Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (55 page)

      
“You be careful, señora,” the grizzled, little Mexican replied dubiously as he helped her into the rig.

      
Why was it men always assumed women were helpless, especially when the women were increasing? Thinking of the self-sufficiency of the women in Leather Shirt's band, she had to smile. The Cheyenne viewed carrying a child as a natural occasion, not a confinement. If only “civilized” society were half so sensible.

      
She spent the duration of the morning in Cheyenne at Mrs. Whittaker's shop. Mercifully, the selections and fittings did not take as long as she had anticipated. Although an established station on the Union Pacific line, the town was still small, with only a few respectable ladies to patronize a dressmaker. The selection left something to be desired, but she had chosen several fabrics that were practical and sturdy, sensible for the months ahead in the wilderness.

      
As she slapped the reins and the frisky white mare trotted off, Roxanna studied the sky. Thick gray clouds billowed over the northwestern horizon. The air was chilly and a light dusting of snow covered the ground. Were they in for the first big storm of the season? She urged the horse to a swifter pace, looking forward to a few hours of blissful solitude without servants hovering. The morning of being pinned, poked and pulled on had been quite enough.

      
She drove the rig down to the stables and left it with Juan, then walked back up the long winding footpath to the servants' entrance at the rear of the house. She entered the kitchen and set about making a pot of tea, then poured a large cup and carried it with her down the hall. This would be a perfect afternoon to curl up with one of the books from Jubal's library. She could watch the snowfall from her sitting room window and be safe and cozy inside. First she had to select a book from the collection which lined the circular walls of the second-floor tower room.

      
She entered the foyer and that eerie prickling sensation returned as she looked up the steep winding staircase to the tower’s top room. There was something about it and these stairs that made her uncomfortable. Grinning at herself, she murmured, “It's probably that I'm on my way to becoming a fat and lazy pregnant lady.” Picking up her skirt in one hand, holding the teacup and saucer in the other, she began the ascent.

      
When she reached the top, she made a mental note to suggest to Jubal that he have the hard oak risers carpeted. She entered the big room with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and began to browse. At one point she thought she heard footsteps on the stairs, but when she called out, no one answered.

      
It was scarcely half past one. None of the servants would return for hours yet. Shrugging, she turned back to the shelves and plucked a volume of Aristophanes' plays from the shelf. With a smile bowing her lips, she decided to reread Lysistrata, even if not in the original Greek. Perhaps there was more than one way to convince Cain to take her , with him.

      
Book tucked beneath her arm, she picked up her empty cup and headed out the door. Halfway to the stairs, she froze. The cup and saucer slipped from her fingers and shattered as they hit the floor, jagged pieces bouncing through the railing to the tiles far below like brittle raindrops.

      
“What are you doing here?” Roxanna asked as steadily as she could.

      
Isobel Darby's face contorted with the venom that had eaten away at her soul and her sanity for six long years, “I am going to exact justice,” she replied in a high-pitched voice, producing an ancient percussion cap pepperbox pistol from the folds of her heavy plum velvet dress.

      
“You'll be arrested. My servants—”

      
“I listened as you dismissed them for the day. No one but that dirty greaser is around and he's down at the stables, too far away to hear.”

      
Keep her talking
, Roxanna thought desperately as she placed her hand on the railing and took a tiny step forward. “How did you hear what I said?”

      
An almost childish smile came over Isobel's pinched aristocratic features. “Why, I've been here ever since the house was completed, in the attic over the tower room.” She glanced up for a second, but leveled the gun the instant Roxanna moved another step closer.

      
“I had everything planned, you see. When the house sat empty I sneaked in with enough food and water to last until you arrived. I knew you'd be here alone sooner or later. All I had to do was wait. I've waited so many years already. But I'm through being patient.”

      
Cain stood rigidly in the foyer below the two women. Dear God, was he too late? When he reached the railhead at Bear River, Jubal's agent in Mississippi had just wired him that the Widow Darby had vanished from Vicksburg without ever visiting her plantation. His fifty thousand had been withdrawn from the bank the same day.

      
Cain had immediately hopped a train heading east and instructed the engineer to open the throttle wide. Now he stood in the deserted house, powerless as the two women faced each other. Roxanna was directly in his line of fire. If he tried to move out farther in the room where he could get a shot at Isobel, she would see him and shoot his wife.

      
What could he do? He had to get behind Isobel. The back servants' stairs to the second floor! Edging along the wall underneath the balcony, he dashed down the carpeted hallway and raced for the back steps as Isobel continued her demented ranting.

      
“That old fool MacKenzie thought he'd bought me off, but I've outsmarted him. I have my ticket for the four-thirty train eastbound. By this time next month I'll be living high in London...and you will be dead...you and that filthy half-breed's brat you're carrying, lying at the bottom of those stairs with a broken neck...probably everything else broken too,” she added with relish. “My noble Nathaniel will at last be able to rest in the peace he deserves.”

      
“Your noble Nathaniel was a thief and a traitor,” Roxanna said, deliberately goading Isobel, hoping she would slip over the brink of madness and fire wildly. She still held the book beneath her arm.
Please, God, let my aim be true!
“He deserved to hang—not only for stealing—”

      
“You lying slut! You enticed him into your bed!” Isobel shrieked, moving closer to Roxanna, her teeth bared in a snarl as her thin lips pulled up, twisting grotesquely.

      
Swallowing the bile her memories evoked, Roxanna said, “I traded my virginity to Colonel Nathaniel Darby in return for his word that he'd release me from that hellhole of a prison in Vicksburg. Do you know how much his word was worth—your fine Confederate cavalier?”
Come closer, Isobel, closer...

      
“I won't listen to—”

      
“Do you?” Roxanna’s voice too rose sharply as the horrors of that hellish night came bubbling up, still festering in the back of her mind, like sewage, black, filthy, noisome beyond endurance. “He took me until he'd slaked his lust. He even told me what a splendid fuck I was.”

      
Isobel drew back in shock. “Nathaniel never used such language!”

      
“Those were precisely his words. After commending me, he smiled and called in the guard. Instead of the horse and free passage north he promised me, he sent me back to that stinking cell in the bowels of the prison—where three guards waited.”

      
Roxanna shivered uncontrollably, then regained control of herself. Isobel's eyes were round, almost popping from their sockets as she relished the idea of her hated enemy's degradation. But Roxanna had to finish it. The telling of it was her only hope of escape from certain death.

      
“He turned me over to those animals. The lowest dregs of humanity, rotted teeth, sour breath, unwashed bodies. They tore off the clothes your noble Nathaniel had allowed me to put back on. Then they took turns—all night long...until they didn't even have to hold me down anymore.”

      
She could feel the tears thickening her voice, feel the sting of them gathering behind her eyes.
Don 't let them blur my vision.
She slid the book from beneath her arm and clutched it in both hands. “They left me for dead near dawn and went to get drunk. They were passed out in the guard room when I crawled out of that cell. I stole one of their horses. To this day, I don't know how I managed to stay on it until I reached Federal lines.”

      
“You deserved what you got,” Isobel said viciously. “My Nathaniel is dead. You ruined him.”

      
“There is a real irony in this, Isobel. I wouldn't have turned him in to General Johnston if he'd kept his word to me. He could still be alive today.”

      
“No! You're lying—lying about it all! You've made up this whole tale!”

      
Just after Roxanna hurled the book, Isobel fired her gun. The slim volume struck the barrel and the shot went wild. Cain raced the last dozen yards down the hall, but before he could reach them, Isobel leaped at Roxanna and the two women stumbled backward as they clawed and gouged at each other. The force of their combined weight slammed against the wooden railing, which gave a sickening crack. Isobel seized a fistful of Roxanna’s hair and yanked it free of its pins as Roxanna landed a fist in her foe's lower abdomen below the protective whalebone stays of her corset.

      
With a bleat of rage and pain, Isobel renewed her attack, intent on forcing her victim over the banister. Once more she careened into the railing, with a talon-like grip on Roxanna’s arm. Her strength was incredible, as Cain found out when he reached them and attempted to extricate his wife.

      
His appearance only seemed to add to Isobel’s blind rage. Flecks of spittle flew from her thin white lips as she held on with a grip of steel, using the weight of both their bodies as she slammed against the banister yet a third time. She was rewarded by the sharp crack of wood giving way behind her.

      
Cain braced his legs and pulled backward, with his arms wrapped around Roxanna's body. As he fell to the carpet, Isobel lost her grip on Roxanna. They could hear her anguished cry, “Nooo...!” Then there was only a dull solid thud when her body hit the slate tiles below.

      
Cain rolled onto his side with Roxanna cradled in his arms, holding her gently, drinking in the feel of her body, so warm and alive against his, the ragged rise and fall of her ribs as she gasped for air. He sat up, then carefully helped her rise. “Did she hurt you—the baby?” he asked anxiously.

      
Roxanna shivered. “The baby’s fine. I may have a few bruises—nothing half so terrible as Isobel.”

      
Together they climbed to their feet and peered over the smashed railing. Isobel Darby lay splayed out in the center of the foyer floor, her body bent at grotesquely malformed angles. Her heavy plum velvet gown billowed out around her legs, and from beneath it, spilled all across the tiles, lay small bundles of banknotes, hundreds of them.

      
“She must've hidden all the money Jubal gave her in her clothes,” Cain muttered to himself as he turned Roxanna’s head away from the bloody flesh that had once been Isobel Darby.

Chapter Twenty-Five

      
Cain and Roxanna left the broken remains of Isobel lying on the foyer floor and walked down the hall to her sitting room. “We'll have to send for the authorities...do something...about her body...” She shivered, remembering Isobel's hate-filled cry as she fell to her death.

      
“Don't think about it. I'll handle it later,” he replied, urging her to take a seat on the sofa. He knelt beside her and examined the scratches on her face and arms. “When I think how close I came to losing you all over again…” His voice trailed away. “Are you injured anywhere else?”

      
“I think she pulled half the hair from my head. Other than that, just these few scrapes,” she responded.

      
“I felt so helpless when I saw the two of you up there. I couldn't get a shot at her. You were directly in my line of fire. I raced to the back stairs, but by the time I reached that hall, you'd both moved and I still didn't dare shoot. I tried to sneak up on her and then you threw that book.”

      
“You saved me once again.” She paused, staring down at her hands, clenched tightly in her lap. “You heard, didn't you?” Her voice was choked.

      
“Yes, Roxanna, I heard,” he said, placing his hand over hers.

      
“I—I had to keep her off balance, angry, to move closer...or at least that's what I was telling myself. Maybe I just wanted to spew it all out at her. She's tormented me for so long...all over a man who existed only in her imagination.”

      
“Jubal said you’d have to be the one to tell me about it...if you wanted to.”

      
She choked on a sob and bit down on one tightly clenched fist. “Reliving it brought back what I thought I'd escaped...feeling so defiled...so dirty... It's as if it happened only yesterday. I'll never be rid of the memories.”

      
He sat beside her and placed his arms around her, holding her tightly. “Roxanna, you weren't to blame for any of it—not Darby, not those guards—you were their victim, may the bastards rot in hell.”

      
She felt his hands, those gentle hands, stroking her hair, holding her so securely. He didn't understand. She looked up and met his eyes, struggling for control of her runaway emotions. “I sold myself, my honor, to escape a hangman's noose. I should’ve died for my country the way a man in my place would have.” Her face crumpled. “But as you said, a woman has weapons that a man doesn't. I gave that swine Darby my virginity—what I should’ve been able to give you—”