm wouldn’t hurt her?

  But he’d promised, promised her. Again, her anger flared, bright as Peshtigo had been that awful night. He had given her his word.

  Stupid. She was stupid, to let fury wrap itself around her fear. If she should be angry with anyone, it should be herself.

  For every star, she wished once that she’d never lied to Daniel, that she’d had the courage to break her bond with him before she’d left. Or maybe if she’d stayed with him in Peshtigo, Malcolm never would have come back. Maybe after while, her fears would have begun to fade and the farm would have been forgotten. Right now, she felt so confused, so empty despite the victory represented by the paper tucked inside her pocket.

  Regretful tears nearly blinded her as she rode Tillie back toward Hampton Falls. Even in bright moonlight, she could see little beyond dark shapes of trees beside the road. Unless Malcolm had left Daniel lying close, she could ride right past him without seeing.

  Over and over, she called out his name, until the air rang with her fear. Until someone called out from a farmhouse to ask her what was wrong.

  The mare resisted Hannah’s efforts to turn her nose away from home and evening’s ration of coarse grains. But Hannah mastered her, and the horse trotted toward the white frame house.

  “You need help?” a stout woman asked her from the porch. Two little children stared, partly hidden by their mother’s broad rear end.

  “I’m looking for my husband,” Hannah told her, surprised she’d called him that. “Someone told me he’d been shot.”

  “Let me get Mr. Woodson,” said the woman. “He’s already in bed.”

  Maybe she should have gone straight to the Blooms’ for help, thought Hannah. By now, they would be worried sick about her disappearance. But the Blooms were miles away. She had to get to Daniel now.

  After a few long minutes, a spindly-legged man in his thirties appeared, still tucking in a faded shirt. “Wife tells me you’ve got trouble. She says she heard a shot a while back, toward Hampton Falls. Let me get a gun. If there’s road agents or hooligans about, we’ll want to be prepared.”

  “Thank you,” Hannah told them.

  The woman brought a lantern and offered it to her. In a few moments, her spouse returned with his hunting rifle.

  “We have a hired boy. Should I send him for the sheriff?” the woman asked.

  Hannah shook her head. Handley was the last person she wanted to see. Besides, he’d soon be busy at the Shelton farm. “Send him with us, if you would,” she said. “We have to find my Daniel quickly.” She turned toward the man. “I’m going to ride ahead while you saddle your horse.”

  “Be bet
ter if you didn’t,” he suggested. “You don’t need to see your man that way.”

  But she’d already seen her share of blood this evening. She’d already turned her horse’s nose toward home —and, hopefully, toward Daniel.

  “Daniel!” Hannah cried again and again until her throat ached and her voice grew hoarse. With each call, she hesitated, straining her ears to hear something, anything beyond the brisk clop of the mare’s hooves and the squeaking of the horse’s leather saddle.

  She stared into the night, her gaze lingering on places silvered with bright moonlight. But close beside them lay deep shadows, reminding her of the dark puddle beside Malcolm’s head. Would there be another next to Daniel, once she found him?

  A sob caught in her throat, and she had to struggle not to give in to it, not to let it rise and grow into an endless scream. She had to stop calling Daniel’s name, unable to risk losing control.

  “Hannah!”

  She jerked toward the sound and held her breath, afraid she might have dreamed it.

  “Hannah?”

  Daniel’s voice —she’d recognize it anywhere.

  She stared off to her right, where the sound had seemed to come from, and finally spotted what looked like a tree stump in the moonlight. When she drew closer, she could make out the still form of a fallen horse.

  Daniel lay beside it, his leg pinned by its bulk. The only blood she saw darkened the dead horse’s ribs.

  Hannah slid from Tillie and ran toward him, carrying the lantern.

  “Malcolm said he’d shot you! What in God’s name are you doing here?” she cried out, unable to keep the anger from her voice. Her hands trembled, making the lamplight flutter like moth wings.

  “If the damned fool can’t tell the difference between shooting down a horse and a man, that’s it. I’m going to have to kill him. I’ve been lying here forever. I can’t seem to get free.” Daniel’s voice rumbled with impatience.