Foxfire Bride

by Maggie Osborne

  "I've felt better." Peaches raised a hand to cover a series of babbling coughs. "Arms and legs swollen like sausages," he murmured, shaking his head. "Need to tell you Eugenia's story."

  Eugenia? Tanner hid a smile. "I know most of it."

  "Good." Closing his eyes, struggling to breathe, Peaches rested a minute. "Maybe she'll listen to you. Don't let her kill Jennings."

  Tanner stiffened. "Jennings?" he said in a flat voice.

  "Hobbs Jennings. Your employer. Figured if you knew that, you'd try hard to stop her. Know you admire the man."

  Tanner's mind raced, rushing back over everything Fox had told him and her puzzling hatred of Hobbs Jennings. The pieces fell into place.

  "Her mother was Delphinia Foxworth," he said, thinking it through.

  Peaches nodded, his head barely moving. "Got to stop her."

  Tanner stared out the tent opening. Fox and Jubal Brown sat beside the fire, drinking coffee, not talking. Her braid had come partially unraveled and red strands lifted in the breeze. Faint circles bruised her eyes.

  "It can't be Hobbs Jennings," he said in a low rough voice. "Hobbs Jennings would never steal a nickel. He would never, not ever, throw away a child."

  "He did. I was there, Mr. Tanner. Saw the bastard. Heard him introduce himself to Miz Wilson, the cousin of Fox's mother. Saw him leave a little girl on the porch and ride away in his fine carriage without a backward glance."

  Tanner lowered his forehead into his hand. His mind rejected what he was hearing, but the pain in his gut told him it was true. During the long minutes that passed in silence, he suddenly understood lifelong puzzles.

  "Fox can't kill Jennings," he said flatly. "If I can't change her mind, then I'll have to tell Jennings that she's coming after him."

  "Hoped you'd say that." Peaches turned his head and wiped froth from his lips off on his sleeve. "Nasty business, this dying," he apologized. "Do whatever it takes to save her from hanging."

  Shock paralyzed him. He sat beside Peaches long after the old man had slipped into a semiconscious fitful sleep, staring out of the tent at Fox. Eugenia Foxworth. He had known there was a child, a little girl, but he couldn't recall if he had ever been told her name.

  The sun was past the midday mark when he finally emerged from Peaches's tent and walked toward her.

  "Come with me," he ordered in a rough voice. "We have to talk."

  * * *

  CHAPTER 20

  Tanner led Fox to the canyon wall where he'd found her earlier, and halted beside the bloodstains on the rock.

  "What is it?" she asked anxiously, trying to read his expression. "Is Peaches?"

  Tanner's hands clasped her shoulders. "My full name is Matthew Tanner Jennings."

  The announcement wasn't close to what she had expected and her mind skipped past it, waiting for whatever would follow. His hard expression told her to go back.

  Fox ground her teeth in exasperation. Matthew Tanner Jennings. Slowly, comprehension widened her eyes and she jerked out from under his hands, shocked and unable to speak.

  "My mother was Caroline Tanner. When I went to work for Jennings Mining and Mercantile, my father suggested I use Tanner as a last name and I agreed. I could do my job better and with more cooperation if I wasn't known as the boss's son. Moreover, the men would speak freely. I'd be able to identify problem areas before those problems became serious."

  "Peaches told you about Hobbs Jennings," she said, working it out. For a second her mind refused to grasp the implication of what he was saying. Then she reeled backward, staring with wild eyes. "Oh my God. Hobbs Jennings is your father!"

  "I don't have the answers, Fox. I don't understand how the man you know meshes with the man I know. But Hobbs Jennings is a good man."

  "Shut up!" Her scream echoed down the canyon. Bending at the knees, she swallowed back a rush of vomit. His father. Oh God. "I need to think a minute."

  The late-afternoon heat radiated off the rock, making her feel dizzy and sick inside. Tanner was Hobbs Jennings's son. It couldn't be true. Straightening abruptly, she studied his face, searching for Jennings in the shape of his brow, the craggy angle of his jaw. But too many years had passed. She didn't remember or didn't want to.

  "There was a son," she whispered, rubbing her temples. "I never met him. He was back east somewhere." Now she knew he'd been in Boston because Tanner had told her. "He'd been living with an uncle, going to school?"

  "If my father did this, Fox, it's tortured him."

  "Good! I wish it had killed him!"

  Tanner's lips thinned and he turned stony eyes toward the river. "There's a portrait he keeps on his desk and has for as long as I can remember. A little girl of about five or six. I've always assumed she was one of the girls from the orphanages he supports."

  "It sure as hell isn't me, if that's what you're implying. Your father has no reason to want to remember me. My mother wasn't buried yet before he'd dumped me on Mrs. Wilson's doorstep and walked away. He stole my money and never gave me another fricking thought! That's what a good man Hobbs Jennings is!"

  "I can't believe that." Turning, he faced the sun-washed rock stained with Fox's blood.

  Fox felt like attacking the wall again. "I've picked up coins until my back was screaming in pain. I've killed men, I've been shot up myself." Her fingers flew to her torn earlobe. "I've been half baked by the sun, and half frozen in snow. And all to rescue the bastard who ruined my life! I don't believe this!"

  "And I'm paying you to go to Denver and murder my father."

  They squared off, facing each other with rock-hard eyes and tense bodies.

  "Don't do it," Tanner said softly.

  His revelation and the enormity of what he asked drained the fight out of her, leaving her limp and trembling. "And then what? We go off and live happily ever after?" She shook her head violently enough that her braid flipped over her shoulder. "One day I'd look up at you and hate you, Tanner. I'd think about him living in that big mansion enjoying a life he stole. Maybe I'd think about you and the fancy education that my inheritance paid for. I'd think about me and Peaches eating out of waste cans behind San Francisco restaurants while you were on a Grand Tour of Europe. Paid for with my mother's money that should have been mine."

  Tanner's shoulders twitched and he swore for a full minute. "If my father did this, then every privilege I grew up with should have been yours. Is that what you want to hear? All right. If my father did this, then it's true."

  " If he did it? If ?" She barely restrained the urge to lunge at him and claw his eyes out. "You know he did! My mother fell in love with a man who had no fortune, but she didn't care because she had money enough for them both. Do you remember the time before you had all those fricking privileges?"

  The flicker in his gaze told her that he'd been a child, but old enough to remember.

  "And suddenly, the money troubles ended, didn't they?"

  Tanner didn't answer, but she knew what he was thinking. He'd been told his father inherited after his new wife and her daughter had died.

  "Oh Christ." Turning in a circle, Fox stamped her feet and hit her thighs with her fists. "It's not your fault." Leaning forward, she covered her eyes and pressed her forehead hard against the warm rock.

  Now she knew why he had brought her here. The dried blood on the wall reflected her anguish over Peaches. Tanner wanted to remind her what he would feel if she killed his father.

  If ever there had been a slim hope that she and Tanner could find their way to each other, now it was gone. If she killed Hobbs Jennings, Tanner would never forgive her. If she abandoned her vow and let the bastard live for Tanner's sake, she would end up hating Tanner for condoning what Jennings had done. And that's how she saw it. If Tanner didn't believe that Jennings should pay for his crime, then Tanner condoned it.

  When the hangman slipped the noose around her neck, Fox would thank him.

  She knew Tanner had walked away although he hadn't spoken. His absence was like a void
at her back. After trying to piece herself together, she followed, bowed by a mix of emotions that battered her like swinging clubs. Head down, she walked into his back.

  Tanner turned and opened his arms. Fox scowled upward, read his expression, and her face went slack. She knew. Fighting like a mad woman, she struggled to shove past him, but he held her, pulling her back against his chest.

  She could see into Peaches's tent straight ahead. Jubal sat inside the tent, holding Peaches in his arms.

  "He's gone," Jubal said quietly. But Fox heard.

  She gripped Tanner's arms so hard that later she realized she'd gouged deep nail marks in his skin. "Did he" Oh God, oh God. Halting, she licked saliva into her mouth. "Did he say anything?"

  Jubal looked at her over Peaches's head on his shoulder. "At the end, he was talking to a child, it sounded like. Seemed like he thought the world of that child."

  Fox sagged against Tanner, silent tears strangling her. Her chest hurt. When she could breathe again, she wiped her nose and jerked back her shoulders then walked forward.

  "Get out of that tent. I need to hold him for a while."

  She wrapped her arms around Peaches and held him until it was almost dark, singing in his ear, all the lullabies she could remember. Singing to drown out the sound of digging. Singing to send him on his way to the pretty angels and the new overalls.

  They buried him at dusk. Before the men lowered Peaches into the earth, Fox tucked his chess set inside his blanket. Then she asked Tanner to cut off the lower six inches of her braid, and she laid that inside his blanket, too.

  When it was done, Fox watched with dull eyes as Tanner fashioned a cross out of two wooden spoons and pounded it into the ground at the head of the mound.

  Jubal took off his hat and cleared his throat. "I guess he was about the best black man I ever knew."

  "Rest in peace, my friend." Tanner bowed his head.

  Fox crushed her hat against her chest and blinked hard. "Wait for me," she whispered. "It won't be long."

  Not caring that Jubal could see and overhear, she walked into Tanner's arms and wrapped her arms around his waist. "I need you. Can we forget about the rest for tonight, and just you know?"

  Without a word, he lifted her and carried her away from the fire, walking in the opposite direction from the canyon walls. Closing her eyes, Fox wrapped her arms around his neck and breathed the scent of him. Earth, horses, sweat, wood smoke. Peaches must be smelling the same thing, she thought, because this was how heaven must smell.

  When Tanner laid her down on a blanket spread across the lush river grass, she realized he had anticipated her need. Lying where he'd placed her, Fox stared up at a black sparkling sky, and wondered if it was true that a person's soul became a star.

  "Don't move," Tanner said softly, kneeling beside her. His fingers opened her braid. "Just lie there and let me love you."

  She watched his face as he undid the buttons on her shirt and pulled off the rope that cinched her trousers. Every line at the corners of his eyes and mouth was known to her. She could have drawn the exact shape of his lips and the stubborn angle of his jaw. She knew the feel of his skin beneath her palms, knew the silky tickle of his chest hair under her cheek. She knew his strength and his tenderness. She knew all this, but she hadn't known his real name.

  When they were both naked, she rolled toward him, warming herself against the cool night air with the heat of his body and the fire of needing him inside her.

  Tilting her face up, Tanner kissed her, gently at first, not rushing. He didn't touch her body until she caressed him first, then he stroked her with infinite tenderness until he felt her tremble and heard her moan his name. And then he kissed her with growing urgency, licking and suckling at her breasts, combing his fingers through the damp hair between her thighs. Kissed her until she gasped and thrashed beneath him. Stroked and teased and touched until the world receded and she was wild and half mad with desire.

  When he came into her, she clung to him, unaware of the tears that flowed silently to pool in the hollow of her throat. She loved him. Loved him so hard and deep that it hurt inside. Loved him like a dream so real it was a shock to wake and discover it never was and couldn't be. She loved him so much that she would rather die than live a life without him.

  Afterward, they lay in each other's arms, lost in the joy of each other. Then Fox sat up suddenly and grabbed the edge of the blanket, yanking it forward to cover her breasts and bottom.

  "You're my brother!"

  The moon illuminated his shock as Tanner also shot upright and stared. "Good God. You're my sister!"

  "No, wait." Fox thrust out a hand and drew a deep breath. "Hobbs Jennings is your father, but he's only my stepfather."

  "We aren't related by blood."

  Fox clapped a hand over her eyes. "Thank God. For a minute there, I thought"

  The insanity of their situation washed over her and she fell back on the blanket, breathless with great gusts of laughter. "Oh my Lord!"

  Tanner dropped beside her, laughing until the tension and emotion of the last few days ran out of them. At the end, Fox pressed against him and his arms closed around her.

  "I'm sorry, Tanner. With all my heart, I wish things were different. I wish there was a future for us."

  "There could be."

  But the lack of conviction in his tone told her he didn't believe it. He'd reached the same conclusion as Fox. He couldn't live with a woman who had killed his father. She couldn't live knowing she'd let Hobbs Jennings go free without paying for his crime.

  They dressed in silence then held hands on the way back to the campfire. Immediately Fox's gaze swung to the spot where Peaches's tent had stood. Jubal, bless him, had removed the tent and packed it away. Turner pulled her close. "I'll have to tell him."

  "I know," she said in a low voice. "Do what you have to do."

  It didn't matter. Hobbs Jennings could surround himself with a dozen bodyguards, and she'd still get him. Give her a rifle and a split second with a clear shot, and the bastard would die.

  They held each other with a hint of desperation, as if they both knew there would not be another night like tonight. From now on Hobbs Jennings would stand between them. It was one more thing the bastard had to pay for. Now he'd stolen the last two weeks of her time with Tanner, where she could have found enough joy to see her through to the scaffold. "If I could find a way that I could live with" Tanner placed a finger across her lips. "I know." They stood together, tangled in an embrace until their eyelids drooped with exhaustion. Even then they could not part. Slipping to the ground, Tanner rested his back against one of the packs and near dawn fell asleep with her head on his chest.

  The shock of discovery had dissipated, replaced by an icy stone of anger that knocked against his chest. How could his father, a man he believed he knew, have stolen his wife's fortune and then thrown away a child? What kind of man committed those crimes? His arms tightened around Fox and he rested his cheek on her hair, inhaling her scent, listening to the soft whisper of her breath. Fury closed his throat. Every instinct demanded that he protect this woman and avenge the wrongs done to her. Nothing could change her past and the injuries done to her; his love for her insisted on justice.

  But the man who had ruined her life was his father. A man Tanner respected and loved as deeply as he loved the woman in his arms.

  Christ. Easing a hand away from Fox, he rubbed his forehead as if he could erase the jumble of emotions hammering inside his head. Love and loyalty tore him into two pieces.

  Fox hadn't realized how slowly they had been traveling. Without Peaches to adjust for, the pace picked up considerably and they made good time, riding hard from dawn to dusk. They reached the mineral springs in one day instead of two.

  The following morning they entered the canyons cut by the Grand north of the mineral springs. Jubal cursed, muttered, and made dire predictions, but a perilous and tense day passed without incident.

  The next day, deep int
o the mountains now, they left the Grand and followed the Eagle River east, climbing steadily into pine forests and stands of shimmering aspen. The air freshened and cooled. Each day Fox saw foxes, bobcats, deer, or mountain sheep.

  Spring came late to the mountains, but had arrived in full glory. Blue and white columbines looked for sun on the forest floor. Wild purple lupin grew thick near the river, and carpets of low white phlox vied for space with great drifts of bright yellow dandelions.

  At night their campfire smelled like pine, and the warmth was welcome at high altitude. Fox had returned to wearing her poncho even during the sunny part of the days. They had begun to watch for movement in the trees, waiting for the kidnappers to make themselves known.

  "I'm guessing they'll approach at the top of the pass," Tanner said that night, warming his hands around a cup of coffee. "That's where I'd do it."

  Jubal nodded agreement. "The timber will be thinner. They'll hear us coming long before we see them."

  "Do you expect trouble?" Fox rode with her rifle and slept with her Gilt. After the incident with the bear, none of them allowed any space between themselves and a weapon.

  Tanner shook his head. "They want the gold. If my father is alive, I'm guessing the exchange will proceed smoothly."

  Jubal agreed. "But if your father isn't present, then they're killers. We shoot them before they get us."

  "I guess we'll know the day after tomorrow. That's when we'll reach the summit."

  Fox missed Tanner so much that she couldn't look at him across the fire. She burned for him, ached for him. During the first days after Peaches's death, they had ridden beside each other, filling in the details of their pasts, like figuring out where he'd been at the time she'd made the first trek across country to find Hobbs Jennings. She'd told him how the newspapers in Denver had printed her name wrong, identifying her as Eugenia Fox instead of Foxworth. The name had stuck.

  Tanner had smiled. "Fox suits you."

  "I never felt like a Eugenia," she'd confessed.