Linda Lael Miller Bundle (43 page)

“Chauvinistic?” Farley looked puzzled, but certainly not intimidated.

“It’s another word for a hardheaded cowboy from 1892,” Rue replied. Then she proceeded to explain the finer points of the definition.

Farley sighed when it was over. “I still think you’ve got too much free time,” he said. He was gazing out at the snow-dusted plains of the ranch, and the longing to escape the confines of the Land Rover was clearly visible in his face.

“I guess you’ll want to saddle one of the horses and look the place over on your own,” Rue observed, pulling to a stop in front of the house.

He grinned with both relief and anticipation, and the moment they’d taken the grocery bags into the house, he headed for the barn.

Knowing Farley needed private time to acclimatize himself, Rue put away the food, then retired to the study to make some calls. Farley’s old-fashioned insistence that they needed to be married had never been far from her mind and, due to her wide travels, she had contacts in virtually every walk of life.

It wasn’t long before she’d arranged a legal identity for Farley, complete with a birth certificate, Social Security number, S.A.T. scores and even transcripts from a midwestern college. All the necessary paperwork was on its way by express courier.

Farley hadn’t returned by noon, when a new snow began to powder the ground, so Rue made a single serving of vegetable-beef soup and sat by the big, stone fireplace in the parlor, her feet resting on a needlepoint hassock.

Once she was finished eating, Rue immediately became bored. She went to the woodshed and split a pile of pine and fir for the fireplace. She was carrying the first armload into the house when Farley appeared, striding toward her from the direction of the barn.

His smile was as dazzling as sunlight on ice-crusted snow as he wrested the wood from Rue’s arms and carefully wiped his feet on the mat outside the back door. Obviously the ride had lifted his spirits and settled some things in his mind, and she found herself envying him the fresh air and freedom.

“At least you haven’t come up with a machine to chop wood,” he said good-naturedly, carrying his burden through the kitchen after seeing that the box by the cast-iron cookstove was full.

Rue followed, marveling at the intensity of her reactions to his impressive height, the broad strength of his shoulders, the muscular grace of his arms and legs. “We can get married in a few days,” she said, feeling slightly foolish for her eagerness. “The system recognizes you as a real, flesh-and-blood person.”

Farley laid the wood on the parlor hearth, pulled aside the screen and squatted to feed the fire. “That sounds like good news,” he commented wryly, “though I’ve got to admit, I can’t say I’m entirely sure.”

Rue smiled. “Trust me,” she said. “The news is good. Are you hungry?”

Farley closed the fireplace screen and stood. “Yes, but I can see to my own stomach, thank you.” He went into the kitchen, with Rue right behind him, and took a frozen entrée from the fridge.

Rue watched with amusement as Farley read the instructions, then set the dish inside the microwave and stood staring at the buttons. She showed him how to set the timer and turn on the oven.

He took bread from the old-fashioned metal box on the counter, and his expression was plainly disapproving as he opened the bag and pulled out two slices. “If a man tried to butter
air,
it would hold up better than this stuff,” he remarked scornfully, evidently wanting to let Rue know that not everything about the twentieth century was an improvement over the nineteenth. He held up a slice and peered at Rue through a hole next to the crust. “It’s amazing you people aren’t downright puny, the way you eat.”

Rue laughed and startled Farley by jumping up and flinging her arms around his neck. “I never get tired of listening to you talk, lawman,” she said, and her voice came out sounding husky. “Tell me you won’t ever change, that you’re always going to be Farley Haynes, U.S. Marshal.”

He set the bread aside and cupped her chin in one hand. “Everybody changes, Rue,” he said quietly, but there was a light in his eyes. She knew he was going to kiss her, and the anticipation was so intense that she felt unsteady and interlocked her fingers at his nape to anchor herself.

The bell on the microwave chimed, and hunger prevailed over passion. Farley stepped gracefully out of Rue’s embrace and took his food from the oven.

It was a curious thing, being moved emotionally and spiritually by the plain sight of a man eating spaghetti and meatballs from a cardboard plate, but that was exactly what happened to Rue. Every time she thought she’d explored the depths of her love for this man, she tumbled into some deeper chasm not yet charted, and she was amazed to find that the inner universe was just as vast as the outer one.

Shaken, she tossed her hair back over one shoulder and stood with her hands resting on her hips. “I’m really in trouble here, Farley,” she said, only half in jest. “It seems I want to cook for you and wash your clothes and have your babies. We’re talking rapid retrograde, as far as women’s rights are concerned.”

Farley smiled and stabbed a meatball with his fork. “I imagine you’ll be able to hold your own just fine,” he said, and Rue wondered if he knew how damnably appealing he was, if his charm was deliberate.

That afternoon, while Farley was out somewhere with Wilbur and the dog, Rue dusted off her grandmother’s old cookbooks and hunted down a recipe for bread. When the marshal returned, the dough was rising in a big crockery bowl, and the air was still clouded with tiny, white particles.

Farley’s turquoise eyes danced as he hung up his hat and gunslinger coat. “Somebody dynamite the flour bin?”

Rue was covered in white dust from head to foot, but, by heaven, those Presbyterians back in 1892 Pine River had nothing on her. As soon as the dough had puffed up for the second time, she would set it in the oven to bake, and Farley would have the kind of bread he was used to eating.

Sort of.

She thought of the vast differences between them, and the very real danger that they might be parted by forces they could neither understand nor control. All the rigors of past days caught up with her…all of a sudden, and Rue felt some barrier give way inside her.

She was stricken with what women of Farley’s generation would have called “melancholia,” she guessed, or maybe she was pregnant. The only thing she was certain of was that for the next little while, she wasn’t going to be her usual, strong self.

Rue let out a wail of despair, covered her floury face with her floury hands and sobbed. Out on the utility porch, Soldier whined in unison.

Smelling of soap and clean, country snow, Farley came to her and gently pulled her hands down. His mouth quirked at one corner, and his eyes were still shining with humor.

“Stop that crying,” he scolded huskily, wiping a tear from her cheekbone with the side of one thumb. “You’re going to paste your eyelids together.”

“I don’t…even know…why I’m…acting like this!” Rue babbled.

Farley kissed her forehead, no doubt leaving lip prints. “You’ve been through a whole lot lately, and you’re all tired out,” he said. Then he led her into one of the downstairs bathrooms, ran warm water into the sink and tenderly, carefully washed her face.

The experience in no way resembled lovemaking, and yet the effect was just as profound.

After that, Farley carried her into the parlor, laid her on the big leather sofa and covered her with the lovely plaid throw she’d brought home from a trip to Scotland. She lay sniffling while Farley went to build up the fire.

“This is really unlike me,” she whimpered.

“I know,” he answered, his voice low and laced with humor. “Just close your eyes and rest awhile, Rue. I’ll look after you.”

Rue was used to taking care of herself, for the most part. Aunt Verity and Elisabeth had coddled her when she came down with a head cold or the flu, but having a man’s sympathy was an entirely new experience. The sensation was decadently delicious, but it was frightening, too. She was afraid that if she laid down her sword even for a little while, it would prove too heavy to lift when the time came to fight new battles.

R
ue hadn’t suffered through her bread-baking crisis for nothing. After she’d enjoyed the crackling parlor fire and Farley’s pampering for half an hour, she returned to the kitchen and tackled the remainder of the job.

While the loaves were baking, filling the room with a very promising fragrance, Rue put game hens on the portable rotisserie, washed some russet potatoes for baking in the microwave and poured a can of cooked carrots into a saucepan to heat.

Farley had gone out to help with the evening chores, and when he returned, Rue had set the kitchen table with her grandmother’s favorite china and silver. She’d exchanged her flour-covered clothes for a set of black lounging pajamas with metallic silver stripes, put on a little makeup and swept up her hair.

When the cold Montana wind blew Farley in, he stood staring at her, at the same time trying unsuccessfully to hang his hat on the peg next to the door. “How soon did you say we’d be getting married?” he asked.

Rue smiled, pleased, and lifted one shoulder. “Three or four days from now, if all goes well.” She sighed. “Too bad you’re such a prude. Montana nights can get very cold, and it would be nice to have somebody to snuggle with.”

Farley was unbuttoning his coat. “Seems to me Montana nights can turn hot even in the middle of a snowstorm,” he retorted hoarsely. He walked to the sink, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt as he went, and washed his hands as thoroughly as any surgeon would have done.

Proudly, Rue served the dinner she’d made, and Farley made it obvious that he enjoyed the fare, and even though the bread was a little on the heavy side, he didn’t comment.

After eating, they washed and dried the dishes together—Rue never mentioned the shiny, perfectly efficient built-in dishwasher—and they went into the parlor. Rue had hoped for a romantic interlude in front of the fire, but Farley, having apparently absorbed everything in his how-things-work book, had gone to Gramps’s bookshelf for another volume. This time, it seemed, he’d decided to investigate the secrets of indoor plumbing.

Resigned, Rue got out her laptop computer, and soon her fingers were flying over the keyboard. It seemed more important than ever to record what had happened to Elisabeth, and to her and Farley because of the strange antique necklace Aunt Verity had left as a legacy.

Rue had written several pages when she realized Farley was watching her. She glanced at him over her shoulder. He was next to her on the couch, holding his place in his book with a thumb. He’d already read nearly half the volume, which was incredible, given the technical nature of the material.

She smiled, reading the questions from his eyes and the furrows in his brow. “This is a computer, Farley. If I were you, I’d make that my next reading project. The modern world runs on these handy little gadgets.”

Farley had seen the laptop before, of course, but never while it was running. “Light,” he marveled. “You’re writing words with
light
instead of ink.”

As usual, his wonderment touched Rue deeply. He’d made such a profound difference in her life simply by being who he was, and even though she had been happy and fulfilled before she’d met him, Rue cherished the special texture and substance he gave to her world.

She showed him how to work the keyboard, and she watched with delight as he read from the screen.

All in all, it was a wonderful evening.

In the morning, Farley was up and gone before Rue even opened her eyes. She stumbled in and out of the shower, dressed warmly and went down to the kitchen for coffee. Since Soldier was whimpering on the back porch, she let him in to lie contentedly on the hooked rug in front of the old cookstove.

Farley had left a note on the table, and Rue read it while the water for her instant coffee was heating in the microwave.

“‘Warm regards,’” Rue scoffed, turning to the dog, who lifted a single ear—the black one—in polite inquiry. “I give the man my body, and he signs notes ‘warm regards.’ And this command to stay in the house! What does he think I am? A child? A greenhorn? Next he’ll be tying a rope between the back porch and the chicken coop so I don’t get lost in the blizzard when I gather the eggs!”

Soldier whimpered and lowered his muzzle to his outstretched paws, eyeing Rue balefully.

“Oh, you’re right,” she conceded, though not in a generous way. “I’m being silly. Farley is a man of the 1890s, and it’s perfectly natural that he sees things from a very different angle.”

She went to the window and felt a vague sense of alarm at the depth of the snow. The drifts reached halfway up the fences and mounded on the sills, and shimmering, pristine flakes were still whirling down from a fitful sky.

Rue drank her coffee, poured herself a bowlful of cereal and began to pace. She was an active person, used to a hectic schedule, and the sense of being trapped in the house made her feel claustrophobic.

She went upstairs and made her bed, and even though she tried to resist, she couldn’t. Rue opened the door to the master suite, intending to make Farley’s bed, as well, and stopped cold on the threshold.

Farley had already taken care of the task, but that wasn’t what troubled Rue so much. A golden chain lay on the bedside table, shimmering in the thin, winter light, and she knew without taking a single step closer it was
the
necklace, the magical, deadly, ticket-through-time necklace she’d purposely left on Aunt Verity’s parlor mantel.

Rue sagged against the doorjamb for a moment, one hand cupped over her mouth. The discovery had been as startling as a sudden earthquake, and the implications crashed down on her head with all the weight of timbers shaken loose from their fittings.

Farley knew about the pendant, knew about its power. He could only have brought it along for one reason: he didn’t intend to stay in the twentieth century with Rue, despite all his pretty talk about their getting married. This was only a cosmic field trip to him; he planned to return to 1892, to his jailhouse and his horse and women who never wore pants!

She started toward the necklace, possessed by a strange, tender spite, fully intending to carry the thing into the master bathroom and flush it. In the end, though, she retreated into the hallway, afraid to touch the pendant for fear that it might send her spiralling into some other period in time.

The distant toot of a horn distracted her, and she was grateful. She ran down the main staircase, one hand trailing along the banister, and bounded out onto the porch without bothering to put on her coat.

A white van had labored up the road from the highway. The logo of an express-courier company was painted brightly on its side, and the driver came cheerfully through the gate in the picket fence and up the unshoveled walk.

“Rue Claridge?” he inquired.

Rue nodded, hugging herself against the cold, her thoughts still on the necklace.

The courier handed her a package and pointed out a line for her signature. “Sure is a nasty day,” he said.

Rue had long ago made a personal pledge to fight inanity wherever she encountered it, but she was too distracted to do battle that day. “Yes,” she muttered, scrawling her name. “Thank you.”

She fled into the house a moment later and tore open the packet. Inside were the papers her somewhat shady acquaintance had assembled for Farley.

Tears filled her eyes, and her throat thickened. Maybe he didn’t intend to marry her at all. Or perhaps he’d planned to go through with the ceremony and then blithely return to 1892, leaving his bride behind to cope as best she could….

Soldier was in the kitchen, and he suddenly started to bark. Grateful for the distraction, Rue headed in that direction, the express packet still in her hand.

Through the window in the back door, she saw Wilbur standing on the porch, smiling at her from beneath the brim of his hat. She was surprised, having gotten the impression from Farley’s note that the old man had gone out to help with the cattle.

Rue opened the door. “Hi, Wilbur. Got time for a cup of coffee?”

Her grandfather’s old friend looked a little wan. “It isn’t often that I turn down the opportunity for a chat with a pretty lady,” he said, “but the truth is that I’m under the weather today. I wondered if you could pick up my prescription for me, if you were going to town or anything.”

Rue took a closer look at the old man. “You come in here and sit down this instant,” she ordered in a firm but friendly tone. “Of course, I’ll get your medicine, but why didn’t you have the store deliver it?”

“Costs extry,” said Wilbur, hanging up his hat and slowly working the buttons on his ancient coat. He took a chair at the kitchen table and accepted the coffee Rue brought to him with a philosophical sigh.

“For heaven’s sake,” she scolded good-naturedly, sitting down with her coffee, “you’re not poor, Wilbur.” She knew that was true; Gramps had provided well for the faithful employee in his will. “Besides, you can’t take it with you.”

Wilbur smiled, but his hand trembled as he lifted his cup to his mouth. “You young people gotta spend a nickel or it burns a hole in your pocket.”

Rue leaned forward, frowning. “What kind of medicine are you taking, anyway?”

“Just some stuff that jump starts the old ticker,” he replied with a sort of blithe weariness.

In the next instant, as quickly and unexpectedly as Rue and Farley had been thrust from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, Wilbur’s coffee clattered to the table. Brown liquid stained the cloth, and the old man clutched at his chest, a look of helpless bewilderment contorting his face.

“Oh, my God,” Rue gasped, jumping up, rushing to him and grabbing his shoulders. “Wilbur, don’t you do this to me! Don’t you dare have a heart attack in my kitchen!” Even as she spoke the words, she knew how inane they were, but she couldn’t help saying them.

He started to fall forward, making a choking sound in his throat. Soldier hovered nearby, whimpering in concern. Rue gently lowered her friend to the floor and loosened the collar of his shirt—a handmade one, Western cut with pearl snaps—that was probably older than she was.

“Hold on,” she said urgently. “I’ll have some help out here right away. Just hold on!”

She stumbled to the phone on the wall, punched out 911. Wilbur lay moaning on the floor, while Soldier helpfully licked his face.

“This is Rue Claridge out at Ribbon Creek,” she told the young man who answered her call. “A man has collapsed, and I think he’s having a heart attack.”

“Is he conscious? Breathing?”

Rue glanced nervously toward her patient. “Yes. I think he’s in extreme pain.”

The operator was reassuringly calm. “We’re on our way, Miss Claridge, but the roads are bad and the trip is bound to take some time. Are you trained to administer CPR?”

Rue nodded, then realized that was no help and blurted out, “Yes. Tell the paramedics to hurry, will you? We’re in the kitchen of the main house.”

“Would you like me to stay on the line with you?”

She looked at Wilbur, and her eyes filled with tears at his fragility. “I’d appreciate that—I think I’d better put some blankets over him, though.”

“I’ll be right here waiting,” the dispatcher answered, and the unruffled normalcy of his tone gave Rue a badly needed dose of courage.

She quickly snatched thick woolen blankets from a chest in one of the downstairs bedrooms and rushed back to the kitchen to cover Wilbur, then rushed back to the phone.

“Should I give him water?”

“No” was the brisk and immediate response on the other end of the line. “Can the patient speak?”

Rue rushed back to the old man’s side. He was looking up at her with glassy, frightened eyes, and she found herself smoothing his thin hair back from his forehead. “You’ll be all right, Wilbur,” she said. “Help is on the way. Can you talk?”

He grimaced with effort, but only an incoherent, helpless sound came from his lips. His hands were still pressed, fingers splayed and clutching, against his chest.

Rue spent the next half hour running back and forth between the telephone and the place where Wilbur lay, but it seemed like much longer to her. When she heard a siren in the distance, she felt like sobbing with relief.

“The cavalry’s just about to come over the rise,” she told Wilbur. “Hold on.”

Farley and the others must have heard the siren, too, for the paramedics had just finished loading their charge into the ambulance when the whole yard seemed to be crowded with horses.

“What happened?” Farley asked, reaching Rue’s side first. He was gazing speculatively at the vehicle with the spinning red light. “Is this what was making all that racket?”

Rue linked her arm through his and let her head rest against the outside of his shoulder. She hadn’t forgotten that he’d brought the necklace to Ribbon Creek, knowing full well what could happen, but she was still in the throes of the current crisis and unable to pursue the point.

Yet.

“Wilbur came by to ask me to pick up his prescription if I went to town,” she said. “After a few minutes, he grabbed his chest—” Emotion overcame her, and Farley held her close against his side.

Life was so uncertain, so damn dangerous, she thought. Here today, gone tomorrow. No guarantees. Catch as catch can.

One of the paramedics slammed the rear doors of the ambulance, then the vehicle was reeling away through the ever-worsening weather. The light flung splashes of crimson onto the snow, and the sound of the siren was like big needles being pushed through Rue’s eardrums.

With Farley holding her close, Rue’s heart was mended, if only briefly, and she could almost believe he hadn’t planned to desert and betray her.

She forced herself to look up into his wonderful, rugged, unreadable face. “Are the cattle all right?”

He nodded, this man she loved, this man she’d hoped to spend her life with. “For the moment. Let’s get you back in the house before you start sprouting icicles.” With that, he ushered her away toward the warmth and light of the kitchen.