Linda Lael Miller Bundle (34 page)

He swallowed hard. Rue Claridge might be telling the truth, he thought, at least about being related to Mrs. Fortner. God knew, she was strange enough, with her trousers and her funny way of talking.

“Miss Claridge?” he said after clearing his throat. He wanted to wriggle her toe, but decided everything south of where the sheet stopped was out of his jurisdiction. “Rue!”

She sat bolt upright in bed and, to Farley’s guarded relief and vast disappointment, held the top sheet firmly against her bosom.

Farley Haynes was standing at the foot of the bed, his hands resting on his hips, his handsome head cocked to one side.

Rue sat up hastily, insulted and alarmed and strangely aroused all at once, and wrenched the sheets from her collarbone to her chin.

“I sure hope you’re making yourself at home and all,” Farley said, and the expression in his eyes was wry in spite of his folksy drawl. He wasn’t fooling Rue; this guy was about as slow moving and countrified as a New York politician.

Although the marshal hadn’t touched her, Rue had the oddest sensation of impact, as though she’d been hauled against his chest, with just the sheet between them. “What are you doing here?” she demanded furiously when she found her voice at last. She felt the ornate headboard press against her bare back and bottom.

He arched one eyebrow and folded his arms. “I could ask the same question of you, little lady.”

Enough was enough. Nobody was going to call Rue Claridge “honey,” “sweetie” or “little lady” and get away with it, no matter
what
century they came from.

“Don’t call me ‘little’ anything!” Rue snapped. “I’m a grown woman and a self-supporting professional, and I won’t be patronized!”

This time, both the intruder’s eyebrows rose, then knit together into a frown. “You sure are a temperamental filly,” Farley allowed. “And mouthy as hell, too.”

“Get out of here!” Rue shouted.

Idly, Farley drew up a rocking chair and sat. Then he rubbed his stubbly chin, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You said you were a professional before. Question is, a professional what?”

Rue was still clutching the covers to her throat, and she was breathing hard, as though she’d just finished a marathon. If she hadn’t been afraid to let go of the bedclothes with even one hand, she would have snatched up the small crockery pitcher on the nightstand and hurled it at his head.

“You would never understand,” she answered haughtily. “Now it’s my turn to ask a question, Marshal. What the
hell
are you doing in my bedroom?”

“This isn’t your bedroom,” the lawman pointed out quietly. “It’s Jon Fortner’s. And I’m here because Miss Ellen came to town and reported a prowler on the premises.”

Rue gave an outraged sigh. The housekeeper had apparently entered the room, seen an unwelcome guest sleeping there and marched herself into Pine River to demand legal action. “Hellfire and spit,” Rue snapped. “Why didn’t she drag Judge Wapner out here, too?”

Farley’s frown deepened to bewilderment. “There’s no judge by that name around these parts,” he said. “And I wish you’d stop talking like that. If the Presbyterians hear you, they’ll be right put out about it.”

Catching herself just before she would have exploded into frustrated hysterics, Rue sucked in a deep breath and held it until a measure of calm came over her. “All right,” she said finally, in a reasonable tone. “I will try not to stir up the Presbyterians. I promise. The point is, now you’ve investigated and you’ve seen that I’m not a trespasser, but a member of the family. I have a right to be here, Marshal, but, frankly, you don’t. Now if you would please leave.”

Farley sat forward in his chair, turning the brim of his battered, sweat-stained hat in nimble brown fingers. “Until I get word back from San Francisco that it’s all right for you to stay here, ma’am, I’m afraid you’ll have to put up at one of the boardinghouses in town.”

Rue would have agreed to practically anything just to get him to leave the room. The painful truth was, Marshal Farley Haynes made places deep inside her thrum and pulse in response to some hidden dynamic of his personality. That was terrifying because she’d never felt anything like it before.

“Whatever you say,” she replied with a lift of her chin. Innocuous as they were, the words came out sounding defiant. “Just leave this room, please. Immediately.”

She thought she saw a twinkle in Farley’s gem-bright eyes. He stood up with an exaggerated effort and, to Rue’s horror, walked to the head of the bed and stood looking down at her.

“No husband and no daddy,” he reflected sagely. “Little wonder your manners are so sorry.” With that, he cupped one hand under her chin, then bent over and kissed her, just as straightforwardly as if he were shaking her hand.

To Rue’s further mortification, instead of pushing him away, as her acutely trained left brain told her to do, she rose higher on her knees and thrust herself into the kiss. It was soft and warm at first, then Farley touched the seam of her mouth with his tongue and she opened to him, like a night orchid worshiping the moon. He took utter and complete command before suddenly stepping back.

“I expect you to be settled somewhere else by nightfall,” he said gruffly. To his credit, he didn’t avert his eyes, but he didn’t look any happier about what he’d just done than Rue was.

“Get out,” she breathed.

Farley settled his hat on his head, touched the brim in a mockingly cordial way and strolled from the room.

Rue sent her pillow flying after him, because he was so insufferable. Because he’d had the unmitigated gall not only to come into her bedroom, but to kiss her. Because her insides were still colliding like carnival rides gone berserk.

Later, ignoring Ellen, who was watchful and patently disapproving, Rue fetched a ladder from the barn and set it against the burned side of the house. At least, she thought, looking down at her jeans and T-shirt, she was dressed for climbing.

She still wanted to find Elisabeth and make sure her cousin was all right, but there were things she’d need to sustain herself in this primitive era. She intended to return to the late twentieth century, buy some suitable clothes from a costume place or a theater troupe, and pick up some old currency at a coin shop. Then she’d return, purchase a ticket on a train or boat headed south and see for herself that Bethie was happy and well.

It was an excellent plan, all in all, except that when Rue reached the top of the ladder and opened the charred door, nothing happened. She knew by the runner on the hallway floor and the pictures on the wall that she was still in 1892, even though she was wearing the necklace and wishing as hard as she could.

Obviously, one couldn’t go back and forth between the two centuries on a whim.

Rue climbed down the ladder in disgust, finally, and stood in the deep grass, dusting her soot-blackened hands off on the legs of her jeans. “Damn it, Bethie,” she muttered, “you’d better have a good reason for putting me through this!”

In the meantime, whether Elisabeth had a viable excuse for being in the wrong century or not, Rue had to make the best of her circumstances. She needed to find a way to fit in—and fast—before the locals decided
she
was a witch.

Ellen had draped a rug over the clothesline and was busily beating it with something that resembled a snowshoe. Occasionally she glanced warily in Rue’s direction, as though expecting to be turned into a crow at any moment.

Rue wedged her hands into the hip pockets of her jeans and mentally ruled out all possibility of searching Elisabeth’s house for money while the housekeeper was around. There was only one way to get the funds she needed, and if she didn’t get busy, she might find herself spending the night in somebody’s barn.

Or the Pine River jailhouse.

The idea of being behind bars went against her grain. Rue had once done a brief stint in a minimum-security women’s prison for refusing to reveal a source to a grand jury, but this would obviously be different.

Rue headed for the road, walking backward so she could look at the house and “remember” how it
would
look in another hundred years. A part of her still expected to wake up on the couch in Aunt Verity’s front parlor and discover this whole experience had been nothing more than a dream.

Reaching Pine River, Rue headed straight for the Hang-Dog Saloon, though she did have the discretion to make her way around to the alley and go in the back door.

In a smoky little room in the rear of the building, Rue found exactly what she’d hoped for, exactly what a thousand TV Westerns had conditioned her to expect. Four drunk men were seated around a rickety table, playing poker.

At the sight of a woman entering this inner sanctum, especially one wearing pants, the cardplayers stared. A man sporting a dusty stovepipe hat went so far as to let the unlit stogie fall from between his teeth, and the fat one with garters on his sleeves folded his cards and threw them in.

“What the hell…?”

After swallowing hard, Rue peeled off her digital watch and tossed it into the center of the table. “I’d like to play, if you fellas don’t mind,” she said, sounding much bolder than she felt.

The man in the stovepipe hat had apparently recovered from the shock of seeing the wrong woman in the wrong place; he picked up the wristwatch and studied it with a solemn frown. “Never seen nothin’ like this here,” he told his colleagues.

Being one of those people who believe that great forces come to the aid of the bold, Rue drew up a chair and sat down between a long-haired gunfighter type in a canvas duster and the hefty guy with the garters.

“Deal me in,” she said brightly.

“Where’d you get this thing?” asked the one in the high hat.

“K mart,” Rue answered, reaching for the battered deck lying in the middle of the table. She thought of bumper stickers she’d seen in her own time and couldn’t help grinning. “My other watch is a Rolex,” she added.

Stovepipe looked at her in consternation and opened his mouth to protest, but when Rue shuffled the cards deftly from one hand to the other without dropping a single one, he pressed his lips together.

The gunfighter whistled. “Son of a—Tarnation, ma’am. Where’d you learn to do that?”

Rue was warming to the game, as well as the conversation. “On board Air Force One, about three years ago. A Secret Serviceman taught me.”

Stovepipe and Garters looked at each other in pure bewilderment.

“I say the lady plays,” said the gunslinger.

Nobody argued, perhaps because Quickdraw was wearing a mean-looking forty-five low on his hip.

Rue dealt with a skill born of years of practice—her grandfather had taught her to play five-card draw back in Montana when she was six years old, and she’d been winning matchsticks, watches, ballpoint pens and pocket change ever since.

Rue had taken several pots, made up mostly of coins, though she had raked in a couple of oversize nineteenth-century dollar bills, in this game when the prostitute in the pea green dress came rustling in.

The woman’s painted mouth fell open when she saw Rue sitting at the table, actually playing poker with the men, and her kohl-lined eyes widened. She set a fresh bottle of whiskey down on the table with an irate thump.

“Be quiet, Sissy,” Quickdraw said, talking around the matchstick he was holding between his teeth. “This here is serious poker.”

Sissy’s eyes looked, as Aunt Verity would have said, like two burn holes in a blanket, and Rue felt a stab of pity for her. God knew, nineteenth-century life was hard enough for respectable women. It would be even rougher for ladies of the evening.

Quickdraw picked up Rue’s watch, which was lying next to her stack of winnings, and held it up for Sissy’s inspection. “You bring me good luck, little sugar girl, and I’ll give you this for a trinket.”

“I think I may throw up,” Rue murmured under her breath.

“What’d you say?” Stovepipe demanded, sounding a little testy. Losing at poker clearly didn’t sit well with him.

Rue offered the same smile she would have used to cajole the president of the United States into answering a tough question at a press conference, and replied, “I said I’m sure glad I showed up.”

Sissy tossed the watch back to the table, glared at Rue for a moment, then turned and sashayed out of the room.

Rue was secretly relieved and turned all her concentration on the matter at hand. She had enough winnings to buy that horrible gingham dress and rent herself a room at the boardinghouse; now all she needed to do was ease out of the game without making her companions angry.

She yawned expansively.

Garters gave her a quelling look, clearly not ready to give up on the evening, and the game went on. And on.

It was starting to get embarrassing the way Rue kept winning, when all of a sudden the inner door to the saloon crashed open. There, filling the doorway like some fugitive from a Louis L’Amour novel, was Farley Haynes.

Finding Rue with five cards in her hand and a stack of coins in front of her, he swore. Sissy peered around his broad shoulder and smiled, just to let Rue know she’d been the one to bring about her impending downfall.

“Game’s over,” Farley said in that gruff voice, and none of the players took exception to the announcement. In fact, except for Rue, they all scattered, muttering various excuses and hasty pleasantries as they rushed out.

Rue stood and began stuffing her winnings into the pockets of her jeans. “Don’t get your mustache in a wringer, Marshal,” she said. “I’ve got what I came for and now I’m leaving.”

Farley shook his head in quiet, angry wonderment and gestured toward the door with one hand. “Come along with me, Miss Claridge. You’re under arrest.”

F
arley Haynes set his jaw, took Miss Rue Claridge by the elbow and hauled her toward the door. He prided himself on being a patient man, slow to wrath, as the Good Book said, but this woman tried his forbearance beyond all reasonable measure. Furthermore, he just flat didn’t like the sick-calf feeling he got whenever he looked at her.

“Now, just a minute, Marshal,” Miss Claridge snapped, trying to pull free of his grasp. “You haven’t read me my rights!”

Farley tightened his grip, but he was careful not to bruise that soft flesh of hers. He didn’t hold with manhandling a lady—not even one who barely measured up to the term when it came to comportment. To his way of thinking, Rue Claridge added up just fine as far as appearances went.

“What rights?” he demanded as they reached the shadowy alley behind the saloon. He had the damnedest, most unmarshal-like urge to drag Rue against his chest and kiss her, right then and there, and that scared the molasses out of him. The thought of kissing somebody in pants had never so much as crossed Farley’s mind before, and he hoped to God it never would again.

“Forget it,” she said, and her disdainful tone nettled Farley sorely. “It’s pretty clear that around this town, I don’t
have
any rights. I hope you’re enjoying this, because it won’t be long until you find yourself dealing with the likes of Susan B. Anthony!”

“Who?” Farley hadn’t been this vexed since the year he was twelve, when Becky Hinehammer had called him a coward for refusing to walk the ridgepole on the schoolhouse roof. His pride had driven him to prove her wrong, and he’d gotten a broken collarbone for his trouble, along with a memorable blistering from his pa, once he’d healed up properly, for doing such a damn-fool thing in the first place.

He propelled Miss Claridge out of the alley and onto the main street of town. Pine River was relatively quiet that night.

They reached the jailhouse, and Farley pushed the front door open, then escorted his captive straight back to the jail’s only cell.

Once his saucy prisoner was secured, Farley hung his hat on a peg next to the door and put away his rifle. It didn’t occur to him to unstrap his gun belt; that was something he did only when it was time to stretch out for the night. Even then, he liked to have his .45 within easy reach.

He found a spare enamel mug, wiped it out with an old dish towel snatched from a nail behind the potbellied stove, and poured coffee. Then he carried the steaming brew to the cell and handed it through the bars to Miss Claridge. “What kind of name is Rue?” he asked, honestly puzzled.

This woman was full of mysteries, and he found himself wanting to solve them one by one.

His guest blew on the coffee, took a cautious sip and made a face. At least she was womanly enough to mind her manners. Farley had half expected her to slurp up the brew like an old mule skinner and maybe spit a mouthful into the corner. Instead, she came right back with, “What kind of name is Farley?”

If she wasn’t going to give a direct answer, neither was he. “You’re a snippy little piece, aren’t you?”

Rue smiled, revealing a good, solid set of very white teeth. Folk wisdom said a woman lost a tooth for every child she bore, but Farley figured this gal would probably still have a mouthful even if she gave birth to a dozen babies.

“And
you’re
lucky I know you’re calling me ‘a piece’ in the old-fashioned sense of the word,” she said pleasantly. “Because if you meant it the way men mean it where—when—I come from, I’d throw this wretched stuff you call coffee all over you.”

Farley didn’t back away; he wouldn’t let himself be intimidated by a smudged little spitfire in britches. “I reckon I’ve figured out why your folks gave you that silly name,” he said. “They knew someday some poor man would rue the day you were ever born.”

A flush climbed Rue’s cheeks, and Farley reflected that her skin was as fine as her teeth. She was downright pretty, if a little less voluptuous than he’d have preferred—or would be, if anybody ever took the time to clean her up.

Considering that task made one side of Farley’s mouth twitch in a fleeting grin.

He saw her blush again, then lift the mug to her mouth with both hands and take a healthy swig.

“God, I can’t believe I’m actually drinking this sludge!” she spat out just a moment later. “What did you do, boil down a vat of axle grease?”

Farley turned away to hide another grin, sighing as he pretended to straighten the papers on his desk. “The Presbyterians are surely going to have their hands full getting
you
back on the straight and narrow,” he allowed.

Rue stared at Farley’s broad, muscular back and swallowed. She was exhausted and confused and, since she hadn’t had anything to eat in almost a century, hungry. She kept expecting to wake up, even though she knew this situation was all too real.

She sat on the edge of the cell’s one cot, which boasted a thin, bare mattress and a gray woolen blanket that looked as though it could have belonged to the poorest private in General Lee’s rebel army.

“Did you ever get around to having your supper?” Farley’s voice was gruff, but there was something oddly comforting about the deep, resonating timbre of it.

Rue didn’t look at him; there were tears in her eyes, and she was too proud to let them show. “No,” she answered.

Farley’s tone remained gentle, and Rue knew he had moved closer. “It’s late, but I’ll see if I can’t raise Bessie over at the Hang-Dog and get her to fix you something.”

Rue was still too stricken to speak; she just nodded.

Only when the marshal had left the jailhouse on his errand of mercy did Rue allow herself a loud sniffle. She stood and gripped the bars in both hands.

Maybe because she was tired, she actually hoped, for a few fleeting moments, that the key would be hanging from a peg within stretching distance on her cell, like in a TV Western.

In this case, fact was not stranger than fiction—there was no key in sight.

She began to pace, muttering to herself. If she ever got out of this, she’d write a book about it, tell the world. Appear on
Donahue
and
Oprah.

Rue stopped, the nail of her index finger caught between her teeth. Who would ever believe her, besides Elisabeth?

She sat on the edge of the cot again and drew deep breaths until she felt a little less like screaming in frustration and panic.

Half an hour had passed, by the old clock facing Farley’s messy desk, when the marshal returned carrying a basket covered with a blue-and-white checkered napkin.

Rue’s stomach rumbled audibly and, to cover her embarrassment at that, she said defiantly, “You were foolish to leave me unattended, Marshal. I might very well have escaped.”

He chuckled, extracted the coveted key from the pocket of his rough spun trousers and unlocked the cell door. “Is that so, Miss Spitfire? Then why didn’t you?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be so damn cocky,” she warned. “For all you know, I might be part of a gang. Why, twenty or thirty outlaws might ride in here and dynamite this place.”

Farley set the basket down and moseyed out of the cell, as unconcerned as if his prisoner were an addlepated old lady. Rue was vaguely insulted that the lawman didn’t consider her more dangerous.

“Shut up and eat your supper,” he said, not unkindly.

Rue plopped down on the edge of the cot again. Farley had set the basket on the only other piece of furniture in the cell, a rickety old stool, and she pulled that close.

There was cold roast venison in the basket, along with a couple of hard flour-and-water biscuits and an apple.

Rue ate greedily, but the whole time she watched Farley out of the corner of one eye. He was doing paperwork at the desk, by the light of a flickering kerosene lamp.

“Aren’t you ever going home?” she inquired when she’d consumed every scrap of the food.

Farley didn’t look up. “I’ve got a little place out back,” he said. “You’d better get some sleep, Miss Claridge. Likely as not, you’ll have the ladies of the town to deal with come morning. They’ll want to take you on as a personal mission.”

Rue let her forehead rest against an icy bar and sighed. “Great.”

When Farley finally raised his eyes and saw that Rue was still standing there staring at him, he put down his pencil. “Am I keeping you awake?”

“It’s just…” Rue paused, swallowed, started again. “Well, I’d like to wash up, that’s all. And maybe brush my teeth.”
In my own bathroom, thank you. In my own wonderful, crazy, modern world.

Farley stretched, then brought a large kettle from a cabinet near the stove. “I guess you’ll just have to rinse and spit, since the town of Pine River doesn’t provide toothbrushes, but I can heat up some wash water for you.”

He disappeared through a rear door, returning minutes later with the kettle, which he set on the stove top.

Rue bit her lower lip. It was bad enough that the marshal expected her to bathe in that oversize bird cage he called a cell. How clean could a girl get with two quarts of water?

“This is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention,” she said.

Farley looked at her over one sturdy shoulder, shook his head in obvious consternation and went back to his desk. “If you hadn’t told me you and Lizzie Fortner were kinfolk, I’d have guessed it anyway. Both of you talk like you’re from somewhere a long ways from here.”

Rue sagged against the cell door and closed her eyes for a moment. “So far away you couldn’t begin to comprehend it, cowboy,” she muttered.

Farley’s deep voice contained a note of distracted humor. “Since I didn’t quite make out what you just said, I’m going to assume it was something kindly,” he told her without looking up from those fascinating papers of his.

“Don’t you have something waiting for you at home—a dog or a goldfish or something?” Rue asked. She didn’t know which she was more desperate for—a little privacy or the simple comfort of ordinary conversation.

The marshal sighed and laid down his nibbed pen. His wooden chair creaked under his weight as he leaned back. “I live alone,” he said, sounding beleaguered and a little smug in the bargain.

“Oh.” Rue felt a flash of bittersweet relief at this announcement, though she would have given up her trust fund rather than admit the fact. Earlier, she’d experienced a dizzying sense of impact, even though Farley wasn’t touching her, and now she was painfully aware of the lean hardness of his frame and the easy masculine grace with which he moved.

It was damn ironic that being around Jeff Wilson had never had this effect on her. Maybe if it had, she would have a couple of kids and a real home by now, in addition to the career she loved.

“You must be pretty ambitious,” she blurted out. The sound of heat surging through the water in the kettle filled the quiet room. “Do you often work late?”

Farley put down his pen again and scratched the nape of his neck before emitting an exasperated sigh. “I don’t plan on spending my life as a lawman,” he replied with a measured politeness that clearly told Rue he wished she’d shut up and let him get on with whatever he was doing. “I’ve been saving for a ranch ever since I got out of the army. I mean to raise cattle and horses.”

At last, Rue thought. Common ground.

“I have a ranch,” she announced. “Over in Montana.”

“So you said,” Farley replied. It was plain enough that, to him, Rue’s claim was just another wild story. He got up and crossed the room to test the water he’d been heating. “Guess this is ready,” he said.

Rue narrowed her eyes as he came toward the cell, carrying the kettle by its black iron handle, fingers protected from the steam by the same rumpled dish towel he’d used to wipe out the mug earlier.

“I’m not planning to strip down and lather up in front of you, Marshal,” she warned, standing back as he unlocked the cell door and came in.

He laughed, and the sound was unexpectedly rich. “That would be quite a show,” he said.

Rue wasn’t sure she appreciated his amusement. She just glared at him.

Farley set the kettle down in the cell, then went out and locked the door again. He handed Rue a rough towel and a cloth through the bars, then ambled over to collect his hat and canvas duster.

“Good night, Miss Claridge.” With that, he blew out the kerosene lantern on his desk, plunging the room into darkness except for the thin beams of moonlight coming in through the few windows.

It was remarkable how lonely and scared Rue felt once he’d closed and locked the front door of the jailhouse. Up until then, she’d have sworn she wanted him to go.

She waited until she was reasonably sure she wouldn’t be interrupted before hastily stripping. Shivering there in that cramped little cell, Rue washed in the now-tepid water Farley had brought, then put her clothes back on. After wrapping herself in the Civil War blanket, she lay down on the cot and closed her eyes.

Although Rue fully expected the worst bout of insomnia ever, she fell asleep with all the hesitation of a rock dropping to the bottom of a deep pond. She awakened to a faceful of bright sunlight and the delicious smell and cheerful sizzle of bacon frying.

At first, Rue thought she was home at Ribbon Creek, with her granddaddy cooking breakfast in the ranch house kitchen. Then it all come back to her.

It was 1892 and she was in jail, and even if she managed to get back to her own time, no one was ever,
ever
going to believe her accounts of what had happened to her.

She would definitely write a novel. A movie would inevitably follow. Priscilla Presley could play Rue, and they could probably get Tom Selleck for Farley’s role, or maybe Lee Horsely….

Rue rose from the bed and immediately shifted from one foot to the other and back again.

“’Morning,” Farley said with a companionable smile. He was standing beside the stove, turning the thick strips of pork in a cast-iron skillet.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Rue told him impatiently. “And don’t you dare offer me a chamber pot!”

The marshal’s white teeth flashed beneath his manly mustache. Expertly, he took the skillet off the heat, setting it on a trivet atop a nearby bookshelf, then ambled over to face Rue through the bars.