Fletcher's Woman (42 page)

Seething, Griffin wheeled around, made his way back to the exhausted mare quivering at the hitching post. He remembered nothing of the ride back to town.

The door of Judge Sheridan's saltbox house stood open to the warmth of the summer evening, and the toneless complaints of Mrs. Sheridan's treasured organ greeted Griffin as he abandoned the schoolmaster's horse and vaulted over the white picket fence.

Without bothering to knock, he stormed into the close, tasseled and fringed ugliness of the judge's parlor. The justice of the peace looked up from his little black book, winced, and swallowed his opening remarks whole.

“Griffin!”

Jonas whirled, his eyes wild in the pale expanse of his face. Beside him, wearing an ill-fitting white dress that probably belonged to one of the Sheridan's four daughters, Rachel turned.

Her amethyst eyes were dilated, and her smile was warm and sleepy and confused. “You're not dead,” she observed cheerfully.

Griffin's heart constricted within him. He held out his arms, and she came toward him, like a child, still smiling in that dazed, heart-wrenching way.

There was a terrible silence in the room after the tortured organ wheezed its last. Griffin drew Rachel close, scanned her widened eyes and her flushed face, and felt wild relief as he realized that she hadn't entered into this particular ritual willingly. She was drugged—probably with laudanum.

Judge Sheridan found his rumbling, politian's voice. “Now, Griffin, this is a legal ceremony—”

Now that Rachel was close, safe within the curve of his arm, Griffin's rage exploded like a volcano. “You pompous, blind old bastard, this is a circus!” he roared. “And the bride has been drugged.” His gaze swung to Jonas, menacing, inviting retaliation. “Hasn't she, Cousin?”

Jonas was speechless, rigid with fury. There was high color in his face, and a hellish glitter in his eyes.

Griffin beckoned with one hand, his fingers curling back over his palm, his jaw clenched so tight that the ache ran the length of his neck and into one shoulder. “Aren't you going to reclaim your bride, Jonas?” he taunted, in low, deadly tones. “Or do you have a rock ready, for when I turn my back?”

Jonas made a chilling, guttural sound, and lunged. Prepared, Griffin thrust a mumbling Rachel behind him and waited.

But Judge Sheridan, a portly man well into his middle years, caught Jonas around the shoulders and restrained him with surprising strength. His shrewd eyes locked with Griffin's, and he uttered the first straightforward words of his long and largely incompetent career. “Your life isn't worth a fresh cow chip now, Griffin. You know that, don't you?”

Griffin's smile felt like a grimace on his aching face. “Yes, sir. I
believe I do,” he said, politely. “Now, if you'll excuse us—we'll skip the celebration.”

Jonas yelled something obscene, and struggled furiously, hopelessly, in the Judge's grip. Mrs. Sheridan, still frozen on the organ seat, grew very pale and uttered a distracted little cry.

Griffin bowed to her, turned, lifted Rachel into his arms, and carried her out into the twilight. Jonas's bellowed threats echoed in his ears all the way to Tent Town.

He paid no attention to the frank, open-mouthed stares that greeted him as he strode through the middle of the canvas community and into the adjoining woods, still carrying the limp, befuddled Rachel.

Knowing that Judge Sheridan couldn't hold Jonas forever, he skirted the path he usually took and followed one that Billy had shown him months before. Rachel yawned and let her head rest against his shoulder.

The welcoming lights of his own house were in sight when the grim humor of the situation finally struck Griffin. He laughed uproariously as he carried Rachel across the shadowy yard, up the backsteps, and into the kitchen.

Molly was there, stirring something at the stove, her auburn hair falling in her face, her cheeks flushed. When she turned, expecting to see her son and finding Griffin there instead, Jonas's stolen bride yawning in his arms, her mouth fell open. “Saints preserve us!” she gasped, when she had recovered herself.

Gently, Griffin lowered his beloved burden into a chair. “I hope they do, Molly,” he said. “We're going to need all the help we can get.”

Field Hollister yawned, redid the knot in his tie for the third time, and turned away from the mirror over the bedroom bureau. Fawn was sitting stiffly in the rocking chair, her hands folded in her lap.

“Wish it wasn't Sunday?” Field asked, softly.

She raised wide eyes to his face. “Don't you?” she countered.

Field sighed. “If the truth be known, Sunday has never been my favorite day.” A smile played on his lips and he suppressed it, only to feel it slide into his eyes. “Yes, indeed, I started hating Sundays when I was a lad of eight. My story is a sad one.”

Fawn giggled, in spite of herself. “Oh, tell me, Reverend Hollister—what is your sad story?”

He assumed the ponderous stance he'd seen his father take on what Griffin called “Brimstone Sundays,” resting his hands on an imaginary pulpit. “As I was trying to say, when I was so rudely interrupted, it was a Sunday, and I was eight years old. My father was expounding on the sin of Gluttony—it was one of his favorites, you know, he rated it right up there with Debauchery and Wearing Your Underwear Backward—and it came to pass that my Aunt Gertrude was visiting. She, being a lady of some corpulence, took that sermon as a personal affront!” Field leaned forward slightly, his eyes blazing, his voice growing thunderous. “And what do you suppose came of
that
, Mrs. Hollister?”

Fawn shook her head, her eyes shining with suppressed mirth.

“Well, I'll tell you!” boomed Field, in the true tradition of his father before him. “She started shifting around in the pew beside me—hear me, for I speak but the purest truth—and her corset stays came undone. I was struck, in my innocence, wounding blows!”

Fawn was rocking back and forth now, trying to hold in her laughter.

Field went ruthlessly on. “By a wall of unleashed flesh, you ask, as you well might?” He frowned ominously. “Well, are you going to ask, or not?”

Fawn managed a nod.

He grinned, rocking back on the worn heels of his boots, waiting.

“All right!” cried his wife. “Was it a wall of unleashed flesh?”

“Of
course
not! I laughed out loud, circumstances being what they were, and my father dragged me outside, right in the middle of his discourse on Gluttony, and beat me half to death with a hymnal!”

Fawn laughed until tears rolled down her face. Then she stood up, letting her head fall against Field's chest. “I'm so scared,” she whispered.

Field held her close. “Me, too,” he replied.

Fifteen minutes later, he took his customary place behind the pulpit of the Providence Presbyterian Church. Word of the marriage had definitely gotten around; the faces of his parishioners were stony with outrage.

Field closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, he saw Griffin standing in the open doorway, grinning, his arms folded across his chest. He swallowed, and then proudly announced his marriage to Fawn Nighthorse.

There was an ominous silence, and then Judge Sheridan's wife, Clovis, stood up, her hands gripping the back of the pew in front of her. “Winfield Hollister, you know how the Lord feels about white men marrying Indians!”

Field saw his wife tense, lift her chin. He cleared his throat. “Enlighten me, Mrs. Sheridan. How does the Lord feel about that?”

Clovis bridled and turned bright red. “You've been—you've been
carrying on
with that woman for months, and we all know it! It just isn't right, that's all!”

There was a general buzz of delighted scandal now, and Field reminded himself sternly that it was Sunday, that he was a minister of the gospel. But before he could answer, his eyes were drawn back to Griffin, who was now coming up the aisle with a bulging gunny sack.

Right at the base of the pulpit, he upended the sack, and at least two dozen rocks clattered onto the board floor. Griffin bent, took a small boulder in one hand, and graciously extended it to Mrs. Sheridan.

“The honor is yours, Clovis,” he said, in a pleasant voice. “Here. Cast the first stone.”

Clovis sat down, her earnest face pale.

Griffin took another stone, and held it out to the storekeeper-constable. “How about you, Henry? We all know you're without sin.”

Henry's handlebar mustache quivered, and he averted his eyes.

Griffin was pacing back and forth now, his face a mockery of righteous consternation. “No takers? But these are good, sturdy,
Puget Sound
rocks. They
hurt
when they make contact with flesh and bone, Brothers and Sisters—you have my professional word on that!”

Until that moment, Field had never seen an entire congregation
blush in unison. But he saw it then, and it was a sight he would never forget.

Griffin, having made his point with typical directness, abandoned his bag of rocks and sat down beside Fawn to listen. He looked so dutifully attentive that Field nearly laughed aloud.

The sermon went well, and the congregation was attentive, eager to redeem itself. They sang the designated hymns with relish, and it was no surprise when four different families invited the Hollisters home for Sunday dinner.

Field declined the offers politely, remaining behind in the church even after all the others, including Fawn, had gone outside to chat under the whispering elm trees in the yard. He bent, took a stone from the burlap bag Griffin had left behind, and turned it slowly in his hand. It was rough and brown and porous, that stone, and covered with a tracery of bright green moss. Probably, it came from the banks of Billy Brady's beloved pond, hidden away in the woods beyond Tent Town.

A smile crept into Field Hollister's eyes and lingered behind a glistening blur. Griffin Fletcher had scorned organized religion for as long as he could remember, and yet, especially at times like this, it seemed to Field that no one practiced the fundamentals of the faith more assiduously.

He sat down in one of the rough-hewn pews nearest the pulpit, still turning the stone in his grasp. Griffin was an enigma, all right—causing wounds and then binding them, loving peace and then starting brawls, making his passion for Rachel McKinnon obvious to all who bothered to look, yet guarding her, sheltering her, with a tenderness Field had never seen him exhibit before.

Contrary as it might have seemed to anyone other than Field Hollister, Griffin was the most moral of men. Closing his eyes, the reverend prayed silently that his friend would not be consumed by the fires of the hell he had created with his own healing hands.

“Field?” It was Fawn, and her hand was light on his shoulder.

He turned, looked up at her. It was to her credit, he thought, that she showed no reaction at all to the tears on his face.

•   •   •

The lingering effects of Jonas's laudanum made Rachel feel both lethargic and restless, despairing and hopeful, angry and apathetic. She tried to remember the day before, and could recall nothing beyond being dragged across the O'Rileys' lawn and thrust into Jonas's carriage.

She sighed, closed the book in her lap, and gazed at the bare hearth of the study fireplace. There were no illusions left in her mind, where Jonas Wilkes was concerned, anyway. He was obviously, for all his gentlemanly manners, just what Molly and Griffin maintained he was.

Rachel shuddered, realizing that if it hadn't been for Griffin, she would have awakened that morning to find herself in Jonas's bed, legally bound to it and to him. It was fortunate that he hadn't taken advantage of her in his carriage, or on board the steamboat that must have brought them from Seattle.

Had he?

Rachel's mind could not remember, but her body did. For reasons of his own, probably pride was among them, Jonas had not touched her.

Molly came in, carrying a tray. The teapot and translucent china cups made a comforting, tinkling sound as she set them down on the small table between Rachel's chair and the one Field Hollister usually sat in.

“Aye, and Sunday is a lonesome day,” she sighed, sitting down. “'Tis good that you're here, Rachel.”

Rachel smiled, reached out to pour the tea. “I was just thinking that I might have been somewhere else today, if it hadn't been for Griffin. Molly, did he really storm into a judge's house and carry me off, as you said?”

Molly sighed again, curling her small feet comfortably beneath her, sipping thoughtfully at her tea. “Aye, Rachel. It's what he told me when he came in—carrying you in his arms, he was, like you might break. 'Twas then he told me how Jonas had struck him down with a rock, and taken you away.”

Rachel felt a sudden need to confide in this gentle woman, to tell her that she believed she was carrying Griffin's baby and ask her advice. But even as the wish formed itself in her heart, she knew that she could not indulge it. Molly's first loyalty was to Griffin, and she would carry the news to him immediately.

“What will happen now?”

Molly shuddered, despite the warmth of the day. “It's not like I've claim to the Sight, or anything like that, but there's trouble coming to all of us, Rachel. And soon.”

Rachel thought of her mother's sturdy building and the day-to-day glimpses of Griffin Fletcher that she would catch where she could, and she mourned. “Do you think I should leave?”

“'Twas a time when I thought that would do, Rachel,” Molly
said, her emerald green eyes meeting Rachel's honestly. “Now, it's too late, I'm thinking. Griffin or Jonas—most likely both of them—would only follow and drag you back. No, this thing won't end, I'm fearing, 'til one of them has you, and one of them is dead.”

The pit of Rachel's stomach plummeted. “Dead?” she echoed, stunned. And then she remembered that Griffin thought her father was dead, and that she'd believed it herself, even though she couldn't bear to. Her teacup rattled dangerously in its saucer as she set it down. “If Griffin died,” she whispered brokenly, “I would die, too.”