Linda Lael Miller Bundle (37 page)

Rue felt as though she’d been abandoned on a distant planet.

The look in Miss Ella’s eyes was not a friendly one as the woman opened the front door and swept into the thin, blue house.

Rue followed, lugging her pink bag. By that time, sleeping in somebody’s barn sounded a shade more inviting than rooming with Miss Ella Sinclair.

“That’ll be one dollar in advance,” the spinster said, holding out one hand, palm up.

Pulling her money from her bodice embarrassed Rue, but she did it defiantly all the same, to let the landlady know she wasn’t intimidated. “Here,” she said, peeling off a bill.

“Thank you,” Miss Ella replied crisply. “I’ll just go and ready up that room I mentioned.” With that, she swept off, leaving Rue standing awkwardly in the front parlor, still holding her bag.

The landlady returned in a surprisingly short time for someone who’d allegedly had to move trunks out of a sewing room. Of course, Rue knew there had never been a shortage of beds in this house in the first place; Miss Sinclair was smitten with Farley, and she didn’t want him taking in a female boarder.

Rue’s quarters turned out to be a closet-size room wedged underneath the stairway. There was very little light and even less air. Someone had made a disastrous attempt at decoration, papering the place with hideous red cabbage roses against a pea green background. It looked as though a child had stood on the threshold and pitched overripe tomatoes at the walls.

“Dinner is at seven,” Miss Ella announced. “Please be prompt, because Papa is always ravenous when he returns from a day at the bank.”

Rue nodded and set her bag on the foot of the narrow cot she’d be sleeping on every night until the stagecoach came through and she could be off to Seattle. It hardly looked more comfortable than the bed in Pine River’s solitary jail cell.

“Thank you.” Rue rushed on without thinking, and the instant the question was out of her mouth, she regretted it. “Where’s the bathroom?”

“There’s a chamber pot underneath the bed,” the landlady answered with a puzzled frown. “And as for bathing, well, each boarder is assigned one particular night when he can bathe in the kitchen. Yours will be…” She paused, tapping her mouth with one finger as she considered. “Thursday.”

Rue sat down on the edge of the cot with a forlorn sigh. She didn’t mind being in the wrong century, she didn’t even mind boarding in a house where she wasn’t wanted, but not being able to take a shower every day was practically unbearable.

Miss Ella waggled her fingers in farewell and went out, closing the squeaky door behind her.

Rue got out her paperback book, stretched out on the lumpy cot and sighed. She’d stayed in worse places, though most of them had been in third-world countries.

Somewhere between chapters four and five, Rue dozed off. When she awakened, she had a headache and cramps in all her muscles, and she was clutching her sports bag like some pitiful orphan abandoned at Ellis Island.

Since crying wasn’t a workable method of operation, she got up, poured tepid water from a chipped pitcher into a mismatched bowl and splashed her face. After that, she opened the window a crack and took a few deep breaths.

Soon Rue was feeling better. She ferreted out the supply of candy bars tucked away in her bag and ate a single piece, then decided to brave Miss Sinclair’s parlor. She would borrow a cloak, if she could, and go out for a walk before dinner.

The landlady was nowhere to be found, as it happened, but a young woman who introduced herself as Miss Alice McCall volunteered a long woolen cape. Gratefully, Rue wrapped herself against the evening chill and went out.

There were no streetlights in this incarnation of Pine River, and certainly no neon signs. The blue-gray color of television screens didn’t flicker beyond the windows, but oil lanterns sent out a wavering glow.

A crushing wave of loneliness washed over Rue, a bruising awareness that the lights behind those thick panes of glass didn’t shine for her.

She was a stranger here.

In the center of town, the golden glimmer of lamps spiced with bawdy piano tunes spilled out of the saloon windows into the streets. Rue was drawn not by the drinking and the ugliness, but by the light and music.

The sudden flare of a match startled her, and she jumped. Farley was leaning against the outer wall of the feed and grain, his trusty rifle beside him, smoking a thin brown cigar.

“Looking for a poker game?” he inquired dryly.

Rue tossed her head to let him know just how much contempt she had for his question, then gestured toward the cigar. “Those things will kill you,” she said. She didn’t really expect to turn Farley from his wicked ways; she just wanted to make conversation for a few minutes.

He chuckled and shook his head. “You have an opinion on just about everything, it seems to me.”

Rue sighed. It wasn’t the first time someone had called her opinionated, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. “There are worse things,” she said, drawing her borrowed cloak more tightly around her. She hoped she would catch up with Elisabeth before too long, because she didn’t have the clothes for cold weather.

“I can’t deny that,” Farley confessed good-naturedly. He started walking along the board sidewalk, and Rue just naturally strolled along beside him.

“Miss Sinclair is—what did you people call it?—oh, yes. She’s sweet on you, Marshal. She’s set her cap for you.”

Now it was Farley who sighed. “Umm,” he said.

“Typical male answer,” Rue replied briskly. “Who are you, Farley? Where did you go to school?”

His boots made a rhythmic and somehow comforting sound on the wooden walk as he moved along, keeping a thoughtful silence. Finally, he countered, “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m just curious,” Rue said. They’d reached the end of the main street, and Farley crossed the road and started back the other way, the ever-present rifle in his hand. “You’re educated, and that isn’t all that common in the old…in the West.”

Farley laughed, and the sound was low and rich. The smell of his cigar was faint and somehow a comfort in the strangeness of that time and place. “My pa was a hard-scrabble farmer in Kansas,” he said, “and my ma never got beyond the fourth grade in school, but she loved books, and she taught me to read from the Bible and the
Farmer’s Almanac.
Once in Texas, I herded cattle for a man who must have had two hundred books in his house, and he let me borrow as many as I could carry.” Farley paused, smiling as he remembered. “I stayed on with that outfit for three years, even though the money wasn’t for spit, and I read every damn one of those books.”

Rue felt a swell of admiration, along with the usual jangling this man always caused in her nervous system. And she wished she could take him by the hand and show him the library her grandfather had built up on the ranch in Montana. “Awesome,” she said.

“Awesome,” Farley echoed. They were passing one of the saloons, and he glanced in over the swinging doors, apparently just making sure all was well with the warm-beer set. “I’ve never heard that word used that way.”

Rue smiled. “Kids say ‘awesome’ in…Seattle.” It was true enough. They just weren’t saying it
yet.
“I’m impressed, Farley. That you’ve read so many books, I mean.”

“If you ever want to borrow any,” he said with an endearing combination of modesty and shyness Rue had never dreamed he was capable of, “just let me know. I’ve got some good ones.”

They had reached the residential part of town, and Rue knew seven o’clock must be getting close. “Thanks,” she said, lightly touching Farley’s arm. “I might do that.”

The instant her fingers made contact with the hard muscles of his forearm, Rue knew she’d made a mistake. The ground seemed to tremble beneath her feet, and she felt more than slightly dizzy.

When Farley leaned his rifle against a building and gripped the sides of her waist to steady her, the whole situation immediately got worse. He gave a strangled groan and bent his head to kiss her.

His tongue touched either side of her mouth, then the seam between her lips. She opened to him as she had never done for another man, and he took full advantage of her surrender.

Much to Rue’s chagrin, it was Farley who finally broke away. He gripped her shoulders and held her at a distance, breathing hard and muttering an occasional curse word.

“I’ll see you back to the Sinclair place,” he said after a long time.

Rue was shaken and achy, wanting the marshal of Pine River as she had never in her life wanted a man before. “Farley, what’s wrong?” she asked miserably.

He took her elbow and started hustling her along the walk. “Nothing. You’re leaving for Seattle on Tuesday and I’m staying here to start a ranch. Let’s remember that.”

For the first time, Rue fully understood how Elisabeth could care enough about a man to give up every comfort and convenience of the twentieth century. Her own attraction to Farley Haynes had just reached a frightening pitch.

She swallowed. “I guess you’ll marry someone like Miss Sinclair, once you’re ready to settle down. A man out here needs a wife.”

Farley didn’t look at her. “I guess so,” he said, and his voice sounded gruff. They’d reached the Sinclair’s front gate, and he reached down to unfasten the latch. “In the future, Miss Claridge,” he said tightly, “it might be a good idea if you didn’t go out walking after dark. It’s not safe or proper, and the good people of the town don’t set much store by it.”

Rue was riding an internal roller coaster, had been ever since Farley had kissed her, and she’d exhausted her supply of sensible remarks. “Good night,” she said, turning and rushing toward the house.

The Sinclairs and their boarders were just sitting down to supper, and Rue joined them only because she was famished. This was one night when she would definitely have preferred room service.

“What do you do, Miss Claridge?” the head of the household asked pleasantly. He was a tall, heavy man with slate gray hair and a rather bulbous red nose. “For a living, I mean?”

His daughter smiled slyly and lowered her eyes, obviously certain that the new boarder was about to make a fool of herself.

“I’m an heiress,” Rue said. The statement was true; it was just that her money was in another dimension, stamped with dates that would be nothing but science fiction to these people. “My family has a ranch in Montana.”

“What brings you to Pine River, Miss Claridge?” asked the young woman who had loaned Rue her cloak earlier.

“I came to see my cousin, Elisabeth Fortner.”

Mr. Sinclair put down his fork, frowning, but his daughter did not look at all surprised. Of course, Rue would have been the subject of much female conjecture in the dull little town.

“Jonathan’s wife?” Mr. Sinclair inquired, frowning heavily. “The woman we tried for murder?”

“Yes,” Rue answered. “The woman you tried…and acquitted.”

Pointing out Elisabeth’s innocence of any crime didn’t seem to lighten the mood at the table. It was as though being accused had been enough to taint not only Bethie, but all who came before and all who could come after.

Once again, Rue wondered how happy her cousin could expect to be in this town. Probably the memory of Elisabeth McCartney Fortner’s murder trial would live on long after Bethie herself was gone, and time would undoubtedly alter the verdict.

“More chicken and dumplings, Miss Claridge?” cooed Miss Sinclair with particular malice.

Rue’s stomach had suddenly closed itself off, refusing to accept so much as one more forkful of food. “No, thank you,” she said. Then she excused herself from the table, carried her dishes into the kitchen and took refuge in her room under the stairway.

After making a reluctant trip to the privy behind the house—Rue refused to use the chamber pot under any circumstances—she washed and brushed her teeth, then climbed into bed. There was one lamp burning on the bedside stand, but the oil was so low that reading was out of the question.

Rue turned down the wick until the room was in darkness, then lay back on her pillow, thinking about Farley and the way she’d felt when he kissed her. She raised one hand to her chest, amazed at the way her heart was pounding against her breastbone, and that was when she made the frightful discovery.

The necklace was gone.

R
ue bounded out of bed, lit the lamp and tore through her sheets and blankets in a panic. There was no sign of the necklace.

Only too aware that she would be trapped in this backward century if she didn’t find the antique pendant, she sank to her knees and went over every inch of the floor.

Rue was rifling through her sports bag when the last of the lamp oil gave out and the tiny room went dark. For a long moment, she just knelt there on the splintery wood, breathing hard and fighting a compulsion to scream hysterically.

Finally, reason prevailed. She couldn’t retrace her steps through town until morning. Flashlights hadn’t been invented yet and, besides, if Farley caught her out prowling the sidewalks at that hour, he’d probably toss her back in jail just on general principle.

Lying very still, Rue forced herself to concentrate on her breathing until she was calmer. Soon her heartbeat had slowed to its regular rate and the urge to rush wildly around Pine River upending things in search of the missing necklace had abated slightly. For all her self-control, Rue didn’t manage to sleep that night.

Finally the sun peeked over the blue-green, timber-carpeted hills, and Rue bolted out of her room like a rubber-tipped dart shot from a popgun. She’d long since washed, dressed and brushed her teeth.

She went over every step she’d taken the day before, hoping to find the necklace wedged between one of the boards in the sidewalk or lying beside the Sinclairs’ gate or on the path to the privy. After a full morning of searching, however, Rue still had no necklace, and she was pretty forlorn.

In a last-ditch effort, she made her way to Farley’s office. The front door was propped open with a rusty coffee can filled with ordinary speckled rocks.

“Hello?” Rue called, peering around the frame.

Farley was just hanging his hat on its customary peg, and a large, rumpled-looking man was snoring away on the cot in the cell.

When Farley smiled in recognition, Rue felt as if two of the floorboards had suddenly switched places beneath her feet. “Good day, Miss Claridge,” the marshal said.

He acted as though he hadn’t kissed her the night before, and Rue decided to go along with the pretense.

She stepped into the room reluctantly, torn between approaching the marshal and bolting down the sidewalk in utter terror. Rue hadn’t felt this awkward around a guy since junior high. “I wonder if you would mind checking your lost-and-found department for my necklace,” she said, sounding as prim as Miss Ella Sinclair or one of the Society.

Farley’s dark eyebrows knit together for a moment, then he went to the stove and reached for the handle of the coffeepot. “We’ve never seen the need for a lost-and-found department here in Pine River,” he said with a good-natured patience that nonetheless rankled. “Folks pretty much know what belongs to them and what doesn’t.”

Rue sagged a little. “Then no one has reported finding a gold necklace?”

Farley studied her sympathetically and shook his head. “Coffee?”

Rue had never been a frail woman, but these were stressful circumstances, and she knew a dose of Farley’s high-octane brew would probably turn her stomach inside out. “No, thanks,” she said distractedly. “Did you know it’s been proven that caffeine aggravates P.M.S.?”

“What aggravates what?”

“Never mind.” Rue turned to go, muttering. “I’ve got to find that necklace….”

There was nowhere else to look, however, so Rue returned to the Sinclair house. The place was empty and, since she’d probably missed lunch, Rue headed for her room. As she was opening the door, a distraught, feminine moan drifted down the stairway.

Holding the skirts of her secondhand dress, Rue swept around the newel post and up the stairs. The sound was coming from beneath the first door on the right. She knocked lightly. “Hello? Are you all right in there?”

“Yes.” The answer was a fitful groan.

Rue opened the door a crack and saw Alice McCall lying on a narrow bed in her chemise. A crude hot-water bottle lay on the lower part of her stomach.

“Cramps?” Rue inquired.

“It’s the curse,” Alice replied, whispering the words as though confessing to some great sin.

Remembering the aspirin in her bag, Rue said, “I think I can help you. I’ll be right back.” She raced downstairs to her room to fetch the miracle drug she’d brought from her own century and then, after pausing in the kitchen to battle the pump for a glass of water, returned to Alice’s room.

The poor girl was pale as death, and her wispy, reddish blond hair was limp with perspiration.

She looked at the pair of white tablets in Rue’s palm and squinted. “Pills?”

“They’re magic,” Rue promised with a teasing lilt to her voice. Aspirin would probably work wonders for someone who had never taken it before. “Just swallow them and you’ll see.”

Alice hesitated only a moment. Then she took the tablets and washed them down, one by one, with delicate sips of water.

“Would you like me to fix you a cup of tea?” Rue asked.

“You’re very kind, but, no,” Alice responded, her face still pinched with pain. It would be a while before the aspirin worked.

Rue sat down at the foot of the bed, since there was no chair, and took in the small, tidy room at a glance. Although Alice’s bedroom had a window and the wallpaper was actually tasteful, the place was as sparsely furnished as a monk’s cell. Two dresses hung on pegs on the wall, one for everyday and one for Sundays and special occasions. Over the bureau, with its four shallow drawers, was a mirror made of watery greenish glass. A rickety washstand held the requisite pitcher and bowl.

Above the bed was a calendar, clearly marked 1892, with a maudlin picture of two scantily clad children huddling close in a blizzard. The month of October was on display, and the twenty-third was circled in a wreath of pencil lines.

“Is your birthday coming up?” Rue asked, knowing Alice had seen her glance at the calendar.

Alice smiled wanly. “No. That’s the day of the Fall Dance at the schoolhouse.”

Rue wondered if Alice, like Miss Ella Sinclair, was sweet on Marshal Haynes. The idea took a little of the sparkle off her charitable mood. “Are you hoping to dance with anybody special?”

Color was beginning to return to Alice’s cheeks, though Rue couldn’t be sure whether that was due to the aspirin or the prospect of spending time with that special someone. “Jeffrey Hollis,” she confided. “He works at the mill.”

“Are the two of you dating?”

Alice looked puzzled. “Dating?”

“Courting,” Rue corrected herself.

Alice laughed softly. “
I
am definitely courting Jeffrey,” she replied, “but I think somebody will have to tell him that he’s supposed to be courting me in return.” She lay back on the pillow, her lashes fluttering against her cheeks, and then, without further adieu, she floated off to sleep.

Rue covered her newfound friend with a plaid woolen blanket and sneaked out of the room. Back in her own quarters, she ate another candy bar, read two more chapters of her book, and closed her eyes to meditate on the problem of the lost necklace.

Mentally, she retraced every step she’d taken the day before, from the moment she’d found herself in a stranger’s privy until she lay down in bed and realized the pendant was gone. And again the chilling thought came to her that that weird, spooky piece of jewelry might have taken to traveling through time all on its own.

Rue squeezed her eyes shut and dragged in a series of slow, deep breaths in an effort to keep her cool, all the while feeling like a one-woman riot.

If she got stuck in this place, she vowed silently, she would pay Elisabeth back by moving into her house like a poor relation. She would stay for fifty years and consciously work at getting more eccentric with every passing day.

Rue brought herself up short. She refused to worry about the future or about the missing necklace. It was time to stop thinking about problems and start looking for solutions.

The first order of business was to find Elisabeth. Once she’d done that, once she knew for a fact that her cousin really wanted to stay in the Victorian era, she could worry about getting home. Or about making a life for herself right there in old Pine River.

With Farley.

She imagined cooking for him, pressing his shirts, washing his back.

The images stirred hormones Rue hadn’t even known she had, and a schoolgirl flush rolled from her toes to the roots of her hair in a single crimson wave.

Good grief!
she thought, bolting upright on the cot.
Cooking? Ironing?
Washing his back?
What’s happening to me? I’m regressing at warp speed!

Rue sighed and rose from the bed. Lying around in her room in the middle of the day was a waste of daylight. She would check on Alice, then go out and retrace her steps again. Maybe she would find the necklace, or maybe some earthshaking idea would come to her.

Miss McCall was still sleeping, and some of the color had returned to her cheeks, so Rue knew the aspirin was doing its work. She closed the door of Alice’s room carefully and turned toward the front stairway.

Mr. Sinclair was standing there, barring her way, a worrisome smile on his face. He was a portly man, with gray hair, shrewd brown eyes, florid cheeks and a somewhat bulbous nose.

“Miss Claridge,” he said, as though Rue might have forgotten her name and he was generous enough to enlighten her.

Rue retreated a step, feeling uneasy. She’d seen that look in a man’s eyes many times during her travels, and she knew the banker had decided to make a pass. “Good afternoon,” she said warily, with a little nod.

“Exploring the house?” He crooned the words, and somehow that was more unnerving than if he’d shouted them.

Rue raised her chin a notch, still keeping her distance. “Of course not,” she said with cool politeness.

“Your room is on the first floor, I believe.” Sinclair’s eyes never linked with hers all the while he was speaking. Instead, his gaze drifted over her hair, her throat, her shoulders and then her breasts.

“I was looking in on Miss McCall,” Rue said, folding her arms to hide at least one part of her anatomy from his perusal. “She’s suffering from—feminine complaints.”

In the next instant, the master of the house reached out with one beefy hand and took hold of Rue’s jaw. While his grip was not painful, it was definitely an affront, and she immediately tried to twist free.

“Now, now,” Sinclair murmured, as though soothing a fractious child, “don’t run away. I wouldn’t want to have to tell Farley I caught you going through my personal belongings and get you thrown back into jail.”

Rue felt the blood drain from her face. This kind of bore was easy enough to deal with in her own time, but just then the year was 1892 and Sinclair was probably among the most influential men in town. “What do you want?” she asked, hoping she was wrong.

She wasn’t.

He ran a sausage-size thumb over her mouth. “Just an hour of your time, Miss Claridge. That’s all.”

Rue thrust herself away from him. “I wouldn’t give you a
moment,
” she ground out, “let alone an hour!”

Smiling genially, Sinclair hooked his thumbs in his vest pockets. “That’s a pity. More jail time will surely ruin what little is left of your reputation.”

Rue inched backward toward the stairway leading down to the kitchen. “I’ll deny everything. And Farley will believe me, too!” She wasn’t too sure about that last part, but she wanted to keep Sinclair distracted until she was out of lunging distance.

His bushy eyebrows rose in mocking amusement. “Silly child. What the marshal believes doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. Not against the say-so of a man who controls everybody’s finances.”

Knowing she had reached the stairs, Rue whirled and raced down them. She snatched her bag from the little room she had occupied so briefly and fled out the front door.

Now, for all practical intents and purposes, she was homeless. She couldn’t go back to her own century because she’d lost the necklace, and since Farley would probably take Sinclair’s word over hers, arrest was no doubt imminent.

Much as Rue enjoyed Farley’s company, she wasn’t about to be locked up again. One stretch in the hoosegow on trumped up charges was more than enough; she had no intention of serving another.

Even so, Rue was forced to admit to herself that she was drawn to Farley’s quiet strength. She made her way through the deep grass behind the mercantile and the Hang-Dog Saloon, stopping now and then to crouch down when she heard voices. After nearly half an hour of evasion tactics, she reached the little barn behind the marshal’s house and slipped inside.

Farley’s horse, a big roan gelding, nickered companionably from its stall.

“At least somebody around here likes me,” Rue said, looking around the small structure and deciding the loft would make the best hiding place.

After letting out a long sigh, she tossed her bag up and then climbed the rickety ladder—not an easy task in a long skirt.

The hay in the loft was sweet smelling, and afternoon sunlight flooded in through a gap in the roof. Rue sat cross-legged and automatically unzipped the side flap on her bag, since that was where she had hidden her money.

The currency, like Aunt Verity’s necklace, had vanished.

Rue gave a little cry of frustration and fell backward into the hay. A few minutes later, she checked the main compartment of the bag, but nothing was missing. Evidently the thief—possibly even Sinclair himself—had stumbled upon the money first and been content with that.

Despite her fury, Rue had to smile, wondering what the robber would have made of her miniature candy bars and other modern inventions.

Following that, she took the advice her grandfather had given her long ago and quietly accepted the fact that she was in big trouble. As much as she would like things to be different, the reality was that her money was gone, one of Pine River’s most prominent citizens planned to accuse her of stealing, and she’d lost the only means she’d had of returning to her own time. Only when she’d faced these problems squarely would solutions begin to present themselves.