Willow: A Novel (No Series) (15 page)

This time Gideon did not laugh, and the humor in his voice was tender. “You thought I was just going to jump on you and then lie there?”

“Yes,” admitted Willow.

They were silent for a time, lying close, Gideon’s hand moving softly in Willow’s hair. Finally, turning to lie above her again, his lips not an inch from her own, Gideon breathed, “Never fear, m’lady. I will stay with you, and I will slay dragons for you.”

A feeling of lush well-being swept over Willow, but beneath this lurked a niggling doubt. Promises made when the two of them had just made love were one thing, but she knew from bitter experience that reality was another.

Gideon meant to hunt down her brother. Would he slay Steven, too, like the dragons he’d mentioned?

His mouth came down to cover hers then, searching and hungry in a sleepy sort of way, and it was nightfall before they both labored back into their clothes and returned to town.

*   *   *

To Gideon’s immense relief, the mourners, strangers all, had gone by the time he and Willow reached Judge Gallagher’s house. Only Zachary remained and, though he was not in the mood to spar with his brother, Gideon could at least deal with his presence.

Zachary remained silent until Willow had bounded up the stairs, her hair trailing loose behind her, her cheeks glowing. Then, in the quiet of the Gallagher parlor, he lifted his brandy snifter in a wry and patently unfriendly salute. “Some people deal with grief in very interesting ways,” he remarked.

Gideon stiffened, then willed his taut muscles to go loose. To aid in this, he helped himself to a glass of his father-in-law’s imported whiskey. “Willow is, after all, my wife,” he said, with an ease he did not feel.

“Who would know that better than I?” countered Zachary. Leaning back against the mantel over the fireplace, he gave the impression of a relaxed man, but
Gideon knew that inwardly his brother was coiled like a snake, prepared to strike at any moment.

Gideon pinioned Zachary with a scathing look. “Listen, Zachary, I’ve been patient about this. When I found out what you did, I wanted to kill you. I didn’t, obviously. So why don’t you just let well enough alone and shut up while you can?”

Zachary made a contemptuous sound deep in his throat and smirked. “Do you, perchance, labor under the delusion that you’re any kind of match for me, little brother?”

“It’s no delusion, Zachary, and you know it.”

Zachary smiled, showing his dazzling white teeth, but he paled slightly, too. “All right, Gid, all right. We’re neither one of us thinking straight, what with Mama buried just today.”

There was a barb hidden in those words and it caught on Gideon’s sense of honor, smarting. Had it been wrong, his losing himself in Willow’s sweet fire on this grim day? Carefully, he hid the fact that Zachary had hit his mark. “Don’t be maudlin, Zachary,” he said hoarsely, “we weren’t close to our mother, either one of us, so let’s not pretend to be devastated by her loss. She virtually abandoned us, after all.”

Zachary took a long draft from his appropriated brandy. “Gideon, she didn’t abandon us. According to the terms of our granddad’s will, we had to remain in San Francisco, under the Marshall roof, until we were of legal age. She didn’t want us to be cut off from our inheritances.”

That was the reasoning, but it didn’t quite hold up, in
Gideon’s mind at least. Evadne had married Devlin Gallagher within a few years of her first husband’s death and installed both her young sons in boarding school. They’d spent vacations in the San Francisco house, under the care of a variety of servants.

Still, the fact that Evadne had been able to walk away from her own children without putting up any kind of a fight nettled him.

“Maybe the judge wouldn’t have let her bring us along on the honeymoon anyway,” Zachary suggested into the resounding silence. “Did you ever think of that, Gideon? Maybe he didn’t want another man’s get underfoot all the time.”

Gideon had considered that possibility often, over the years, but now, having met the judge, he didn’t see him in that light. For all his riotous ways, Devlin Gallagher was not the kind of man to shirk responsibility, even if it was only indirectly his. “No,” he said aloud. “The lawyers managing Granddad’s estate brought pressure to bear, and Mama folded under it, that’s all.”

“She’s dead, Gideon. Let’s just give poor Mama the benefit of the doubt and assume that she did the best she could—all right?”

It was the only sensible approach and Gideon was more than ready to put his little-boy thoughts and feelings aside. Right or wrong, the past was the past, and Evadne was gone forever. “You’re right,” he conceded, facing his brother with a pensive frown. “Frankly, I’m still a little surprised that you’re here at all, brother. I didn’t think anything—even our mother’s death—could
drag you away from the gaming tables and—what’s her name—Melanie?”

Zachary grinned wearily. “Melanie married a fifty-year-old shipping magnate with a belly and an even bigger bankroll than mine. And I made the journey because—well—because I felt guilty about that little trick I played on you. I thought there might be something I could do to help, but you seem to have things under control.”

Control? Gideon almost laughed at the word. He was anything but in control; he was acting at odds with his own plans, in fact. He had intended to find Steven Gallagher, to marry Daphne Roberts, and to unite his shares of Central Pacific stock with her father’s, thus gaining a controlling interest.

Instead of pursuing these objectives, he had bought a house, for God’s sake, and on top of that he’d bedded Willow. He hadn’t told her he loved her, but he’d come damned close, and he had as much as promised her that they would grow old together. Have children.

What the hell was wrong with him? He’d always been able to think decisively, but now he was torn between two vastly different goals. He
did
want to live on that small ranch he had so rashly purchased. He
did
want to see Willow swell to lush roundness with his children.

And yet he wanted to pursue his other desires, too. Not knowing how else to approach his quandary, Gideon turned on Zachary.

“Do you have any inkling of what a hell of a mess you’ve made of my life?” he growled furiously.

Zachary looked amused rather than contrite. “May I
remind you that you went along with the idea willingly? You were ready to bed that sweet little morsel, no matter what you had to do to accomplish the purpose. Unless I miss my guess, which I’m sure I haven’t, you’ve been rolling around in the hay with her all afternoon. You could have just quietly annulled the marriage, you know. Obviously, you’ve chosen to do otherwise.”

Gideon scowled. “Did you tell Daphne about this, by any chance?”

“Of course I did. I couldn’t have the poor girl running around town, telling everyone that she was engaged to a married man.”

Gideon closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. “How did she take the news?”

“Colorfully. I could still hear the bric-a-brac shattering when I got into the carriage to leave.”

“Wonderful. And her father?”

Zachary smiled, enjoying his memories. “The old man wanted to have you publicly flogged. Then shot. Then flogged again.”

So much for uniting two financial empires, despaired Gideon, in grim silence.

“That isn’t all, I’m afraid,” said Zachary, with thinly veiled relish. “They’re coming here to Virginia City, Daphne and her papa, presumably to make you see the error of your ways and seek some kind of redress for their grievances.”

Gideon swore again but was stayed from further comment by the sudden appearance of Willow in the parlor doorway. The bright smile on her beautiful face
was adequate proof that she hadn’t overheard any of the conversation.

“We’ll have to stay here tonight, Gideon,” she announced cheerfully. “Maria says there simply isn’t time to gather up all the sheets and towels and other things we’d need to be comfortable at the ranch house. She and I can take care of all that in the morning.”

Gideon felt as limp as an unstarched shirt, and he avoided the knowing look he knew would be gleaming in Zachary’s eyes. “Fine,” he said, with a sharpness he hadn’t intended.

Willow was visibly stung, and her smile wavered slightly, threatening to come unfixed. “Is something wrong?”

Zachary leaped into the conversation, with his usual dashing aplomb. “No, no—nothing is wrong, love.” He took her hand, bent his head, and brushed his lips lightly across her knuckles. “And may I say, welcome to the Marshall family.”

Gideon winced, but fortunately Willow’s attention was focused on Zachary and she didn’t see.

“Thank you,” she said softly, and her lovely eyes came to Gideon’s face with a timidity that made him ache inside. With the brusqueness of a single word, he had hurt her, and he hated himself for it. Himself
and
Zachary.

“We’ll stay here tonight,” he told his wife, with a gentleness calculated to make up for his earlier brusque tone, “if you’re sure your father wouldn’t mind.”

For a moment, Gideon thought Willow would come
to him and put her arms around him in an embrace. He wouldn’t have been able to bear the sweetness of the gesture if she had. But stopped by the coolness of his manner, she simply summoned up another tremulous smile and said, “He won’t mind—we’re married, after all.”

This time, Gideon could not hide his reaction to the reminder; it struck his troubled conscience like a lash.

Willow’s face literally crumbled, but she left the parlor doorway with a dignity Gideon immediately admired, her shoulders straight, head held high.

“You bastard,” said Zachary. “Why didn’t you just come right to the point and slap her to the floor? She didn’t deserve that.”

“Will you shut up?” rasped Gideon, at the end of his patience. “None of this would have happened if it weren’t for you.”

“I may have started it rolling, brother,” Zachary answered dryly, “but I didn’t bed that girl, and I didn’t get her hopes up, either. You did those things, Gideon. You.”

Zachary was right, though Gideon would never have admitted it aloud. And suddenly, he felt as though Devlin Gallagher’s house was closing in around him, choking the breath from his lungs.

“I’m going out,” he said crisply. “Are you coming with me?”

Arching one eyebrow, Zachary shrugged. “Why not?” he intoned.

Fifteen minutes later, they entered the same saloon where Gideon had encountered Steven Gallagher, then wearing his peddler disguise.

“A special,” Gideon said, to the grinning bartender. “For my brother, that is. I’ll have whiskey.”

Zachary was about to protest when the bartender slid a brimming mug of panther piss in front of him, from which he obligingly took a deep drink.

His violent reaction did much to ease Gideon’s beleaguered spirit.

“Son of a goddamned bitch!” roared Zachary, alternately spitting and eyeing his glass with horror. “What is this stuff?”

Gideon only grinned.

*   *   *

Maria’s hand was soft and warm on Willow’s shuddering shoulder. “What is it, little one? Why do you cry?”

Willow’s response was a wail of indignation and pain.

“Already you and the husband have quarreled?”

Willow sat up on her childhood bed and sniffled. “Not exactly. He just—well . . .”

Maria took a seat beside Willow and enfolded her in a motherly embrace. “What, little one? What has he done?”

“I don’t know—I can’t explain it.”

A warm, understanding laugh escaped Maria. “You will not worry,” she ordered.

“Not worry?” snapped Willow, stiffening in the housekeeper’s arms. “Maria, Gideon is my husband and he doesn’t love me!”

“Hush. Gideon does not know what he feels, and neither do you. Tomorrow there is time to settle things, always there is time. Why do you not get into bed, and I will bring you supper here, no?”

“No,” Willow answered stubbornly.

But when Maria returned, only minutes later, with a tray, Willow was snuggled down in her bed, sound asleep and dreaming that Sir Lancelot, riding a white charger, was saving her from a great, scaly dragon, breathing fire.

*   *   *

Gideon opened one eye and groaned. He was sprawled out on the narrow settee in his mother’s sitting room, and his own portrait smirked at him from above the fireplace. He’d been not quite seventeen when he’d posed for the likeness, and at school. Evadne had forced him to submit to days of excruciating stillness by promising, from a distance, to withhold his allowance unless he cooperated.

Sickness rolled in his stomach and pounded beneath his temples as he sat up. In one corner of the room stood a polished suit of medieval armor, silently mocking him. He arched one eyebrow, which ached as badly as his head, impossible as that was, and idly wondered if that iron garb would fit him.

Not likely, he thought ruefully, as a lusty snore rose over the top of a brocade chair a few feet away.

Gideon grinned. His only comfort lay in the fact that Zachary was going to feel every bit as bad as he did, if not worse, and he clung to that. “Zachary!” he said loudly.

His brother moaned and stirred in the small chair. “Next time you offer me a drink, little brother,” he rasped out, “I fully intend to shoot you.”

Gideon lifted whiskey-reddened eyes to the ceiling, thinking of Willow. Chances were, Zachary wasn’t the only person in this house inclined to do him violence. He
sighed. At least he hadn’t gone to his bride’s bed the night before, though he’d been sorely tempted. In the end, he’d decided that Willow deserved better than the pawing of a drunk.

Zachary lumbered out of the fussy chair and stretched, giving a painful groan as he did so. “Why the hell did you sleep down here,” he demanded testily, “when your curvaceous little wife was right upstairs?”

Gideon colored up for the first time in his memory and concentrated on wrenching his boots onto his feet. He said nothing, for at the moment he was too ashamed even to speak Willow’s name.

“I sure wouldn’t have spent the night on a sofa if I’d been in your situation,” grumbled Zachary, who never knew when to keep his mouth shut.