Her Outlaw (24 page)

“I suspect at some point, he will. He’s on a wild goose chase.” Something in his voice alerted her because she stopped and looked questioningly at Dair. “Another bit of information I picked up at Chatham Park. Remember Miss Starnes? One of Jake’s bride prospects?”

“I do,” Emma said, nodding. “I thought he might choose her.”

“Apparently so did she, and when he didn’t, she found a way to get back at him. She stole an old letter of his brother Daniel’s from a file Bernard Kimball kept and had a forger copy the handwriting. Jake received a letter from his “brother” which led him to think Daniel was alive and waiting to be found. That’s why he left your sister and the children.”

Emma winced. “How cruel. How did you discover this?”

“Miss Starnes’s father discovered her perfidy and he arrived at Chatham Park to beg Jake’s forgiveness while I was there. With Jake already gone, he confessed all to me.”

“So Daniel isn’t alive. Jake won’t find his family. That’s so sad. And poor Kat. His leaving would have hurt her. She didn’t deserve that.”

“Life isn’t fair more often than not.” He pressed a quick kiss against her lips, then said, “Look Emma, Edinburgh isn’t safe for either of us at the moment. I need to decide our next move, but I’m not certain where we should go.”

“I am.” Excitement lit Emma’s eyes and she hurried to put herself to rights. “Get dressed, MacRae, and come downstairs. I’ve something to show you.”

Dair frowned at her leg, distracted by a truly ugly garter and stocking. “I hope we can be done with Wilhemina Peters soon.”

She sniffed. “I’ve never liked facial hair on men, myself.”

Dair’s disguise took longer to repair than Emma’s—it was important for his beard and mustache to appear natural—so when he finally descended the staircase, he found her back at the reading table with a leather-bound book and a box full of correspondence in front of her. “What’s this?” he asked, reaching for one of the letters.

“Read this first.” She handed him a receipt for one box of personal correspondence from the private library of a Duncan MacRae. “Look at the date and time. Mr. Potter borrowed this box after we visited him and showed him the necklace.”

“It’s information about the treasure,” Dair surmised, glancing back at the box.

“Yes. He’d hidden the letters well. It took me almost a week to find the box. Dair, the letters were written by a woman named Roslin MacRae.”

“Another one.”

“Yes. She emigrated to Australia with her husband in 1840.”

“Australia?” he repeated, putting the pieces together. “She took the Sisters’ Prize to Australia?”

“I think so. For a time. But then in one of the later letters, she mentions another Roslin, a cousin to whom the burden was soon to pass. Dair, I think the cousin was your mother.”

Dair thought that through. “You think she took the treasure to Texas.”

“It’s possible. And if my necklace was originally part of the treasure, maybe that’s why it was familiar to you. Maybe you’d seen it before.”

He considered it, then shook his head. “It doesn’t feel right. It’s not the necklace that felt familiar, but the engraving.”

“All right, then. Maybe the box holding the treasure is engraved with the same symbol, the same words. You were just a boy. Your mother could have showed it to you, but you don’t remember it well.”

While he was still trying to digest that idea, she hit him with another blow. “I’ve thought about this every day we’ve been apart. Dair, I think someone else knows about the treasure. I think it’s possible that someone has had you followed to see if you’d lead them to The Sisters’ Prize.”

He rubbed the back of his neck as he considered it. “He could have found out about the Riever that way. Found out about you.”

“And used the information when he considered it to be most valuable.” She paused significantly, then added, “After Robbie was able to put together the clues.”

“You think this mysterious someone killed Potter.”

“I do. We know Mr. Potter spoke to someone after we left this shop that day because of this box from Duncan MacRae’s library.”

“I know Duncan MacRae,” Dair said. “He’s a good man. He didn’t do this.”

“All right. If not MacRae, then maybe Potter borrowed another source of information from someone else, too.”

“The killer.”

“I think Mr. Potter told the killer about my necklace, about the treasure, and what he’d discovered in those letters.”

“The killer stole the ruby,” Dair said, a shudder running down his spine as he pictured a murderer standing beside the bed where Emma lay sleeping.

“Or had it stolen,” Emma agreed.

Dair paced the bookshop aisle. “If Robbie discovered a piece of information that offered up a clue to the treasure’s whereabouts, then the killer didn’t need us anymore.”

“He gave up the Riever and framed me for the murder he committed to get us out of the way.” Emma nodded her agreement.

“What was the clue, Emma? What did Robbie discover and how did the killer know I’d get involved with the Sisters’ Prize before I did?”

“Magic?” she offered.

He scowled at her. “I need something more solid than that.”

“What if the killer knew your mother? What if he thought she told you the secret?”

Dair’s blood ran cold. He lifted his finger to trace the faint scar beside his eye that he’d carried most of his life. “What if he’s the one who killed her?”

“Your mother was murdered?” Emma’s eyes widened at that. “You never told me that. What happened, Dair?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never known. I don’t remember anything about it. I barely recall living with my mother in our cabin.”

She fired off a dozen questions about his past, but Dair shook his head. “I don’t know, Emma. A man delivering some lumber she’d ordered found her lying on the floor of the cabin. I was hiding under the bed. Nevertheless, it’s not relevant to this. Let’s not get distracted.”

“All right,” she agreed, although the look in her eyes told him she’d revisit the subject again. Then her expression turned pensive as they both took time to think the matter through.

“It fits,” she said a few moments later, excitement lighting her eyes. “The killer knew about the Sisters’ Prize. Maybe he wanted your mother to give it to him, and she wouldn’t so he killed her. Then, sometime, somewhere, he saw you and recognized you. He thought you might lead him to the treasure and sure enough, you did. You led him to Mr. Potter and my necklace.”

She shuffled through a stack of papers on the desk, then pulled out a single sheet. “I found this the other day. Look. Mr. Potter copied the engravings. See, the words are partially translated. It’s ‘The Land of….’ You said it was familiar. Can you remember now, Dair. ‘The Land of—’”

“Beginning Again,” he murmured, the words popping into his mind.

“That’s it?” The paper slipped from Emma’s fingers and floated to the floor. “That’s what it says? The Land of Beginning Again?”

Silently, Dair nodded.

“You know, don’t you?” she asked. “That’s what they call—”

“Texas.” Dair sucked in a deep breath, then blew it out in a rush. “Texas is the land of beginning again. I think you’re right, Emma. It all makes a horrible sort of sense. Some villain knows about The Sisters’ Prize and now has a good idea where to find it. He killed Potter and put the police on our trails so that we wouldn’t put it all together and follow him.”

“To Texas,” Emma stated.

“Yes, Emma. To Texas.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Texarkana, Arkansas-Texas

E
MMA STOOD ON THE
depot platform staring up at the chalkboard which announced the imminent departure of a train to Dallas, then Fort Worth. A wave of homesickness rolled over her. She missed her mother, her father and the boys. She wanted desperately to talk to Mari who would have had her baby—or babies—by now. Did she have a new niece or nephew or both? And what of Kat? Emma wanted to know that Kat was all right and learn how she was managing motherhood.

“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” Dair came up behind her and placed his hand at the small of her back.

She leaned into him, happy for the contact. Though he appeared confident that she wasn’t about to bolt, Emma thought she detected a slight hint of worry in his tone. She gave him a reassuring smile. “No. I intend to see this through. I am anxious to see my family, though.”

“With any luck, you’ll be on your way to Fort Worth before the month is out.”

Noting he’d said “you’ll” rather than “we’ll,” Emma worked to keep the smile on her face. She didn’t know what to make of Dair’s behavior since leaving Scotland. She had expected their close physical proximity, along with the threat hanging over their heads, to draw them closer during the trip. Instead, just the opposite had happened.

Emma wasn’t sure just what had caused the breach. She’d tried to bring up the subject a dozen times, but the mule-headed man refused to cooperate, skillfully changing the subject or successfully distracting her with kisses and more.

At least he hadn’t shut her out in that area. In fact, as the closeness of their relationship outside of the bedroom waned, the intimacy of their lovemaking intensified. Almost every night, Dair made love to her with an emotional energy that soothed the little wounds his distance during the day created. Of the two, Emma believed his behavior in bed was more truthful.

She suspected the headaches were a big part of it. They’d increased in frequency during the trip, and as a result, she and Dair had fallen into a hurtful little pattern. Invariably, he’d try to isolate himself when the pain began. At first, aware of the embarrassment and vulnerability he felt at her witnessing his incapacitation, Emma had allowed it. But it didn’t pass her notice that he appeared to suffer less and recover faster when she sat with him, stroked his poor head and whispered soothing words. She couldn’t bear to see him suffer, so she’d wait until the pain was such that he couldn’t stop her, and she’d invade his privacy and care for him. His reaction upon coming around was seldom pleasant.

Emma felt uneasy about the headaches. She questioned his assurances that he was getting better. She’d decided that the first order of business upon reaching Fort Worth was for Dair to see a doctor she trusted.

That’s if the man didn’t desert her beforehand.
Not
I’ll
be on my way to Fort Worth, MacRae.
We’ll
be on our way. And if necessary, I’ll pull out all my old McBride Menace tricks to make it happen.

“We have an hour before departure,” Dair said. He gestured toward a café across the street. “We need to grab an early lunch. We should have a good meal while we can. The place where we’ll have supper tonight isn’t known for its fine cuisine.”

Emma perked up. “What is this mysterious destination? Are you finally ready to tell me why we’re not going straight to the farmhouse where you lived with your mother?”

He grimaced, rubbed the back of his neck, then glanced up at the departure board. “Over dessert. I’ll tell you over dessert.”

Observing the path of his gaze, Emma wondered if he wanted to wait until after the Fort Worth–bound train left the station. Maybe he didn’t want her to have an opportunity to leave him after telling her where he was taking her. The idea wasn’t exactly comforting.

Emma had expected the hunt for the treasure and Robbie Potter’s killer to take precedence over everything, so she’d been shocked earlier this morning when Dair told her he had other business to see to in Texas, first. Her subsequent demands for more details had been met with stubborn silence.

The café, however, proved to be a delightful distraction from her pique. On the Texas side of State Avenue, the restaurant offered a menu that told Emma she was home. “Beef barbecue. Yum. Corn bread. Peach cobbler. Look, they even have calf fries.”

Dair winced. “You know, I’ve eaten a lot of…unusual…things in my travels. Gazelle in Africa. Bugs in the far East. I’ve eaten rattlesnake here in Texas. But just the idea of calf fries…that’s a little too personal for me.”

He sounded so much like Emma’s father that she almost dropped her water glass. Trace McBride was just about the bravest man she knew, and he wouldn’t go near a calf fry. She could hear the echo of his affronted voice in her mind.
It’s unnatural for a man to eat a bull’s balls.

At that point, she could do little else but smile sweetly up at the waitress and order, “I’ll have the calf fries, please.”

Dair narrowed his eyes and frowned at her.

She batted her lashes. “Chicken.”

“What!” Obviously affronted, he reared back.

She had to purse her lips to keep from laughing as she gave a casual shrug. “They taste just like chicken.”

Dair ordered a steak, then when the waitress left, folded his arms and observed, “You have an evil streak, don’t you?”

Now she did laugh. “It’s the Menace in me.” Then she rose from her chair, leaned across the table, and kissed him right on the mouth. “It’s so good to be home!”

Dair gave her a reluctant grin, then almost as an afterthought mentioned, “You’re so beautiful when you’re happy.”

It was the most intimate thing he’d said to her outside of bed in weeks, and Emma’s heart and hopes lifted.

He must have had second thoughts about his slip because he hastened to say, “What will you do when our adventure is over?”

Heart and hopes immediately crashed.

He smiled up at the waitress as she brought a basket of corn bread. “Will you return to your teaching position? You enjoy the children, don’t you? They’re certainly an adventure, and we know how much you like dangerous undertakings.”

She refused his offer of a muffin, having completely lost her appetite. “I do enjoy children,” she said quietly. Then, tired of the hot and cold nature of his attitude as of late, she decided the time had come for some plain speaking. “I enjoy children very much. In fact, I hope to have my own someday soon.”

Dair went still. Carefully, he set down the butter knife. “Emma, you’re not…?”

“No.” And her heart twisted a bit at the reality. She’d been glad when he’d taken steps to prevent pregnancy, but at this moment in time, she’d have been happy to answer affirmatively. “My birthday is tomorrow. I’ll be thirty years old, Dair. Thirty. I want children. A home. A husband. Most women my age already have them.”