Shotgun Bride (28 page)

Jeb was still holding her firmly, and his sigh ruffled her hair. “He didn’t mean it, Mandy,” he said gently. “He’s scared for Pa, that’s all.”

She shook him off, shook off his kindness and his pity. She didn’t want anything,
especially
pity, from any of the McKettricks, ever again. Kade’s orders meant nothing to her; she raced over, snagged up Sister’s dangling reins, swung into the saddle, and rode off with no direction in mind except
away.

She heard Kade shout something, but it was Jeb who came after her, rode alongside, keeping pace, but making no effort to stop her flight. She kept Sister at a full-out run until the little mare began to tire, stumbling, her coat lathered and her sides heaving.

Coming to her senses, at least where the animal was concerned, Mandy reined her in, patted her neck in silent apology, and headed for the creek she’d spotted in the near distance. Jeb and his gelding stayed right with them.

“Go back to your pa and Kade and Rafe,” she said, avoiding her brother-in-law’s gaze. “I can get where I’m going without help from a McKettrick.”

“Mandy,” Jeb said reasonably, “you
are
a McKettrick. And I’m not going anywhere, so you might as well get past that.”

Reaching the stream, she slid down off Sister’s back and let the mare drink. “You’re all stubborn as jackasses, you McKettricks!” she cried. “Every last one of you!”

Jeb dismounted, chuckling. “That must be why you fit in so well with the outfit.” Then his face turned tender, which was the one thing Mandy knew she couldn’t bear. “Mandy, listen to me. This thing’s got Kade going three ways from Sunday. He doesn’t really believe any of the things he said, and you know it. Give him some time to cool off and get his thoughts in order, and he’ll come around.”

Mandy used the backs of both hands to dash away an embarrassing abundance of tears. “He’d be wasting his time if he said he was sorry!” She kicked furiously at a number of stones until some of her rage was spent. “He as much as called me an outlaw! I’d sooner spend the rest of my life cozied up with a mangy coyote than married to him!”

Jeb caught her by the chin and made her look at him. “How you going to tell the difference?” he asked with a twinkle.

She gave a sniffly laugh, shook her head. “I don’t rightly know.”

Jeb chuckled at that, but when he looked at Mandy again, his eyes were gentle. “Mandy, Mandy. My brother can be a bastard, no getting around it, but he’s a good man. Maybe the best of all of us. Don’t give up on him.”

She spat her reply. “It’s too late. Don’t you see that, Jeb? You heard what he said. You know what he thinks of me. You’re a poker player—you’ve got to know that there are times when the only thing a person can do is cut their losses and run!”

He stood with his hands resting on his hips, his head tilted to one side as he studied her. “I didn’t figure you for a quitter,” he said lightly, with a shrug in his voice, “or a coward, either. Guess I was wrong on both counts.”

Mandy wanted to jump back on Sister and ride, just ride, as fast and as far away as possible, but she couldn’t, because the horse was spent and wholly dependent on her good judgment. Where the mare was concerned, she hadn’t shown much of that, and she was mortally ashamed.

She began to pace, striding in one direction, then whirling to stride just as purposefully in the other. “I am
not,”
she yelled, swinging her arms for emphasis, “a coward—
or
a quitter!”

Jeb simply watched her. “Prove it.”

“I don’t have to prove anything!”

He shook his head. Sighed. “Mandy, we all have things to prove. Show Kade he was wrong about you. If you light out now, you’ll never know what the two of youcould have had together. A whole family of ornery, stubborn little kids will never be born. Is that what you really want?”

She began to cry again. “No,” she admitted, because he’d forced it out of her, left her with no choice. Just like a McKettrick. “But I’ve got some pride, damn it, and I’m in over my head here. That’s why I wanted to go away for a while, to clear my head. I can’t be what I’m not. Now I know I just plain don’t fit in, and I never will, and that’s the plain truth.”

Jeb raised one eyebrow, folded his arms. “Is it?”

“Do you people ever give an
inch
of ground?” Mandy ranted.

He grinned. “Not if we can help it.” He nodded toward his horse, grazing peacefully nearby. “Come on. You can ride with me, and we’ll lead the mare.”

“Not until you tell me we’re not going to Indian Rock,” Mandy said, digging in, folding her own arms.

“Okay,” Jeb said easily. “We’re not going to Indian Rock.”

“Where, then?”

“You drive a hard bargain, Mandy McKettrick.” She should have objected to his calling her by that name, but a part of her still liked the sound of it. He sighed. “We’re going to the Triple M, and that’s the end of it. And don’t give me any more trouble, or I’ll have to hog-tie you.”

“I’d like to see you try it!”

He shook his head again, scuffed idly at the ground with the toe of one boot. “Oh, no, you wouldn’t.”

He was probably bluffing. She fumed, not quite daring to test her theory. “You’re not holding all the cards here, Jeb McKettrick,” she informed him, but when he took hold of Sister’s reins and then mounted his own horse, she got on behind him. “If I’m going back with you, I want something in return.”

He looked back at her over one shoulder, grinning a little. “What?”

Mandy was willing to grasp any distraction. “You’ve been claiming that you’ve got a wife someplace. Is that true?”

He frowned. “Sort of.” He urged the horse into an easy stride.

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’? You’re either married or you’re not.” She was talking to the back of his neck now, but she kept on, mostly because silence would have driven her crazy just then. She felt the sigh move through him.

“Just between you and me, Sister Mandy,” he said, keeping his face forward, “I made a mistake.”

“What kind of mistake?”

The answer was a long time coming, and when it arrived, she knew it was all she or anybody else was going to get out of him, without the use of a hot poker. “I married a woman, and then I found out she really belonged to somebody else,” he said. “So when Kade came to Tombstone to fetch me, I figured it for a sign to move on.”

They met the buckboard, driven by Denver Jack, with Zeke riding shotgun, less than an hour later. They’d made good time getting to and from the ranch.

“Angus still holding on?” Denver Jack asked worriedly.

“He’ll outlive us all,” Jeb said.

The sun was setting when they reached the McKettrick place.

R
afe and Kade lifted Angus into the back of the buckboard as carefully as they could, while Denver Jack held the team steady and Zeke went to catch Zeus, the old man’s horse. Then, when the two brothers were halfway to their own mounts, Rafe moved to block Kade’s way. “If it weren’t for the shape Pa’s in right now, little brother, I’d kick your ass all the way back to the barn!”

Kade stepped around him, deliberately slamming his shoulder against Rafe’s as he passed, throwing him off-balance. “Soon as we get him settled at home, I’ll be happy to oblige you with any kind of fight you might be looking for.”

Rafe swore roundly. “You damn fool,” he hissed. “Doesn’t it bother you at all that you went and insulted the best woman you’re ever likely to come across?”

Kade’s jaw ached; he consciously relaxed it. “Leave it alone, Rafe. She’s protecting somebody, and it’s either Curry or that half brother of hers.”

“What half brother?”

“Cree Lathrop,” Kade said, grabbing his horse’s reins and mounting up. “He’s the grandstander who put up all those Wild West show flyers.”

“The one that never turned up,” Rafe mused, standing beside his horse. The buckboard was rolling back toward the main house, more than an hour away.

Kade shifted in the saddle. “I don’t like him.”

Rafe wheeled his arms. “Well,
hell,”
he exclaimed. “You
don’t like
him. That settles it for sure—let’s lynch the bastard!”

Kade shook his head, irritated beyond all logic and reason. “Damn it, it’s more than that.”

“What?” Rafe challenged.

Kade felt his shoulders, held rigid for much of the day, give way a little. Like every other part of his body, especially his heart, they were sore. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“You’re right, little brother. Right now, I really don’t understand.” Rafe mounted up. “From where I sit, it looks like you’re doing your damnedest to ruin a good thing.”

“You’d be an expert on that,” Kade said dryly. “It’s God’s own wonder that you didn’t drive Emmeline right back to Kansas City before you came to your senses.”

“When are you planning on coming to yours?” Rafe countered.

C
oncepcion reached the ranch house only moments after Mandy and Jeb did, riding stiffly in a buckboard driven by one of the ranch hands. Doc was with them, and another cowboy rode alongside. Jeb dismounted, leaving Mandy to get down on her own, and went to meet them.

Mandy saw Concepcion relax at his words, which didn’t carry, then bury her face in her hands to weep, most likely with relief. He and Doc helped her out of the buckboard, and Concepcion flung her arms around Jeb, who held her tightly until she’d gotten her strength back.

There was a lot to do in the next little while; Mandy and Concepcion rigged out a bed downstairs in a back parlor, and made supper, Mandy having relayed the news that Angus had been complaining of hunger when she’d last seen him.

Concepcion had plied Mandy all the while with anxious questions, and Mandy had answered them as thoroughly as she could. Inwardly, she worked hard at keeping thoughts of Kade and his terrible accusations at bay, but for all her busyness, it was a fight.

In time, Kade and Rafe arrived with Angus, and that was when Mandy made herself scarce. She locked herself in the room she knew was Kade’s and listened to all the commotion downstairs.

Hours went by, and the house grew quiet.

Mandy lay sleepless in the big bed far into the night, until the lamp on the bureau guttered. She should have asked to sleep in the spare room, she reflected miserably, or even the barn. Though she’d never set foot in Kade’s room before, reminders were everywhere she turned. Her estranged husband’s unique smoke-leather-snowy-morning scent permeated the sheets and blankets and certainly the pillows. His clothes hung in the wardrobe, his good hat awaited claiming on a peg next to the door. There were enough books to start a library, most of them, she’d noted earlier, while snooping, the kind of lofty-minded stuff that would put ordinary folks into a coma. Emerson. Thomas Aquinas. Shakespeare. Somebody named Plato. He must have been foreigner.

Tarnation. Mandy was a reader herself, but her experience was mostly limited to thirdhand dime novels about cowboys and schoolmarms, or knights and lovely ladies who coughed delicately at intervals and then turned up their toes at the end of the book, just when you were starting to like them. She would have given one of her front teeth for something like that to lose herself in right then, but no luck.

Things went from bad to worse when she realized she required a chamber pot, and there wasn’t one handy. Evidently the high-and-mighty Marshal Kade McKettrick didn’t find the need to relieve himself in the middle of the night, like ordinary mortals.

With a little huff of disdain, she tossed back the covers, and that raised his damnably appealing scent again, so easily recognizable that he might have been right there in the room with her, taking up all the space. She’d have given him a piece of her mind if he had been, that much was sure.

She got up, pulled on her trousers and boots, then donned one of Kade’s shirts over her camisole, leaving it unbuttoned. Some women might have been afraid to venture out into the night in search of an outhouse, but Mandy wasn’t the sort to fuss over minor inconveniences. For much of her life, she would have regarded even the smelliest privy as pure luxury.

Leaving the lamp behind, since it was nigh on useless anyhow, she crept along the corridor to the back stairs, then descended to the kitchen. A faint glow of light warned her that someone had gotten there ahead of her, but she expected Jeb or Doc or perhaps Concepcion, and she was quite unprepared to stumble across Kade instead.

He sat at the table, with his back to her, bent over an open book, and when he turned around, she saw that he was wearing spectacles with wire rims. There was no accounting for her reaction, a sort of aching tenderness that plucked at her heart, just as if there were strings humming in there. She drew in a deep breath, because when Kade McKettrick was in a room, he used up most of the air.

His face was void of expression as he took the spectacles off, set them aside, and looked her over. She pulled the shirt closed and fumbled to button it.

“I figured you’d be asleep in the bunkhouse or something,” she said, because the silence was intolerable and Kade plainly wasn’t going to be the one to break it. Oh, no. He was far too stubborn to make a concession like that.

“And I figured you’d be crawling out a window and heading for the hills,” he retorted, his voice revealing no more than his face had.

She straightened her spine, painfully aware that she had to get to the outhouse and, at the same time, damned if she’d let him think for a moment that she was intimidated. Even though she was, and mightily so.

“Guess we both figured wrong,” she said.

He let his gaze run over her again, slow and discerning and without a trace of friendliness. “If you’re of a mind to run off now, forget it.”

She felt herself flush, and her chin jutted right out. “I’d never go anyplace without my shotgun.”

He smiled at that, but it was a grim offering. “My mistake.”

She eased toward the back door. If Kade wanted to argue, he’d just have to wait a spell; she had personal business to attend to, and nature would not be denied. “I reckon you’ve made lots of those,” she told him, taking care to sound haughty. “Mistakes, I mean.”

“More than my share.” He stood up. “Where do you think you’re going?” He meant to press the matter, the jackass.

She squeezed her thighs together. “That needn’t concern you.”

He chuckled, finally taking note of her discomfort. “The outhouse.”

Mandy bolted and, to her chagrin, soon realized that Kade was right behind her. “You just stay put,” she called back, hurrying toward a privy-shaped shadow about a hundred yards from the house.

“Not a chance. I mean to keep an eye on you.” Damn, but he was cussed. “Emmeline came out here once,” he added, gaining on her, “and ran into a rattler. Broad daylight, too. No telling what you might come across.”

She reached the outhouse door, wrenched it open, and dashed inside, taking precious time to lower the latch. “I’m not some city girl,” she told him, dancing a little as she struggled with the buttons on her trousers. “Rattlers don’t scare me. Anyway, they don’t come out atnight—it’s too cold.” By that point, she wasn’t just keeping up the conversation; she didn’t want him to hear her making water, and it was a long way from the hole she was sitting on to the pit beneath. “Not that I’d speak a word against Emmeline,” she prattled on. “It’s not her fault she’s a McKettrick. She’s been real nice to me, unlike some people I could name.”

He laughed, damn him. She could just see him standing out there on the path, with his arms folded. King of the mountain, nothing he didn’t know all about, backward and forward. Hellfire and spit, he was the most irritating man she’d ever had the misfortune to come across.

“I thought she was a handful, till I made your acquaintance.” Just her luck that he was on one of his rare talking jags. “Next to you, my sister-in-law is a candidate for sainthood.”

Figuring if any situation ever called for bravado, this was it, Mandy unlatched the door and flung it open with such force that it banged against the outside wall.

“I reckon if you thought so highly of Emmeline, you should have married
her.”

“I would have liked to,” Kade replied, standing just as she’d imagined him, square in the middle of the path, “but when she got here, we all thought she was already hitched to Rafe.”

Mandy’s curiosity was aroused, in spite of her high dudgeon, which had not abated. Kade McKettrick had as good as called her a murdering outlaw that very day, and she wasn’t about to forget that. Not immediately, anyhow, and not without a lot of persuasion—which probably wasn’t forthcoming. “You
thought
she was married to Rafe?”

“So did she. Turned out there was some kind of mixup at the mail-order bride outfit, back in Kansas City, and the two of them had been living in sin. It was quite a scandal.”

Mandy knew any number of people who had lived in sin, including her own mother, but they usually did it deliberately, not by accident. “I’ve got better things to do,” she said loftily, trying without success to get around him, “than stand around yammering with you about other people’s business.”

“Mandy,” he said, catching hold of her arm when she would have dodged off the path to pass. “You know something about those outlaws, even if you think you don’t.”

“If that was supposed to be an apology, it was a piss-poor one!”

“It wasn’t an apology—not exactly, anyway.”

Mandy folded her arms, partly because she was furious, and partly because it was cold in the high country at night. Poor Angus must have suffered, lying there on the ground in the dark, wounded and alone. “Then what—exactly—was it supposed to be?”

“The start of a reasonable conversation.”

“There was nothing ‘reasonable’ about calling me an outlaw!”

“I didn’t call you an outlaw,” he said, taking pains with each word. A muscle bunched in his cheek. “And you’re doing your level best not to hear what I’m saying here.”

She waited, shivering a little, and too stubborn by half to say anything at all. That very afternoon she’d made up her mind never to speak to this man again as long as she lived, should she ever be unfortunate enough to encounter him, and now here she was, face-to-face with the rascal, and smack in the middle of a jawing fest.

“You’re cold,” he said, and putting an arm around her waist, he steered her toward the house.

She blinked back tears; when he yelled at her, she could hold her own, she’d had so much practice with Gig, but simple kindness invariably threw her for a loop. She let herself be led, though, because she knew if she balked, he’d just pick her up and carry her inside, and the very idea of that made her pride smart.

Once they were back in the kitchen, he indicated the table with a nod of his head. “Sit down.”

She considered her options, which were anything but spectacular, then sat.

He went to the stove, picked up the coffeepot. “Want some?”

She shook her head. She’d never seen anybody drink coffee the way he did, at all hours of the day and night. It was a miracle that he ever slept at all. “Too much of that stuff can make your gun hand shaky,” she felt obliged to point out.

“Never been a problem.” He brought his cup back to the table and took a seat.

“I’m still leaving,” she said, careful not to look at him. “First chance I get. It was a damn fool idea to marry you in the first place.”

He seemed to be smiling behind the rim of his coffee mug, though his eyes, usually expressive, were flat as mirrors, and just as opaque. “Maybe it was, but you’re not going anyplace until I round up those outlaws and get my pa’s money back. Unless it’s to lead me to their camp.”

Mandy threw up her hands.

After that, it was a stare-down, not a conversation, and Mandy tried her best not to look away first, but in the end, Kade prevailed. She felt a crushing shame, thinking back on all the things she’d done in those early years, lying as a matter of course, stealing whatever she could, whenever she could. She’d hated that life, that was the God’s truth, but Kade would never truly believe her. He’d already said as much.

Presently, Kade pushed back his chair, stood. “Get your rest, Amanda Rose. We’re going after some outlaws in the morning.”

The way he used her full name wounded her in some strange way, and when she looked up, his face was like stone.

She shook her head, despondent. Her throat ached; a powerful instinct to reach out to him came over her, and she was nearly swamped by it. In the end, though, her fierce pride saved her, if what she was feeling could be termed salvation.

“You’re staying in my room?”

She nodded.

“Then I’ll sleep in the bunkhouse. Good night, Amanda Rose.”

There it was again, her given name. Why did it do her so much injury to hear him say it? She bit down hard on her lower lip and nodded again, and he took his infernal coffee and left the house by way of the back door.

Mandy sat still at the McKettrick table for a long time. Then, weary of soul, she took the lantern from the middle of the table and used it to light her way up the stairs.