Claudia Dain (36 page)

"Nothing's happened in the last few days that a decent man would have a problem with," Jack said, standing next to Anne and pulling Daphne's gaze to him, drawing her fire. He was awfully good at that and she sure was awfully grateful, though her stomach was still in knots.

"I'm sure that I won't argue with you about what a decent man does or does not do," she said.

"I sure appreciate a woman who refuses to argue, ma'am," Jack said. "Appreciate it a lot now that it's my wedding day and the day's about through. How about Anne goes on up and gets settled? I'll be up directly."

Anne blushed pink and dropped her head. This was not going
at all
as she'd planned. Reverend Holt and Constance left quickly, Sheriff Lane said a brief and somewhat stiff good-bye to her mother, and Doc Carr said a very formal good-bye to her grandmother. Neither one of them said good-bye to Jack. Grey and Blakes didn't say good-bye to anyone but Jack and her. In five minutes, she was alone in the parlor with her grandmother, her aunt, her mother, and... her husband. The only one who looked happy at all was her husband. It might have been that happy look on his face that propelled Miss Daphne from the room. She didn't say good night to anyone, but she looked with cold self-satisfaction at Anne as she walked by her on the way to the kitchen.

"Nell," she said, "you go on up with Anne. Sarah, you'll help me with the cleaning up. There's a pile of dishes to wash tonight."

"But I thought I'd like to help Anne—" Sarah said.

"That's a mother's duty and, unfortunately, you are not a mother."

"Humph," Sarah grumbled softly. When Miss Daphne was out of the room, Sarah whispered to Anne and Nell, "I'll be up later."

"So will I," Jack said, looking only at Anne. Winking at her, he went out on the porch and lit a cigar.

Anne watched him go, frozen. Until her mother pushed her toward the stairs. She went up them, one heavy leg at a time. She'd done it, done what she'd sworn she'd never do. She'd become a wife and now she had to face the devil and give him his due.

No, now Jack wasn't a devil. He was merely a husband. Well, and weren't the two just too close for her comfort?

"Nervous?" her mother asked as they entered her room and closed the door.

Anne went to the window and looked out onto the street in front of the house; she could see the smoke of Jack's cigar rising sporadically in the twilight air.

"I guess so," she answered, turning to face Nell. "I didn't think I'd end up married. To a bounty hunter," she added.

If there hadn't been any point in telling her ma her plans before, there was even less so now. She needed a new plan, one that would accommodate being the wife of a bounty hunter. She didn't know if she could make a plan that big. How had she ended up here? Married, and to the one man everyone took pleasure in hating. It wasn't going to be a pretty life, not if it went on like this.

But it wouldn't go on. He'd leave, or she would. There were lots of places to get lost in between California and Kansas. She might even go east, to Chicago. A girl could get herself good and lost in Chicago; so lost that nobody would be able to find her. If anybody came looking.

She'd been wrong about Jack needing her, must have been. There was no one better at looking after himself.

Why, the way he'd handled himself at the reception proved that. He surely didn't need her. If she lit out, he'd scarcely notice. Probably.

"When I married Tim, he was the town hero. He'd just shot a man, killed him, a real bad man who was on the run. The townsfolk would have voted him in as president, they were that taken with him. Everyone was just as pleased as they could be that I'd married him."

"Even Miss Daphne?"

Nell chuckled and spun her daughter around to continue disrobing her. "Especially Miss Daphne. You know how she likes everything done just right? Well, Tim was the right man at the right time."

"And look how that turned out," Anne said.

Her mother looked at her hard. "Why, Anne Ross Scullard! I was happy with your pa. He made me feel things, wish for things... I was just flying with the clouds whenever he even looked at me."

Yes, she'd heard this before, all her life in fact. Men did that. They turned you around so that you couldn't find ground and then left you flat, all memories of flying lying in the dust with you.

"And then?"

"And then he turned bad, a little bit at a time," Nell said softly, her fingers fumbling with the buttons. "And when that happened, folks started avoiding me, like I'd turned bad with him."

"Everyone?"

"Everyone, everyone except Charles," Nell said slowly. "Charles never did change."

"But you hadn't changed. You were the same person," Anne said.

She'd been so little, she hardly remembered any of it. She remembered that her father had black hair and large hands, that his boots had been loud on the wooden floors of their home, and that when he hadn't come home for a long time, they'd moved. Moved back home with Miss Daphne.

"I was the same," Nell said, "but folks don't see that. They see you as being the same as the man you marry."

"That's not fair," Anne grumbled.

"Life's fair?" Nell said, smiling. "Maybe I'm not saying it right. It's not that they see you the same, but that they respond to you the same. You and your man, you're one. You share more than a name, you share your life."

Share her life? With Jack? Jack was just for now. Jack was kisses that made her drunk. Jack was safety and passion and laughter. Until he left her. Or she left him.

"Until he leaves," Anne said aloud as her dress fell to the floor in a delicate heap.

"Until he leaves?" Nell asked. "What are you talking about?"

"Men. Husbands. They never stay. They leave," Anne said, looking down at the floor and the flattened heap of her dress.

"Anne, that's not true," Nell said heavily.

"Yes, it is." Anne looked at her mother, her arms crossed over her breasts. "It's always true."

"No, it isn't. Look at the Holts."

"Miss Daphne says it takes thirty years to see if a marriage will stick." Her granddaddy had left after twenty-seven.

"But that's—"

"That's the way it is. That's the way it's going to be. One way or the other."

And it would be her way. She'd leave him before he could leave her. She'd pick the time and the place. She'd move on, make a new life, start over. She'd be the one to leave.

Nell stood and held Anne in her arms, rocking her gently to and fro. Her ma hadn't done that since she'd had been a child, right after her father had left. That pain was behind them. She'd made sure of that. That pain wasn't ever going to touch her again.

"You don't marry a man thinking he's going to leave you, Anne. Only God knows what's coming. Maybe I made a poor choice in a man. God willing, you made a better one." Nell kissed Anne's cheek. "Enjoy every day you've got, not because you're afraid he'll leave, but because every day's a gift." Nell rocked her daughter and kissed her temple, smoothing the hair away from her face. "I don't have the best judgment in men, but I don't think Jack'll leave."

Sarah opened the door and hurried in; she'd escaped from Miss Daphne, for the moment.

"He won't leave until he's taken advantage of his marital privileges," Sarah said, misinterpreting what she'd heard. Nell and Anne didn't correct her; their conversation had been too private to share, even with Sarah. Nell patted down Anne's hair and bent to pick up Anne's dress.

"What exactly does that mean?" Anne said, crossing her arms over her suddenly sensitive breasts.

"You're her mama, you want to tell her?" Sarah asked Nell.

"You want to tell her so bad, you go ahead," Nell said, hanging up the dress in the wardrobe.

"You know those kisses he's been handing out?"

Anne was sick of blushing, but she did it anyway. "Yeah?"

"Like that, only everywhere. If you're lucky," Sarah said. "With Jack, I think you're going to get lucky."

Chapter 22

"I never figured you to marry," Grey said.

The porch was shadowed in twilight, a wind kicking around the corners, pulling at the flaking paint. The rest of the wedding guests had gone on home a while back. They were alone, except for the women in the house.

"I never figured it either, but here I am," Jack said.

Why tell them that he'd never thought a woman would have him who didn't have to be paid for it first? That was nobody's business but his own. That he'd come by a woman like Anne, well, that just proved that God looked kindly on fools and sinners.

"What you gonna do with her now?" Blakes asked.

It was a question. He couldn't take her with him when he hunted bounty; that was no life. He'd have to leave her. At least he'd be leaving her safe. No married women had been killed; he was going to have to count on that.

"I'm going to do my job and leave her to do hers," Jack said. "She's safe now. I can finish this thing. It needs doing and I got to get to it."

"Whoever he is, he's been pretty slick," Grey said, leaning against the post.

"Yeah, well, I can handle it. Once I get hold of him, he's not going anywhere."

"The trick is to get hold of him," Grey said.

"Yeah," said Blakes.

“Yeah," said Jack. “You thinking I'm not up to it?"

"Nah, just that you might need some help."

He didn't like the idea of help. Help could leave you flat and worse off than if you'd done it alone. Except now he had Anne and her family to think about. He didn't like the idea of leaving a houseful of women to fend off whatever came in from the prairie.

"Sure," Jack said, accepting the offer.

The two men shifted their weight and exchanged a glance.

"What?" Jack asked, watching them.

"That gal sure has softened you," Grey said. "You never was so easy as this before."

Jack just grunted, sure Grey meant it as a joke. Well, pretty sure.

It was near dark when he went upstairs. He'd finished his cigar; that was more than enough time for her to get herself ready for her wedding night. He was more than ready.

When he got to the top of the stairs, he realized that he didn't know which room was hers; all the door were closed against him. He knew that Daphne and Nell and Sarah were downstairs, because he could hear the sounds of women softly talking over the equally soft clink of china submerged in water. It was a nice sound, real homey. But even though they were downstairs, he didn't want to open up the door to any room that wasn't Anne's. The way Miss Daphne had looked at him all day, she'd most likely accuse him of stealing and he didn't want a thing in this house. Except Anne.

"Anne?" he called softly.

"Yes?" he heard after a bit of hesitation.

The sound came from the right, but there were two doors on the right and he couldn't tell which one had her voice behind it.

"You going to invite me in?" he said.

After a longer hesitation, the door nearest the stairs opened, just a crack, but a crack was all he needed. He pushed the door open with his fingertips and eased in. She was wearing a gown of thin cotton that had buttons all the way down the front; all those buttons... he got hard, then and there. She must have sensed it because she backed up real quick and banged her hip against the base of the bedstead. It must have hurt, but she was too scared to say anything. She stood there, staring at him as if he were going to kill her, rubbing her hip with her hand.

For a cigar's worth of waiting, Anne didn't seem too ready.

"You're beautiful, Anne," he said, his voice gentle and even. He used the same kind of tone when he was getting the feel of an unfamiliar horse; seemed like the same kind of situation. But Anne didn't need to know that. "That's a real pretty gown."

"It's nothing special, nothing new, I mean."

"Doesn't need to be new to look good on you. You'd look good in a saddle blanket. At least to me."

"Thank you. I think."

Her eyes were wide and open, the whites showing clearly in the dim light from the single lamp. She looked ready to bolt.

He moved toward her, hand outstretched and palm up, offering her his hand, offering her his touch. She backed up and put her hand to her throat.

"Come here, Anne. I only want to kiss you."

She pressed her lips together and kept her distance.

"Don't you want a kiss?" He smiled, taking off his rifle. She watched him carefully, completely, silently. “You're my woman. I want to kiss you, to feel you in my arms, pressed up against me, with your mouth hot on mine. Don't you want the same?"

He took off his holsters, one at a time and laid them on the floor next to the bed. His rifle he laid atop the dresser. He took off his belt and watched her turn white as flour.

"Didn't they tell you nothin'?" he asked softly.

"They told me some things," she whispered back, her eyes on his boots, where she could watch him without meeting his eyes.

"What things?" He unbuttoned his shirt, slowly, just the way he was going to unbutton all those little white buttons that ran from her neck to her feet. One small button at a time.