A Lady of the West (13 page)

Emma looked swiftly at Victoria, then back to Jake
and nodded. “Help me with Victoria,” she said to Celia. Victoria found herself taken in hand and ushered back into her room, the door firmly closed on the ugly scene in the hallway.

She sat down and folded her hands in her lap, holding herself inside. She felt numb. A man had just been killed in front of her, and despite all she had seen during the war, nothing had been as brutal as that. Jake had been so … casual about it, as if the taking of a life was nothing to him. And the smile on his face still made her shiver in reaction.

Celia sank down onto the floor and put her head in Victoria's lap. The girl was shocked and silent.

Automatically Victoria smoothed the bright blond hair, as she had been doing since Celia's childhood. Emma sat down on the bed, as quiet as Victoria.

“Did you hear what he said?” Victoria asked.

“Some.” Enough, Emma thought, to know that Jake Roper had been in this room with Victoria. Enough to know that Roper had
had
to kill Pledger to keep him silent. Not that she thought for one minute that Victoria had betrayed her marriage vows; for one thing, there hadn't been time, and for another, Victoria was too inherently honorable.

But Jake had in fact been in here alone with her, and Emma had accurately pegged the Major as a mean, violent, petty man who would, she was afraid, judge Victoria by his own standards—which was to say, none at all. For Victoria's sake, Emma was prepared to back whatever story Jake offered.

Fifteen minutes later the Major and Garnet arrived, having been fetched from a saloon by a breathless youngster with the news that there'd been a shooting at the hotel and the Major's wife was involved. The boy hadn't known anything other than that garbled message. They had both been on their way upstairs with a couple of the saloon's soiled doves, and the Major was in a foul mood from the interruption.

“That's two of our men you've killed, Roper,” Garnet said, eyeing the tall, muscular man before him with suspicion.

Jake shrugged. “He went for his gun first. A man braces me, I don't ask if he's serious or just funning.”

“You
say
he drew first.” Garnet's eyes were alive with hate.

McLain looked from one hired gun to the other, his eyes wary. He had remained alive because he was shrewd if not intelligent, and Garnet's suspicious attitude alerted him. Fights were common among a bunch of men, but Roper was
killing
men with whom he was supposed to be working. It did make a man stop and wonder.

“Garnet's got a point,” McLain said, eyeing Roper closely. “There any witnesses?”

“Mrs. McLain saw the whole thing.” Jake sounded bored. “Ask her.”

“I'll do that.” McLain stomped to Victoria's door and slammed his heavy fist on it. “Victoria!”

Emma snatched it open, and the three men entered. Celia rose from the floor and Victoria got to her feet, too. She was still pale, and she didn't look at Jake.

“Roper says Pledger drew on him first. Is that so?” McLain growled.

Victoria clenched her cold hands in her skirts. “Mr. Pledger went for his weapon first, yes.”

“What I want to know is what you and Pledger were doing up here,” Garnet said.

Suspicion darkened the Major's face. Steeling herself, Victoria lifted her chin. “Mr. Roper walked us back to the hotel, at the Major's request.”

“I'd seen them to their rooms and gone back down to the lobby when I saw Pledger slip in, like he was trying to be sneaky.” Jake took a tobacco pouch out of his pocket and leisurely rolled a cigarette. “I followed him, found him up here trying to break into Miss Emma and Miss Celia's room. Don't guess I have to
tell you why. I tried to get him to go back downstairs with me, but he refused and went for his gun.”

“You saw this?” McLain asked, cutting his eyes to Victoria.

“Yes.” She agreed to the lie with her own. She didn't look at Jake.

McLain looked at Emma. “Is that true? Was Pledger trying to get into your room?”

At least Emma didn't need to lie. “He was beating on the door and saying… ugly things. We were afraid to open it.”

Jake lounged back against the doorjamb, his eyes narrowed to sleepy slits as he surveyed the others. “I did what I had to do to protect the women. That's what you wanted, isn't it, Major?”

“Of course,” McLain snapped.

“Then what's the problem?”

“I'll tell you what the problem is,” Garnet said, stepping closer. “The problem is you killing two of our oldest hands. Pledger and Charlie Guest had been with the ranch for years.”

Jake smiled. It was the same expression Victoria had seen just before he'd killed Pledger. “I could always make it three,” he suggested in a silky tone.

“That's enough damn killing!” McLain yelled. “Back off, Garnet. It riles me to lose Pledger, but I sure as hell don't want my two best men killing each other over him.”

“Sure, boss.” Garnet stepped back, but his expression remained hate-filled.

Jake wasn't surprised that Garnet had backed off so easily; face-to-face wasn't his style.

McLain put on his best smile. “The party tonight will be just the thing to make you ladies forget about this,” he said. “The governor can't wait to meet you, since word's out that I have the three prettiest women in the territory. Every man in Santa Fe will be trying to dance with you tonight.”

Victoria seized desperately on that excuse. “My goodness, I'd forgotten about the party! We'll have to hurry. Run along, gentlemen—” She made little shooing gestures with her hands. “Oh, Major, could you have the hotel send up hot water to both rooms?”

“Of course, my dear.” He patted her on the cheek. “Dress up in your fanciest dress—give these yokels something to gawk at.”

When the three women were alone again, Victoria visibly sagged. “I don't know if I can bear even the thought of a party,” she said in a stifled voice. “Dear God.” But she forced herself to straighten and took deep breaths to compose herself. “I suppose we'll have to go and make the best of it. Celia, dear, are you all right?”

“Yes.” Celia looked unusually grave, but her dark blue eyes were steady. “Jake had to kill him, to protect us. I'm not sorry.”

Victoria felt sick. Yes, Jake had killed to protect, but had he done it for Emma and Celia, or to conceal his own indiscretion with Victoria?

There was a hardness in him that terrified her, yet she was inexplicably drawn to him. Try as she might to avoid him, fate kept twisting their lives together, forcing them to share sordid secrets that created an unwilling intimacy between them, and now they were sharing lies.

Yet she had stood in his arms and let him kiss her in a way so improper and shattering that she could scarcely bear to think about it. She was another man's wife! To do what she had done had been betrayal, but at the time she had gloried in it. She had enjoyed the scent and taste of him, the feel of his strongly muscled body against her, thrilled to the power of his arms.

She had even dreamed of him. And that was, perhaps, an even greater betrayal.

V
ictoria excused herself and sought out the ladies' convenience, needing to get away just for a moment from the chatter and social smiles, and from the unexpectedly harrowing nearness of blue uniforms. It was silly, because the war had been over for a year, and in the meantime she had certainly become used to the sight of blue uniforms on the streets of Augusta. But never before had she been required to meet Union soldiers socially. She had no hate for them and wasn't bitter, as so many Southerners were, but when the first Union officer had bowed over her hand, she had felt afraid, as if they were still foes. The soldiers certainly did nothing to calm her already frayed nerves.

She had used rigid control to survive the evening. She hadn't allowed herself to think of the gaping hole in Pledger's chest, the ugliness of death, the boneless sprawl. Nor had she let herself remember the vile things he had said or the chilling way Jake had smiled. Most of all, she had blocked from her mind the hot, endless moments she had spent in his arms. It shouldn't have happened and must never happen again. She had to forget it forever.

The hallway was deserted, and though two lamps illuminated it for the benefit of the guests, the light seemed dim, absorbed by the rich but rather dark patterns of the wallpaper and carpeting. She longingly thought of the simple white walls and clear, uncluttered lines of the hacienda. If she enjoyed her marriage half as much as she did that house, she would have been very happy indeed.

The convenience was at the back of the house. As she passed an open doorway, it was filled with a dark, massive figure. She was startled but not frightened, merely thinking it another guest. An arm stretched out of the shadows and grabbed her, jerked her into the room, and only then did she become alarmed. She inhaled jerkily to scream, and the man clapped his hand over her mouth.

“Damn it, don't scream,” he muttered.

The simple recognition of his voice twanged at her nerves. She jerked her head away from his hand. “What are you doing? You shouldn't be in here! How did you get in?”

“I'm here because the Major doesn't go anywhere without backup. I've been walking around outside, keeping an eye on things. This door was open, and I could see in through the window. From the parade of ladies going up and down the hall, it didn't take much brain to figure out where they were going.”

“So you sneaked in the back door?”

“Crawled in the window.”

“And grabbed the first woman who came by?” She was incensed and thought she might still scream. He hadn't let go of her; his fingers were still hooked around her waist, and the way he was holding her so close made her uneasy.

“No, I waited for you.” He let go of her and walked to the open door, which he eased shut without even a click. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Without the light coming from the hallway, the room at first seemed totally dark. She moved closer to
the windows, both to put some distance between them and to see better. She lifted her chin. “What do we have to talk about?”

“Pledger.”

She flinched a little at the name. “You killed him. What more is there to say?”

“Plenty. Don't let your high-nosed conscience push you into confessing. Pledger was dirt. He murdered and raped, and enjoyed it.”

“Like you enjoyed killing him?”

He was silent a moment, then gave a low, harsh laugh as he moved toward her, into the light from the windows. “Yeah, I enjoyed it. I felt like I was doing a good deed.”

Victoria clenched her hands. “You killed him to keep him from telling the Major that you were in my room. You shouldn't have been in there at all; it's my fault a man is dead, and I lied to hide why he was shot.”

“Not much else you could do.”

“Is a life, even his, so cheap? What could have happened if you hadn't shot him, if he had told? You'd have been fired and the Major would have been angry with me, but that would have been his right—”

“Wake up,” he snapped, still keeping his voice low. “This isn't about a job! McLain would have told Garnet to get rid of me, and he wouldn't mean just throw me off of the ranch. But even if he didn't kill me, if he just fired me, where would that leave you? Where would it leave your little sister?”

“Celia?” Victoria stared up at him, trying to see his features in the faint light.

“If I'm gone, who'll keep Garnet away from the girl?”

She hadn't thought of that. She felt dizzy, as if she had almost walked off a cliff and seen it just in time. Good or bad, and for his own reasons, Jake Roper was the only protection Celia had—or, come to that, she herself had. He had killed to protect them. But why?
She didn't delude herself that he cared anything about her; how could he? He didn't know her. True, he had kissed her, but she was learning that didn't necessarily mean anything to a man.

Whatever she saw in his cold green eyes, she was certain it wasn't tenderness. His reasons for protecting them were his own. She felt as if she were being used, but she couldn't see how. She had no power, no influence for him to hope to exploit.

She inhaled. “I won't say anything,” she said, her tone stifled.

“Just make sure you don't. What about your cousin? Did she hear what was said?”

“I think so, but Emma would never say anything.”

“And Celia?”

“She won't tell, either.”

“Can you trust her?”

Her anger was immediate, but she tamped it down. He didn't know Celia, couldn't understand that her peculiar characteristics in no way indicated an untrustworthiness. But perhaps her anger was because all her emotions were so close to the surface tonight. Because of that, she restrained her immediate retort and instead merely replied, “Yes.”