The Invitation (37 page)

O
ne moment Cole's heart was in his throat, for he knew that he was seeing his last minutes of life, and the next he didn't know what had happened. Dorie rushed out of the train, her small body nearly hidden in a flurry of ruffles and the voluminous skirt of her nightgown. She had loosened her hair and allowed it to spring out from her head—and spring was just what it did. He had thought her hair was straight and could see now why she kept it pulled back so severely. Taming her hair was akin to taming a wild horse just off the plains. It billowed about her head like a honey-colored cloud. And damn it, he thought, she looked just like an angel. Never in his life had he felt so protective of another human as he felt of this one.

The moment he saw her he knew that something was horribly wrong. Had one of Ford's men already boarded the train? Had someone touched her? He started to take a step toward her, started to bark out an order, but she didn't give him a chance to say a word before she launched into a screech of agony.

“You can't kill him until he gives me back the gold he stole from my sister and me. He's the only one who knows where it is.”

“Dorie!” Cole said sharply and tried to reach for her while not taking his eyes off the four men sitting astride their horses and watching him.

Dorie shrank away from Cole, with exaggerated horror, as though she might instantly die from some vile disease if he touched her.

In spite of himself, Cole frowned at her movement and the horror on her face.

“Don't you come near me! I'd rather die than be touched by you.” She looked up at the man on the big bay. “Oh, Mr. Ford, you can't imagine how horrible he is. He
uses
me!”

Dorie had the attention of Cole and the four outlaws as well as that of the cowardly passengers who were looking out the windows, watching while staying behind the protection of the steel train.

As Dorie started down the platform, Cole made a lunge for the back of her nightgown, but she eluded him.

“Mr. Ford, you look like a man who would help a lady,” she said.

Winotka Ford had cheekbones you could cut beef with, a five-inch-long scar ran down one of them, his hair hung to his shoulders and hadn't been washed since the last time he crossed a river, and his eyes were so cold he frightened rattlers. He didn't look as though he could or would help anyone.

“This man, this horrible man, killed your brother so he could kidnap me. He knew I was rich, richer than anything he had ever dreamed of. He knew my father had millions in gold bars hidden in his house. He knew this and used this information against me. I thought he was my friend; I thought he was a good person after he rescued me from the holdup. I…I married him.”

Ford looked up at Cole, still standing on the platform, still ready to draw. If Cole moved to try to get Dorie away from the men, he'd lose his vantage point, and with his right hand useless, he wouldn't be able to hold her out of the way of flying bullets. He was a prisoner of place.

“You marry yourself some rich girl, Hunter?” Ford asked, his voice snide and insinuating. He liked to toy with people before he killed them.

Dorie did the answering. “He married me, then forced my sister to give him fifty thousand dollars in gold, which he hid. I don't know where. I don't know anything anymore. He can't keep his hands off of me long enough for me to think.”

“Dorie!” Cole said, and to his horror there was hurt in his voice. He hadn't touched her, had treated her with nothing but respect. How could he go to his grave with these last words between them? Had his few kisses disgusted her this much?

Dorie ignored him. “Make him tell me where he hid the gold, and then you can kill him. Or maybe
I
will pull the trigger. I'd like to see him dead after the way he's treated me.”

In an instant Cole saw what she was doing and he was disgusted with himself for not having seen it earlier. He had been so blinded by her words about marrying him, that he had completely missed what she was saying about the gold. He looked up at Ford. “There is no gold,” he said calmly. “I have no gold hidden anywhere.”

“Liar!” Dorie screamed at him, then spit for emphasis.

Cole hated to admit it, but that gesture shocked him. Where'd she learn to do such a vulgar thing?

Ford began to laugh—an ugly sound because it wasn't something he did very often. His laughter sounded like the wheel of a wagon that had been rusted by the weather for a couple of years and now was trying to roll without being greased.

“Who am I supposed to believe, you or this little lady?”

“Don't believe him. He does nothing but lie!” Dorie yelled. “He lied to my sister and to me. He lies to everyone. He got shot, and he couldn't earn any money killing people anymore, so he sweet-talked me into marrying him, then forced my sister to give him all the gold she had. He was taking me back to Latham to get the rest of it. I think he means to kill me and burn my daddy's house down. I think—”

“Shut up!” Cole shouted at her, effectively making her instantly stop talking. He turned to Ford. “She's trying to save my life. There is no gold; she has no gold anywhere. She's as poor as a squatter. Your beef is with me, not her. Dorie, walk down to the far end of the train and stay out of this.”

“Ha!” she said. “I'd rather die than do more thing you tell me to do. You can't imagine the horrible things he's made me do. Disgusting things that no lady should have to live through.” She ran to Ford, put her hands on his stirrup straps and looked up at him with pleading eyes. “I'm not poor. If I were poor I wouldn't be traveling in a private train car, would I? I'm not trying to save his life. I hate him. He's taken so much from me, and I want it back. Get him to tell me where he's hidden the gold. Then you can kill him. I care nothing about him. Nothing.”

Cole could see that Ford was beginning to listen to her. “Gold” was the only word someone like Ford heard, and maybe he also heard the hint of something dirty and sinister in what Dorie was suggesting Cole had done to her.

As for Cole, he had difficulty controlling his anger at her words. Had she deceived him from the beginning? Was she something different from what she seemed? How did she know about “disgusting things,” things no lady should have to endure? Where had she learned of such things?

“Watkins!” Ford snapped. “Give Hunter and the little…lady”—he sneered the word—“your horse. We'll go back to camp and figure this out.”

For a moment Cole thought about shooting as many of them as he could. But he knew he'd end up dead, and then who would look out for Dorie? She'd just told these lying scum that she was rich, and she'd made them look at her as something sexual. These men would all want to know what Cole had done to her that was dirty; they'd want the details and want to repeat the experience. “She's lying,” he said, but he could see that his words made no difference. What words could he say that could compete with the words “gold” and “sex”?

“We'll figure that out later,” Ford said. “Now get on the horse.”

“Let her get dressed,” Cole said, playing for time. Maybe a bolt of lightning would strike Ford and his men. Maybe the cavalry would ride up and save them. Maybe those yellow-livered passengers watching them would step forward and help. And maybe Winotka Ford was going to repent within the next two seconds. Sure.

“I don't want to ride with him,” Dorie said, shrinking back toward the rear of Ford's horse, her arms folded protectively over her chest as though trying to ward off Cole's blows.

“She can ride with me,” one of the men said, leering at her.

“No, give her to Hunter, she likes him so much,” Ford said, his eyes easy to read even in the moonlight. He was going to enjoy seeing Dorie sitting so close to a man she hated. Misery in anyone gave him great pleasure. When he was the cause of that misery, his pleasure was combined with power and he was doubly pleased.

“Get down here before I shoot parts of you off,” Ford said to Cole. “And no changing clothes. We go now.”

Cole had never before been in such a bind. But then, he'd never before been responsible for another human being. In all his life he'd had only himself to take care of and look after. If he'd been killed, his death wouldn't have meant anything to anyone; no one would have noticed that he was missing from the earth. But now things were different. If he was killed tonight, something dreadful would happen to another human being, a person he had come to care about. He knew they had not married for the right reasons, but he had sworn to stay with her, to look after her until death did them part.

Of course death wasn't too far away, because within a few minutes he was going to wring her neck.

Fifteen minutes later he was mounted on a horse, Dorie ensconced in front of him, her big nightgown flapping about his legs, her feet encased in thin bedroom slippers. She was leaning back against him, his arms around her, holding the reins. For ten minutes, while they were riding, he had been telling her what he thought of her stupidity.

“You should have stayed where you were. If you'd done what I told you—”

“You would probably be dead now,” she said, yawning and leaning back against him.

In spite of himself—she did have a talent for bringing out the very worst in him—he said, “You'd better not get too close to me or I might do disgusting things to you.”

“Such as what?” she asked, sounding rather like a scientist who intended to take notes on the behavior patterns of another civilization.

“I
have no idea.
You
were the one telling the world that I couldn't keep my hands off of you. Damn you, Dorie! You've gotten us into a real mess. You and I both know there's no gold. Why didn't you let me fight it out with him?”

“Because I didn't want you to die,” she said simply.

For a moment he was mollified. Part of him was, of course, glad that he wasn't dead, but he wished with all his heart that she were somewhere safe instead of at the mercy of a conscienceless outlaw.

“Why did you have to tell Ford—and everyone else within earshot—all that about how I…how I…”

“How you couldn't keep your hands off me?”

His pride didn't want to ask for her answer, but right now every feeling he'd ever had was bruised and confused. “Yes,” he whispered.

“My father never let me do anything I wanted to do. Rowena said he could be very contrary, but I think he was just plain mean. If I wanted to read a book, he made me go out in the carriage with him. If I said it was a beautiful day and I was looking forward to going out, you can be sure we'd stay in, probably in one room. I thought that maybe your outlaw was as mean as my father. If I'd said I wanted to stay with you, he would have done everything in his power to keep us apart, so I did what I learned to do with my father: I told him I wanted to do the opposite—get away from you.” She snuggled a bit against his chest. “It looks as though it worked.”

All his life Cole had thought women were the weaker sex. They needed protection. But this woman was making him rethink what he'd believed to be true. Impulsively he bent his head and kissed her neck a couple of times.

“Stop it!” she screamed. “Keep your slimy hands off me! I hate you! Don't touch me!”

Ahead of them they could hear Winotka Ford chuckling. He'd probably laughed more tonight than he had in the last ten years together.

“You don't have to overdo it,” Cole said, hurt in spite of himself.

“Yes, I must or he won't get any enjoyment out of this.”

Maybe it was that unfamiliar protective instinct she'd aroused in him, but he didn't like to think that she had ever known anyone who was even remotely like Winotka Ford. He would have preferred to think she'd had a father who indulged her with pretty dresses and lollipops on Sunday afternoons. But he was beginning to realize that her affluent childhood was as lonely as his poor one had been.

He shook himself, telling himself to stop being so melodramatic. Right now his major concern was to get both of them out of the jam Dorie had got them into. Had he been alone, he would have tried to shoot his way out of this mess, never mind that his shooting arm was in a sling. But now he had to take care of Dorie.

It wasn't pleasant to remember, but he tried to think back to what she had told Ford. It seemed that he, Cole, was supposed to have fifty grand that only he knew the where-abouts of. So that meant Ford could do anything to Cole short of killing him to find out where Cole had stashed the gold. Also, he seemed to remember that Dorie had said there was more gold in her house in Latham.

“Do you have any gold hidden in your father's house?”

“None,” she said sleepily. “Why?”

He tightened his arm around her in a warning gesture.

“Oh, that,” she said, remembering what she had told that dreadful, dirty man. “I wanted him to have a reason not to kill me, so I told him I knew where there was money hidden. But there is no hidden money. My father put everything in trust in a bank in Philadelphia. I am given the smallest amount possible every month.”