Daniel's Bride, page 9
Jolie closed her eyes for a moment, feeling her throat tighten, fearing she might cry. When she’d recovered her composure, she gave Nan a faltering smile. “Did you know Ilse?”
“My yes,” her neighbor answered, and a touch of sadness showed in her vibrant eyes. “A dear thing she was, tiny and pretty as one of those porcelain dolls they send over from France. Everybody liked her, and when she died, Joe and I thought Daniel would pass on too, from the grief of it.” She reached out to pat Jolie’s hand. “It’s good that you’re here. Daniel needs you.”
But he’d loved Ilse. Jolie felt an overwhelming frustration with her tall, sturdy body and her even but otherwise unremarkable features. In those moments, she would have given ten years of whatever life span had been allotted to her just to be small and delicate and pretty.
Needing to change the subject, Jolie showed Nan her sewing and the yard goods waiting to be stitched up into everyday dresses. Nan promised the loan of a new pattern book, and Joe, having finished the chores, came to the door to collect his wife.
Jolie thanked him and watched with regret as the Culley wagon disappeared around the house. By that time, the sun was almost down, and it was time to light lamps and think about supper.
She made herself a sandwich, using a plump tomato from the garden, and then built up the fire and pumped enough hot water to fill the stove reservoir and several large kettles. She’d put in a productive day, and a soothing bath would be her reward.
By the time Jolie brought in the larger tub from the barn—the one Daniel used for his baths—she was exhausted. And when she sank into the hot water, there in the middle of the kitchen, she immediately closed her eyes. She’d just rest for a moment, before scrubbing herself and going upstairs to bed …
Something cold was dripping onto her stomach and when Jolie opened her eyes, a scream swelled in her throat. Blake Kingston was standing over her, wringing out a wet bandanna and grinning as though he’d done something clever.
“Hello, Jolie-girl,” he drawled, dragging a chair over so he could sit astraddle of it, his arms resting across the high, carved back.
Jolie’s shock subsided in a backwash of cold fury. “What are you doing here?” she gasped, snatching up a nearby towel and using it to cover herself as best she could.
Blake raised one thin shoulder in a shrug. Some women considered him handsome, with his boyish face and wavy brown hair—Jolie had, once. But now she saw him more clearly: He was a murdering thief who would use innocent bystanders to accomplish his purposes and then leave them to die for his crimes. “Me and Rowdy, we figure to bide awhile. Nobody’ll think to look for us this close to Prosperity.”
“I want you out of here!” Jolie spat, rising out of the water, careful to keep the towel in place.
Blake arched an eyebrow and cocked his thumbs in the pockets of his dusty gray vest. In his cheap trousers and ruffled shirt, he looked like a gambler down on his luck. “This is Blake you’re talking to,” he said. “Not some dumb, hulking farmer. Tell me—how long will the big man be away?”
Jolie wet her lips with a quick, nervous motion of her tongue. “He’s not away. He’s just over at the neighbor woman’s, seeing to her sick cow, and he’ll be home any minute.”
The desperate prevarication brought only contemptuous laughter from Blake. He shook his finger. “That’s a lie, little girl. Rowdy and me, we saw him headed north, bright and early this morning, toward Spokane.”
Some of Jolie’s anger was displaced by fear. She took a step backward, and Blake made a sudden move, without leaving his chair, and laughed when she flinched. In another few moments, that sly-eyed Rowdy—she’d never liked him—was bound to join his friend in the house. And Jolie knew the man didn’t have the same disinterest in women that Blake did.
She lifted her chin, holding the skimpy towel with dignity. “They nearly hanged me because of you,” she said coldly. “I’d be dead now, if Daniel Beckham hadn’t seen fit to marry me.”
Blake spread his hands in a magnanimous gesture. “He’s obviously a smart man, for a sodbuster. After all, he’s built up this place, just about single-handed from what Rowdy and me have been able to find out, and then he up and took you for a wife. Shows he knows good breeding stock when he sees it.”
If the circumstances had been different, Jolie would have stormed across the room and slapped Blake back on his heels. As it was, she stayed near the door leading to the downstairs hallway. What hurt her even more deeply than Blake’s remark was the distinct possibility that it was true. Daniel had lost one wife in childbirth, and he wanted sons and daughters. When he’d looked Jolie over that day when she was standing in the back of that wagon with a noose around her neck, he’d probably been thinking she looked big enough and healthy enough to deliver babies with ease. Like a trusty brood mare.
Blood rushed into Jolie’s face. “Get out,” she said. “Damn you, get out and don’t ever come back here!”
Blake’s look of chagrin was sheer, smug mockery, and he made no move to obey Jolie’s command.
“You’ve gone and fallen in love with the farmer, haven’t you? That’s real interesting—and convenient, too.”
“What do you mean, it’s convenient?” Jolie asked, failing to see the trap that yawned before her until it was too late. By not denying her love for Daniel, she’d just admitted that she cared.
Her unwanted visitor looked around the dimly lighted kitchen with appreciation. “I mean, this is a pretty nice nest you’ve tumbled into. And since you’re Beckham’s wife, well, if anything happened to him, this whole outfit would probably be yours.” He paused to smile fondly at Jolie, then drawled, “Did I mention, darlin’, that you’re the only woman I ever wanted to marry?”
Chips of ice flowed in Jolie’s bloodstream, and she trembled. “Nothing’s going to happen to Daniel!” she spat, and though she knew the words revealed her fears, she hadn’t been able to hold them back.
Now, at last, Blake stood, pushing the chair aside. Jolie felt the door frame digging into her spine, so anxious was she to escape.
“I reckon that’s what the banker’s wife thought, too, when she sent him off to count money that morning a month or so back.” He smiled again and then turned and opened the outside door. “Good night, darlin’. I’ll be looking forward to a nice breakfast in the morning.”
The moment he was outside, Jolie rushed across the room and braced a chair under the knob, though even while she was taking this measure she knew nothing so simple would protect her from the two outlaws.
She blew out the lamp, still holding tightly to her towel, and crept to the window. She could see the shadows of two men and two horses, out by the barn, and hear Blake and Rowdy laughing together. From there, Jolie ran to Daniel’s small study and pulled the hunting rifle down from its pegs above the mantelpiece.
A hasty search of the desk drawers produced bullets, and Jolie shoved them into the chamber. She couldn’t thank her pa for much, but he had taught her to shoot straight and true.
She carried the rifle upstairs with her, crawled into bed, and slept fitfully, awakening at every creak and thump. Her sleeping gown clung to her skin, the night air was so hot, but she didn’t dare open a window for fear Rowdy or Blake might climb the trellis outside and catch her unprepared.
The sun was up when Jolie woke, and she sat bolt upright, her heart throbbing in her throat, when she heard the sound of an arriving team and wagon. Joe, she thought, flinging herself to the window and grasping the sill with shaking hands. He was approaching the barn, where the outlaws had most likely spent the night.
Jolie was struggling with the window latch, meaning to scream out a warning, when the neighbor disappeared into the large weathered structure where the hay was stored. She waited, her breath turned hot and solid in her lungs, but no shot rang out. All she heard, in fact, was the glass-thinned sound of a man whistling while he worked.
Hastily, Jolie washed, dressed herself in her own clothes and rushed downstairs. She stopped cold in the kitchen, staring at the table. Although she’d left it clear the night before, it was now littered with egg-stained plates, scraps of ham fat, and spilled coffee. The chair was still propped beneath the doorknob, mute testimony that Jolie’s efforts to protect herself had been vain ones.
Remembering that she’d left the rifle upstairs, Jolie whirled to run back, only to collide with the dirty frame of Rowdy Fleet. He was a small man, not nearly as tall as Jolie, and his skin, like many people’s, was horribly pockmarked from a bout with the smallpox. He had little mean eyes the clear color of water, and greasy black hair that hung down around the collar of his long canvas coat.
He smiled and pressed the point of a pistol into the tender skin under Jolie’s chin. “The horses is hid,” he said, showing stained teeth that stood well apart from each other. “Me and Kingston, we figure on letting that ole boy ride right on outta here, with no holes in his hide, if you don’t scream or anything stupid like that.”
For a moment, Jolie thought she’d faint, but she managed to tighten the muscles in her knees and hold herself upright. She thought of Nan Culley, home waiting for her husband to return from doing a favor for a friend. “I won’t scream,” she said.
“Good,” Rowdy replied, taking her roughly by the elbow and hurling her back into the kitchen. He might have been small, but he was tough as boiled owl and meaner than the devil’s maiden aunt, and Jolie didn’t even consider pushing him beyond his limits. “Tidy up this place. I can’t abide a mess.”
Numbly, Jolie began clearing the table, ladling hot water for dish washing. She dragged the big bathtub to outside the door and dumped its contents into the yard.
That was when Joe came out of the barn, carrying a bucket of fresh milk and smiling. Clearly, he expected to chat a while, and perhaps deliver some message from Nan.
Of course, Jolie didn’t dare let him in the house—Rowdy wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him. She stepped quickly onto Deuter’s sturdy porch and pulled the door closed behind her. Even through the heavy wood panel, she thought she heard Rowdy’s strange, labored way of breathing and the click of his forty-five as he cocked it.
“Thank you,” she said to Joe, as cheerfully as she could, holding out one hand for the milk.
Joe looked baffled for a moment, then he shrugged one shoulder and handed over the bucket. “Nan allows as how she might come calling this afternoon,” he said.
More company was the last thing Jolie wanted, but she was afraid of rousing Joe’s suspicion. He surely knew that she and Nan were friendly. “You tell her not to forget to bring that pattern book,” she said, praying Mrs. Culley would decide it was too hot a day to travel over roads choked with dust.
He nodded, gave her one questioning look, then got into his buckboard and drove off. As soon as he was gone, Blake came out from behind the barn, leading a pair of horses, and Rowdy pushed past Jolie, nearly overturning the bucket of milk at her feet.
“Will you look at this?” he whined, whipping his hat off and flailing it in the air with one hand. “Here it is, daylight, with the sun shining as bright as Gabriel’s trumpet! I told you we should have headed for the hills while it was still dark!”
Jolie just stood on the porch, watching Blake approach. She’d thought she’d known him so well, before the bank robbery and the murder. Once, she’d seen him as a gallant rescuer, even fancied him as a husband, and it shook her to realize just how wrong she could really be about a person.
“We could always spend the day here,” Blake suggested smoothly, grinning at Jolie.
“You’d better not,” she said. “If Daniel finds you on his land, he’ll kill you.” That was, please God, if they didn’t kill him first.
Rowdy swung deftly up into his saddle. “This place gives me the willies,” he said, pushing back one side of his mud-encrusted coat so he could reach his holster without hindrance. “I say we get the hell out of here.”
Blake smiled at Jolie and gave his hat brim a dapper touch, then mounted his own horse. “We’ll be back, sweet Jolie-girl,” he said. “You be watching for us.”
Jolie was rigid, her hands clenching the sides of her old skirt. “I’ll be watching, all right. And if I see you riding in, Blake Kingston, I’ll pick you off like a buzzard sitting on a scarecrow’s shoulder!”
The two men seemed to find the warning uproariously funny, even though they both knew that Jolie was a fair hand with any kind of firearm. They laughed and whooped and waved their hats in the air before riding off straight through Daniel’s wheat, their horses’ hooves crushing precious stalks into the dry earth.
Jolie opened all the doors and windows after they were gone, wanting to dissipate the stink of them. She scrubbed the table and all the plates they’d used, then she scoured the floor, too.
By then the day was burning hot, and Jolie had cramps for the second day in a row. Nonetheless, she heated up the flatirons and began pressing yesterday’s wash. If she laid herself down or even stopped to think about Rowdy and Blake meeting up with Daniel, she’d probably start crying and screaming.
So she worked. And Nan didn’t come to call.
The first stars of evening were popping out when Jolie remembered her promise to Deuter. Having just done the separating, she took a generous portion of cream out and set it near the base of the steps. Then, wearily, she sat down to enjoy the first cool breeze she’d caught since early morning.
Leviticus trotted out of the garden, from between two rows of cabbage, carrying a dead mouse in his teeth. He dropped the ill-fated creature a safe distance from Jolie, lest she try to steal it, no doubt, and cautiously approached the bowl of cream.
“You’re a mighty ugly cat,” Jolie sighed, as she cupped her chin in one hand and watched the battle-scarred beast lap up its dinner. “I imagine all you had to do was look at him and that poor mouse just keeled over stiff as a coffin nail.”
The animal raised his head, wiped the cream from his whiskers with a practiced tongue, and gave a conversational meow. Jolie smiled, but she didn’t quite dare pet the creature.
She stayed right there on the porch until the mosquitoes were biting and she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. Then Jolie went inside and set chairs under both the back and front doors, for all the good it had done before.
The rifle was in easy reach when she lay down to sleep, but no one came to bother her.
The next day was a busy one—Jolie spent it putting up tomatoes and carrots from the garden—and she was almost able to convince herself that Rowdy and Blake’s appearance had been nothing more than a bad dream. Whether or not she should tell Daniel what had happened was a question so thorny that she wasn’t ready to tackle it.
Nan came to visit that afternoon, and she and Jolie sat on the front porch, chatting while Jolie hemmed another of her new dresses.
“What do you want most in the whole world?” Nan asked, as she stitched a bodice seam on a nightgown. She bit off the thread and knotted it with nimble fingers before turning the garment over to begin again on the other side.
Jolie watched as a garter snake slithered through the green grass. The front yard was dotted with the yellow faces of dandelions and smelled pungently sweet, since Deuter had given it a recent trimming with a scythe. “I guess—well, I’d like to have a baby.”
Nan grinned coquettishly. “You’d best get busy, Mrs. Beckham, if you hope to keep up with me. Joe and I are going to do just that, come the middle of March.”
Delighted tears brimmed in Jolie’s eyes, and she nearly skewered herself on Nan’s needle in her eagerness to embrace the woman. “That’s wonderful!”
But Nan’s look of pleasure had turned to a thoughtful frown, and she shuddered visibly. “There are so many things that can happen to a child in the country. Ella Cupcough’s little girl fell down a well and drowned last year, and the summer before that, there was an outbreak of measles … ”
“Those things could happen anywhere,” Jolie reminded her friend gently. She surveyed the rippling wheat with loving eyes. “I want my children, if God sees fit to trust me with any, to grow up right here. The boys will work in the fields and the barn, because one day this place will belong to them.”
“And the girls?” Nan inquired in a teasing tone, looking a little less troubled than before.
Jolie laughed. “They’ll marry fine men with land adjoining Daniel’s, naturally!”
Just then, Joe came around the side of the house, having finished the afternoon chores, and Jolie’s expression went solemn as she recalled how close he’d come to dying without even knowing he was in danger. A lump formed in her throat as the lanky farmer picked two tea roses from the bush next to the porch and offered one to each woman.
It was the first time any man had ever given her a flower, and Jolie was both touched by the kindness of the act and stricken because the gesture hadn’t come from Daniel. She watched with an emotion just shy of envy as Nan flushed prettily and thanked her husband with a slightly saucy smile.
All too soon, the Culleys climbed into their wagon and rattled away down the road, practically invisible because of the wheat.
Jolie took her rose into the house and set it in a bowl of fresh water, which she put in the middle of the table. Every so often, while she was preparing her supper, she paused to bend down and draw in its lush scent.
By that night, Jolie had almost forgotten that she’d had a very disconcerting visit from two men who were on the run from the law. She washed her hair and combed it dry in front of the bedroom window, and began to think in terms of which new dress she would wear for Daniel when he finally returned from his travels.
He came home in the middle of Friday afternoon, while Jolie was in the garden picking string beans. She was wearing her old clothes, her hair was stuffed up inside her derby hat, which she’d reclaimed from the scarecrow to keep the sun off her face, and she knew her chin and cheeks were smudged with dirt.
So much for winning Daniel’s heart by looking her prettiest.
