Daniel's Bride, page 31
She performed for him, for herself, until sleep finally claimed her, no longer willing to be denied.
When Jolie awakened in the morning, the room was chilly but Daniel had filled the pitcher on the bureau with clean water, now gone tepid. She washed and dressed quickly, carrying the basin downstairs with her to be emptied in the backyard.
Six inches of new snow covered the ground, and the air was hard and sharp. Jolie hummed as she prepared breakfast and laid out clothes for Hank and Gemma to wear to school … on mornings like that one, they always came scampering to the stove the minute they got up, dressing in the shimmering glow of heat that surrounded it.
When Daniel came in with a bucket of milk, he had the smells of cold weather and manliness and freshly pitched hay about him, and something deep inside Jolie’s wanton body tightened like a watch spring.
Daniel set the milk bucket on the table, took Jolie’s hips in his hands, and pulled her easily to him. He chuckled as he bent to give her a commanding kiss.
“I’ll have you again, Mrs. Beckham,” he said, after totally mastering her with his tongue. “Soon as I’m done with the morning’s business.”
Jolie trembled as a wave of heat rolled over her, and her eyes drifted shut as she tilted her head back for another intoxicating kiss.
Instead, she got a playful pat and squeeze on the bottom and a jovial, “What did you cook for breakfast?”
Jolie’s blood was hot with passion the whole time she fried pork strips and flapjacks, but there was nothing to be done because the children were up and about. Daniel’s eyes followed her wherever she went, shining with devilment and promise, and she thought how remarkable it was that he’d awakened this other woman inside her. This woman she’d never dreamed she could be.
As usual, Daniel drove Gemma and Hank to school in the wagon. When he came home, he unhitched the horse directly and led it into the barn.
Jolie grabbed up her cloak and hurried out there, telling herself she only wanted to know if there was news from town. In truth, that spring inside her was pulled so taut it was about to break.
“Daniel?” She paused in the doorway of the barn, seeking out his familiar frame in the shadowy interior. There was a strain in him, she could make that out, and a peculiar tension.
Something was very wrong.
He hesitated a moment, then hung the harness rigging in its customary place and turned to face her. “January bought my mortgage from the bank,” he said.
Jolie wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but she knew it was bad. She swallowed hard and stared at Daniel, waiting for him to explain.
Daniel pushed his hat back for a moment and wiped his brow with one shirt sleeve, even though it was cold that day and the gray skies threatened still more snow. “There’s nothing owing on this place, so he can’t take it,” he went on woodenly. “But Enoch’s farm … ”
She closed her eyes for a moment, sickened by the thought that Enoch and Mary could lose their home, after saying good-bye to most of their family and traveling so far. Their hopes and dreams could be dashed with the stroke of a pen.
Another silence pulsed in the barn, then Daniel continued. “I figure January will show up any time now, wanting full payment for the land.”
Jolie thought she might vomit, she was so shaken. The worst part of all this was knowing it was her fault Daniel had been forced to spend his savings. “I guess you wish you’d never laid eyes on me,” she murmured, looking down at the straw-covered floor.
Daniel crossed the long space between them, cupped one hand under Jolie’s chin, and lifted. “I won’t have you blaming yourself for any of this, Mrs. Beckham. A man takes chances in life, and sometimes he ends up on his face in the mud and manure.”
Under other circumstances, Jolie might have smiled at Daniel’s colorful way of putting things. As it was, she could barely keep herself from bursting into tears of frustration and regret. Her vision was a little blurred, as a matter of fact, when she gazed up into his eyes.
It was like looking at a summer sky.
“I’m so sorry, Daniel,” she whispered. “I’ve caused you so much grief, when all I ever wanted … ” But she couldn’t finish, couldn’t tell him what she’d wanted, because she would be too wounded when he turned away. Jolie had no illusions that her husband loved her the way he’d loved his first and true wife.
He kissed her forehead, very lightly and, in one and the same moment, released his gentle hold on her chin. Without another word, he turned away and stood gripping the side of the buckboard with both hands.
Jolie caught up her skirts and hurried out of the barn, cursing the day she’d thrown in with Blake Kingston. Her life had been going downhill on greased runners ever since.
She might have hidden in the bedroom all day, moping, but Verena and Nan arrived for a visit, escorted by a watchful Deuter. Nan was still not her old self, of course, but there was a pink tinge to her once-waxen cheeks, and her eyes were clearer.
After greeting her friends with a rather fragile smile, Jolie set about brewing tea and fetching cookies from the pantry. The three women sat in the parlor, as befitted a formal call, and Jolie noticed that Nan’s gaze kept straying to the now-barren rosebushes beyond the window. No doubt she was recalling the summer day when Joe had picked two fragrant yellow blossoms and presented them to his wife and to Jolie with such courtly ceremony.
Jolie was certain she’d guessed correctly when Nan’s eyes filled with shimmering tears. Mrs. Beckham reached out to clasp her friend’s hand and give it a reassuring squeeze.
“Nan’s been helping me trim a spring bonnet to send to my niece in Kansas City,” Verena announced, over the rim of her cup. Behind her, Ilse Beckham looked down on the small company from inside the framed photograph on the mantel. Verena turned to look at Nan. “You’ve got a gift for millinery, my dear. You should have your own shop.”
Nan merely lowered her eyes. She hadn’t touched her teacup, and her hands were knotted together in her lap.
After that, Verena turned her attention to Jolie and frowned. “You’re not looking very well this morning, Mrs. Beckham. Is there something wrong?”
Jolie couldn’t bring herself to speak of Ira January and the threat he represented to Daniel, not in front of poor Nan, whose grip on composure was so tenuous. Neither could she lie to Verena, however, so she replied, “I imagine it will all work out.”
In truth, she imagined nothing of the sort. Mr. January hadn’t liked Daniel in the first place. Now, because of Jolie, the powerful millowner was hungry for vengeance.
Not that Jolie regretted snatching Nan away from that dreadful house. She felt remorse only because innocent people … Daniel, Enoch, Mary, and the children … were going to suffer over something they’d had no real part in.
As soon as Nan and Verena had started out for the Dailey place, with Deuter once again serving as their squire, Jolie resumed her search for the bank money. It was doubly important now that she find the loot before Rowdy and Blake did.
She fared no better in the enterprise than she had before, but giving up was not an option. It was because of her that Daniel faced the loss of the land he’d bought from Nan Culley, and she had to make things right. Somehow.
Ira January arrived that evening, riding as confidently into the dooryard as if he were a welcome guest. Daniel went out to meet him, and the two men talked in the twilight while Jolie watched from the window, her bruised heart stuck tight in her throat.
When Daniel came into the house a few minutes later, he tossed a folded document onto the kitchen table.
“He wants the money now,” Jolie said wretchedly. Up until that very moment, she’d been nursing a vain hope that Mr. January would be reasonable about the matter.
It was as though Daniel didn’t even see her. He left the room without speaking or even glancing in her direction, moving like a man in a daze.
The walls of the house seemed to move in closer in those moments, making Jolie feel crowded, almost smothered. She grabbed for her cloak and headed outside, and before she’d had time to think about what she was doing, she found herself under the maple tree, gazing down at Ilse Beckham’s fancy marble headstone. The grave was awash in moonlight and fallen leaves.
“Tell me how to help Daniel,” Jolie muttered, crouching to clear away some of the crisp scattering of crimson, orange, and gold. “Please. I love him so much.”
“Now, that’s right sweet,” a familiar voice drawled from behind her.
Shooting to her feet, Jolie whirled, cast a frantic look back over one shoulder and saw Rowdy Fleet standing there in the shadows. There was no mistaking the fact that he had a pistol in his hand.
“Don’t scream,” he warned. “Beckham will have another wife to bury if you do.”
Jolie’s every instinct called upon her to protect the child growing under her heart. That necessity made her appear calm, even though she was in the grip of wild panic.
“Blake said he’d tell me where he hid the money if I brought you to him, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
She swallowed and then lifted her chin. “I won’t go with you.”
He cocked the pistol expertly, and moonlight shimmered along the polished, blue-black barrel. “I didn’t offer you no choice,” Rowdy pointed out, gesturing toward a horse hidden in the dark shadow of the maple tree. “Now, git.”
Jolie glanced longingly toward the house. If she screamed loudly enough, Daniel would come running, gun in hand. But before her husband could reach her, Rowdy would have ended her life, and her baby’s as well. Daniel, at a disadvantage because of the darkness, would doubtless be the next victim.
“All right,” she whispered, starting toward the nickering, nervous animal.
After Jolie was mounted, Rowdy climbed up behind her. She could feel the barrel of his forty-five prodding the small of her back. “Not so much as a peep out of you,” he said, his breath foul as it moved through her hair and touched her face. He smelled as if he hadn’t had a bath since childhood, and his closeness made Jolie’s skin crawl.
Jolie said nothing at all. She just stared straight ahead.
“You’re going to write Big Dan Beckham a letter,” Rowdy informed Jolie fancifully, as the horse carried them farther and farther from everyone and everything she held dear. The chilly night seemed especially dark and menacing.
Jolie shivered, but, other than that, she didn’t react. She didn’t want Rowdy to know just how frightened she really was.
Rowdy’s voice rumbled past her ear. “You’ll tell him farm livin’ ain’t for you, and say your farewells.”
“Why?” Jolie couldn’t hold the question back, even though she tried with all her might. It was really fate she was asking, not Rowdy.
“Blake wants you,” the outlaw answered blithely, as if that were all that mattered … and, to him, it probably was. Good will had evidently been restored between Rowdy and Blake, and it seemed Blake was picturing himself as a husband.
Jolie’s stomach would have churned at the prospect of being touched by any other man besides Daniel, let alone surrendering herself to the likes of Blake Kingston. She gulped back the bile that surged into her throat and squared her shoulders. “Surely you don’t trust Blake, not after what he tried to do,” she ventured, knowing she had only one real chance. She had to start trouble between the two men who meant to hold her prisoner, one for a few hours or days, one for a lifetime. “He would have taken that money and headed for the hills if it had been you that was caught instead of him. He planned to cheat you.”
She felt the tension in Rowdy’s small, wiry frame even before it erupted from his lips. “Hush up,” he rasped, “or so-help-me-God I’ll kill you right here, right now!”
Rowdy rode to the timbered side of Prosperity, where the dark mountain loomed behind the lumber mill. Jolie clung to the saddle horn, shivering, full of wild, quiet fear. She wasn’t surprised when they approached a large house from behind; the place was so big, it could only have belonged to Ira January.
Jolie’s mind rushed through the possible implications of that, and she fought down the new rise of panic that swelled within her.
Blake came out through a rear door, holding a lantern high in one hand, and he gave a low, delighted chuckle when he saw Jolie.
Rowdy swung down from the saddle and wrenched Jolie after him. Her ankle twisted painfully when she hit the ground, and acid pooled in the back of her throat.
As Blake approached, Ira January stepped through the open doorway and followed. Even in the thin light of the kerosene lamp, Jolie could see that both men were grim faced.
“All right, Kingston,” Rowdy crowed, shoving the pistol he’d held on Jolie into his belt, “I brung her. Now, you gotta tell me where that money is.”
A demonic grin stretched across Blake’s face, and hatred glittered behind his eyes. “A deal is a deal,” he said smoothly, gesturing toward the house with his free hand. “Soon as I’ve dealt with Mrs. Beckham, here, you and I will ride out and fetch the money.”
Jolie retreated a step when Blake reached for her, only to collide with Rowdy, who gripped her arms above the elbows and thrust her forward again.
Blake’s gaze burned into her face; he looked fanatical and rabid, like a mad coyote she’d seen once. He chuckled, probably amused that she’d even dreamed of escaping him, and raised his hand to curl his fingers around her cheek. His touch, though light, sent yet another charge of terror surging through her. “Who’d have thought my sweet little Jolie-girl was really a Delilah, willing to betray the only man who was ever good to her?”
Blake was referring, she knew, to her visit to the marshal’s office that day when he was still in jail.
She eyed him with undisguised contempt. “Good is hardly the word I’d use for the way you treated me,” she replied evenly. “First, you made it look like I was part of that robbery. Then you left me to hang for something I hadn’t done.”
January interrupted by clearing his throat. “Couldn’t we discuss this inside?” he complained irritably. “I’d rather everybody in Prosperity didn’t know I have company.”
“Anything you say, boss,” Blake answered. Then he buried his fingers in Jolie’s hair, gripping it hard near the scalp, and propelled her toward the open doorway.
Neither Rowdy nor Mr. January seemed to think treating a woman so roughly was at all untoward. They certainly didn’t intercede on Jolie’s behalf.
She was in pain and half-sick with fright, but Jolie’s mind had snagged on one word Blake had said … boss. Rowdy and Blake had probably been working for Mr. January from the first, and while the marshal and Daniel and the others were searching the countryside for the outlaws, they’d been hiding in the fanciest house in town.
Jolie narrowed her eyes at Ira January when Blake flung her into a back hallway. The place was close and dark, lit only by the bobbing lantern in Blake’s hand.
“It happens that I have a bone to pick with Mrs. Beckham myself,” the millowner said, with a smug smile. “Tell me, Jolie … have you seen my wife lately?”
Color surged into Jolie’s cheeks, and she raised her chin obstinately. She felt no remorse for kidnapping Nan. Even if there had been a way to go back into the past and change what she’d done, she wouldn’t have taken it. “Nan was never your wife,” she said, with a boldness that was all bluster. “She was your victim … just like poor Hamish Frazer at the bank.”
January’s eyes glinted with annoyance and he raised his hand to strike Jolie, only to have Blake step between them.
“She’s my woman,” the second man said quietly, and Jolie noticed a slight tremor in his voice. “I’ll see to any correcting that needs to be done.”
Relief that January hadn’t struck her and offense that Blake regarded her as his woman collided within Jolie. The impact left her breathless, like some kind of silent explosion. I’m my own woman, and Daniel Beckham’s, she thought fiercely, but she wasn’t foolish enough to say the words out loud. It was beginning to dawn on Jolie, in fact, that she’d probably said too much already.
Blake loosened his hurtful grip on her hair, only to take another bruising grasp on her upper arm.
“Put her in the room off the cellar and make sure she’s gagged,” January said, sighing the words. His was the manner of a commander who must constantly deal with bumbling, rebellious troops. “Soon as Big Dan misses the lady, he’ll come right to my door. Fleet, you see that the horses are out of sight.”
“I want that money ‘fore I go anyplace,” Rowdy argued, figuratively setting his heels.
They went through a doorway at the end of the shadowy hallway and down a set of stairs. The dank smell of mildew and closed space rushed up to fill Jolie’s nostrils and her throat. The soles of her shoes slipped on the stone steps and she could barely see to put one foot in front of the other, but she didn’t fall because Blake was holding on so tightly.
In the cellar, Jolie made out shelves of canned and bottled goods, vegetable bins, and assorted clutter.
Her heart sank when January swung one shelf away from the wall—it creaked eerily on unseen hinges —and gestured grandly for her to precede him.
She stifled a shriek when Blake hurled her into the musty chasm, where rats and all manner of other vermin probably lurked. She could see nothing but shapes and shadows, and a spiderweb draped itself across her bosom.
Jolie brushed away the gossamer net with quick hands.
Blake followed her into the cell, bringing the welcome light of the lantern. She looked around, seeing only a stool and an overturned crate with an empty metal mug sitting on top of it. Not surprisingly, there was no other way out.
“Sit down,” Blake ordered, setting the lamp on the crate table with an irritated thump. Rowdy was peering suspiciously into the dark cavern, not out of any concern for Jolie’s safety, she was sure, but because he was afraid of somehow being cheated out of his share of the robbery money.
