The Chisholm Trail Bride, page 16
He’d asked her once if he could investigate that situation and help, but she declined his offer. He’d never brought it up again.
“You have a lovely home.” Eliza smiled up at him. “And your friend is very nice.”
“Housekeeper,” he told her, though he wasn’t sure why it mattered so much that she understood theirs was a working relationship and nothing more.
“Oh.” A nod. “I see.”
Wyatt realized he was still standing in the doorway holding the screen, so he stepped inside and let it close behind him. “Come on in here and sit down. I assume this isn’t a social call.”
“No,” she said as she removed her hat and smoothed down the top of her braid. “It is not. I need your help.”
Anything almost came out of his mouth. “I’m listening,” was what he said instead.
Because as much as he wanted to help Eliza, he also wanted to keep her safe. He had no doubt that Ben Barnhart would make good on his threat to turn them all in—including Eliza—as murderers. He also had no doubt that the Barnhart family had the connections to produce witnesses who might not otherwise ever set foot on the Chisholm Trail. What a Barnhart stated as fact soon became gospel whether it was true or not. Which brought him back to the beautiful redhead standing there wondering what was wrong with him.
Wyatt escorted Eliza to the parlor and waited until she took a seat in the chair next to the window. He settled opposite her and waited for her response.
“I’ve been duped into a false marriage, and I want to get out of it.”
He let out a long breath and leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “That’s not what you told me at the Driskill.”
Eliza braced for the statement. She’d been preparing an answer all the way from Austin. As she sat here in front of the security detective, that answer evaporated and only the plain truth remained.
“I lied.”
He said nothing.
“Did you hear me, John? I lied about being married to Ben Barnhart. I had a reason, which I now feel incredibly stupid and gullible for. Ben told me I would be saving Trey’s life if I pretended to be married to him while he negotiated with what turned out to be nonexistent kidnappers. Then there is this.” She pulled out the marriage license and handed it to the security detective. “I did not sign that.”
The detective studied the paper and handed it back to her. “All right.”
“All right?” Eliza shook her head. “That’s all you have to say about this?”
He shifted positions and regarded her with an unreadable look. “I believe you.”
“Then fix this, please. You’ve always fixed things for my father. Do it for me,” she snapped.
“How?”
The housekeeper returned with a tray filled with an elegant blue-and-gold Sèvres teapot and two matching cups. Eliza watched her slow and careful movements as she set the tray on the table and then stepped back to look over at John.
A moment passed between them, and Eliza felt an odd twinge of something akin to jealousy. Ridiculous, of course.
Eliza thanked her but continued to watch as the housekeeper stood waiting for a word from John. His attention was elsewhere, but hers was focused on him. Finally, he noticed her standing there.
“That will be all, Janie. You can go home for the day,” he told her without looking in her direction.
She watched Janie’s expression fall. The housekeeper turned hard eyes on Eliza before she made her way out of the parlor.
John Brady might be oblivious, but that woman had set her sights on him.
“Let me see that paper again,” he said when the housekeeper was gone.
Eliza handed it back to him and watched as the detective ran his hand across the page and turned it over to study the back. He looked up at her.
“Have you shown this to the clerk in Travis County?”
“Yes. He wasn’t helpful,” she said.
“How so?”
“He examined the document and said it was legitimate. Something about the paper only being available from a certain supplier and this being that paper.” Eliza waved her hands. “I don’t know exactly except that I was told the license was legitimate. He refused to consider my complaint that my signature was forged.”
Eliza sat forward and poured a steaming cup of tea. John was still studying the paper, so she took the opportunity to look more closely at her surroundings.
The room was simply furnished but with pieces that were anything but simple. From the rosewood sideboard and matching parlor set to the paintings on the wall, everything was of a quality that Mama would have demanded. The paintings on the wall looked to be museum-quality originals except for an antique map of the Republic of Texas that had been hung over the fireplace.
The grandfather clock in the corner ticked off the seconds in a beautifully carved cabinet that was decorated in ebony and gold leaf. A closer look at the clock’s face revealed that it not only told time but also indicated the phases of the moon.
She took a sip of tea and returned her attention to John. “You see something in that, don’t you?” she finally asked.
Her voice seemed to break the spell. He jolted his attention toward her. “I’m just being thorough. What else have you done?”
“I went to see my father. He was gone. Mama and Justine too. He left a note for me with Red.” She paused. “He told me he would always love me.”
“Of course he would,” John said. “He’s your father.”
“He left me two addresses. One was the Central Bank of Austin and the other one was yours.”
John’s expression told her this information had taken him by surprise. She waited for a response. When he said nothing, she continued. “I need help with this, John. You’ve worked for my father for years. Obviously he has endorsed you as the only one who can help me now.” She paused. “And he has given me the funds to hire you. Name your price.”
“For what, exactly?” he said slowly.
“For righting this wrong,” she told him. “I want to be free of this nightmare. I want my family back. And I want Ben prosecuted for this forgery.”
“That’s a tall order,” he said.
“If my father didn’t think you could deliver, he wouldn’t have said so in his message.”
“I can deliver. What I haven’t decided is whether I should. You’ve married a dangerous man with extensive connections in politics and elsewhere.”
“Are you afraid of Ben Barnhart, John?”
“Never have been and never will be,” he snapped.
She’d hit a nerve. It didn’t take much to know these two had some sort of shared history. Something that caused John Brady’s temper to flare.
“It’s your safety I’m concerned with, Eliza. You have no idea what sort of mess you’re stepping into if you pursue this.”
“So you just want me to forget everything and go on with pretending I’m married to Ben Barnhart? Is that your advice? Better yet, is that the advice my father would have given you if he was here?”
“Your father is not here, Eliza. Did you stop and wonder why he left the ranch with your mother and Justine? Could it be because he knew you would be safe with Barnhart as your protector but he feared for their safety if you decided to fight this marriage?”
She hadn’t considered that. “But why?” she managed.
“I’ve already told you. Barnhart has powerful friends. He wants to win an election. To do that, he needs to make up for his age by showing the voters his respectability. That’s where you come in. He needs a wife. Now he has one.”
“Why me though?” One look into the security detective’s eyes and she knew he had the answer to that question.
“You’re asking the wrong question,” he told her. “Why not you?”
“No. You know exactly why I was chosen for this.” She placed her cup back on the saucer and sat back. “But you won’t tell me, will you?”
“Why do you think I know?”
“Because you’re a security detective, and you’re paid to know everything about the people who employ you. My father would have briefed you on me and Mama before he sent you to follow us around New Orleans. What did you discover that will tell me why Ben Barnhart went to such trouble?”
“Because he’s always said he would have you for his own. Always. On that last trail drive, he told everyone who would listen to him that someday he was going to marry you. When he gets an idea in his mind, he’s on it like a starved dog on a bone. He wanted you. He got you. If I had to guess, that is the real reason the judge sent him on that trail drive. He wanted to forge a relationship between the two of you that would end in marriage. What he didn’t count on was creating a monster who would do anything to make that happen.”
The vehemence with which John Brady spoke surprised Eliza. “How did you know about that trail drive? No one was supposed to know he was there. Afterward, the judge made sure we didn’t talk about it, and he denied Ben had been there when rumors started to…”
No. She would say nothing further. No good would come from dredging up those memories.
He lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “Like you said, I’m a security expert and I’m paid to know everything about the people who hire me.”
She almost believed him. Almost but not quite. There was something personal in this for John Brady.
When she said nothing, he continued. “So the real question here is do you want to get out of this false marriage situation, or do you want your family out of danger? Let me know which of those you want help with.”
Why can’t I have both, John?”
Wyatt sighed. Eliza Gentry might be a beautiful, intelligent, sophisticated woman, but deep down she was still the same spoiled and pampered girl he remembered. “Eliza, it is one or the other.”
She sat very still and seemed to be studying her hands. Slowly she looked up at him with tears shimmering in her eyes. “I refuse to believe that.”
He stood. “Then I cannot help you.”
Her voice rose, but Eliza remained in her seat. “Papa gave me your address. He provided the means for me to find you and to pay you to help. Why would you refuse?”
“Because one of us has the good sense to know this is a situation with no good solution.”
Eliza was on her feet in an instant. “And one of us has the good sense to know there is always a better solution to a situation than just walking away from it.”
He took a step closer and looked down at her. “Which of us is doing that, Eliza?”
Crimson climbed into Eliza’s cheeks as she stood there staring up at him, eyes narrowed. After a minute, she opened her mouth to speak and then clamped it shut again.
It was killing him not to pull her into his arms and tell her he would make everything right. That he would fix what was wrong and give her back the world that had been taken from her.
“How do I get my family back?”
The question took him by surprise. The answer hurt worse than anything else so far.
“You go home to your husband and convince him not to hurt them.”
“I’m not legally married to him,” she said.
“That paper you showed me says otherwise.”
Tears welled up in her eyes, and Wyatt’s knees went weak. If she stayed a minute longer, he would do something stupid. Or worse, say something stupid.
Like tell her who he was and why she should walk away from everything Ben Barnhart could give her to stay here with him.
But he couldn’t do that. Wouldn’t do it.
He’d loved Eliza Gentry as long as he could remember. Definitely as long as he’d had any sort of idea what the word meant. And in all those years, he’d never felt like he ought to give up on that love.
Not when he had to walk away from that trail ride a dead man at the age of fourteen. Not when William Gentry called him out of the blue to guard his wife and daughter. And not when he heard Ben Barnhart’s story of how he had claimed Eliza for his own.
But standing here looking at her, he knew that remaining in her life would only put her and her family in danger. She could never fall in love with a dead man, and this dead man could never fall out of love with her.
“You don’t need me or this agency to fix what happened.” He took her by the shoulders and aimed her toward the door, snagging her hat to fit it atop her head just before he opened the screen. “Go back to your husband. Then the rest of these problems will solve themselves.”
“But…”
“Go home.” Wyatt led her out the door and onto the porch then closed the door behind her.
Before the screen had time to slam shut, he opened it again. “Liza Jane, come back.”
Eliza turned around and smiled. John Brady didn’t look nearly as happy as she felt, but he would get used to the idea that helping her was the best choice.
“I know you’re teasing me with that name,” she said. “But I kind of like it actually.”
John’s expression remained neutral. “Sit, please.” He pointed to the steps. “You will listen, and I will do the talking.”
She nodded and complied, not because Eliza intended to do as he said during the remainder of this investigation but because she felt so relieved that he would be helping her.
John eased down beside her and stretched out his long legs, then gave her a sideways look. “Show me the license again.”
Retrieving the vile document, Eliza handed it to him. This time when John studied it, he held it up to the light for quite a while.
“The clerk said there was only one supplier of this paper,” she told him. “That’s how he knew it was legitimate.”
He set the page on the step in between them. “And that’s how I know it isn’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I can’t tell you more than that right now.” He picked up the license and held it up in front of him again. This time, instead of studying the document, he tore it down the middle and gave her half.
“John, that’s not the fix I was thinking of. You can’t just tear up the marriage license and call it done.”
Folding the paper, the security detective stuck it into his pocket. “That is not my intention, but I need this half.” He paused. “I’m sorry. Were you considering framing it?”
Eliza opened her mouth to tell him just what she thought of the question. Then she noticed the twinkle in his sage-green eyes.
“You’re incorrigible.”
His laughter surprised her. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never incorrigible.” His expression sobered. “Every instinct I’ve ever developed in my career as a detective is telling me not to do this.”
She sat very still and quiet. For once, she had no good argument. No trick of humor to divert him. “There’s more you haven’t told me,” she said instead. “You knew this would happen, didn’t you?”
John shook his head. “No. There was no indication of this. My men were following him, and yet somehow…”
“He had help,” Eliza told him. “The man who came for Red and me was no one I had seen before.” She shook her head. “Wait. Why were your men following him? Had he made threats against me or my family?”
“The fact he draws a breath makes him a threat,” John said.
Eliza turned to face the gate she’d walked through just a short time ago. The beautiful pink roses still bobbed in the salt-scented breeze, and the sun still shone in a bluebonnet-blue sky. Nothing had changed.
Yet it was about to.
“John,” she said slowly, keeping her attention focused away from him, “there’s something I need to tell you. Something important that may help you understand Ben Barnhart’s motives.”
She dared a glance in his direction and found him watching her closely. “All right.”
“When I was twelve, I went on a trail drive with my father. My mother was against it, but Papa won out and I was allowed to go. Have you ever ridden on a trail drive on the Chisholm Trail, John?”
His green eyes went misty. “I have,” he whispered. “It was something to see when all those cattle and horses go heading off in the same direction. Or at least you hope they’re all going the same way.”
“Yes. There’s mostly nothing but prairie except for that suspension bridge at Waco over the Brazos, and a great big sky full of stars at night, and it is just the best thing in the world.” Eliza sighed. “Or it was.”
Eliza expected the detective to prompt her for more information. Instead, he sat quietly and waited.
“I think about that trail ride a lot,” she continued. “There was a meteor shower last Wednesday—”
“Encke’s Comet.”
“That’s right. You told me you know about astronomy.”
He offered a faint smile. “A little.”
Eliza studied him for a moment longer, then returned to her story. “The last trail ride I went on was in the spring. In April. I couldn’t wait until bedtime when everything got quiet and my brothers fell asleep. I would lie on my back and look up at the heavens to watch for falling stars. I would count them.” She smiled at the recollection. “Sometimes it became a friendly competition with Wyatt. He was my best friend.”
A sob tore through the remainder of her words. “I miss him so much,” was all she could manage on a ragged exhale of breath.
Wyatt leaned in to gather her into his arms. At fourteen, he’d thought of her as a child. A girl who irritated him and made him laugh. Who challenged him and made him wonder what she would be like when she was grown.
He’d been a kid then, hardly old enough to imagine holding Eliza Gentry in his arms. Even as an adult, he couldn’t have imagined it to be nearly as good as it felt to wrap his arms around her and feel her head resting on his shoulder.
Abruptly she lifted her head to look up at him. “Did my father tell you what happened on that trail ride?”
“I know,” he said, not exactly answering the question she asked but still telling the truth.
