Courting Susannah (29 page)

Ethan had a vague recollection of a kid with red pigtails, a face full of freckles, and teeth that were too big for her mouth. If he hadn't found the prospect of a home-cooked meal such a comfort, he would have refused the invitation outright. “I remember,” he admitted grudgingly. “How old is she now, anyhow?”

“Eighteen,” Hollister answered. “She went to normal school down in San Francisco. Means to teach school awhile, though I reckon she'll be married pretty soon.”

Ethan retrieved the whiskey flask. He was largely disinterested in Hollister's little sister's life story, the dull thrumming under his ribs had grown to a pounding ache, and he was worried sick about Aubrey. “That so?”

The jailer arrived with keys.

“You promise or not?” Hollister demanded of Ethan, barring the guard's way when he moved to open the cell. The man could be obstinate as a bulldog when he had his mind set on something.

“Hell,” said Ethan. The walls were starting to close in. “All right, damn you, you've got my word.”

Hollister grinned and stepped back. “Let him out,” he told the jailer.

Chapter 14

“I
can't get her to leave him, not even to look after the baby.” Maisie's worried voice came from the corridor outside Aubrey's bedroom. “She ain't slept a wink, far as I know, and when I brung her a tray a little while back, she wouldn't take so much as a bite of food.”

The door opened, and Susannah straightened her spine but did not look around. Reverend Johnstone came to stand beside the bed opposite her, but his attention was fixed on Aubrey. He lay a hand on that still shoulder, and Susannah watched as the older man's lips moved in silent prayer.

Only when his petition had been made did he meet Susannah's eyes. “Child,” he said, and the word carried the gentlest of reprimands. But there was tenderness in it, too, and a vast, quiet faith.

Susannah began to cry. “I keep thinking that if I can somehow share my strength with him—”

“Aubrey knows you care for him,” the minister counseled, drawing up a chair, sitting with his fingers loosely interlocked, clearly prepared for a vigil of his own. “However, you'll do him no good at all by exhausting yourself. This is a battle only the angels can fight, Susannah.”

“But suppose I leave and—and—”
he dies
. She could barely think the words; saying them was beyond her.

“Then God will receive his spirit,” the reverend said.

She shook her head, refusing to let go. Another tear slipped down her cheek, and she dashed it away with the back of one hand.

“Susannah,” the visitor pressed. “At least go downstairs and have some tea with Maisie. She's in a frenzy, between worrying over Aubrey and fretting about you. I'll sit with our patient here for as long as necessary.”

She stood then, her knees wobbly and stiff from sitting through the long night, her lower back and shoulders knotted with tension. Perhaps a cup of tea would restore her a little, and of course she was not indifferent to Maisie's concern. “You'll summon me, if—if I'm needed?”

Reverend Johnstone nodded, took a battered Bible out of his pocket, and began to read from it, under his breath.

Susannah hesitated a moment longer, then forced herself to leave the room, descend the rear stairs, and assemble a shaky smile for Maisie's sake. Her friend was rocking a sleeping Victoria, while Jasper sprawled on the floor on a warm blanket, taking a nap of his own.

Maisie's face quickened with both alarm and hope when she saw Susannah. She raised her eyebrows in question.

“There's been no change,” Susannah said softly, to keep from waking the little ones. She envied Jasper and Victoria their peaceful repose as she put water on to boil and measured tea leaves into a crockery pot. Although she was worn out, she thought she might never sleep again.

“Look at you,” Maisie scolded in a gruff voice barely above a whisper. “Them eyes of yours look like two burnt holes in a blanket, and you're pale as a haint.”

Susannah ignored the remarks, though she knew them to be true. “How is Ethan? Have you heard from him?”

Maisie withheld her answer for a moment, her mouth pressed into a thin line of frustration. Then she took pity on Susannah and relented. “I reckon he would have got out of jail last night if Hawkins found a lawyer. Like as not, he'll show up here in the next little while. If he ain't gone lookin' for whoever it was that hurt Mr. Fairgrieve, that is.”

Something quivered in the pit of Susannah's stomach. There had been more than enough tragedy in the Fairgrieve family over the years, without Ethan getting himself hanged or taking another bullet. Doubtless, Aubrey's assailants were better shots than Mrs. Parker; they would aim to kill. Before she could say as much to Maisie, there came a knock at the back door, and Ethan stepped inside, wearing a leather coat lined with sheepskin and a stockman's hat that had seen better days. His pants and boots were those of a working rancher, and his shirt was unbuttoned to the waist, revealing the thick bandages that swathed his middle.

Without a word, he crossed the room, took Susannah by the shoulders, and placed a light, brotherly kiss on her forehead. The tenderness of the gesture made her eyes swim again; she blinked rapidly, sniffled, and raised her chin.

“He's so still,” she said, despondent.

Ethan nodded and shrugged out of his coat. With a muttered greeting to Maisie, he hung the garment from a peg beside the door and started toward the back stairs. At their foot, he turned and looked back. “When Aubrey comes to, Susannah, he'll want to find you well.
He'll need you more than he's ever needed anybody. So get some rest, will you?”

She couldn't fight them anymore, couldn't deny the logic of what Maisie, Reverend Johnstone, and now Ethan had all said. “All right,” she said, and he nodded again and went upstairs.

Thereafter, Susannah ate the poached egg and toasted bread Ellie made for her, then went up to her own room and flung herself down on the bed, fully clothed. She was asleep almost before she reached the mattress.

Ethan shook her awake at sunset; she sat up, blinking and dazed. Terrified and hopeful.

“Aubrey's come around,” Ethan told her with a weary grin. “He's asking for you.”

She gave a small, strangled cry of urgency and of desperate joy, bounded off the bed, and raced into the hallway. Sure enough, Aubrey lay with his eyes open, and when he caught sight of her, his swollen mouth formed a semblance of a smile.

“Hello, Susannah.” His voice was hardly more than a croak, but the sound of it was infinitely beautiful to her. She approached him slowly, knelt beside the bed, took his hand in hers. That same hand she had held through long, dark hours of despair.

Without speaking, she kissed the backs of his fingers.

The Reverend Johnstone stood, clearing his throat, and Susannah heard both him and Ethan leave the room, closing the door behind them. She was grateful, overwhelmingly grateful, for so very many things.

In a painful motion, Aubrey brushed her cheek with his thumb, their fingers intertwined. His eyes, blackened and practically swollen shut though they were, twinkled. “I may not be able to dance at our wedding,” he said.

Susannah made a soblike sound with something in it of both joy and sorrow. “How do you feel?”

He looked at her for a long time, his regard at once curious and tender. “As if I've been stomped by a team of horses and then dragged a half mile over rocky ground,” he answered, and it was plain that merely speaking was a great effort. “Even so, I don't see how I could look much worse than you do.”

She pretended to be insulted, but she knew her eyes were shining with happy tears. “Such flattering words. Are you trying to seduce me, sir?”

He chortled. “I would love to seduce you, lady, but I'm afraid I'm in no fit condition for it.” His expression turned serious, and she knew the pain was gathering momentum. “Lie down beside me, Susannah,” he said. “Just lie here, so I know you're close.”

She didn't hesitate, although she was careful not to jar him as she took her place next to him on the mattress, fitting her shape to his as closely as she could, her lips and the tip of her nose just brushing his neck.

“Oh, Lord,” he groaned. “Suggesting this might have shown poor judgment on my part,” he said, and chuckled again. His amusement was immediately followed by another moan of pain.

“I never thought I'd hear you admit to anything less than perfect judgment,” Susannah retorted. She was smiling, but her eyes were still stinging with tears. She could not seem to stop crying.

“The Ladies' Benevolence Society would not approve of this,” Aubrey said. Perhaps, Susannah thought, talking distracted him from his pain, though it was equally plain that every word came at great cost.

Susannah laid her hand lightly upon his chest, fingers splayed, and felt his heart beating strong and steady, as though rising to meet her touch. She aligned her breathing with his and closed her eyes. “A pox on them,” she said cheerfully.

She felt his left hand find and cover her right, lying there over his heart. “For shame,” he said. Then they both slept, soundly and without dreams.

There was something different about Ethan, Aubrey reflected, a week after he'd come to and found himself in his own bed, swaddled in sheets like a mummy in some pharaoh's tomb. He was sitting up, plumped pillows supporting his back, and though his ribs were still trussed, his bruises were fading, and the pain was becoming more endurable with every passing day.

His brother stood at the window, his back to the room, light shining around his lean frame like a halo. He smiled at the irony; Ethan was a lot of things, but an angel wasn't one of them.

“Delphinia's long gone,” he was saying, “but those thugs she hired are still around someplace, I'd bet the ranch on that.”

Aubrey was eating some of Maisie's chicken and dumplings; he took time to chew. Just one more simple, ordinary thing he had to be careful about.
Real
careful, since he'd loosened a few teeth in the fight. “Never mind that,” he said impatiently. Delphinia was long gone, and as far as he was concerned, it would be downright greedy to ask for more. “What I want to know is, what's happened to you? You aren't the same man as before.”

Ethan rounded in his own good time, regarded his brother with a slightly mysterious grin. He was holding his hat, turning it around slowly by the brim. “Oh, I'm the same, all right.”

Aubrey narrowed his eyes, then shook his head. “I guess you'll tell me about it when you're ready,” he said. “I had a visit from John Hollister earlier this morning. It seems he's resigned from the Pinkerton agency to take
up the law again. I suppose he's tired of traveling so much.”

Perhaps it was the mention of the police that made the smile slide off Ethan's face and vanish into thin air. “He'd like to marry Susannah,” he said, but the comment sounded like an aside; he was plainly thinking of something else. He made another stab at lightening things up a little. “You'd better get well fast, brother. Half the town's set to court her, should you pass away or remain an invalid.”

“Very funny,” Aubrey said without a shred of amusement anywhere in his being. “You're in bad trouble over that little set-to with Delphinia, aren't you?”

Ethan shrugged. “Like I said, she's disappeared. Hollister thinks they'll drop the charges eventually, given the fact that I was shot in the scuffle and she's not around to testify.” Another fleeting, faltering grin. “Provided I stay out of dutch in the meantime, of course.”

“Of course,” Aubrey agreed, setting aside what remained of his lunch and lying back against the pillows. “That's good advice, Ethan. You won't accomplish anything by getting yourself sent to prison.”

“You want me to just let those sons-of-bitches get away with damn near killing my brother?”

“I'd prefer that to seeing you ruin the rest of your life. Forget what happened, Ethan. It isn't your fight.”

“Whose fight is it, then? And don't say the police will handle it. You and I both know they'll chase down a few leads, then give up and close the case for good.”

“Did it ever occur to you,” Aubrey said, “that it might be
my
fight? I'm the one who took the beating, aren't I?”

Ethan slapped the hat against his thigh, and a muscle pulsed at the edge of his jaw. “You can't even get out of bed. How are you going to track a bunch of wharf rats in and out of every dive on the waterfront?”

“Ah. So you
have
been playing detective. And after you promised Hollister you wouldn't.”

This time, the grin was genuine. “All I did was ask a few questions here and there,” he said.

“Ethan.”

“I'll be careful,” came the clipped reply. The strains of some really sorry piano playing began to seep up between the floorboards. “I see Susannah's doing a brisk business teaching music,” Ethan said from the door.