Sweetwater Seduction (24 page)

More astonishing, even to her, was the array of toilet preparations she had hoped might enable her to appear less plain than she was. None of them had ever worked, but nevertheless, when she was a child traveling with her parents, it would have been impossible to cart such a collection of breakable bottles and jars.

The dresser held Eastman's Toilet Waters (which she had intended to use with the Eastman's Violette Cold Cream that Kerrigan had kept her from purchasing), Fleur de Lis Talcum Powder, White Lily Face Wash, Witch Hazel Glycerine Jelly, C. H. Berry Freckle Ointment, Orange Flower Skin Food, Franklin's Liquid Depilatory for Removing Superfluous Hair, and last, but most certainly not least, Mrs. Graham's Kosmeo Toilet Cerate, which promised a perfect complexion in only ten minutes a day of cleansing with her beautifier.

Miss Devlin had taken to heart Mrs. Graham's caution on the label:
When a man marries, nine times out of ten he chooses the girl who is careful about her personal appearance, the girl with the pretty complexion.

Eden had used the product religiously, and to be honest, she did have lovely skin. But nothing she had collected, used, dusted, or sprayed had ever made her face anything but plain. Miss Devlin knew it was going to take a very special man to look past her face to the wonderful woman inside.

The saddest part of her collection (because she had never expected to need them) were items useful only to a wife and mother. Her decorated wooden Wish Box contained such treasures as a bone teething ring with a rubber nipple and a luxurious silk cord that attached to the baby's arm so it wouldn't be lost, two spools of satin and grosgrain baby ribbon (one pink, one blue, just in case), a nickel-plated steel barber clipper, and a genuine badger-hair shaving brush with a black bone handle, which she intended as a wedding gift for her husband—if she ever had one. Most recently, she had added the silver baby spoon Kerrigan had given her.

Miss Devlin had no idea how long she had been sitting there dreaming, but she was suddenly conscious of the gunslinger's hands clear down on the small of her back. While it felt delicious, she was sure something that felt that good must be equally improper.

She slipped forward, and turned to meet his studying gaze. “As I was saying, I don't plan to leave this valley. That's why I'm doing my best to keep peace here. I'm through with leaving when things start to go bad.”

Kerrigan waited for her to speak again, because he wondered what kind of calamity had once made a drifter out of this tall, plain woman. When she didn't offer the rest, he asked, “You have experience with things going bad?”

She turned away and his hands began their cradling work again, mostly because he could tell she wanted to get away from him and he didn't want her to go.

“My father wasn't the kind of man people wanted to see riding into their towns. And they were mighty glad to see the back of him.”

His hands moved down her back, and though she arched away, he held her fast, circling her waist, his thumbs working low on her spine, to comfort, to ease. “What kind of work did he do?”

“Whatever he was paid to do,” she said evasively. “It doesn't matter, does it?”

“I guess not.” It was clear that if he pressed her, she was going to bolt. So he changed the subject. “Tell me. When you were going through my things, did you happen to find my watch?”

He felt her tense.

Sheepishly she admitted, “I have it right here in my pocket.” She had been carrying the watch all week long, waiting for the moment she could confront him about the pictures inside. She reached slowly into her pocket, pulled out the heavy gold watch, and handed it over to him.

He stopped what he was doing to take the watch reverently into his hands.

“I was wondering,” she said, angling herself on the bed so she could see his face better, “if you would tell me about the pictures.”

He popped the back of the watch open. His face took on a pinched look as he studied the two portraits. “The one on the left is me. The one on the right is . . . was . . . my wife, Elizabeth.”

“She was very beautiful,” Eden said.

“The most beautiful woman I've ever seen.”

Eden felt a lump in her throat. From the pain on his face it was easy to see that he hadn't stopped loving her even though she was dead. She cleared her throat and said, “How long ago did she die?”

“It's been . . . fifteen years.”

“I'm sorry. What about Colby and Susanna?”

“Damned Yankee carpetbaggers killed them!” he said in a harsh voice. Then, “How did you know about my brother and his wife?”

“When you were delirious—with the fever—you talked about them.”

“How much did I say?” he asked bitterly.

“Just that you found the men who killed your family . . . and killed them.”

His eyes were filled with hate and horror.

“Would you tell me the whole story?” she asked.

He looked out the window, and his dark eyes saw a world far away and long gone. “I've never thought it was a good idea to talk about what's done and over.”

“I'd like to know.”

He snapped the watch shut and huffed out a breath of air. “I suppose I owe you something for keeping me alive.”

“If you'd rather not—”

“I carried a gun from the day I was old enough to heft one,” he said, rubbing the etched gold watch with his thumb. “First to put food on the table and then to fight off renegade Comanches. I left Texas with gun in hand when I was twenty, to fight for the South.

“My brother Colby stayed home to keep the ranch going because his wife, Susanna, was already expecting a baby by the time the South needed boys from Texas towns as small as ours, who were as young and naive as we were then. I married Elizabeth before I left, and she stayed with my brother and his wife.

“I was lucky. I came home after the war with nothing more than this little scar on my face.” He traced the long, thin scar along his cheekbone with the cool edge of the watch. “I was glad the killing was over. I was ready to let bygones be bygones. To get on with my life.”

He clutched the watch in his fist and drew a ragged breath. “Only I never got the chance. When I got home, Colby and Susanna were already dead—killed by the carpetbaggers who took over our ranch. With Colby out of the way, there was no one to keep them from taking what they wanted.”

“They must have known you'd come back to claim what was yours.”

Kerrigan's jaw muscles tautened. “A few months before the end of the war I got separated from my outfit after a skirmish. By the time I found my way back to them a letter had already been sent to my family saying I had been reported missing and was presumed dead. Before the message that I was alive and well got to them, the carpetbaggers had already acted on the assumption I wouldn't be around to complain.”

When he didn't say anything more, she asked, “What about Elizabeth?”

“My wife escaped when the killing started and went into hiding. When I got home I found her living—if you could call it that—with a neighbor. She warned me I'd have to fight if I wanted my ranch back, that the carpet-baggers weren't about to hand it over just because I had a legal claim to it. But I was tired of killing. I told her I'd had enough of guns and fighting. All that killing hadn't solved anything. I had decided to lay down my gun for good.”

Eden let Kerrigane off into the darkness for a while, but eventually prodded, “What happened then?”

“I killed my wife.”

Eden gasped.

The mask of horror on Eden's face prompted Kerrigan to say, “I didn't pull the trigger. But it was my fault she died.”

“Surely not.”

His guttural bark was a travesty of laughter. “It was my fault, all right. The sheriff came out and evicted those carpetbaggers, just like the law ought. But that night, while I was having a celebration dinner with Elizabeth, they came back. There I was without a gun at hand . . . no way of stopping them. And what they did to Elizabeth . . .”

The hairs stood up on the back of Miss Devlin's neck at the choking agony in his voice, and a knot formed in the pit of her stomach. “It wasn't your fault,” she whispered in an attempt to bring him back from wherever his hellish memories had taken him.

“They shot me. Left me for dead. Left her alive. I tried to tell her it didn't matter what they'd done to her. I still loved her as much as I ever had. She didn't believe me.” He paused, and a look of such desolation crossed his face that Eden could not bear to look at him. A moment later he finished, “The first time I left her alone, she found a gun and put it in her mouth—”

“Stop! I don't want to hear any more.”

He touched one of the white scars hidden in the curly black hair on his chest. A voice so savage it frightened her said, “I lived to hunt them down, one at a time.”

“But you told Elizabeth you don't believe violence solves anything. Why—”

“There are times when nothing else works, Miss Devlin. It may be hard for you to believe, but there are men out there who don't give a fool's damn about reason. A bullet is the only kind of talk they understand.”

“Things have changed,” she said. “The war has been over a long time.”

His upper lip curled and his eyes narrowed into a mask of cynicism. “There are other wars to be fought.”

How could she deny that? “I can see you've got your mind made up. I'm not going to try and change it. I know from experience how futile that can be.”

Her voice was full of bitterness and irony he didn't understand. The burst of rage he had felt had pretty much exhausted him, as it always did, and with his wounds, he found he could hardly keep his eyes open. With what little energy he had, he lowered the pillow for his head. By then Miss Devlin was up and helping him. He hadn't the strength to argue that he could manage by himself. He was already half asleep by the time he said, “Be sure to get that message .”

Miss Devlin sent a message to Felton saying she would like to meet him in his office. But the sheriff was out of town and wasn't expected back for a couple of days. The gunslinger was fit to be tied. It was nearly impossible to keep him still. Several times Miss Devlin had to shoo him back to bed after he made forays into the parlor draped in a trailing sheet.

On one occasion, she was grading papers at the dining room table when he suddenly appeared across from her. He had wrapped a sheet around his waist and tucked it in. It was disconcerting, to say the least, when she looked up to discover herself staring at his bare chest, with its T of black curls leading down to an exposed naval.

“You should be in bed,” she said.
Or anywhere except here where I can't keep my eyes off you
.

He pulled out a chair, turned it around, and straddled it—winding the sheet around his hips as he sat down. He then took the quilt he'd been trailing behind him and settled it around him to help him stay warm. “I heard you muttering to yourself. What's the problem? Maybe I can help.”

“Not unless you can think of a way to convince an eleven-year-old boy that it's a little early to give up on learning.”

“Who are we talking about?”

“Wade Ives. You've met his older brother, Jett.” She eyed him significantly over the top of her spectacles. “Their father has the farm farthest south from town. Wade isn't making any effort at all to do his homework. He says he's going to be a Wyoming farmer all his life, and since he already knows how to read and write and do sums, he figures that's all the education he needs.”

“What more is it you want him to learn?” Kerrigan asked.

“Geography.”

“He probably knows how to get his crop from here to the nearest market.”

“But he won't be able to identify the countries that could import his grain,” Eden contended. “Or understand how his prices will be affected by the amount of grain grown by other countries. And then there's history—”

“We have a bad habit of repeating that,” Kerrigan said. “He'll probably have a chance to experience firsthand whatever he misses in a book.”

“Don't be facetious!” Eden bit her lip, waiting for Kerrigan to attack her for using a Big Word meaning “to jest in an inappropriate manner.”

Instead, he grinned and said, “What else?”

“Literature,” she replied with alacrity.