Authors: Meagan McKinney
Tags: #Man-woman relationships, #Historical, #Wyoming, #Westerns, #Outlaws, #Women outlaws, #Criminals & Outlaws, #General, #Fiction - Romance, #Social conflict - Fiction, #Romance: Historical, #Non-Classifiable, #Outlaws - Fiction, #Wyoming - Fiction, #Western stories, #Romance - Historical, #Social conflict, #Fiction, #Romance - General, #American Light Romantic Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Women outlaws - Fiction, #Biography & Autobiography, #Love stories
He caught her and extracted her hand where it was caught on the twig. Tersely he said, "Get rid of those damned gloves."
"The biscuits," she gasped, ignoring her bleeding hand. The idea of having to go back to the camp and make more sickened her.
He looked down at the burned, doughy biscuits strewn across the dusty path. As if recalling breakfast, he shook his head. "A little dirt can't ruin that cooking."
In any other situation she might have been insulted, but it was true, her cooking was deplorable and she was glad. The Kineson gang deserved to be poisoned.
She stooped to pick up the biscuits and brush the dirt from them, but he stopped her. "I said, get rid of those gloves."
"No—" She barely got the word out before he dragged her to her feet and pulled the glove off her left hand.
His gaze dropped to her hand, a hand suspiciously devoid of a wedding ring, and before she could stop herself, she stumbled to volunteer a reason. "I—I needed money after my husband died. I was forced to sell my ring."
He stared at her intently, as if homing in on her nervousness.
"How long you been married?"
"Two years." The lie came quickly.
"He's been dead six weeks?"
"Yes."
He looked down at her finger and rubbed where the ring should have been. His mouth twitched with a smile, as if he'd trapped her. "There's no white skin."
She didn't comment. To confess anything more would hang her.
He grabbed her right hand and pulled on the torn glove.
A shot of fear ran down her spine. She couldn't let him see the scar. The wanted posters might have somehow followed her west, and if he had ever chanced to see one, he'd know there was an enormous reward for her.
She snatched her hand away, more ready to fight than to reveal what was beneath her glove. Grappling with him, she smeared blood on his shirt, but he paid it no mind, as if he were used to it and used to fighting with her. He took her hand again and this time held tight. He pulled off the glove, his eyes glittering as he gazed down.
The scar took most of her palm. It was strangely beautiful; an exact shape of a rose, burned into her hand. She watched his reaction carefully, heartened that she only saw curiosity and, perhaps, a little shock in his eyes.
But no recognition.
He released her hand. Slowly his eyes met hers. She could tell he wanted to ask her a lot of questions; also, that he knew she wouldn't answer. Without saying a word, she knelt and began to pick up the biscuits lying in the rocky path.
His eyes followed her every movement as if that would uncover her thoughts, her past. But she'd spent four years keeping secrets, and she kept them now. She picked up each blackened biscuit and blew off the dust, the memory of her tragedy kept painfully locked in her heart.
She'd been thirteen when the fire occurred. Her family, the Van Alens, was one of the exclusive and illustrious Knickerbocker families of Manhattan, wealthy but restrained, living quietly in their old town house on Washington Square. Her life back then now seemed
unreal,
it seemed to spring from a storybook. Her parents had loved each other, and their daughters, Christal and Alana, had loved them. They were a close family who often welcomed their late aunt's husband, Baldwin Didier, into their home as if he were a blood relation. He was a frightening man in many ways to a young girl. With his gray Vandyke beard and his piercing blue eyes, Christal remembered not liking him. But he was also a man-about-town, and she remembered her parents laughing quite gaily over his dry comments, happy to have his company if only for the entertainment it offered.
But while Clarisse and John Van Alen laughed with their brother-in-law by the dying evening fire, Baldwin
Didier was coveting. Rumor had it that the Van Alen legacy held immense wealth: enormous stock in the
old
Dutch West India Company, holdings in the Knickerbocker and New-York Bank, parcels of land that stretched from Wall Street to the Harlem River.
And very few relatives.
Especially since Clarisse's sister, Didier's late
wife,
had died of stomach ailment.
One night when Christal had recently turned thirteen, she awoke to the acrid smell of smoke. She leapt from her bed and followed the smoke to her parents' suite. The rooms were in flames. And Baldwin Didier stood over the bed, a pensive cast to his face as he stared at her parents lying in state beneath the bed's flaming canopy.
She cried out. Didier fled. She prayed he was going for the fire wagon, but she knew it wasn't so when she stumbled to her parents in the smoke-darkened room and saw the blood, and the gold candlestick dented by the pressure of their skulls.
Christal now believed it was at that point her mind snapped, refusing to recall what she'd seen, an unfortunate occurrence because her lack of memory, a fine guardian from trauma, was also the ruthless traitor that put her in the asylum. With her memory gone, she could produce no evidence to absolve her of the killing of her parents. And that she was in the room when the fire occurred was certain. One had only to look at the palm of her hand.
The interior of her parents' suite was fitted with a set of Parisian silver repousse doorknobs, each in the likeness of a rose. Her memory had returned before she ran away from the asylum, and now Christal could relive every terrifying minute in the suite. She'd known instinctively that her parents were beyond help, and with flames licking all around her, she'd run to the door to escape. But Didier had locked it.
Like a captured animal, she'd twisted the iron-hot doorknob until her strength was gone, and her hand indelibly branded. She recalled sliding to her knees in her white cotton nightgown gone gray with smoke. To this day, she didn't know if prayer had revived her, or something else, but somehow she crawled to the windows that fronted Washington Square and opened one. With smoke blinding and choking her, she felt her way onto the stone ledge outside. It was only a few feet to her bedroom window, and she crawled to it, unafraid of the twenty-foot drop to the street below, crying and gasping for breath in the clear night air, her entire body and soul in shock from what she had just witnessed. And strangely, she couldn't remember her hand hurting, yet it must have, terribly, for she'd worn bandages on it for almost six months. But even now she couldn't remember the pain.
The firemen found her huddled in her wardrobe, black from head to toe with soot, her right hand dangling uselessly at her side. Her mind rejected what she had just gone through, and she found she couldn't remember enough to answer the police's questions. The fire had raged so hot that her parents' bodies had been burned beyond recognition. There was no evidence left of their bludgeoning, nor of Didier's crime. There was just the doorknob burn on her hand, damning her by placing her in the bedroom when her parents died, and the amnesia, further damning her by proclaiming her insane.
A cloud of accusation hung over her until her uncle Baldwin mercifully bargained with the police to place her in the posh asylum out in Brooklyn. And no wonder he'd been merciful. With her sister Alana's fortune under his control, Christal's memory gone, and the rose indelibly burned into her hand, one of his own victims had given Baldwin Didier the alibi he'd needed to commit the perfect crime.
Christal shook with anger every time she thought about the fact that he had gotten away with such a heinous crime. Now her very reason for living was to see that he was found out, but it was up to her and her
alone,
and the going had been slow and difficult. She refused to seek Alana's help and perhaps endanger the only person in the world she loved. Christal could still picture her sister's expression as Alana visited her in the asylum, Alana's face, pale and beautiful like their mother's, but unlike their mother's, etched with concern, hardened with determination. Alana had never believed the terrible accusations surrounding her sister. She had fought tooth and nail for years to get Christal removed from the asylum. And though Alana had never been successful, her faith kept Christal going when she despaired. And because of this, her love for her sister went beyond even her love for herself.
Cain motioned for her to begin climbing again, interrupting her thoughts. She balanced the biscuits in one hand and held her skirts in the other. She climbed, assaulted once more by remembrance.
Her memory had returned when she was sixteen. The asylum had thought she'd truly gone mad when she began raving about her uncle's crime. They'd injected her with morphine until she almost believed they were right. But she'd convinced the night orderly to dispense with the shots, and in the wee hours of one morning three years ago, she'd dressed in a stolen nurse's uniform and departed the asylum for good.
A fugitive.
She glanced back at Cain. Meeting his gaze, she still found no recognition of
who
she was, just the glint of curiosity. With no gloves to hide it any longer, she curled her palm over the scar. For years she'd wished she could be rid of it, but it was always there, like a shadow, ready to convict her of unspeakable crimes she had not committed. Once, she'd even thought of burning the rose scar off, but when she'd gotten the poker red-hot and held it up to her hand, she hadn't the courage to endure the pain. She'd tossed the poker into the fire and sentenced herself to a life on the run.
Her heart ceased its hammering in her chest. She wondered why she'd been so afraid. Out west, they were all fugitives. She glanced back at Cain.
Of one kind or another.
In town, an outlaw paced the front of the saloon, on watch. Cain nodded to him, and they entered the swinging doors. The saloon was hardly recognizable. The dust had been disturbed in so many places that for the first time she could see wood. The footsteps up the staircase looked as if an army had trod there.
She walked up the stair with Cain and knocked on the door. Zeke answered, his bullwhip replaced by a Winchester.
Christal handed him the biscuit plate. She peered over his shoulder and counted passengers. They all looked weary. Mr. Glassie was sweating though the morning was still cool. The preacher's hand shook when he reached for a biscuit, obviously wishing it were a glass of whiskey. The driver and Pete's father slept, their heads lolled against the peeling plaster wall, the rattle of their chains waking them every time they shifted position.
Her gaze met with Pete's. The boy was slouched in a corner, scared but defiant. Anger stained his cheeks when he gazed at her torn bodice. "Why ain't she here with us?" he demanded, refusing the biscuit plate. He tried to rise to his feet, but Boone, the other outlaw in the room, shoved him back to the floor.
"She's Cain's woman now, that's why," Boone said. By the look Boone tossed at her, Christal knew he'd been at the campfire last night.
"You ain't got
no
right—!" Pete cursed at Cain, but Boone kicked him in the stomach.
Christal started to go to him, but Cain grabbed her by the waist and held her back. "You can't help that boy," he said gruffly.
"Don't hurt him!" she cried out.
Boone looked to kick Pete again. Cain said, "Leave him," and Boone obeyed. It was clear he didn't like the fact that the order had come as a result of her plea, but even he knew Cain ruled with an iron hand.