Kit Gardner (9 page)

“Here.” She shoved the straw purse at him. “This is all I can spare at the moment for supplies you might need to begin work, though I don’t know if your shoulder is well enough to—”

“I can manage, ma’am.”

She tilted her head up at him, and sunlight spilled over the sprinkling of freckles upon her cheeks and nose. “Of course you can. You did manage to—” One white glove waved toward the buggy. Her eyes again strayed away from him, northward, down the row of establishments lining the street. “I don’t suppose I thanked you. I—” Her mouth snapped closed, and she blinked. “Good heavens, there’s Sadie McGlue. I can’t possibly...not now...with you...” Her hand fluttered at her hat brim, then at her neck, before she grabbed Christian’s hand and brushed past Rance. “You’ll find all you need—though I don’t quite know what all that might be—in Ledbetter’s. I...we...I’ve need of a few things at the clothiers.
This
way, Christian.”

“But, Mama, you’re walking too fast.”

Indeed she was, her heavy heels clomping upon the wooden boardwalk,
south,
away from whoever it was she had wished to avoid. Rance stuffed the purse into his pocket and watched the furious swishing of her skirts. He then glanced northward. Ah, there it was, the telltale bobbing of feathered hats and satin parasols. Two of them, as his luck would have it, their wide, much-flounced and beribboned skirts sashaying along with all the pomposity of a naval frigate. And a matching set of imperious, entirely unlikable female faces to add the finishing touch.

Both sets of their glittering little eyes had fastened upon him. Like a full-fledged cavalry, with colors flying and weapons braced, they descended upon him. At the moment, he’d rather take on a battalion of Rebel soldiers. After all, he’d had considerably more success on the battlefield than on female turf. Particularly when a gentler manner might be the order of things.

Sadie McGlue. Yes, he could imagine a half-dozen reasons why ordinary women might flee the inevitable scrutiny from such a woman. But his proud and noble Jess? Then again, he was only beginning to realize all that puffed-up indignation concealed an exquisite vulnerability that she would rather die for than betray. Vulnerability, so desolate and bleak lurking deep in her eyes, no matter how she might try to convince herself otherwise. And how it must pain her to even realize it. One day she would look at him without that deep sadness in her eyes. One day. And then he would leave.

The solitary wail of a train’s whistle sliced through the relative stillness and echoed off the wooden buildings surrounding. A gnawing unease filled Rance’s gut. The Kansas Pacific line, no doubt. Over the flat rooftops, he watched the puffs of oily black smoke billowing skyward as the train moved slowly west. That line ran straight to Wichita and onward to Dodge City and Abilene. Hell, he was smack in the middle of cattle country, not an altogether brilliant place to be for a man wanted for murder by one of the most powerful cattlemen in the state. A man who had many friends, a man who could pay for those friends. Those friends could in all likelihood step from any train in Twilight, to conduct business, to simply rest for the night.

Tugging his brim lower over his eyes, he glanced swiftly about, then mounted the steps to Ledbetter’s. He nodded briefly to the two older men playing checkers on overturned cracker barrels just outside the door. They’d paused in their game some time ago to stare at him with twin impassive masks, their jaws working in unison on their chew. No, he recognized neither of those weather-beaten, guarded countenances.

He shoved the door wide, well aware that his female pursuers had stopped outside the store. Not a moment later, their beslippered feet mounted the steps behind him.

“I
said don’t touch anything,” Jessica whispered into her son’s mutinous glower. His bottom lip poked at her, his glower deepened, and she cursed for the thousandth time her rash decision to hire Stark.
He,
of course, was responsible for this annoying rebelliousness in her son this morning. What else could possibly be the reason? Certainly not her own distracted state...

She extricated his pudgy fingers from a hopelessly tangled skein of ribbon and fidgeted with untangling it, thankful for the excuse it gave her to linger here at the window of Philip’s Clothiers. Through the bolts of cloth stacked in the window, she had a fairly unobstructed view of Ledbetter’s. If she stood on tiptoe, that is, and leaned slightly to the right and craned her neck and braced herself against one of the stacked bolts.

“I want to go now,” Christian grumbled.

“Shush, Christian.” Her eyes narrowed upon the pair of bustles and matching parasols lingering in front of Ledbetter’s. Blast Sadie and her idle mind, so spiteful and eager to pounce on the latest gossip. Or to stir something up and feast on it. Indeed, Sadie must have enjoyed a veritable banquet when all those creditors descended upon Jessica after Frank’s death, demanding payment of all his gambling debts and spreading the seeds of the malicious rumor that had made coming to town all but unbearable for Jessica ever since. Oh, most people were kind enough to behave as though they’d heard positively nothing about Frank’s perfidy, and if they had, they acted as though they didn’t believe a word of it. People like Samuel Ledbetter, who had offered kind words of sympathy and then heartily agreed to purchase her fruits and preserves. Then again, there were those, like Sadie, who were either too nosy or perhaps too insecure in some way, those who seemed to derive perverse pleasure from others’ misfortune. Oh, she’d offered her sympathies delivered with expertise from beneath the fringe of her parasol. She’d smiled her typical bland smile. Nothing overtly malicious. But this inadequacy and embarrassment swept over Jessica whenever she ventured anywhere near
those women.
Not that she allowed it to bother her in any way. Absolutely not.

She simply kept to her farm as much as she could. But then there was the purposeful exclusion of Christian from the group of youngsters who played after church on Sunday. Even Avram couldn’t fix that. Jessica had come to wish he’d never tried.

“You made me wear this suit, and it hurts my tummy,” Christian said, interrupting her thoughts. “And I can’t wiggle my toes in these shoes. These are baby shoes. I don’t like them.”

Jessica didn’t take her eyes from Sadie McGlue’s rather alarming backside. Perhaps these bustles were fashioned for women less broad of beam. Navigating such a contraption through Ledbetter’s narrow door just might prove impossible, even for Twilight’s reigning society queen. But Sadie must have been profoundly overcome with curiosity, positively itching to sink her claws into Logan Stark and discover what he was all about. No alarming backside would stand in her way.

Even Jessica had to admit the man necessitated a good long look. Several, actually.

He
was
a stranger, wasn’t he? And Twilight had so very few of those. It didn’t help that the man was handsome as sin.

Why the devil hadn’t he chosen someone else’s backyard in which to make his appearance? Blast, but she wished she didn’t need him so much. The thought of relieving him of his post whispered through her mind and was instantly gone.

“I want to go now, Mama.”

Jessica chewed her lip and, without looking, plucked Christian’s hand once again from the pile of ribbon. No, this would certainly not do. A woman such as she, with business interests and her farm at risk, simply could not afford to allow Stark to muck things up for her any more than he already had. Blasted stupid of her to allow her feelings of...of...
inadequacy
to send her fleeing from Sadie McGlue. Fleeing, yes, cowardly as it might truly be, anything to avoid confrontation. Perhaps to avoid having to defend a dead man,
her
dead husband, something Miss Beecher would advise any goodly and honorable wife to do. To lie, if need be, though Miss Beecher would phrase it a bit more delicately. No, it was far better to continue to deny that she, more than anyone, had reason to believe the most lascivious of those rumors. She had, after all, washed the evidence from her husband’s shirts, the unmistakable scent of another woman’s musky perfume...

It was at that moment that the sunlight caught with a certain mocking brilliance at the buckboard, particularly at the polished leather seat. How the devil had Stark contrived to fix it in a solitary morning? The man mustn’t have slept the entire night through.

Her eyes shifted again when those bustles managed to disappear within Ledbetter’s. Jessica strained on tiptoe, levered herself between stacked bolts of cloth and squinted at the windows of the general store. Confounded glass reflected nothing but the sunny street without. Not even a hint of a tall, broad-shouldered shadow.

“Damn,” she muttered.

“I beg your pardon— I— Good heavens, Jessica! It
is
you! Whatever are you doing crawling up into the window?”

Jessica whirled about so suddenly she had to clutch a heavy bolt of muslin to keep it from toppling to the floor. A furious blush of guilt swept her from head to toe and back when her eyes met those of Louise French, her one true friend in Twilight. Willowy, dark-haired and elegant even in a simple cotton frock and bonnet, both of the most lively shade of buttercup yellow, Louise gave Jessica a deeply curious look, then immediately bent to Christian, who had assumed his typical position upon being greeted by positively anyone, even someone as familiar as Louise. Both arms had a vise grip around Jessica’s knee, and he’d buried half his face in her skirts.

“Good morning, Master Wynne,” Louise said with an understanding smile. “How grown-up you look today. Are you helping your mama like a big boy?”

Jessica shoved the bolt back into the window and attempted without success to pry her son from her leg. “Say hullo to Mrs. French, Christian.”

Christian mumbled something very quiet and thoroughly unintelligible into her skirts and only tightened his grip on her knees.

“Buying a hair ribbon?” Louise mused, indicating the ribbon still twisted in Jessica’s fingers.

“Yes,” Jessica replied quickly—too quickly, she realized when she glanced at the ribbon again. She replaced it on the pile.

“Sapphire blue isn’t your usual color,” Louise said. She gave Jessica’s arm a squeeze. Her tone brimmed with mischief. “Or does Avram wish to see you in something gloriously bold and daring? I was wondering when you were going to come to your senses about that drab gray dress at Ledbetter’s. So?”

“It’s not gray. It’s a lovely cornflower blue.”

“Posh. It’s gunboat gray and you know it. All high-necked and stiff. It matches every other dress you own.”

“It also matches my eyes.”

“Your eyes were a lovely vivid blue the last I looked. The precise color of the
other
dress at Ledbetter’s, the sapphire silk with the shocking scooped neckline. You know the one.”

Jessica averted her gaze and felt the flush stain her cheeks, knowing full well which dress Louise spoke of, simply because her eye seemed to stray to the frock whenever she ventured past Ledbetter’s.

“So?” Louise mused smugly. “Is the ribbon to impress Avram, or simply to bring him to his knees with passion?”

Jessica blinked. “Avram?”

Louise set her jaw. “Avram. Your fiancé.”

“Yes, of course, I know who Avram is. Yes, it is— I mean, gracious, no. Avram abhors color on me.”

Louise gave her another curious look. “Are you feeling well, Jessica? You look hot and feverish, and you seem a touch preoccupied. Too much sun, perhaps. Haven’t I told you your strawberries will be worth nothing to you if you work yourself to death out in those fields all day?”

“Better that than to starve,” Jessica replied crisply.

“Oh, posh, Avram would never allow you to starve.”

“No, he wouldn’t. Then again, he hasn’t done much to help me, either.”

Louise gave her an understanding pat on the arm. “Men can be too stubborn for their own good, Jessica, especially men who get themselves all caught up in their own work. Even a kind and gentle man like Avram. You know he would never steer you wrong. I can’t imagine why he would. And need I remind you that his house is just around the corner from ours? We would be neighbors! Perhaps you should reconsider and sell. You know, those East Coast businessmen have been known to be rather persistent when they’re after something. Avram merely seeks to spare you all that heartache—”

Jessica glowered at her friend from beneath the sweep of her hat.

“Then again,” Louise said swiftly, “perhaps Avram shall come around. Men do that sort of thing when they’re in love with a woman. Oh, but you already realize that.”

No, Jessica had never realized that, perhaps because she’d never experienced it. Not with Frank, and certainly not with Avram. She forced a smile, despite her fleeting disquiet. “But what of you, Lou? Shouldn’t you be shading yourself on some lovely, cool veranda somewhere, sipping lemonade, for the next six months?”

Louise grinned hugely and effortlessly, and her gloved hand smoothed the cotton over the slight curve of her belly. “Oh, Jessica, I don’t think I can bear to wait another six months. Particularly if it means six months of sequestering myself in the house for fear someone might take notice of my condition. Blast these silly notions. Confinement. It makes me sound as if I’ve acquired some contagious disease. How the devil is a woman supposed to shop?”

“And how is John managing all this?”

Louise gave a throaty laugh. “He was quite overcome with all the vomiting, as any man would be, I suppose. Silly creatures. They can abide all the guns and the killing and the bloodshed in the name of honor and country, but the rigors of nature and childbearing loom beyond them. But all that has since passed, and he’s got that proud spring in his stride once again. He is rather afraid of laying even one hand upon me, though.” Louise tapped a finger against her bottom lip. “I can’t imagine how I might convince him otherwise without coming off sounding a bit...loose. He has always been rather a stickler when it comes to convention.”

“Little wonder he’s such a fine attorney. You should be proud of him, Lou.”

“I am. He will make a fine father. He’d better. He wants to have six children.”

Jessica gaped, horrified. “
Six?
Good heavens, Louise, you must change his mind.”

“Why the devil should I? I cannot think of anything more delightful—” a wicked sparkle lit Louise’s dark eyes “—and delicious than trying your very best to fill a home with children with the man you desperately love, faults and all. Can you?”

“I—” The words caught in Jessica’s throat. No, she’d never felt anything at all like that. Christian had been the only blessing to come of her clumsy attempts to fulfill her duties as a new bride. After his birth, Frank had seemed preoccupied with his cattle business, and Jessica had scarcely had the energy to tend to the family, much less to her husband’s infrequent needs. So unlike Louise and John French. More like strangers, they had been, existing beneath the same roof.

No, Jessica had never dreamed of filling her home with Frank’s children.

“Besides—” Louise cocked a saucy brow and whispered hoarsely. “This being with child has its advantages. A girl could get awfully used to having large bosoms. And her husband, as well, eh?”

Something stirred in Jessica, and she realized what it was. A painful melancholy, and for what? A man she had come to realize had cared more for himself than for her or his son? Or the woman who’d been too naive to see it? She should have buried all that with him. She
was
starting afresh with Avram, wasn’t she? Why the devil, then, did she feel so sad?

“Avram wants children, I’m sure. You’ll see, Jessica. I wouldn’t doubt you’ll be pregnant within your first month of marriage, just like I was.”

“I’m rather certain I wouldn’t want that.”

“Good grief, you sound positively morose.”

Jessica stared at her gloved hands, clasped tightly together. “I suppose I do.”

Louise flung an arm about her shoulders. “My dear, we all must endure these prenuptial jitters...though I must say I was far too consumed with—how shall I say this?—
restraining
myself until John and I were properly wed to ever wonder whether I was doing the right thing by marrying him. I’m sure you experience those moments, just as you do these sad ones, hmm?”

“Actually, Avram... He...he’s not like John. He’s...well...he’s...”

“Say it. Somewhat of a prig. True. But he’s a man of the church, Jessica. Remember this. Those types must forever be aware of their public image. But just wait. That gentle man might become a savage tiger in your wedding chamber. Oooh! A man like that could make a woman change her mind about all those babies. Now see, there, you’re smiling.”

“I can’t quite imagine where Avram might be hiding his savage tiger.”

“It’s the quiet ones who surprise you most, Jessica. Trust me. Now, I must be off. John will lock me in our bedroom if he finds out I was out shopping till midday. Some balderdash about me needing my rest. But even he won’t be able to keep me from the church picnic Sunday.” Louise peered at her reflection in the storefront window, adjusted her bonnet and held a ribbon of the most astonishing shade of fuchsia next to her face. “You’re coming, of course. Let us fervently pray the Fates conspire and Sadie McGlue finds herself confined to her bed with chronic dyspepsia and— Why, there she is now, coming out of Ledbetter’s.”

Jessica swiveled about and almost launched herself between the bolts of cloth to achieve a better view.

“Oh, what a god-awful dress,” Louise observed. “And Dolly Terwilliger right behind her, looking just as hideous. I’d say they’ve both put on weight, wouldn’t you? There is justice, after all, and—”

Jessica knew precisely the reason Louise’s breath caught in her throat. The reason had nothing to do with Sadie McGlue and Dolly Terwilliger or their dresses. That reason had everything to do with the pair of very long legs thrown into sunlight as they paused just outside Ledbetter’s. Muscled legs, snugly encased in soft, faded denims. A man’s legs. Strong, capable legs that made a woman’s knees turn to water.