Secondhand Bride (29 page)

C
hloe tried her best, but she couldn’t concentrate on the lessons that Monday morning, even though her students were all there, bright-faced and eager.

She resolved to keep her mind on good things. Walter and Ellen Jessup must have settled in nicely with the Fees, for they were scrubbed and brushed, each sporting a new set of clothes, which probably represented quite a sacrifice for Sam and Sarah. Jennie Payle had all her arithmetic problems right, and when it came time for the first recess, she didn’t hold back, like before, but ran and played with the Sussex boys, and even laughed out loud once or twice.

Still, Chloe felt uneasy, and her thoughts kept straying to Jeb, who’d made it clear that he would never trust her again, and to Lizzie, who would be left behind when her stubborn father took himself back to Texas.

She got through the day by rote, and when three o’clock came, she dismissed the children, washed down the blackboard, made sure the fire was out in the stove, and went straight to the churchyard to sit with John a while, hoping that would settle her nerves.

Becky was already there, wrapped in a cloak against the chilly wind and wearing a bonnet. Her back was straight, and her head was not bowed, but there were tears on her face.

Chloe stopped, feeling like an intruder, and would have slipped away, hoping to go unnoticed, if Becky hadn’t seen her right away.

The older woman smiled.

“Did you love him?” Chloe heard herself ask in an anxious whisper. She was thinking about love a lot these days—and nights—thanks to Jeb McKettrick.

Becky sighed. “With all my heart and soul,” she said.

Chloe’s eyes burned, and her throat felt tight. She had to squeeze out her answer. “You must miss him terribly.”

“Every minute,” Becky confirmed. “If I could trade all the rest of my life for one hour with him, I’d do it.”

Chloe swallowed hard. No more words would come, and she couldn’t think of any anyway.

“Love is a rare and precious commodity, Chloe,” Becky said quietly, and her eyes were wise, seeing deep, even through a veil of tears. “Not everybody gets the chance, and only a fool lets pride stand in the way when that chance comes.”

Chloe said nothing, but she managed to shake her head.

“Do you love Jeb, Chloe?” Becky asked. Her voice was kind, but relentless, too. She would settle for nothing but the truth, and she’d know if she was shortchanged in the transaction.

“Yes,” Chloe managed.

“Then stop this foolishness, right now,” Becky said. “Take the first chance you get to settle things between you. The shooting should have convinced you that we never know, any of us, how much time there is.”

Chloe sniffled, shook her head again. “It isn’t that easy,” she whispered. “He thinks I’m a liar, and he wants nothing to do with me, ever. He told me that straight out.”

“And you believed him?” Becky chuckled, as if mystified. “He’s stubborn, that’s in his blood. Jeb’s a McKettrick, after all. But I’ve been watching him since Kade brought him back from Tombstone last spring, and since you got here, too. Before you came to Indian Rock, he could have had his pick of half a dozen women, what with all the brides Kade and Rafe ordered up; but he didn’t do any more than dance with them.”

“He thought we were married,” Chloe said, despairing.

“Did he?” Becky inquired, raising an eyebrow.

Chloe stiffened. No, Jeb
hadn’t
thought they were married. He’d believed exactly the opposite, that he’d been duped, that she was Jack Barrett’s wife, body and soul, and up to some kind of treachery. Why, then, had he been faithful to a woman he regarded as someone else’s?

“Jumping Jupiter,” Chloe said, going weak under the weight of that revelation.

“Exactly,” Becky replied. “Is Jeb still on the Circle C?”

Chloe shook her head, reminded that he’d left Holt’s ranch in a cold rage. Reminded that Lizzie had lost her home and perhaps her father, too.

“It’s too hard,” she said.

Becky looked her over. “That’s not John Lewis’s daughter talking,” she said. “There must have been a mistake somewhere along the line. No child of his could ever be a coward.”

Color throbbed in Chloe’s face. She was on the verge of protesting that she wasn’t a coward, that she was
indeed
John Lewis’s daughter, when Becky smiled. Humming softly under her breath, she bent to lay a wildflower, surely one of the last to be found in the high country, at the base of his headstone.

Chloe took a step toward Becky, then a step toward the schoolhouse. Damned if she knew which way to go, literally or figuratively.

“You’re right, Becky,” she said. “I have been a coward. There’s a man who means to kill Jeb, and I’m scared it’ll happen. I’ve never been so afraid of anything in my life.”

Becky lifted her chin. “If you pull back now,” she said, “you’ll be letting that man win, and you’ll have to live with the consequences.”

With that, she turned and walked away, leaving Chloe alone with her thoughts and the bite of a northerly wind, promising winter.

The cabin was empty, though there were signs of recent habitation. Angus and the others found stores of food, an abandoned buckboard, and a coffee mug on the spool table inside. Mold was already forming on the dregs.

“He won’t be back here,” Angus said to Holt. Jeb and Kade were outside, beating the brush for Jack Barrett, and Rafe had spotted stray horses, probably Barrett’s team, and gone to round them up, check for brands. If the animals were marked, they might be able to find the original owner and get some information out of him.

When Sue Ellen had written those two words on the ledger page, they’d known this was the place she meant because it was the only empty homestead standing for miles around. If such ruins were found on Triple M land, Rafe generally burned them to the ground, but this one was within the borders of the Circle C.

Holt cursed. “I’m one hell of a Ranger,” he muttered. “Lucky to find my ass with my hat, let alone the bastard who tried to kidnap my daughter.”

“If we have to turn over every rock in the Territory,” Angus said, with conviction, “we’ll do it, but we’ll find him.”

Holt met his eyes, something he’d been careful not to do, Angus had noticed, for the better part of the day. “We?” he asked.

“Whether you like it or not, Holt,” Angus said, “you’re a McKettrick, and we’re your family. You’re stuck with us, good times and bad.”

Holt sighed, worn down by his worry over Lizzie, and Angus felt sorry for him, though he was too smart to show it. “What is it that I want from you?” his son muttered, shaking his head as if to clear it.

“You want my blessing,” Angus said. His thoughts were following another trail, though. During the long night just past, it had come to him—Holt had taken a shine to Chloe, his brother’s woman.
That
was why he was so all-fired eager to head for Texas.

Holt made a disgusted sound. “I couldn’t care less what you think about me, old man.”

“I suppose that’s why you traveled all the way from Texas to be a burr under my hide,” Angus said with a mildness he didn’t feel. In truth, he wanted to take his boy by the shoulders, make him look him in the eyes, make him see, somehow, that he loved him as much as Rafe and Kade and Jeb. Tell him that what he felt for Chloe would pass, when he found a woman of his own. “Lot of places you could have picked to settle, but you chose Indian Rock.”

At the edge of his vision, Angus saw Kade step into the doorway, take a measure of the situation, and duck out again. There might be hope for those three rascals yet, but getting them all going in the right direction was like trying to herd a bunch of scalded cats through a mouse hole.

“Here’s the fact of the matter, Holt,” Angus went on when his firstborn didn’t speak. “Take it or leave it. You are my son, and I love you. I have never said that straight out to anybody but Lizzie, your mother, Georgia, and Concepcion. You’re a fine man, and I’m proud of you, even if your head is harder than a plate of Arizona bedrock.” He chuckled, though he hadn’t felt so much like weeping since Georgia passed. “Guess you came by that honestly.”

Holt stared at him, confounded. Maybe, Angus thought, he’d gotten through all that granite at last, but he didn’t want to be hasty in his hopes. The fall might just kill him if he let them rise too high, and his foothold was tenuous.

“Chloe—” Holt began after a good long time.

“You’ll get over that.”

The boy looked taken aback. Maybe he thought his old man didn’t recall what it was like to be young. “Jeb,” he said, “is my brother. Chloe is his wife. How do I—?”

“You let some time pass, that’s all. Maybe you tell Jeb how you feel, and maybe you don’t, but running away won’t solve anything, Holt. Nobody knows that better than I do.”

There was a long pause while Holt worked out the knots in his thinking. Finally, with an expulsion of breath—relief, Angus thought—he nodded, and there was an easing in the way he held himself.

Another silence fell, even longer than the first. Angus waited it out.

“What about the ranch?” Holt finally asked.

“Which one?” Angus asked, stalling. Scared to hope he’d gotten through.

“The one I just sold you. Maybe I want to buy it back.”

Tread carefully, you old coot,
Angus told himself.
There are potholes aplenty along this trail.
He shifted his weight, wedged his thumbs under his gun belt. “It’s too late for that,” he said. “You signed a bill of sale, and I wrote you a bank draft. Anyhow, it doubles the size of the Triple M.”

“What the hell do you expect me to do without any land?”

“I reckon you should have thought of that before you made the deal,” Angus said, praying he wasn’t overplaying his hand. “And I never said you wouldn’t have land.”

Holt shoved a hand through his hair, exasperated. No wonder he was so muddle-headed, going around without a hat. Even in the fall of the year, the high country sun could fry a man’s brain. “What the
hell
are you trying to say?”

Angus cocked a thumb toward the dooryard. “That you’re as much my son as any of those yahoos out there,” he said. “And that means it’s only fair to include you in the deal I made with them. Get yourself a wife, and you’ll run the Triple M, since you’ve already met one of the conditions by giving me a grandchild.” He paused, laughed out loud at the images that came to mind—Rafe, Kade, and Jeb would be scrambling for sure. “Goddamn, that would piss them off,” he finished, with a nod toward the cabin door.

A slow, incredulous grin spread across Holt’s face. Folks said Holt looked like him, but Angus saw a lot of the boy’s mother in him, and sometimes it wrenched his heart. “Maybe I’ll send for a mail-order bride,” he said.

“That would take a while,” Angus allowed.

Holt was clearly mulling things over again.

“There’s one other stipulation,” Angus said, wondering why he didn’t have better sense than to do a jig on thin ice.

Holt’s gaze was fierce. “Like what?”

“You’ll have to take your right name back. You’re a McKettrick, and calling yourself Cavanagh is a lie. Nothing good ever came of jimmying with the truth.”

Holt didn’t answer, and Angus didn’t press. He’d given the lad plenty to chew on as it was.

“Guess we’d better get back on that polecat’s trail,” Angus said with resignation. “We’re burning daylight here, and God only knows what devilment Barrett is up to by now.”

“I’m not moving into your house, old man,” Holt said as they both made for the door, and darn near got wedged in the narrow space, shoulder to shoulder.

“You can stay where you are,” Angus told him. “Just remember, that place is part of the Triple M now, and it’s going to stay that way, no matter which of you boys ends up calling the shots.”

Holt held his ground for a few moments, then sighed and stepped back to let Angus pass through the doorway.

Smiling, he stepped into the sun.

Rafe, Kade, and Jeb were standing side by side in the knee-high grass, and they didn’t look cheerful. Especially Jeb.

Might as well get it over with, Angus decided. “Holt’s in the contest now,” he said bluntly. “If he lands a wife, the whole shootin’ match will be his.”

The silence was ominous, and Jeb, not surprisingly, was the first to break it. “I’ll be a son of a bitch!” he rasped, and whirled to mount his horse. He might have had two good hands, he did it so easily.

Rafe and Kade stayed where they were, glaring at Holt.

“You can ride out,” Angus told them, “or you can help us track down this Barrett feller. It’s up to you.”

Rafe swore, and Kade looked like he might go for Holt’s throat, if not Angus’s own. Jeb simmered atop his horse like a kettle about to boil over.

Angus waited, as immobile as a canyon wall, holding his breath.

Rafe and Kade climbed into their saddles, and for a moment the three of them looked as though they might take the option he’d offered, and light out for home, or even parts unknown.

“Are you coming, old man?” Rafe finally demanded. “We’ve got a hard ride ahead.”

Angus ducked his head so they wouldn’t see his smile, and got on his horse. There might be a fight down the road, but he had four sons behind him, however mulish their natures.

Jack Barrett didn’t stand a chance.

C
hloe was in a grand dither, after her conversation with Becky next to John Lewis’s grave, and try as she might, she couldn’t settle herself down. Driven to take some kind of action, she went to the telegraph office and wired the judge in Tombstone, requesting written confirmation of her divorce from Jack Barrett. She couldn’t wait for a response to the letter she’d sent earlier.

Taking action should have resolved some of her turmoil, but it didn’t. Jeb was far away, and she couldn’t just go to him and tell him how she felt, much as she wanted to do exactly that. The distance was too great, and too dangerous, with Jack out there, watching. Waiting for his chance.

She would have to bide her time, whether she liked it or not.

She went back to the cottage behind the schoolhouse, built up the fire, and set water on for tea. She paced, and just when she thought things couldn’t get any more trying, her gaze fell on the wall calendar, the one she’d brought with her from Tombstone.

Awareness struck her like a bucketful of cold water.

She rushed over, flipped back the pages, noting the small x’s she’d made at precise intervals of twenty-eight days, then flipped them forward again.

“Dear God,” she whispered, torn between an elemental jubilation and absolute horror. It seemed she had one thing more to tell Jeb McKettrick, and it would put paid to matters, in his mind anyway, for all time and eternity.

He would want their baby, there was no question about that.

But would he want her?

Chloe went to the window, looked out at the twilight through a sheen of tears, seeing the place where Jeb had stood that momentous night, the night they had conceived their child, serenading her.

She heard the door open behind her, and smiled, even though her heart was in pieces, as she turned.

But it wasn’t Jeb standing just inside her cozy little cottage, come by some sweet miracle of fate to hear the news. No, it was Jack Barrett.

“Hullo, Chloe,” he said, leaning back against the door. He was holding his .44 on her. “Don’t scream, or I swear to God I’ll shoot you.”

Chloe might have screamed anyway, if it hadn’t been for the baby tucked away inside her, silently trusting in her good sense.

Jack pushed away from the door, hung up his hat beside her calico bonnet, like any husband coming home after a long day and expecting a welcome. Except, of course, for the .44, still aimed squarely at her center.

“What do you want?” she asked, though she knew. Even as terror seized her, a new strength flowed beneath it, buoying her up, clearing her mind, sifting the confusion roiling there into a soft sediment at the base of her spirit. Strange, she thought, that in the face of death, she should come smack up against the true nature of its opposite. Life. Rich, vibrant, contrary life.

How very much she loved it, and what a fickle steward she had been.

“You,” he said. “I want you. I would purely hate to kill you, Chloe, but I will, if you don’t listen to reason.”

“I’m listening,” she said, standing absolutely still, grateful that he had stopped at the table instead of coming to her.

The teakettle boiled over, the water sizzling on top of the tiny stove. Chloe thought she heard the sound of approaching horses, beyond the hiss, but decided it was wishful thinking when Jack didn’t react.

“You’d best see to that kettle,” he said. He’d laid the.44 on the table, but his hand rested lightly upon it, and his finger was still curled around the trigger.

Chloe forced some starch into her knees, walked over, and, using a dish towel, lifted the pot off the heat. Men’s voices. She heard them clearly, from the direction of the schoolyard, and closed her eyes.

No, Jeb,
she thought, with desperate calm.
Don’t come any closer.

She turned, saw Jack smiling, and knew he’d heard what she had. He stood, at his leisure, the .44 ready in his hand.

“Well, now,” Jack said, grimly pleased. “It seems the McKettricks are better trackers than I thought. When I couldn’t get my hands on the little girl—almost had her, too, but they came riding ’round the bend just as I was about to make my move—they must have figured I’d come here next.”

“I won’t let you hurt him, Jack,” Chloe said. Inside, she was screaming, hopelessly,
Run, Jeb! Run!
She knew he wouldn’t, though. He didn’t know how.

Jack chuckled, shook his head, as if marveling at her stupidity. “This won’t be over until they’re all dead, Chloe,” he said, with deadly reason. “It’s Jeb I want, but as long as there’s a one of those McKettricks left, I’ll be looking over my shoulder. That’s not the way I want to live out my days.”

Chloe watched him turn, and when he did, she threw the kettleful of boiling water at him. It struck him square in the back, and he screamed with pain and fury, but he was still on his feet. He crossed to her in two strides, grabbed her hard by the hair, and half dragged, half hurled her toward the door. He yanked it open with his free hand and stepped out onto the stoop, the barrel of the .44 digging into her left temple.

The McKettricks were there, all of them, including Holt.

Chloe’s gaze locked with Jeb’s, and she begged him, with her eyes, to back down. He refused, as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud. He stepped forward, and when Kade reached out to stop him, Angus laid a hand on his arm and shook his head.

“Put the guns down,” Jack said. “All of you.”

They complied, after a moment’s hesitation. Angus, Holt, Kade, and Rafe laid their pistols on the ground, though Jeb kept his. His right arm was still in its sling, Chloe noted with despair, and his holstered gun lay awkwardly against his left side.

“Kick them out of reach,” Jack prompted, giving Chloe’s hair a yank that sent fresh pain shooting through her scalp.

The McKettricks did as they’d been told—except for Jeb.

Don’t do this
, Chloe pleaded silently, her gaze never straying from Jeb’s face.

He was ignoring her, wholly focused on Jack.

“You shouldn’t have messed with my woman,” Jack said, with false benevolence. He shook his head. “That was a bad mistake, young McKettrick. A very bad mistake.”

“Let her go,” Jeb said evenly. His voice was quiet, but the undertone was deadly. A chill wind blew through Chloe’s spirit, set her to shivering.

That was when Jack hurled her off the porch, into the grass. She heard the shots in the second before she landed, two of them, one right after the other, and whirled on her hands and knees to look.

Jeb was standing, his pistol still smoking in his hand.

Jack lay sprawled against the cottage door, his face completely gone.

Chloe screamed, scrambled to her feet, dashed across the space between them, and flung herself at Jeb, felt his good arm close blessedly around her. “I’m sorry, Chloe,” he whispered, against her temple. “Christ, I’m so sorry.”

She clung to him, sobbing, only dimly aware of Angus and the others moving around them, picking up their discarded guns, shoving them into their holsters.

“I love you, Chloe,” Jeb said.

She looked up at him, searching his face, his eyes. “Do you mean that?”

“Like I’ve never meant anything before,” he answered.

Another tremor went through her. “Oh, God, I thought sure he’d kill you,” she cried. “I was so scared!”

“Everything’s all right now,” he assured her, but a question took shape in those blue, blue eyes. “Isn’t it?”

“I love you, Jeb,” Chloe said. “Heaven help me, I love you so much—”

He smiled. “That’s all I needed to hear,” he said.

Sam Fee and a bevy of other men rushed into the yard, and Angus spoke to them, explaining quietly. Jack’s body was gathered up, taken over to Doc’s office.

“I sent a wire to the judge in Tombstone,” Chloe felt compelled to say, when only she and Jeb were left, there in the gathering darkness. “He’ll confirm what I told you, about the divorce from Jack—”

Jeb laid a finger to her lips, stemming the rush of words. “I don’t need proof, Chloe,” he said. “You’re my wife. That’s all that’s important now.”

She let her forehead rest against his chest, gathering her scattered emotions. “There’s going to be a baby,” she told him.

He cupped her chin in his hand, raised her face for his kiss. “Even better,” he said. He nodded toward the door of the cottage, with its speckles of blood. “Let’s go inside, Chloe, and shut out the world for a while.”

Life roared through her, sweet and infinitely complicated, making its claim.

She nodded, and Jeb took her hand and led her over the threshold.

“Hold me,” she said, when the door had been closed and latched behind them.

He kissed her deeply. “I plan to do a lot more than that,” he said.