Willow: A Novel (No Series) (11 page)

“Gideon!”

“Once Mother adjusts to the idea of our living together, you and me, I mean, she will probably make a most miraculous recovery.”

Many times over the years, Willow had seen Evadne develop a “sick headache” or the vapors when she wanted to draw attention to herself.

“Willow,” Gideon persisted, “
we are married
.”

“But-but, Gideon, it isn’t a
real
marriage—you don’t love me—”

“That is quite true,” he answered, probably having no conception of the depth of the wound he’d just inflicted. “All the same, you will pack your things and be ready when I come back for you.”

“I refuse to live with you just because you decree it!”

“You have two hours,” Gideon said, and then he was striding out of the parlor, through the entry hall, onto the front porch. Forty minutes later, he bought a white frame house and seven hundred acres of land he’d read about in that morning’s newspaper and rationalized the brash expenditure by telling himself that he was tired of living in a hotel.

*   *   *

Maria watched her charge with gentle amusement. “Hadn’t you better start packing, señorita?” she asked. “Oh, but now you are a señora, of course. I keep forgetting.”

Willow, having retreated into her bedroom, glared at the woman who had practically raised her. Her real mother, Chastity, had cared for no one but Jay Forbes; it had been Maria who had shown her unflagging love. “Packing! Are you mad, Maria? I’m not going anywhere with that man!”

“That man is your husband,” Maria reminded her quietly, “and he is the kind, I think, to come up here after you if you are not ready when he arrives.”

“Let him—I’ll lock my door! I’ll have him arrested!”

“One door would not stop this hombre, I think. And the marshal, he would only laugh at you if you asked that your own husband be hauled off to jail.”

“Papa could do it! Papa could have Gideon thrown into the hoosegow just like that!” Willow snapped her fingers.

“
Sí
, but the papa is not here now, is he? No, he is far away, at one of his copper mines, and even when he leaves there he will not come first to this house.”

Willow lowered her head. What Maria said was all too true; her father would go to Dove Triskadden when his business was through, and remain with her until morning. And by morning, of course, it would be too late.

She would be ruined.

Forever.

And what of poor Evadne? Didn’t she deserve her husband’s attention, feeling the way she did?

“Evadne?”

“Mrs. Gallagher is resting,” Maria assured her. “I gave her a dose of her medicine and she spoke to me. I’ve already sent Pablito for the doctor, but I feel certain that there is no more to be done.”

Willow nodded, fidgety. Neither Maria nor Gideon seemed very concerned, but to her, Evadne had looked dreadful.

“You love the señor, no?” asked Maria, her tone gentle with knowing as she dragged Willow’s trunk out of the wardrobe and began to fill it with drawers and camisoles, dresses and nightgowns.

“No!” lied Willow. “I do not love Gideon Marshall. Wherever would you get such an idea?”

“Ah, but I know you too well,
chiquita
,” argued Maria with a smile and a pat of Willow’s hand. “You have loved him always.”

Willow shook her head. “No! I loved Lancelot—an imaginary man, no more real than Cinderella’s prince.”

“You love this one,” Maria insisted, seemingly oblivious to what was about to happen.

Willow was appalled. “Maria, how can you do it? How can you stand there, calmly packing my clothes, when you know I am about to be—kidnapped?” She swallowed and hugged herself tightly with both arms. “And
worse
?”

Maria chuckled. “Kidnapped,” she repeated, as though Willow had made a joke.

“Maria, Gideon doesn’t love me—he told me so himself.
Suppose he turns out to be a drunkard, or he beats me, or—”

“Gideon will not beat you, though you will surely try his patience many times.” Maria seemed damnably certain of that, and Willow wondered why.

Despondent, she sank down onto the edge of her bed. What was happening to her? She knew that Gideon intended to track down her brother, for heaven’s sake, and yet she would have gone with him willingly, glad to be his wife, if only he’d said he loved her.

Maria paused to place a gentle hand beneath Willow’s chin. “Little one, do not fear. He does love you, your Gideon.”

“He came right out and said he didn’t!”

“Then he lies or, perhaps, he has not yet recognized his feelings for what they are.
Chiquita
, the señor burns for you. This is in his eyes. In his breath. In the way his hands want to reach for you, and he must still them.”

“That’s only lust!” Willow protested vehemently.

But Maria would make no further comment. She went placidly back to the packing, and when it was finished, she left Willow to her musings to go and make sure Pablito had gone on his errand, then to sit with Evadne until the doctor arrived.

Willow was bending out of her window, trying to decide whether she could jump and escape to freedom without breaking one or both legs, when the door of her bedroom opened behind her. She whirled, expecting to see Gideon standing there.

Instead, she was confronted with a wild-eyed,
distraught-looking Evadne. Her dark hair, always elegantly coiffed, tumbled down over her shoulders, reaching past her waist.

“What did you do to entice my son?” the woman demanded, in strange, slurred tones.

For a moment, Willow was too taken aback to speak. Had Evadne—proper and temperate Evadne—been partaking of spirits? “Entice your son? Evadne, I didn’t—”

“You’re exactly like your mother!” Evadne broke in, and her voice was shrill now. She trembled with indignation. “Leaving one man, taking up with another, doing whatever you want, no matter who gets hurt! Well, I won’t let you poison Gideon’s life the way Chastity did Devlin’s.
Do you hear me, Willow? I will not permit you to spoil his chance to be happy with a suitable woman!
”

A suitable woman.

Evadne was referring, of course, to Daphne Roberts.

What made Daphne “suitable,” Willow wondered, unexpectedly injured, and why wasn’t
she
suitable, too?

A thousand protests leaped into Willow’s mind, but she did not give voice to any of them. It was Evadne who had been poisoned, with hatred and with bitterness, but trying to reason with her now would be useless.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Willow said finally, as compassion swept through her. “The truth is that I love Gideon very much.”

“Love him?” scoffed Evadne. “No one in this misguided family has any conception of the meaning of that word!”

Willow blinked back tears. “My father loves you, Evadne.”

Evadne fell against the doorjamb, and the dearth of color in her face was frightening. “Does he? Does he, Willow? They why, pray tell, does he spend every free moment with that Triskadden woman?”

Sympathy for her stepmother swept over Willow in a crushing wave; she went to Evadne, took her arm, guided her to a chair. “Please. You mustn’t upset yourself so—you don’t look well—”

“Don’t touch me!” Evadne shrieked.

“What is wrong?” Maria queried anxiously, from the open doorway.

Willow looked at the housekeeper in relief and pleaded, “Maria, has the doctor arrived? Mrs. Gallagher is not well.”

“I am not ill!” screamed Evadne, flinging away the hand that Maria extended to her.

Over Evadne’s head, Maria’s worried brown eyes met Willow’s gaze. “The señora needs to rest. Help me take her back to her room,
chiquita
. The doctor is on his way.”

Surprisingly, Evadne allowed herself to be squired to her own chamber, but she muttered senselessly the whole way. When she had been settled on the bed, Maria and Willow left the room to confer in the hallway.

“You will go to meet the doctor,
chiquita
, and beg him to hurry,” Maria commanded. “Quickly,
por favor
.”

Willow had never loved Evadne—the woman had not permitted that—but she was genuinely worried about her father’s wife. “What about Papa? Shouldn’t he be here, too?”

Maria considered. “He will be with the woman now. I
do not want you going there. You go and tell the doctor that Mrs. Gallagher is worse than we thought, and I will send Juan for the judge.”

Under other circumstances, Willow would have been disappointed not to be sent on such an errand, for she had always wanted a close look at the notorious Dove Triskadden, who had once been, it was rumored, the queen of a great Chicago bordello. Now, with Evadne so ill, Willow knew her curiosity about her father’s mistress had to be put aside.

She bounded down the stairs, out through the front doors, and over the walk. At the gate, she encountered Gideon.

Having forgotten his ultimatum in the emergency, Willow stopped and waited for him to step aside.

“Are you ready to leave?” he asked.

“Your lust will have to wait, Mr. Marshall,” she informed her “husband” in a scathing undertone. “I’m off to see what’s keeping Dr. McDonald.”

“What?”

“Something is terribly wrong with your mother,” Willow said, though not without kindness, pushing past him, wrenching at the gate until the catch gave way.

At this, Gideon bolted toward the house and Willow was free to seek out the doctor.

Devlin Gallagher was hopping awkwardly about on one foot, struggling into his left boot. “How serious is it?” he snapped, as Juan waited just inside Dove’s back door.

The boy shrugged. “I do not know, señor. My cousin
Maria, she say to come here, bring you back. She sent me for the doctor earlier.”

Calmly, Dove Triskadden handed her harried lover his coat. At Devlin’s beleaguered look, she simply smiled, very sadly and very gently, and said, “Go. I’ll be all right.”

Heedless of the young man who awaited him, within earshot, Devlin kissed Dove briefly but with conviction and replied, “I love you.”

“Go home,” insisted Dove as her fingers brushed his cheek in farewell.

*   *   *

Willow grasped Dr. McDonald’s frayed coat sleeve the moment he stepped out of Evadne’s room. There were deep lines in the man’s face and his eyes were averted.

“Well?” pleaded Willow. “What’s wrong? Will my stepmother get better?”

Perhaps reading something in the doctor’s manner that Willow had missed, Gideon thrust himself away from the wall he’d been leaning against and closed his hands gently over her shoulders.

“Mrs. Gallagher has suffered some sort of apoplectic fit,” the physician said wearily. “She may linger a few days, a few weeks—or only a few hours. I’m sorry.”

Willow looked wildly to Gideon, saw him close his eyes and saw the color seep out of his face. “Oh my God,” he whispered raggedly.

Guilt encompassed Willow. Had she caused this thing to happen by being so troublesome to Evadne, always talking back, stirring things up? Oh, God in heaven, why had she baited the woman the way she had? Why?

Overcome, Willow cried out and groped down the stairs, nearly falling before Gideon caught up to her, midway down, and pulled her into his arms.

“Willow,” he said, his breath warm in her tangled hair, holding on as she tried in vain to wrench free of him. She wanted to run from him and from her feelings and from the terrible thing that had befallen her stepmother. She wanted to escape the awareness that she’d never loved her father’s wife, and the sense that she’d brought this calamity on somehow. “Willow!”

She cried out in anguish and then began to sob. “I made her so angry . . . I’m to blame for this—”

“No,” Gideon rasped. “No.”

And then he lifted Willow into his arms and carried her back upstairs and into her room, Maria appearing in the corridor to lead the way.

Willow felt herself being lowered carefully to the bed. Her entire body was wracked by sobs, deep, dry, angry sobs that came from the depths of her and were not stopped until after the laudanum Dr. McDonald administered had taken effect.

Gideon and the doctor had both left the room by the time Maria began undressing Willow and helping her into a nightgown.

“Rest now,
chiquita
,” the older woman urged, her eyes bright with tears. “Rest.”

Willow was too befuddled to speak, and the room kept going in and out of focus, while the bed seemed to have all the substance of a wispy summer cloud. After Maria
had gone—did she dream it?—Gideon came into the room, sat down nearby, then touched her cheek.

Willow smiled at him and for a few moments none of the dreadful things that had been happening were real after all. It was all a bad dream.

“Lancelot,” she sighed.

Gruffly, brokenly, Gideon laughed, and his fingers were warm where they caressed her face. “At your willing service, m’lady,” he answered.

Willow smiled again and allowed the fog of sleep rising up around her to carry her away with it.

*   *   *

It was late and there were voices, angry voices. Willow listened but could not make out the words or the identities of the speakers.

Curious, she got out of bed, scrambled into her wrapper, and crept into the hallway and down the stairs.

“You were with your whore, you son of a bitch!” Gideon yelled. “My mother is dying and you were with your goddamned whore!”

Willow froze outside the closed doors of her father’s study.

“Dove Triskadden is not a whore,” replied the judge, with admirable evenness of tone, “and I will thank you to keep your voice down, Gideon. It’s the middle of the night and this mother you speak of so fondly is gravely ill.”

“You don’t give a damn, either, do you?” Gideon retorted, his voice torn, raw with grief. “You’re probably hoping she’ll die. That would solve a lot of your problems, wouldn’t it, Judge?”

Fury at this cruel accusation surged through Willow’s numb little frame like lightning blazing down a metal rain-spout. She wrenched open one of the doors and stormed inside, pausing only when she found herself face-to-face with Gideon Marshall.

“Don’t you ever speak to my papa like that again!”