Way Back

by Williams, Abbie;

Her angry utterance was interrupted as the jailhouse door crashed open as though kicked, slamming against the wall and subsequently emitting the marshal, clutching the man from the alley.

  “Cole,” the marshal said succinctly, and that was all it took for Cole to rise and lead both Patricia and me out of the way. Patricia slipped an arm around my waist and drew me closer to her; Cole positioned himself in front of us, though the sorry figure being half-dragged into the room hardly seemed a threat at this point.

  “I hope you enjoy this evening’s accommodations, Turnbull,” Miles said conversationally, unlocking one of the small cells in the room. “I’d get used to the view from behind bars, if I was you.”

  Patricia kept a firm grip on my waist. Between her warmth and the marshal’s jacket, my trembling had stilled. The man who’d intended to rape me was summarily tossed to his knees, his bearded face beaten to a bloody, swollen mess. The marshal relocked the door and then stepped back, his gaze seeking mine.

  “Thank you,” I felt compelled to say. My throat was tight and hoarse.

  “Come, Ruthann, you shall stay with me this night,” Patricia said, with authority.

  “No, Miss Rawley will remain here,” Miles responded, in a tone which brooked absolutely no argument. “I have a desire to speak with her.”

  “She is hurting and I shall care for her.” Patricia’s arm remained locked around my waist; we were almost exactly the same height.

  Miles said, “I will care for her, rest assured,” and my heart went into a seizure.

  “I’m all right,” I murmured to Patricia, touched by her concern.

  Patricia turned her blue eyes to Miles and implored, “Once you have spoken, I insist Ruthann be escorted to my train car.”

  “Your people will be looking for you at any moment,” Cole said to Patricia. “Come, I’ll walk you back.”

  “I do not wish to leave this place, not until Ruthann is able to accompany me.” Her expression dared him to deny her this request.

  A grudging smile tugged at Cole’s mouth. He disregarded her order and said, “Let’s go,” holding forth one hand in polite invitation, nodding at the door.

  “I shall not.”

  “I’m just fine,” I said quickly, hoping to thwart an argument. “I have a room at Rilla’s, but I thank you for the offer.”

  Patricia was plainly torn; she was used to getting her way, I could tell. She finally said, “I shall find you first thing in the morning, does that suit you?”

  “It does.” I tried for a smile.

  “Come along, Mrs. Yancy,” Cole said, emphasizing her name just slightly.

  Patricia kissed my cheek before sweeping past the men and out the door. Cole looked to Miles, the two of them exchanging a brief, wordless conversation that spoke a thousand things to which I was not privy.

  Seconds later Cole followed Patricia, and Miles and I were alone.

  Chapter Seven

  AEMON TURNBULL, THE MAN HUNCHED IN THE JAIL CELL, issued a low, groaning grunt, and this sound temporarily drew the marshal’s attention; he said quietly, “We will speak in my quarters rather than this office, Miss Rawley. If you’ll accompany me?”

  Though he framed this as a question, it was actually an order; I could do nothing but nod. He locked the front entrance to the jail and I allowed him to lead the way outside, where the air was chill and the sounds of the town at play in the saloons drifted to our ears. A small wooden structure, no bigger than Branch and Axton’s shanty cabin, was situated a few yards beyond the jailhouse; Miles had plucked the lantern from the desk, which he now placed on a tabletop in this, his personal space.

  My eyes roved anxiously from the table with three mismatched chairs to a small porcelain basin of water, a fat-bellied woodstove, and a narrow bed made of ropes stretched taut over a wooden frame, covered by a disheveled quilt. I darted my gaze at once from the place where he slept.

  “Please, be seated,” Miles said, withdrawing a chair. “I apologize for the unseemly location of this conversation. I am unwilling to converse before that vermin in the jail at present, and I have a wish to speak with you. I have since our first encounter.”

  I sat, awkward and nervous, clutching the bloody cloth, his jacket still hooked over my shoulders. Miles dragged a chair around the table, closer to me, which seemed to create a force field in my chest; it was all I could do not to scramble away, as tense as though I sat here naked. Without asking permission, he took the cloth from my hand, dipped it in the basin and then squeezed it out.

  His shirtsleeves were unbuttoned, rolled back from his forearms, which were covered in dark hair. He had lean, strong, long-fingered hands, which I studied as they performed the small tasks; the dark hair continued over the backs of his wrists. I watched as though transfixed as he leaned and dabbed at the wound on my forehead.

  “Turnbull struck you?” His anger at my potential response was held carefully in check.

  I nodded.

  “He claims you and Mrs. Yancy struck him,” the marshal went on, placing his fingertips beneath my chin, holding me steady as he administered the damp cloth. His touch was gentle and warm at both points of contact on my skin. No more than two feet of empty air separated our faces as he cleansed my forehead; he said softly, “I hope you realize I am not going to hurt you.”

  I found my voice at last. “I know.”

  “You appear afraid of me,” he justified, pausing in his ministrations to look into my eyes. His fingertips moved against my chin, not quite stroking me but not far from it. I thought he must be able to feel the strength of the pulse in my throat. He turned to rinse the cloth, tinting the water faintly red with my blood. I released a narrow breath, clutching his jacket together between my breasts.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” I found the wherewithal to say.

  He reapplied the cloth to my forehead; he hadn’t squeezed it out as well this time and a lukewarm drip of water rolled down the left side of my nose. I reached to swipe at it the same moment he did and our hands collided. Unexpectedly, he smiled. My heart throbbed in response.

  He said, “Well, that’s good. And I apologize.”

  I spoke before I thought. “No, it’s me who should be apologizing.” His eyebrows lifted in an obvious question and I hurried to explain, “For accosting you on the street the other day.”

  “About that.” His focus returned to my forehead and he took a moment cleaning the last of the blood away, finally sitting back and folding the cloth over the edge of the basin. “Are you able to tell me what happened this evening?”

  I gripped his jacket tighter around my body; his eyes followed the movements of my hands. “I was planning to walk out to Branch Douglas’s claim shanty.”

  “Walk out of town?” he interrupted. “Surely you have better sense than to walk alone after dark.”

  “No one notices me. Usually Axton and I ride together in the evenings, and I eat supper with them –”

  He interrupted for the second time to repeat my words, rather more heatedly than necessary. “No one notices you?”

  “They really don’t.” He looked as though he thought I was lying and I felt a spark of temper, insisting, “I don’t work as a…” The word lodged in my throat. “As a whore. Rilla offered me a place to live if I help out with the daily laundry. I don’t normally hang out on the floor after customers start arriving, but still…”

  “Have you no idea how vulnerable you are?” Miles was visibly upset. “A woman alone, wandering the streets of this town after dark? I wouldn’t let my own mother consider such, and she could probably out-shoot me on any given afternoon.”

  “I don’t make a habit of it. I was only alone tonight because I told Axton I didn’t feel well enough for our usual ride.”

  “Branch and Axton Douglas look after you? They claim to have found you earlier this summer, badly injured. What of this? How came you to be alone on the prairie outside Howardsville?”

  “I wish I knew.” I felt the familiar prickle of te
ars and used my knuckles to swipe at them; the jacket sank from my shoulders.

  “Allow me,” he said, drawing his jacket around my upper body. Our gazes clung. I felt as if with the slightest touch applied to any part of me, I would burst like a soap bubble. My heart beat with such agitation I could feel it to the soles of my feet.

  “Thank you.” My voice shook.

  “Who are you?” he whispered. His hands, having accomplished the polite task, now lingered; he cupped my shoulders, with extreme care, as if I was constructed of glass. My gaze moved between his eyes and his lower lip, the top hidden by his full black mustache. My thighs began trembling.

  “I don’t know.”.

  “I do not understand.” He lifted his hands and tucked hair behind my ears with movements both adept and tender, and the trembling overtook my belly. He whispered, “Your hair startled me so, when you first confronted me. It was loose and I am unused to seeing women with their hair loose, at least in the daylight hours.” He seemed to realize he was behaving exceptionally boldly – certainly out of line – and he could never know I wanted right then to lean into his full embrace. I wanted this so much physical pain swelled in my chest.

  “Forgive me.” He leaned back, withdrawing his touch. He appeared ashen beneath his darkly-tanned skin. “I very much apologize, Miss Rawley. I am not myself this night.”

  I felt desperate with the need to understand. “Then who are you?”

  Instead of answering, he asked, “How is it that I know you, when I am certain we have never met before the other day? I have felt I must be losing my mind since last I saw you.”

  “I’ve felt the same way,” I whispered.

  “You’ve been hurt and I am behaving most abominably.” He sounded tortured. “Aemon Turnbull will pay, of that rest assured. I have no doubt he would have caused you greater harm if not for Mrs. Yancy happening upon you. She struck him?”

  “Yes. She saw him follow me so she followed him. She saved me. Marshal,” and a sharp pain stabbed my heart as I spoke his formal title rather than his name. “You weren’t wrong. I should know better than to walk alone at night. I just wanted to see Axton and Branch, and my new horse. I missed them.”

  “They care for you? They look out for you?”

  “They do.”

  “Have you no family, no one searching for you?”

  “I can’t remember,” I said miserably. “I don’t know a thing about my life.”

  “Rilla Jaymes allows you room and board, in exchange for laundry duties?”

  I nodded.

  “She treats you well in her establishment?”

  I faltered, not wanting to seem ungrateful; Rilla gave me the security of a nightly bed.

  “Rilla Jaymes does not strike me as a compassionate woman,” he said when I didn’t answer. “I dislike imagining you at her mercy. I dislike the thought of anyone mistreating you.”

  I said in a rush, “Celia Baker. She cares for me. And she really is pregnant. She has no reason to lie and she would kill me for having told you. She won’t tell you herself.”

  His eyebrows drew together, forehead creasing in a combination of denial and confusion. “I cannot…how may it be possible…”

  “She told me she was with you, and no others, last spring before getting pregnant. And she believes there’s nothing you would do, even if she told you the truth.” I hadn’t intended to punish him with these words but his expression indicated I had. I said quickly, “But you can help her. You can arrange it so she won’t have to send the baby away.”

  He clenched his forehead with one hand, as if to stop a flood of thoughts he wanted nothing to do with. “You must think me a heartless man, a man without principle.”

  “I truly don’t. But Celia needs help.”

  “I cannot raise a child.” He sounded horrified at the prospect. “I haven’t the means. I haven’t a wife.”

  My thoughts whirled through possibilities. “What about your brother? Isn’t he married? Isn’t he near here?”

  “Grantley? Yes, on both counts. But he and his wife have two of their own children. I could not ask my brother to raise my bastard child…oh, dear God…”

  I whispered, “You could marry Celia.”

  He looked even more horrified than he’d sounded moments ago. “I could not.”

  “So she’s good enough to share your bed but not your name?” I cried. “Is it because she’s a whore?!”

  “It is because I do not love her. Nothing would stop me if I loved her.” His tone was deadly serious. “My father taught me two things. One, to ride a horse. Second, to marry a woman for love. He loves my mother with his whole heart and I have always listened to what my father taught me.”

  I felt totally out of control. “So you can have sex with her for a solid month but you can’t stoop to marrying her?! What the hell would your father have to say about that?!”

  “Dang, you two, I can hear you all the way outside,” said Cole Spicer, entering the little cabin without a knock. He looked amused, eyeing me with a grin. He teased, “You seem far too ladylike for the kind of language I just heard.”

  I nearly bit through my bottom lip, unable to suppress an angry glare in Miles’s direction; he spoke at the same moment, saying to Cole, “I’ll thank you to take your sorry, eavesdropping self out of here.”

  “I just got here,” Cole returned easily, not in the least perturbed, kicking a chair around so he could brace his forearms over the back of it. “I ain’t going anywhere for a day, at least.” He looked between the two of us, still grinning. “Is Rawley taking good care of you, Miss Ruthann?”

  It would be unfair to act like he wasn’t and so I nodded, now avoiding Miles’s gaze.

  “I’m glad to hear it. He’s never been a true ladies’ man, like myself,” Cole continued, winking at me. He seemed almost giddy.

  “You want a severe beating, Spicer? Right here?” Miles demanded.

  “I don’t see anyone who could deliver it,” Cole threw back.

  “Did Patricia get safely home?” I asked, breaking into their brotherly-sounding bickering.

  “She did indeed,” Cole said, merriment fading. He was silent, reflective, for the space of a heartbeat. “She seems intent on befriending you.”

  “I would like that.” I wondered at his pause.

  “She said she wishes to see more of you this week.” Cole rested his chin on his stacked hands, which were curved over the rounded chair back; his eyes were the brown of acorns, almost devilish in their expression. I found myself speculating he’d always been the friend who got everyone else in trouble with his ideas.

  “Well, I’m not going anywhere,” I muttered.

  “Has Miles offered you something to drink? Food of any kind?” Cole pressed.

  The marshal issued a deep sigh, rubbing his fingertips over his forehead in the manner of someone with a headache. I felt a small twinge of sympathy. I told Cole, “He cleaned my wound and determined that someone is looking out for me.”

  “He ain’t ever been much of a host. We’ve been friends a long time, Miss Ruthann. We don’t hold nothing back when it comes to each other’s business, do we, Rawley?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Miles muttered. “Would you rather spend the night in the alley? As I can arrange it.”

  Cole ignored this jab. “The cook in the saloon next door was friendly enough, earlier. I’ll run and see if she can fix me one more plate. You must be hungry.”

  I was, but I said, “I don’t want to trouble you.”

  “No trouble at all,” Cole said. “Give me just a minute,” and he disappeared out the door.

  In Cole’s absence, Miles moved to kneel near the woodstove. Without a word, he began building a fire in its belly and for a time we were silent, the tension slowly leaking away. At last, without looking my way, he said, “I should have asked if you were hungry. I apologize.”

  “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.” I was surprised to hear myself admit, “It
’s just that you make me so upset.”

  Miles looked over his shoulder, his expression more serious than ever. Behind him, in the woodstove, the fire glinted to existence.

  I rushed on, “I know it’s not my business, I really do, but Celia is my friend. I care about her. And she’s so worried.” The thought of my conversation with her the first night we’d spoken intruded into my head; I was half in love with him, Celia had said and she meant Miles, the man kneeling before me just now.

  “And you are worried for her,” Miles understood.

  I forced myself not to fidget under his steady gaze.

  I began, “I am –” but Cole suddenly returned, bearing a plate of biscuits and sausage gravy; my stomach clenched in hunger. I’d eaten nothing since my breakfast of a boiled egg and lukewarm coffee.

  “Thank you.” I accepted the plate and a bundle containing both fork and butter knife.

  “My pleasure.” Cole settled again onto his backward chair. “Cook next door was sweet as pie to give me a second plate. It’s because I’ve got a nice smile.”

  I gouged an enormous forkful from a biscuit and dragged it through the thick sausage gravy, smiling at his teasing bravado.

  Cole tipped his chair on two legs, like a little boy. “Miles, this night has been unexpectedly exciting.”

  Miles closed the woodstove’s grate and rejoined us, claiming the same chair he’d used earlier, dragging it just a little closer to mine. “It’s been unexpected, that’s for certain.”

  The quiet, dimly-lit space lent me a fleeting sense of confidence; before I could lose my nerve, I asked Cole, “Why would you say Patricia’s husband’s family is criminal?”

  Cole righted his chair and rubbed a thumb over his jaw, plainly unsure how to respond; I was, after all, a stranger to him. Both he and Miles radiated a sense of strength and capability I found reassuring and slightly intimidating, and I hoped he would trust me with an answer. At last he said, “That’s a long story, Miss Ruthann. There’s plenty I could tell you to help you understand but it involves the business of my very dear friend, Malcolm Carter. I couldn’t tell you the entire story without Malcolm here. Does that make sense?” “Of course.” I was touched he would take his friend into such consideration.