“That’s all we’re gonna get.” She sat across the table from Becky so she could look her in the eye. “And if you go looking for more, you’re going to make things worse for us. While we love you, Miss Becky, we know our place and that ain’t something you’ve learned yet.”
Talk of the first real friends she’d ever had knowing their place set Becky’s temper to simmering, and she knew as soon as Fiona had her say, she was going to walk down to Adam’s office anyway and demand justice for Betty. Whether they thought she was worthy of it or not, Becky believed she was.
“Here’s the thing,” Fiona continued. “You can dress up in Miss Adele’s fancy clothes and you can invite the sheriff into that big brass bed, but you ain’t a whore. You ain’t never spread your legs for a man you don’t want just because it’s the only way you’ll live to see another sunrise.
“My family got left behind by a wagon train when my ma took sick. My parents and my sisters all died on the side of a dirt track and left me alone in the middle of the prairie. I was twelve.”
“I…I’m sorry.” Becky hated hearing the tears in her own voice while Fiona’s was so strong.
“The man who found me said I could go with him or I could stay and die like my folks. He used me for a while, then he traded me for some whiskey. I’ve been traded for liquor, horses and lost in game of dice. Betty, she was beaten and raped by her brother so bad they didn’t think she’d live and when she survived her mama threw her out for having tempted the bastard. I asked Holly once why she whored, but just thinking about it made her empty her stomach for hours and we never talked about it again.”
A tear dropped from Becky’s face into her tea and she pushed it away. She couldn’t drink it anyway with the way her stomach was rolling.
Fiona blew out a shaky breath. “When we each found Miss Adele, we found a better life. We have pretty things and we get to keep enough of our money to put some aside in case there’s something better in the future. We ain’t treated bad in Gardiner. We’re allowed to shop at the Mercantile and walk down the main street. We can even attend the town social if we don’t make ourselves up and we only dance with the cowpokes or each other.
“But if you go start making noise about how we’re as good and deserving as the decent people in this town, they’re going to get riled up because we ain’t. When you wash your face clean, you’re just Rebecca Hamilton again, and you’re like them. When I wash this paint off at night, I’m still a whore. That don’t ever scrub off. And, God willing, you ain’t never gonna know what that feels like.”
Becky felt as small as a bug with the bottom of a boot hovering over its head. “I’m sorry, Fiona. I never meant to make your life harder. I just…I was all caught up in being noticeable and the clothes make me feel so pretty.”
“That’s because you’ve never had to do what your aunt had to do.” Fiona reached across the table and took Becky’s hands in hers. “The people in Gardiner aren’t really sure about your place. You’ve got a scandalous reputation because of the way you look and the fact you’ve taken Sheriff Caldwell into your bed, but they know you ain’t really a soiled dove so they don’t know your place. They know our place. And we know our place. So you need to accept that and let me tend to certain matters.”
Becky nodded and swiped at the tears running down her cheeks. And she even managed a smile when Fiona walked around the table to wrap her arms around Becky’s shoulders for a moment before leaving the kitchen.
But the smile faded as soon as the swinging door closed, and Becky dropped her head onto her arms and sighed.
She’d never intended to make anybody unhappy. She’d simply wanted to step out of the shadows and live a more vibrant life. But now she had to wonder if, after being repressed for so long, she’d taken it a little too far.
Gardiner was where Becky was making a life for herself, and the time had come to do some hard thinking about what kind of life she wanted it to be.
Chapter Thirteen
Becky was walking back to the Coop after a visit with Sadie when thoughts of a new life became irrelevant and her worst fears were realized—in the form of Lucas Kilraine.
He was talking to Will Martinson, and sourness rose into her throat as she realized she had no choice but to keep walking if she didn’t want to draw attention to herself.
He was tall, well-dressed and reasonably handsome, no doubt the reason so many society matrons had courted him for their daughters. To Becky, however, he’d always seemed a younger version of her father, minus the smidgen of obligatory paternal affection.
It wasn’t any kind of affection that had brought Lucas to Gardiner. It was money—a great deal of it. Becky had prayed he would find another wealthy, biddable orphan to wed, but now she knew he wouldn’t give it up. Or give her up.
With her heart in her throat, she kept walking, her path bringing her within earshot.
“I’m looking for a woman named Rebecca Hamilton,” Lucas said to Will, and she almost dropped dead on the spot when the doctor saw her coming up the sidewalk.
But Will’s attention returned to Lucas Kilraine as if he hadn’t even seen her. “Rebecca Hamilton, huh? I don’t reckon I know a Rebecca.”
“Perhaps she’s using an assumed name. She’s rather a small woman, and quite plain. Drab, even. Quite shy and mild-mannered.”
Becky heard Will cough and it took every ounce of her self-control not to flee. As she passed behind Lucas and the five men clearly with him, a couple of them turned to offer wolfish grins, but she just snapped her lace fan open, waved it flirtatiously near her face and kept walking.
“I haven’t come across a drab, mild-mannered lady by the name of Rebecca that I recall,” she heard Will say, “but if I should, where can I find you?”
“We’ll be at the hotel. The stagecoach driver told my man he remembered leaving a woman who fit her description off in Gardiner, and I intend to find her.”
They were behind Becky now, and she once again had to stifle a nearly overwhelming urge to hurry.
“You seem mighty determined, mister,” Will said. “What’s your business with the woman?”
“I believe that’s my own affair.”
“I reckon since I wear a badge, one person hunting another in this town makes it my affair, too.”
“She’s my wife.”
Becky’s knees wobbled and she almost stumbled. Then her hand was on the latch and she was through the door into the last place Lucas Kilraine would ever think to look for her.
“Good Lord!” Fiona exclaimed. “You’re white as a nun’s knickers. You didn’t go and push the sheriff into the watering trough again, did you?”
“Worse,” she squeaked.
“I’ll get the shotgun.”
Becky shook her head, but Fiona was bellowing for the other chickens as she went for her gun and paid her no mind.
How did a woman prove she wasn’t married? Proving you were a man’s wife was as simple as providing a marriage certificate. But there was no official document declaring Lucas Kilraine to be a lying bastard.
As the surprisingly well-armed chickens rallied around her, Becky couldn’t keep from dwelling on one dreaded question.
Would Adam believe Lucas’s lies?
“I want you to swear on something—Guapo’s life maybe—that you ain’t gonna shoot me.”
That was about the oddest request Adam had ever heard Will make. He slid his feet off his desk and sat up straight. “You ain’t fixin’ to offer me one of Eliza Jane’s pies, are you?”
“No.”
“Then I reckon I don’t have cause to shoot you, Doc.”
“A fancy Eastern guy and some rough-looking fellows just rode into town. He says he’s looking for a drab, mild-mannered woman named Rebecca Hamilton.”
The hair stood up on the back of Adam’s neck. “He sure as shit ain’t gonna find anybody by that description.”
“The not-drab and not so mild-mannered Miss Becky happened to walk past and none of
them recognized her. But she looked scared to death, and I can tell he ain’t leaving town until he finds her.”
Even though he was seated, Adam’s fingers flexed over his gun. If some son of a bitch thought he was going to do harm to that woman, he was in for one hell of an unpleasant surprise. “Did he state his business with her?”
“He says Becky’s his wife.”
Cold seeped through Adam, followed by the hot sizzle of rage like rotgut whiskey chasing away a winter chill. “He’s a liar.”
“I know Miss Adele was under the impression she was unmarried, but he’s something important to her. She looked so shaken I’m surprised she didn’t walk into a post.”
“Rebecca’s not his wife.” Hell, the woman had not only come to his bed a virgin, but she’d never even been kissed.
But it was more than that. He just knew with a certainty he couldn’t explain that Rebecca had never lied to him. She’d confused him, humiliated him and flat out made him so spittin’ mad he wanted to shoot somebody just to relieve the tension. But everything about her was flat out honest, and there was no way in hell she’d a hidden a husband from him.
“What do you aim to do?” Will asked. “He ain’t done nothing to justify a bullet yet, so I can’t let you shoot him down in the street.”
Adam stood and slapped his hat on his head. “I reckon I’ll head on over to the Coop and check on Rebecca. See what I can find out about the situation.”
“I paid a couple of the boys a dollar to watch the Coop and let us know if anybody tries to get in we don’t know. Most folks ain’t gonna be real cooperative with a stranger, but if he runs across any of the Bible Brigade, they might just draw him a damn map to her front door.”
“If she was that shook up, Fiona will have her shotgun. I’ll be lucky if I don’t get blown out of my boots myself when I walk through the door.”
He kept a careful watch as he made his way down the sidewalk, but Adam didn’t see any strangers. When he got to the Coop, he knocked, though he didn’t as a rule, then opened it real slow.
He heard the hammer being pulled back and stilled. “Don’t you shoot me, Fiona.”
“Guess that depends on your intentions.”
“I aim to make sure Rebecca’s not too distraught and find out if the new arrivals in town merit shooting or not.” He eased into the parlor and closed the door behind him.
A flash of sparkling green caught his eye as Rebecca emerged from the kitchen. She was an unhealthy pale under her fancy face paint and even from a distance he could see her tremble.
“I’m not married to that man, Adam. I swear to you I’m not.”
“I believe you.”
Her hand flew to her mouth too late to stifle what sounded like a sob of relief. It needled him a bit she’d thought he would just take the stranger at his word without showing a lick of faith in her.
“Let’s you and I go in the back and talk about this. Fiona, you keep that shotgun close at hand. And Sadie, you go on back to your husband now.”
“I ain’t scared, Sheriff, and us chickens stand together, even if I ain’t whorin’ no more.”
“You think about that baby and do as I told you.”
He followed Rebecca into the hellishly red bedroom he hated so much and closed the door behind them. She sank onto the little gilt chair, so he sat on the edge of her bed.
“Who is he?”
She folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them. “His name is Lucas Kilraine. He was a business associate of my father’s.”
“Why did he hunt you all the way to Texas?”
“Because I stole from him.”
That would have set him back on his heels if he’d been standing. Considering the faith he had in her honesty, he wouldn’t have pegged her for thieving, either. But she hadn’t said he thought she’d stolen from him. She’d confessed it straight out. “What did you steal?”
“Jewelry. And me.”
“You told me that jewelry was your grandmother’s.” He knew the words were coming out of his mouth in a reasonable way, but his thoughts were tangled and buzzing in his head like a nest of prodded rattlers.
“It was my grandmother’s. I swear it. And then my mother’s.” She leaned forward and rested her hand on his knee. “My father left everything to Lucas in his will, even me.”
Rebecca’s hand was trembling on his leg, so he threaded his fingers through hers and held tight. Just to offer comfort, of course. “It ain’t legal anymore to bequeath one person to another.”
“It’s…complicated.”
“No, me killing a man, then finding out he didn’t merit it is complicated.”
“Lucas admired the way I ran my father’s household almost as much as he did his money. He offered for my hand, but my father said he’d never find as competent a housekeeper to replace me. When his health began to deteriorate, Father told Lucas he would inherit his interests and properties as long as he married me. Because Lucas had made his intentions clear many times, their bargain was as good as sealed.”
“Until you got the letter from Miss Adele and hightailed it to Gardiner with a heap of jewelry.”
“The jewelry was the only thing listed in the estate I brought with me, but it’s more than that, Adam. I stole everything from him.”
“Because Kilraine only gets his hands on your father’s money if he makes you his wife. What happens to the estate if the marriage doesn’t take place?”
“It said if I wasn’t Mrs. Lucas Kilraine within a year’s time, everything would go to a charitable foundation my mother favored. He won’t let me go, Adam.”
“There ain’t a man alive who can take you from…” Me. “…here, little mouse.”
One would think he’d already shot somebody, as quiet as the street was when Adam stepped out of the Coop and settled his hat on his head. There were plenty of townsfolk out and about, but apparently they were too busy sending him speculative glances to make conversation.
Lucas Kilraine had told Will they’d be at the hotel, so Adam went there first. The look on Dan’s face and the way his Adam’s apple bobbed told him the man had already been questioned.
“You tell them anything, Dan?”
“Of course not, Sheriff.” And he did sound outraged to be asked the question, in a nasally way. “I wouldn’t never help somebody do harm to Miss Becky.”
“They say anything to make you think for sure they intend her harm?” All he needed was one good, solid reason for firing off the bullet.
“Well…no. It was more of a look in the eye, if you know what I mean? I meet lots of folks in the hotel business, and that one—the man in charge—he’s a mean one even though he don’t look rough.”
“They upstairs now?”
“No, they’ve gone over to the saloon, I reckon. Said something about finding refreshment and maybe some answers.”
“Thank you, Dan. And you keep a close eye on Sadie ‘til I run them off. Anybody who can help them find what they’re looking for needs to be extra careful.”
Dan gulped and nodded. “I will, Sheriff.”
Adam left the hotel and walked down the plank sidewalk. He pondered taking Will in with him, then dismissed the thought. While he was a good man to have at your back, there were times the doctor was just too damn civilized.
He was accustomed to a hush greeting him whenever he pushed through the saloon’s swinging doors, but when scraping chairs preceded everybody moving toward the outside walls, he knew the man he sought was bellied up to the bar.
He walked halfway into the room, stopped and tipped his hat back on his head. “Which one of you boys is Lucas Kilraine?”
A half-dozen men had turned from the bar at the chair ruckus, and now they all looked to the man in the center. A smug, overdressed, soft-handed city boy with a poison mean look in his eye. “I’m Kilraine.”
“What’s your business with Rebecca Hamilton?”
“She’s my wife. She’s not well—sometimes she has these…
spells, and she was separated from me during our journey.”
“You’re a liar.”
In unison, the spectators inhaled so deeply Adam was surprised they didn’t suck all the air out of the room. More than a few started sidling their way around toward the door.
Kilraine’s beady eyes narrowed. “Where I come from, that’s not an accusation to be made lightly.”
“I reckon you should mount up and head on back there. Right after you explain to my satisfaction why you’re chasing a woman who doesn’t bear your name and clearly wants shut of you.”
“She’s forgetful during her spells,” Kilraine lied, smooth as buttermilk. “When she gets bad off, she gives people her birth name.”
Adam was tired of the sound of the man’s voice already, and the harsh Yankee accent grated on his nerves in a way Rebecca’s never did. “I’m giving you one hour. You and your men get out of my town.”
“I don’t believe I’ve broken any laws, Sheriff,” Kilraine said with a pointed glance at Adam’s badge.
“You’ve disturbed my peace.”
When Kilraine laughed, the sidling toward the door became more of a shuffling quickstep.
“If you’re still in Gardiner an hour from now,” Adam said, “you’re going back to Massachusetts in a pine box.”
Kilraine’s eyebrows shot up toward his slicked-back hairline. “I don’t recall telling anybody where I’m from, friend. My guess is you’ve been talking to Rebecca, so why don’t you just tell me where she is and I’ll be gone with thirty minutes to spare.”
Adam took a few steps forward. “Or I could just shoot you right now and save us all fifty-nine minutes.”
One of Kilraine’s men went for his gun and Adam shot him in the chest before iron cleared leather, never taking his eyes off the leader. The other men froze.
“You’ve got fifty-nine minutes to look up Ol’ Bart the undertaker, then hit the trail.”
He stepped to one side, not being stupid enough to turn his back on them, watching as they dragged their friend through the sawdust and out the door.
Becoming Miss Becky Page 12