Outlaw’s Bride (14 page)

“Today.”

“Your father might have other plans,” Frank cautioned Merielle.

“He won’t mind if I invite Patch. Do you, Father?”

Patch turned and saw that Jefferson Trahern had entered the store. Her first impressions were of power and pride. He was a big man, both broad and tall, with collar-length white hair and a neatly trimmed salt and pepper mustache. He was wearing a black broadcloth suit with a brocade vest that hid a slight paunch at his waist and a string tie that emphasized the sagging flesh at his throat.

This was the Jefferson Trahern she had imagined, a man who wouldn’t hesitate to crush his enemy. This man was easy to hate.

Her second impressions were no less distinct, but gave her a contrary image of Trahern which made her uneasy. Lines of pain and bitterness pinched his nose and bracketed his mouth. When his gaze alighted on his daughter, his dark brown eyes bore a look so sad they made Patch want to weep.

But it would be a cold day in hell before she wept for Jefferson Trahern. This was the man who had hounded Ethan Hawk to hell and back. Trahern had made sure Ethan spent the better part of his youth in prison. Trahern wanted Ethan Hawk dead.

Patch curled her clawed fingers into daintily gloved fists that she kept hidden in her skirt. She wasn’t about to let Trahern know what she really thought of him. The smile on her face as she turned to greet Merielle’s father was so warm it would have melted butter.

“Why, hello,” she said. “I don’t believe we’ve met, Mr. Trahern. I’m Patricia Kendrick.”

Trahern tipped his flat-crowned hat. “Nice to make your acquaintance, Miss Kendrick. Merielle has told me about you.”

Patch was surprised. “She did?”

Trahern gave Patch a look up and down. She was careful to keep her eyes lowered demurely, to look as mild-mannered and gently bred as she possibly could.

Merielle hurried over to her father and looped her arm through his. “Father, I’ve invited Patch to supper tonight. You don’t mind if she comes, do you?”

Trahern pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I suppose it would be all right.”

Merielle stood on her toes and tugged on her father’s arm so he knew to bend down for her kiss on his cheek. “Thank you, Father.”

Merielle turned to Patch, her face beaming. “See, I told you he wouldn’t mind.”

“Are you sure it won’t be any trouble?” Patch asked Trahern.

“If my daughter wants you to come to supper, you’ll come.”

Trahern’s statement sounded more like an order than an invitation. Patch bit back a scathing retort, told her neck hairs to settle down, and nodded her acquiescence. “What time?” she asked.

“We eat after the sun sets.”

“I’ll be there,” Patch said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another appointment.” She swept past Trahern, dropped her letter on the counter for Mr. Felber to send off in the next day’s mail, and left the mercantile with her chin up and her shoulders squared.

Once outside, Patch crossed beyond the window out of sight, then quickly backed up against the wooden wall of the building. She took several deep breaths. She unballed her fists and realized her hands were trembling.

Patch knew it was unreasonable to despise Jefferson Trahern. He had lost his beautiful daughter on the same day his only son was killed. His grief must have been awful, overwhelming. She couldn’t blame him for wanting justice. She probably would have applauded his efforts, if only he
weren’t stalking the man she loved. But Jefferson Trahern had to be stopped. And the best way to do that was to find out the truth.

“Miss Kendrick?”

Patch whirled at the sound of Trahern’s voice.
Think of the devil, and he lands on your doorstep
.

“Are you all right?”

“You surprised me.” Patch put a hand on her heart as though she could slow it down from the outside.

“I wanted a chance to talk to you privately.”

“We’re alone now.” Patch had no intention of going anywhere with Jefferson Trahern.

Trahern looked around him. There was no one coming along the boardwalk in either direction. They stood in the shade of a live oak, so the heat wasn’t unbearable. “All right. I can say what I have to say here. I want to know what your relationship is to Ethan Hawk. I want to know why you’re staying at the Double Diamond. And I want to know why you’ve befriended my daughter.”

That was plain speaking.

Patch started with the last question, because it was the easiest to answer. “I didn’t choose to befriend Merielle, she chose me. I know she isn’t … quite right. But I think she needs a friend, and I can be that to her.

“I’m staying at the Double Diamond because Mrs. Hawk is ill, and she needs someone to do the cooking and cleaning and to keep an eye on her young daughter.”

Patch avoided answering the most difficult question directly. “I know you’ve sworn vengeance
on Ethan Hawk, that you blame him for everything bad that’s happened to your children. But I believe you’ve wronged him. Someday, soon, I hope to prove that to you.”

“I plan to see Ethan Hawk dead and buried if it’s the last thing I do,” Trahern said. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your distance from him.”

“I won’t leave Mrs. Hawk to manage alone,” Patch said.

“Suit yourself.”

He started across the street, and Patch hurried to catch up with him. “Am I still invited for supper?”

He paused in the middle of the street, and such was his presence that he stopped a dray full of lumber coming one way and a load of cotton coming from the other. “I won’t deny my daughter anything she wants. If you wish to come, Miss Kendrick, you’re welcome.”

He left her standing there, and she was lucky not to be run over when the two wagons swung back into motion. It wasn’t until she reached the sidewalk that she realized Trahern’s destination.

He was opening the door to the sheriff’s office.

Patch experienced a terrifying moment when she imagined what would happen when Jefferson Trahern and Ethan Hawk met face-to-face with only Careless Lachlan to referee. She was frozen in a state of helpless panic. There was no way she could get there in time to prevent what was going to happen.

She was so focused on the door to the sheriffs
office that she never saw Ethan until he was beside her.

“What are you doing here? I thought …” Her face seesawed from Ethan to the sheriff’s office and back.

“Shall we stroll this way?” Ethan placed her arm through his and headed down the boardwalk away from the jail.

“Ethan, what—”

“Later,” he said. “I think it’s time we headed for home.”

Careless Lachlan never looked up from his plate when he heard the front door open and shut. Damn that Ethan Hawk, stirring up trouble, keeping a man from his dinner. It was plumb loco to open up an investigation of a crime committed seventeen years ago. He had told Ethan everything he knew. Which was nothing. What did the damned man want from him now? “What the hell’re you doin’ back here—”

Careless glanced up to see Jefferson Trahern standing in front of him. The forkful of food he had just shoveled into his mouth came spewing back out. He bobbed to his feet, grabbed the red-checkered cloth tucked under his chin, and swiped at the mashed potatoes on his chin and scattered in clumps across his desk.

Trahern retrieved the gold pocket watch from his vest pocket, extended it the length of the gold chain that held it there, snapped it open, checked the time, and snapped it closed again. “It’s exactly
one o’clock. Did we, or did we not, have an appointment today?”

Careless stood there looking like a fool and feeling like a jackass. “We did. Have a seat, Mr. Trahern.” Careless gestured toward the nearest chair, but it was piled high with posters and flyers. He gestured to another that held a frayed Montgomery Ward catalog. In fact, there wasn’t any surface in the room that wasn’t covered with something.

“Why don’t you clean this place up?” Trahern asked in an irritated voice. “Sheriff of a town ought to be a little neater, don’t you think?”

Careless wasn’t sure whether that was a warning or a threat. It felt like both. Careless swallowed down his feelings of annoyance. He was the same man now that he had been twenty years ago when Trahern had gotten him hired by the town council. He had felt then as he felt now. Cleaning was a waste of time. Things just got messed up again.

But he served as sheriff of Oakville only so long as it pleased Jefferson Trahern for him to do so. At fifty-four, Careless Lachlan didn’t feel like pulling up stakes and moving on. When Trahern said jump, Careless got to hopping like a bunch of tree frogs. “I’ll get someone in here to straighten up,” he mumbled.

Careless hurried around his desk and shoved a pile of flyers and posters onto the floor from the seat of a ladderback chair. “You can sit here.”

Trahern took one look at the uncomfortable chair and said, “I think I’ll stand. This won’t take long.”

Careless felt uncomfortable standing face-to-face with Trahern. But he didn’t know any way to retreat behind his desk except by turning his back on the other man. No one with sense and a wish for survival turned his back on Jefferson Trahern.

“Uh … what can I do for you, Mr. Trahern?” Careless asked. “You ain’t come about that idea of Hawk’s, have you? I mean, ‘vestigatin’ what happened seventeen years ago—that’s crazy, right?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Trahern said. “Who’s investigating what?”

Careless wished he had kept his mouth shut, because it felt damned uncomfortable now that he had his foot in it. He pulled at the hairs on his chin. “Uh … ain’t you heard?”

“Heard what? Spit it out, Careless. I haven’t got all day.”

“Had a visit from Hawk. He wanted to know everythin’ I ’membered ’bout the ’vestigation of your daughter’s ra— ’Bout what happened that day when Miss Trahern got …” Careless didn’t dare get any more specific because every time he tried, Trahern’s face tightened up. Finally, he said, “Anyway, Hawk wants to know what I found out in my ’vestigation.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That there weren’t no ’vestigation, ’cause we knew who done it.”

“What did he say to that?”

“Said we was mistaken. Said he didn’t do it. Said the real culprit has been runnin’ free all these years. He means to find the man who done it and bring him to justice.”

“He won’t have to look any farther than his own mirror,” Trahern said. “Ruthless son of a bitch.”

Careless scratched nervously at his crotch. He caught Trahern’s disgusted look and left off what he was doing.

“There isn’t anyone else it could be,” Trahern muttered.

“Hawk said there’s whole bunches of suspects.”

“Who?” Trahern demanded.

“Everybody who showed up to your daughter’s party. Hawk said it coulda been any one of ’em.”

Trahern quickly went through a mental list of everyone who had been invited to Merielle’s birthday party. It was a long one because he had just finished his year of mourning for Merielle’s mother, who had died unexpectedly of pneumonia the previous winter. He had wanted his daughter to have the kind of shindig her mother had always given. He had asked half the businessmen in town to come, along with everyone in the cattlemen’s association. Dorne had invited some of his friends, as well.

But none of them had been anywhere near Merielle when she was found. Ethan had.

There was only one reason why Hawk was raising doubts now about what had happened. He wanted to stop Trahern from hounding him, and he hoped to get public sympathy on his side. By God, that wasn’t going to happen!

Every morning when he faced his daughter across the breakfast table, Trahern was reminded of Ethan Hawk’s crime. He hadn’t been able, even
with all his wealth, to undo the damage Ethan had done.

Once, a long time ago, he had brought in some doctors from back East to see if they could help Merielle recover her memory. But their attempts only made her hysterical. For several days afterward she didn’t speak at all. He was afraid of losing her completely, so he had sent the doctors back where they came from. He had loved the child she was, and mourned the woman she would never become.

It had cost a fortune to hunt Ethan down. He had frothed at the mouth when a jury sentenced Ethan to a mere seven years in prison instead of hanging him for Dorne’s murder. And he had nearly gone mad when they insisted there was insufficient evidence to convict him of Merielle’s rape.

It was during the years Ethan spent in prison that Trahern realized the law wasn’t going to give him the justice he craved. Of course he couldn’t be blatant about taking the law into his own hands, because the town was willing to concede that Ethan had paid his debt in prison. Trahern had to exercise discretion in order to avoid causing trouble for himself.

Ordinarily, he would have ordered his foreman to make whatever arrangements were necessary to solve the problem. But his foreman, Frank Meade, had been Ethan’s friend. He didn’t trust Frank to look to his boss’s interests where Ethan was concerned.

So Trahern had left Frank out of it. To distance
himself, he had asked Careless Lachlan to take care of hiring someone to kill Ethan Hawk when he got out of prison. To his chagrin, Ethan had easily dealt with the first bunch of hired guns Careless had found. This time, however, Trahern was bringing in the best. He wanted this business finished once and for all.

His hate for Ethan Hawk had been a boil on his neck for seventeen years, chafing under his collar, the swelling less some days and worse on others. He wanted it cut out.

“Have you contacted that gunman in Wichita?” Trahern asked the sheriff.

Careless had been surreptitiously shifting himself, trying to get comfortable inside his trousers. He hadn’t yet succeeded, and his agitation came out in his answer. “It ain’t that easy hirin’ killers when you’re the sheriff!”

“That problem can easily be remedied,” Trahern said in a menacing voice.

Careless realized he had crossed the line and mentally stepped back. “Ain’t gonna get rid of Ethan Hawk with no hired gun. He’s too fast,” he said sullenly.

“We’ll see. Calloway has a reputation of his own. Now, are you going to take care of it, or do we need a new sheriff in Oakville?”