The Taming of Shaw MacCade

by Judith E. French

  "It's easy for me to say it might be one of your brothers," Shaw said. "But it could just as well be mine. Bruce and Ewen knew I meant to carry you home. They might have been able to ride across country and get ahead of us."

  "You think they'd do it?"

  "No. Hell, I don't know." He shook his head. "Ewen's bitter about Laird."

  "And you aren't?"

  "No sense going over that again, Bee. You know how I feel about finding my brother's killer."

  And she did. Shaw had never been one to boast about what he meant to do, but he never forgave a wrong. If one of her family was guilty... She shook her head. It was too dangerous even to think about what Shaw would do if he found the murderer.

  Shaw stroked her arm with his fingertips, and she felt her heart skip a beat. All she could think of was how she had felt in his arms, kissing him, pressing her body shamelessly against his.

  "There's trouble coming, Bee," he murmured. "We've had some fires. Livestock has been scattered. And last week, somebody stove a hole in one of Pap's boats. You warn your menfolk. If they get caught sneaking around our place, the only warning they get might be a bullet."

  She stiffened, suddenly defensive. "You think the culprit is a Raeburn? It could be anyone. Even pro-slavers. Your father makes his abolitionist views pretty plain. I heard that he threw two slave catchers off his place earlier this spring. Welsh said they were complaining in town that they couldn't even buy a drink at MacCades' with hard money. It could be them."

  "Could be," he agreed solemnly. "But Pap is pushing my brother Will to run for sheriff, plus he's hired a new attorney to file a second complaint against your father. Pap not only wants Angel Crossing, he also wants to be repaid for all the tolls your father's collected since he took over the ferry."

  "What?" Rebecca tried to keep her own anger under control. "That's almost thirty years. He must be crazy to—"

  "Pap's not crazy," Shaw replied. "He can be mean as a two-headed snake, but he's smart enough to know if he keeps filing lawsuits, sooner or later one will come before a judge that sees things his way. And Will does whatever Pap tells him to. If Will gets elected, he can make things mighty uncomfortable for your family in this county. Once Pap sets his mind on a thing, he never gives up until he gets it." Shaw mounted his horse. "I thought you should know, Bec. I don't want anything secret between us."

  She sighed. "All right. I'll see what I can find out. But I honestly don't think Uncle Quinn or my brothers would do any of those things. And I don't believe they shot at us, either."

  For a long moment, Shaw stared at her so intensely that her palms went moist, and she felt butterflies in the pit of her stomach. Then he nodded and touched the rim of his hat. "Evening, Bee."

  "Good night, Shaw," she managed. "And thanks again for pulling us out of that fire. You saved my life."

  "Any time."

  * * *

  Rebecca knew the house would be locked, so she entered the stable and found blankets in the tack room and carried them up to the loft. Her thoughts were so confused that she didn't think she could sleep, but exhaustion got the best of her. She jerked awake just after sunrise, climbed back down the ladder, and waited until Pilar turned the dogs out and went to the henhouse to gather eggs. When she was certain that the housekeeper wouldn't see her, she hurried into the kitchen and up the back stairs to her bedroom.

  A few moments later, dressed in fresh clothing, bathed, and hair neatly braided, Rebecca descended the front staircase to find her father and two of the dogs waiting in the hall. Molly's tongue lolled, and she wagged her tail in greeting.

  "Morning, Poppa," Rebecca called in what she hoped was a cheerful tone. But one glance at his tight-lipped face told her that her ruse was up.

  "What do you have to say for yourself?" he demanded. "Isn't it enough that your sister turned whore for that man? Do you have to do the same?"

  Rebecca flushed. "It's not what you think, Poppa. Shaw—"

  "No! You won't speak that devil's name in this house!" Veins stood out on his forehead, and he trembled from head to foot with barely contained rage. "Never again, Rebecca!"

  "You don't understand. I..." Her reply died in her throat as her father raised an open palm to strike her.

  Stunned, unable to move, she stared at him in disbelief. Poppa hadn't laid a hand on her in anger since she was eleven.

  "Get upstairs," he rasped. "If I have to look at you... I may do something..." His voice cracked, and he dropped his hand, clenching it stiffly at his side. "This is the end of it." Tears glistened in his eyes. "God help me, girl. I'll kill Shaw MacCade myself, before I let him ruin you."

  "It's not what you think, Poppa. There was a fire at the mill. I—"

  "You've both said enough." Uncle Quinn stepped between them.

  Her father gritted his teeth, then said, "I'll not have another daughter gone to whoring."

  "I didn't do anything to be ashamed of," Rebecca pleaded. But her father's only answer was a stiff, retreating back. Molly inched forward, pushing her graying head against her mistress' knee. Rebecca crouched and buried her face in the big hound's coat.

  "You're playing with fire, girl," her uncle said in his soft North Carolina drawl as he raised her to her feet. "You know what the MacCades are. You'll break your pop's heart if you go on this way."

  "Shaw risked his life to save mine. And he... brought me home. That's all."

  Uncle Quinn's steely gray eyes narrowed grimly, and Rebecca felt a chill of unease. He had never been unkind to her, never once raised his voice as he did to her brothers. But even as a child she had heard the stories of his past. If the bickering between the MacCades and Raeburns flared to violence, her uncle would not hesitate to shoot to kill.

  "You think what you're doing, Becca. You remember what Shaw did to your sister, and how it near tore this family apart." When she started to protest, he raised one crooked finger. "You hold your tongue and listen. You think I don't know you been sneaking around to see that boy since you were barely old enough to sit a horse?"

  "We were kids. He was my friend then."

  "Different now. No such thing as friendship between a grown man and a woman not his blood kin." A muscle beneath his left eye twitched, and his relentless gaze seemed to burn through to her bones. "You care about Shaw, you don't want to be the cause of putting him in his grave."

  Rebecca winced as a terrible suspicion seized her. Had Uncle Quinn murdered Laird MacCade because of Eve?

  "I watched your mother set her heart on Robert MacCade," her uncle continued. "Your pop saw it, too, and him loving Margaret since they were both babes. But she had to have Robert, and him with the same Satan-born temper as his brother Murdoch. Margaret defied her kin to wed Robert, and you see what that came to."

  Rebecca shivered as a cold, hollow sensation filled her. And she knew, as sure as she knew the sun would come up the next morning, that it had been Uncle Quinn shooting at them last night. He hadn't meant to hit them. If he had, they'd both be dead. Her uncle had delivered a warning as clearly as if it had been written in blood.

  "I hunted bear with Robert MacCade," he continued. "I drank with him, too, before I got saved and gave up spirits for good. Robert was a saint sober and was Satan's imp when the liquor was in him."

  Rebecca listened incredulously. It was rare for Uncle Quinn to put so many words together at once, and rarer still for him to mention her mother.

  "Robert MacCade beat your mother so bad one night that he near blinded her in one eye, and she miscarried of twins. Your Poppa found her near the ferry landing in a pool of blood. He carried her home to Mama to keep her from bleeding to death. And then I held your pop back, him wanting to go after Robert and choke the life out of him with his bare hands."

  Rebecca sank onto the stairs and leaned her head against the spindles. "No one ever told me."

  "No need for you to know... until now." He paused, as if looking back to that time before she was born. "A week later, Robert sobered up and c
ame back crying to your mother that he was sorry and couldn't live without her. Claimed he'd got religion, and he'd never take another drop of moonshine. She took him back. And two weeks later, Robert's dead and the MacCades are certain she killed him to get Angel Crossing."

  "But it was an accident, wasn't it?" Rebecca asked as Molly settled her aging bones beside her and put her head in Rebecca's lap. "Grandma told me that Robert MacCade fell off the ferry in a flood and drowned."

  "Was just Margaret and Robert on the water that morning. The river was running high, and it was raining pitchforks. Nobody knows the truth of what happened but the two of them and the Lord Almighty."

  Absently, Rebecca scratched behind Molly's ears. "You don't believe that my mother murdered—"

  Uncle Quinn shrugged. "Wasn't my affair. Whatever happened, I expect Robert MacCade got what was coming to him." He rested a gnarled hand on the newel post. "They were bad times, Becca. Real bad times. Murdoch and Robert were as tight as flint and steel. That's why Murdoch swears he'll have his revenge if he burns in hell for it."

  "Poppa wouldn't have married my mother if he'd thought she'd killed Robert. You know how Poppa is."

  "Nobody better. But even though he got the woman he wanted, he was cheated. He only got part of her. Margaret buried something of herself with Robert MacCade, and Campbell was left with only a shell. She wed your pop and bore his children, but she never loved him like she loved Robert. And having the land and the ferry crossing never made up for what he'd lost."

  "Poppa never said—"

  "Your mother died when you were too young to understand how it was between them. Mark my words, Becca. My brother means what he says. He'll not have you go the way of Eve."

  She rose to her feet. "Poppa called Eve a whore. That's a lie."

  "Honey." Her uncle's eyes clouded with sorrow. "Last fall—when I went to Saint Louis to buy that big iron pulley—I saw Eve coming out of Adeline Fleur's French House. Where no decent woman would set foot."

  Rebecca shook her head. "No, it's a mistake. Eve is a laundress. She told me in her letters. She probably picks up wash from her customers."

  His mouth twisted in disgust. "Eve was drunk, hanging on a drover's arm, and wearing a dress cut so low..." His eyes hardened. "I never claimed to be a saint. I know a whore when I see one." Uncle Quinn shook his head. "Eve's lost to us. She's fallen into the devil's net. And Shaw MacCade is the man that pitched her there. And don't you ever forget it."

  * * *

  When the signal bell rang, alerting Rebecca that someone wanted to cross, she took the ferry to the far side of the Little Smoke and picked up a passenger. Noah was waiting for her at the dock when they returned. He kept silent until the farmer paid the toll and departed.

  Rebecca could see that he had something he wanted to tell her. "What is it?" she asked.

  Noah grinned, dug deep in his pocket, and held out an object for her to see. "Yours! Noah find!" On his palm lay the rose arrowhead that Shaw had given her when she was a girl, the one she'd thrown out her window.

  "Thank you," she said.

  He beamed and shifted from one foot to the other.

  She hugged him. How he'd found her treasure she didn't know. But the fact that it had been returned to her this morning seemed a sign. She motioned toward the ferry. "Would you tie off the ropes for me?"

  Noah nodded vigorously.

  "You're a big help," she said. She'd often thought that Noah was smarter than he appeared. Although his speech was no better than a four-year-old's, Noah had a way with sick or hurt animals. And he rode horseback, fished, and hunted like any other boy his age. He liked to roam the hills and fields by himself, and he'd never gotten lost, no matter how long he stayed away from the house.

  "What would we do without you?" Rebecca said as she slipped Shaw's arrowhead into her skirt pocket. She gave him a few final instructions before going to the house in search of her grandmother.

  She found Grandma in the dining room pouring coffee for the lone traveler who had spent the night. "Let me help," Rebecca said as she took the heavy pot. "This is too heavy for you."

  Once the peddler had finished his breakfast, paid his bill, and departed, her grandmother looked at her expectantly. "You want to talk about it?" she asked. Without waiting for an answer, Grandma led the way to the parlor, used only for sewing and for entertaining important guests.

  Rebecca closed the door behind them. Pilar had been with them for years, but the housekeeper's chief pleasure in life was carrying gossip from one household to another. And what Rebecca had to say, she wanted to remain within the family. "I think I have to go away."

  Her grandmother's kind features blanched. Sighing with dismay, she sat on the old high-backed settee that had been part of her wedding dowry. "Come here, beside me," she ordered, patting the worn leather. "Campbell told me that he lost his temper with you."

  "I'll not be disciplined like a child."

  "Then act like a woman."

  Rebecca felt her bitterness seeping away. The wrinkled hand that clasped hers was feather-light, but still strong enough to drive a four-horse team. She loved her grandmother fiercely. Everything that she knew about being female had come from her sole remaining ally in this house of males.

  Grandma had taught her to read and write, to find wild plants that were good for medicine or eating, how to sew a torn coat or put stitches in a boy's foot, how to cook a rabbit stew and make biscuits as light as thistle down. It had been her grandmother who'd tended her when she was sick and who'd rocked her to sleep when she was afraid of the dark.

  "Don't let your father drive you away. He's already lost one daughter. If he loses another, it will kill him."

  "Why? Why did he let Eve go? Why is his pride worth more to him than his children?" Rebecca stood and paced the room, unable to sit still. "He called my sister a whore. Do you know that, Grandma?"

  Her grandmother closed her good eye and cradled her arms against her bony chest. Rebecca had never seen her cry, and Grandma didn't shed a tear now. But she did utter a low keening that raised the hair on the nape of Rebecca's neck. "It's the curse," she wailed, her thin shoulders quivering as she rocked back and forth. "Annie Raeburn's curse. We can't shed it. It followed us across the water and over the mountains. And it will never end until one clan or the other is no more."

  "Don't, don't," Rebecca soothed, returning to her side and crouching on the rug to take her hands. "It's not a curse. It's just them hating us and us hating them. It's just wickedness on both sides."

  Her grandmother raised her head and looked up with haunted eyes. "If you go, what will become of us?" she asked in a small voice. "Who will care for Noah and me? Corbett? The twins? All these years—since you were a child—it was you who made us a family, Rebecca. You love the river. Your father doesn't love it. Neither do your brothers. Since you were old enough to sit a horse, it was always you that kept Angel Crossing going."

  An ache as deep as the grave rose in Rebecca's chest. "How can I stay, Grandma? How can I sit at the table with Poppa while my sister isn't welcome in this house?"

  "You can forgive your father because you have the heart for it, and you love him in spite of his weaknesses. And you can stay because you're too strong to run from your inheritance and your duty."

  "Am I supposed to forget about Eve?"

  Her grandmother seized her arms. "Of course not. But it takes two to mend a breach. Your sister and your father are too much alike. She has to come home, ask his forgiveness, and show she means to live a proper life. And you need to show Campbell that you'll stand with your kin. If you give him your word you won't see Shaw MacCade again, it will all be over."

  Numbness spilled through Rebecca. "Poppa hates Shaw because he believes he's the father of Eve's baby. What if he's not?"

  "He told you that? And you take his word over your sister's?"

  "Suppose Eve lied to us?"

  "Why do you take his part, Rebecca? Are you like your mother? Will you choo
se a MacCade over your own kin?"

  "I don't know how I feel about Shaw. But I do know that he was once my friend. And I'd be a poor friend in return if I'd not try to find out the truth."

  "Blood will soak this ground, child. I've seen it before, and I prayed to God never to see it again. I washed the body of my brother Angus and watched him put into the ground before he was one and twenty. And I wept at the graves of two of my cousins, both shot down by MacCades."

  "You hate them so much, they must have horns and tails."

  "Hate them?" The old woman shook her head. "I don't hate the MacCades. I'm past hate, child. I hate nothing but the dying and the wail of weeping women and fatherless babes."

  "There was a fire at the square dance. Did you know that? I was trapped in the smoke, me and a little girl, just a mite. Shaw saved us. He could have run like all the rest, but he didn't. Does that mean anything?"

  "Have you lain with him?"

  Rebecca got to her feet, her cheeks burning. "No. I haven't."

  "Then you've time to think. Time to break it off before it's too late. For his sake as well as yours. Your Shaw could be the first to die."

  "He's not my Shaw. And Uncle Quinn said the same thing."

  "Then you'd best pay heed."

  "I'll think about it," Rebecca said.

  "Promise me you won't leave."

  "I can't do that, Grandma."

  "We need you. I won't live forever, and without me, you're the only one to take care of Noah. He's a blessing, one of God's angels, but the world's too hard for him. If he's not treated gently, he'll wither and die."

  Rebecca sighed. "I know that."

  Lower lip quivering, her grandmother rose to her feet. "You must forget Shaw, Rebecca. You're a Raeburn."

  "I know that."

  "Stay here and run Angel Crossing. Find yourself a good man. Marry and have children for me to spoil. Can you do that for me? For yourself?"

  "It's all I've ever wanted, Grandma," she answered softly.

  She bent to hug the old woman before leaving the parlor to return to the ferry. But as she left the room, Rebecca unconsciously slipped a hand into the deep pocket of her leather work skirt.