Fletcher's Woman (44 page)

The prostitutes had fled, leaving nail files and burning cheroots and scrambled eggs behind them. Even Tom Rawlins had abandoned his post behind the long, polished bar.

But Jonas was composed, in a frightening sort of way. Rachel saw, with bitter amusement, that he had dressed with haphazard haste. He wore no suit coat, and no tie, and his shirt was open at the neck.

“What do you think you're doing?” he demanded, in a rasping undertone, his golden eyes flashing.

Rachel stood at a careful distance, aware of Mamie behind her. “What do
you
think I'm doing, Jonas?” she countered, with a lightness she didn't feel.

Jonas's booted feet were set wide apart, his fists clenched at his sides. Clearly, her attempts to stall him were going to be fruitless. “I don't pretend to know,” he said. “But if you're planning to carry on the family business, I have a surprise for you—you're not.”

“That is no surprise, Mr. Wilkes. If I can possibly manage it, this saloon will be a boardinghouse before the end of the week.”

Something in Jonas's face relaxed; incredibly, he began to laugh. It seemed to Rachel that an eternity passed before his mirth ebbed to an amazed, disbelieving grin. “A
boarding-house?
Oh, yes, you did mention that to me once, didn't you?”

Not knowing what else to do, Rachel nodded.

Jonas looked, if anything, more dangerous than he had before. There was something about his fixed grin, his grip on the back of one of the saloon chairs, that made Rachel fear for her very life. “Where would my men take their comfort, pray tell, if this place became a boardinghouse?”

Rachel lifted her chin. “Their ‘comfort' is no concern of mine, Jonas Wilkes. It's their wives and children who matter to me.”

Jonas raised one golden eyebrow. “How noble. You're beginning to sound like Field Hollister, Rachel—or, even worse, Griffin.”

Fury sustained Rachel, even though she wanted to run from this man and from his controlled madness. “I know what its like to live in a tent. Fleas bite you and rain drips in your face and you can't ever take a bath—”

His grin was less threatening, in spite of his words. “And you do love baths, don't you, Rachel?” Jonas paused, but went on before Rachel could voice her contempt. “Go upstairs and pack your things, Miss McKinnon. We're leaving.”

Rachel shook her head. “No.”

Jonas sighed, and it was a vicious sound, for all its softness. “You are a rebellious little minx, aren't you? Well, Rachel, there are certain qualities I demand in a wife, and obedience is one of them. Move!”

“I am
not
your wife, Jonas Wilkes, and I have no intention of being your wife, ever!”

Again, Jonas sighed, tilting his head back to search the ceiling as though he expected to find guidance there. Rachel was
thrown off guard by this gesture, and was horrified when, with a swiftness she wouldn't have believed possible, he closed the space between them and grasped her upper arms in a painful, inescapable grasp.

Rachel tried to scream, but the sound died in her throat. She just stood there, frozen, looking up into his contorted face.

“Lesson one,” he breathed savagely. And then he sat down in a chair and wrenched Rachel after him. With maniacal strength, he flung her across his knees, like a child, and began to spank her.

Outraged, Rachel struggled, and her voice came back in glass-rattling shrieks. Never, in all her life, had she ever been angrier, or more humiliated.

But Jonas was equal to the battle; he held her easily. And the palm of his hand kept coming down on her backside with ferocious, stinging regularity.

There was a loud clicking sound at one side of the room and, simultaneously, the saloon doors swung open.

Rachel looked toward the doors, probably because her fear of further humiliation was greater than her curiosity. If Griffin saw her like this, she would die.

But it was Athena Bordeau who stood in the doorway, her silvery hair bright against the threatening glower of the day. A tiny smile curved her full lips, and she removed her gloves with deft little tugs. Her blue eyes were fixed on the kitchen door, and they were sparkling with amusement.

“You'd better let the lady up, Jonas. If you don't, that negress over there is going to blow your head off.”

The blows stopped, and Rachel was freed. The bright embarrassment burning in her face drained away when she scrambled to her feet and saw Mamie standing just inside the saloon, aiming a double-barrelled shotgun at Jonas's head.

He rose to his feet so suddenly that Rachel, still standing near him, was hard put to keep her footing. The look in his eyes was murderous, and his throat worked with a convulsive, stifling rage.

Undaunted, Mamie looked down the polished, blue-black barrel of that gun and met his gaze. “Get out, Wilkes. If you don't, they're gonna be scraping up your parts and pieces as far away as Wenatchee!”

Athena laughed. “I think she means it, Jonas.”

With a strange dignity, considering the circumstances, Jonas
rolled down his sleeves and clasped his dangling cuff links into place. His gaze moved over Rachel in a possessive, scorching sweep. “You owe me a lot of money,” he said, in a low, stomach-numbing tone. “One way or another, Urchin, you're going to settle the debt.”

Rachel's hand, too often independent of her brain, rose to his face with a vengeance, made hard contact.

Probably conscious of Mamie's shotgun, Jonas made no move to retaliate physically, but his words were as lethal as any blow could have been. “You slapped me once before, Rachel, and it was a bad mistake even then. This time, it was disastrous.”

“Get out,” Rachel breathed, seething, her hands clenched so tightly that her nails were digging into the skin on her palms.

But Jonas only sighed, scanned Rachel's outraged frame speculatively, and muttered, “You have twenty-four hours, Urchin. At the end of that time, you will either be at my door, or devoutly wishing that you'd seen reason.”

His meaning, veiled as it was, was crystal clear to Rachel. “And if I do ‘see reason'?”

He confirmed her suspicions calmly. “Then certain people we both know and love will go right on breathing. You have one day to decide, Rachel.”

Apparently tired of waiting, Mamie fired the shotgun. The mirror over the bar shattered into shards and, when the smoke cleared, Jonas was striding out of the saloon, dragging a shaken Athena along with him.

“And don't you come back here, neither!” Mamie screamed after them.

Rachel sank into a chair, flinching as her battered bottom made contact with the hard wooden seat. One by one, the prostitutes reappeared, reticules in hand, looking pale and all too aware of the dangerous climate of Becky's Place.

By the time an hour had passed, only one remained—the tall blonde who'd spoken up when Rachel had announced her intention of closing the brothel.

Her name was Elsa, and she informed Rachel placidly that she'd just as soon stay on, if it was all the same to everybody else. She'd saved a few dollars, and when Rachel saw the sense of things and went to Mr. Wilkes, Elsa allowed, she'd have Becky's Place turning a tidy profit again in no time.

Rachel listened to all this in appalled silence, sipping the
brandy-laced coffee Mamie brought and wishing that she'd never heard of Providence or even Washington Territory, for that matter.

She'd been a fool to stay, to let matters come to what they had. Now she was beaten, once and for all, and there were no options left.

If she borrowed steamer fare and fled to Seattle, or points beyond, Jonas would have Griffin killed. If she stayed longer than twenty-four hours, clinging to her stupid dream of running a boardinghouse, the result would be exactly the same.

Rachel folded her arms on the table and laid her head down on them in mute despair. Griffin had proposed to her, and she knew that he loved her, but she could not turn to him either. The chances were too great that he would die suddenly, in some mysterious “accident,” or just disappear entirely, as her father and Patrick Brady had.

Small, raw sobs shook Rachel's shoulders and clogged up her nose. She was going to have to present herself to Jonas within the space of one day, in unqualified surrender.

Elsa's hand came to rest cautiously on one of her shoulders. “Don't cry, Sweetie. Jonas ain't so bad, really—what's a few spankin's and a hard time in bed once in a while compared to all that money?”

Rachel cried all the harder.

•   •   •

Athena sat quietly in the carriage seat across from Jonas's, her hands folded in her lap. When it was safe to speak, she would know.

“Second thoughts?” she asked, five minutes later, when the easing in Jonas's anguished face told her that the time had come.

Jonas made an odd, despairing sound—it was almost like a sob. “Why did I do that?” he hissed, without looking at Athena.

“I guess you want her so badly that you can't think straight. Jonas, you can't kill Griffin—I won't allow it.”

Jonas's hands moved, fingers spread apart, to run themselves through his already rumpled hair. “Relax, Sweetheart. I have no intention of killing him.”

“No one would guess that!” snapped Athena, in retort. “And if you make any more scenes like the one at Becky's, you may not have a choice!”

Incredibly, Jonas laughed. “I don't know. Spanking that
saucy little dryad was almost worth dying—she deserved it so richly. Even Griffin would agree to that, I think.”

Athena wanted to cry, though she didn't quite know why. “What are you going to do now, Jonas?”

He met her eyes and grinned. “Back off, of course. Apologize profusely—maybe even grovel.”

Athena shook her head. “You're insane, Jonas Wilkes. Totally, unequivocably insane.”

Jonas sat back in the carriage seat, sighed happily, and cupped his hands behind his head. “Yes. And I'm in august company, Mrs. Bordeau. August company indeed.”

“Fool,” spat Athena, glaring out at the passing countryside and the light, dismal rain that had just begun to fall.

•   •   •

The night passed with hellish slowness, as far as Rachel was concerned. She tossed and turned in her mother's bed, hearing the swift approach of her own doom in the steady cadence of the rain.

The sounds accompanying the dawn were no more comforting. Standing at the window, looking out at the choppy waters of the canal, Rachel listened in glum misery to the raucous calls of the gulls; the clatter of Mamie's pots and pans in the kitchen below; the lonely, distant whine of the saws in the mill at the base of the mountain.

But there were other sounds, too—sounds that didn't belong. Wagon wheels squeaking, muted curses, the steady
thwack-thwack-thwack
of a hammer.

Rachel went into the empty room next to her mother's and looked toward Providence and the harbor. But she needn't have looked so far, she discovered, for the noise was coming from the thicket of blackberries and ferns not fifty yards from where she stood.

The framework of a sizable building was going up, and Jonas Wilkes was there, directing the process.

Impulsively, Rachel wrenched at the window sill until it gave way, leaned out, and called, “What are you doing?”

Jonas smiled, doffed his rain-beaded hat in a courtly fashion. “You won't mind having a saloon next door to your boarding-house, I hope?” he shouted back, jovially.

Rachel swallowed. “My boardinghouse?”

Jonas nodded. “It's all yours, Urchin. And, as for that little disaster yesterday, I'm sorry. For most of it anyway.”

The men working among the wagons and sawhorses went about their business without taking apparent note of the conversation, though Rachel knew that they would rush to recount it, word for word, at the earliest opportunity. By the time the sun set, everyone in Providence and in the camps up the mountain would know about Jonas's Grand Gesture.

What was he up to, anyway?

Rachel's cheeks ached with color. “Which part are you apologizing for, Mr. Wilkes?” she demanded.

“The twenty-four hour ultimatum,” he replied. “That was unreasonable of me.”

Unreasonable.
What an inadequate word that was for what he had demanded.

“And the sp—the other part?”

Jonas laughed. “I can't deny it, Urchin. I enjoyed that immensely, and I'm not sorry.”

Supposing that she should have been grateful, Rachel turned crimson, stepped back, and slammed the window so hard that the glass shattered and fell, ringing like tiny bells, at her feet.

The grin on Field Hollister's face was patently annoying, as far as Griffin was concerned. With a scowl, he closed his medical bag, ruffled the wheat-blond hair of his small, wide-eyed patient, and grumbled, “All right—what is it?”

Field looked at the little boy lying on a cot in the corner of the tent and smiled all the harder. “Don't mind Dr. Fletcher, Lucas,” he said to the child. “He was sleeping in class when they covered bedside manner.”

Lucas looked confused, but he was too sick to say much. “He give me an orange,” he told Field defensively, holding up the fruit as evidence. “See?”

“I stand corrected,” replied Field, as Griffin brushed past him to walk out of the tent and stand stone-still in the pouring rain. It felt good, streaming down over his face, plastering his hair to his forehead, soaking his shirt.

Field said something else to the little boy inside, and then came out to stand beside Griffin. There was no trace of the obnoxious grin in his features now, just a sad, wary look. “Influenza?” he asked, in a low voice.

Griffin nodded.

“Are there other cases?”

Griffin tipped his head back, let the rain fall full in his face for a moment. The chill of it allayed some of the deadly fatigue he'd been feeling, if not the ceaseless, raging pain. “Two,” he said, softly.