Linda Lael Miller Bundle (35 page)

“Don’t try anything,” he warned, gesturing for Rue to precede him into freedom.

She stepped over the grubby threshold, concentrating on appreciating the sweet luxury of liberty, however brief it might be.

The marshal ushered her outside and around the back of the small building. Behind it was a small, unpainted cabin, and beyond that was an outhouse.

Rue wrinkled her nose at the smell, but she was in no position to be discriminating.

She went inside and, peering through the little moon some facetious soul had carved in the door, saw Farley standing guard a few feet away, arms folded.

When they were back in the jailhouse, he gave her soap and a basin of water to wash in before setting the bacon on to finish cooking. Rue felt a little better after that, though she longed for a shower, a shampoo and clean clothes.

“I suppose you’ll be releasing me this morning,” she said after Farley had brought her a metal plate containing three perfectly fried slices of bacon, a dry biscuit and an egg so huge, it could have been laid by Big Bird’s mother. “After all, if playing poker were a crime, you’d have to arrest Stovepipe and Garters and Quickdraw.”

Farley, who was perched on the edge of his desk, consuming his breakfast, laughed. Then he chewed a bite of bacon with such thoroughness that Rue grew impatient.

Finally, he responded. “I reckon you’re referring to Harry and Micah and Jim-Roy, and you’re partly right. It isn’t against the law for
them
to play poker, but Pine River has an ordinance about women entering into unseemly behavior.” Farley paused, watching unperturbed as Rue’s face turned neon pink with fury. “You not only entered in, Miss Claridge—you set up housekeeping and planted corn.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” Rue thought about flinging her plate through the bars like a Frisbee and beaning Farley Haynes, but she hadn’t finished her breakfast and she was wildly hungry. “It’s downright discriminatory!”

Farley went to the stove and speared himself another slab of bacon from the skillet. “Nevertheless,” he went on, “I can’t ask the good citizens of this town to support you forever.”

“If you’d just wire Elisabeth in San Francisco—”

“Nobody’s heard from Jon and Lizzie,” Farley interrupted. “They were in such a hurry to get started on their honeymoon, they didn’t bother to tell anybody where they were going to stay once they got to California. They weren’t planning to return until Jon’s hand has healed and he’s ready to start doctoring again.”

Rue finished her breakfast with regret. Although loaded with fat and cholesterol, the food had tasted great. “People have mentioned a little girl. Did they take her with them?”

Farley nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Looks like we’ll just have to wait until Jon decides to write a letter to somebody around here. When he left, he wasn’t thinking of much of anything besides Lizzie.”

After handing her empty plate through the bars, Rue folded her arms and sighed. “They’re really in love, huh?”

The marshal’s blue eyes sparkled. “You might say that. Being within twelve feet of those two is like being locked up in a room full of lightning.”

Rue took comfort in the idea that this whole nightmare might not have been for nothing. If Bethie was really happy and truly in love with the country doctor she’d married, well, that at least gave the situation some meaning.

“I understand there was a fire and that nobody really knows how Dr. Fortner and his little girl escaped.”

Farley stacked his plate and Rue’s neatly on the trivet and poured the bacon grease from the frying pan into a crockery jar. “That’s right. Of course, what’s important is, they’re alive. There are a lot of goings-on in this world that don’t lend themselves to reasoning out.”

“Amen,” agreed Rue, thinking of her own experiences.

After fetching a bucket of water from outside, Farley put another kettle on to heat.

“You are going to give back my poker winnings, aren’t you?” Rue asked nervously. She needed that money to buy some acceptable clothes and pay for a room. Provided she could find someone willing to rent her one, that is.

Farley took a mean-looking razor from his desk drawer, along with a shaving mug and a brush. “It’d serve you right if I didn’t,” he said calmly, studying his reflection in a cracked mirror affixed to the wall near the stove. “But I’ll turn the money over to you as soon as I decide to let you go.”

Rue’s temper simmered at his blithely officious attitude, but she held her tongue. It was a technique she usually remembered after a conflagration, not before.

She watched, oddly fascinated, when Farley poured water from the kettle into a basin and splashed his face. Then, after moistening his shaving brush, he turned the bristles in the mug and lathered his beard.

Presently, he began using the straight razor with what seemed to Rue to be extraordinary skill.

The whole process was decidedly masculine, and it had a very curious—and disturbing—effect on Rue. Every graceful motion of his hands, every turn of his head, was like a caress; it was as though Farley were removing her clothes and taking the time to explore each new part of her as he bared it. And that odd feeling that she’d just collided with a solid object was back, too; she gripped the bars tightly to hold herself up.

When Farley gave her a sidelong look and grinned, she felt as though the bones in her pelvis had turned to warm wax.

Rue had spent a lot of time on a ranch, and she’d traveled and met people, read hundreds of books, watched all sorts of movies, so she had a pretty fundamental understanding of what was happening in her body. What she
didn’t
comprehend was exactly what it would be like to make love, because that was something she hadn’t gotten around to doing quite yet. It wasn’t that she was scared or even especially noble—she just hadn’t found the right man.

Farley finished shaving, humming a little tune all the while, rinsed his face and dried it with the towel draped around his neck.

The jailhouse door opened, and Rue noticed that Farley’s hand flashed with instinctive speed and grace to the handle of the six-gun riding low on his hip.

His fingers relaxed when a big woman dressed in black bombazine entered. Her eyes narrowed in her beefy face when she caught sight of the prisoner. Two other ladies in equally somber dress wedged themselves in behind her.

“Something tells me the Presbyterians have arrived,” Rue murmured.

“Worse,” Farley whispered. “These ladies head up the Pine River Society for the Protection of Widows and Orphans, and they’re really mean.”

The trio stared at Rue, their mouths dropping open as they took in her jeans, sneakers and T-shirt.

“Poor misguided soul,” one visitor said, raising bent fingers to her mouth in consternation and pity.

“Trousers!” breathed another.

The heavy woman whirled on Farley, and Rue noticed that a muscle twitched under his right eye.

“This is an outrage!” the lady thundered, as though he were somehow to blame for Rue’s existence. “Where on earth did she get those dreadful clothes?”

“I can speak for myself,” Rue said firmly, and the other two women gasped, evidently at her audacity. “This is called a T-shirt,” Rue went on, indicating the garment in question, “and these are jeans. I know none of you are used to seeing a woman dressed the way I am, but the fact is, these clothes are really quite practical, when you think about it.”

“Well, I never!” avowed the leader of the pack.

Rue’s mouth twitched. “Never what?” she inquired sweetly.

Farley rolled his eyes, but offered no comment. It was plain that, although he wasn’t really intimidated by these women, he wasn’t anxious to cross them, either.

“Are you a saloon woman?” demanded the leader of the moral invasion. The moment the words were out of her mouth, she drew her lips into a tight line and retreated a step, no doubt concerned that sin might prove contagious.

Rue smiled. “No, Miss—What was your name, please?”

“My name is
Mrs.
Gifford,” that good lady snapped.

Holding one hand out through the bars, Rue smiled again, winningly. “I’m very glad to meet you, Mrs. Gifford. My name is Rue Claridge, and I’m definitely not a ‘saloon woman.’” She dropped her voice to a confidential whisper. “Just between you and me, I think I’m probably overqualified for that kind of work.”

Mrs. Gifford turned away and gathered her bombazine-clad troops into a huddle. While the conference went on, Rue stood biting her lower lip and wondering whether or not Farley would turn her over to these people. She thought she’d rather take her chances with a lynch mob, if given the choice.

Farley scratched the back of his neck and sighed. Judging from his body language, Rue was pretty sure he wanted to let her go and get on with the daily business of being a living, breathing antique.

Finally, Mrs. Gifford approached the cell again. “There will be no more prancing up and down the street in trousers and no more poker playing,” she decreed firmly.

Under any other circumstances, Rue would have defended her right to dress and gamble as she liked, but she wasn’t about to risk getting herself into still more trouble. For all she knew,
Mr.
Gifford was a judge with the power to lock her away in some grim prison.

“No more poker playing,” Rue conceded in a purposely meek voice. “As for the—trousers, I promise I won’t wear them any farther than the general store. I mean to go straight over there and buy a dress as soon as the marshal here lets me out of the pokey.”

The delegation put their heads together for another consultation. After several minutes, Mrs. Gifford announced, “Rowena will walk down to the mercantile and purchase the dress,” she said, indicating one of the other women.

“Great,” Rue responded, shifting her gaze to the marshal. “Will you give Rowena fifty cents from my winnings so I can get out of here?” If the Society tried to make her go with them, she’d make a break for it.

Rowena, who was painfully thin, her mousy brown hair pulled back tightly enough to tilt her eyes, swallowed visibly and backed up when Farley held out the money.

“Poker winnings,” she said in horror. “My hands will never touch filthy lucre!”

Now it was Rue who rolled her eyes.

“
I’ll
get the dress,” Farley bit out furiously, grabbing his hat from its peg and putting on his long canvas duster. A moment later, the door slammed behind him.

The church women stared at Rue, as though expecting her to turn into a raven and fly out through the barred window.

Thank God I didn’t land in seventeenth-century Salem,
Rue thought wryly.
I’d surely be in the stocks by now, or dangling at the end of a rope.

Basically a gregarious type, Rue couldn’t resist another attempt at conversation, even though she knew the effort was probably futile. “So,” she said, smiling the way she did when she wanted to put an interviewee at ease, “what do you do with yourselves every day, besides cooking and cleaning and tracking down sinners?”

W
hen Farley returned from his mission to the general store, looking tight jawed and grim, he opened the cell door and handed a wrapped bundle to Rue.

Rue’s fiery, defiant gaze swept over Mrs. Gifford and her cronies, as well as the marshal, as she accepted the package. “If you people think I’m going to change clothes with the four of you standing there gawking at me, you’re mistaken,” she said crisply.

Farley seemed only too happy to leave, although the Society hesitated a few moments before trooping out after him.

If she hadn’t been so frazzled, Rue would have laughed out loud at the sheer ugliness of that red-and-white gingham dress. As it happened, she just buttoned herself into the thing, tied the sash at the back and tried with all her might to hold on to her sense of humor.

When the others returned, Farley slid his turquoise gaze over Rue in an assessing fashion, and she thought she saw the corner of his mouth twitch. The ladies, however, were plainly not amused.

“Just let me out of here before I go crazy!” Rue muttered.

Farley unlocked the cell again and stepped back, holding the door wide. In that moment, an odd thought struck Rue: she would miss being in close contact with the marshal.

Their hands brushed as he extended the rest of her poker winnings, and Rue felt as though she’d just thrust a hairpin into a light socket.

“I’ll try to stay out of trouble,” she said. All of a sudden, her throat felt tight, and she had to force the words past her vocal cords.

Farley grinned, showing those movie-cowboy teeth of his. “You do that,” he replied.

Rue swallowed and went around him, shaken. She’d been in an earthquake once, in South America, and the inner sensation had been much like what she was feeling now. It was weird, but then, so was everything else that had happened to her after she crossed that threshold and left the familiar world on the other side.

The Society allowed her to leave the jailhouse without interference, but the looks the women gave her were as cool and disapproving as before. It was plain they expected Rue to go forth in sin.

Once she was outside, under a pastel blue sky laced with white clouds, Rue felt a little stronger and more confident. The air was fresh and bracing, though tinged with the scent of manure from the road. Rue’s naturally buoyant spirits rose.

She set out for the house in the country, determined to take another crack at returning to her own time. Not by any stretch of the imagination had she given up on finding Elisabeth and hearing her cousin tell her face-to-face that she was truly happy, but Rue needed time to regroup.

She figured a couple of slices of pepperoni pizza with black olives and extra cheese, followed by a long, hot bath, wouldn’t hurt her thinking processes, either.

Soon Rue had left the screeching of the mill saw and the tinny music and raucous laughter of the saloons behind. Every step made her more painfully conscious of the growing distance between her and Farley, and that puzzled her. The lawman definitely wasn’t her type, and besides…talk about a generation gap!

When Rue finally reached Aunt Verity’s house, she stood at the white picket fence for a few moments, gazing up at the structure.

Even with its fire-scarred side, the place looked innocent, just sitting there in the bright October sunshine. No one would have guessed, by casual observation, that this unassuming Victorian house was enchanted or bewitched or whatever it was.

Rue drew a deep breath, let it out in a rush and opened the gate. With her other hand, she touched the necklace at her throat and fervently wished to be home.

The gate creaked as she closed it behind her. Rue proceeded boldly up the front walk and knocked at the door.

When the crabby housekeeper didn’t answer, Rue simply turned the knob and stepped inside.
Remarkable,
she thought, shaking her head. Bethie and her new husband were off in California and the maid had probably left for the day, and yet the place was unlocked.

“Hello?” Rue inquired with a pleasantry that was at least partially feigned. She didn’t like Ellen and would prefer not to encounter her.

There was no answer, no sound except for the loud ticking of a clock somewhere nearby.

Rue raised her voice a little. “Hello! Anybody here?”

Again, no answer.

Rue hoisted the skirts of her horrible gingham dress so she wouldn’t break her neck and bounded up the front stairway. In the upper hall, she stood facing the burned door for a moment, then pushed it open and climbed awkwardly out onto a charred beam, praying it would hold her weight.

The antique necklace seemed to burn where it rested against her skin. Clutching the blackened doorjamb in both hands and closing her eyes, Rue whispered, “Let me go home.
Please,
let me go home.”

A moment later, she summoned all her courage and thrust herself over the threshold and into the house.

When she felt modern carpeting beneath her fingers, jubilation rushed through Rue’s spirit, though there was a thin brushstroke of sorrow, too. She might never see her cousin Elisabeth again.

Or Farley.

Rue scrambled to her feet and gave a shout of delight because she was back in the land of indoor plumbing, fast food and credit cards. Looking down at the red-and-white dress, with its long skirts and puffy sleeves, she realized the gown was tangible proof that she actually had been to 1892. No one else would be convinced, but Rue didn’t care about that; it was enough that
she
knew she wasn’t losing her mind.

After phoning the one restaurant in Pine River that not only sold but delivered pizza, Rue stripped off the dress, took a luxurious bath and put on khaki slacks and a white sweater. She was blow-drying her hair when the doorbell rang.

Snatching some money off the top of her bureau, Rue hurried downstairs to answer.

The pizza delivery person, a young man with an outstandingly good complexion, was standing on the porch, looking uneasy. Rue smiled, wondering what stories he’d heard about the house.

“Thanks,” she said, holding out a bill.

The boy surrendered the pizza, but looked at the money in confusion. “What country is this from?” he asked.

Rue could smell the delicious aromas rising through the box, and she was impatient to be alone with her food. “This one,” she replied a little abruptly.

Then Rue’s eyes fell on the bill and she realized she’d tried to pay for the pizza with some of her 1892 poker winnings. The mistake had been a natural one; just the other day, she’d left some money on her dresser. Apparently, she’d automatically done the same with these bills.

“I’m a collector,” she said, snatching back the bill. “Just a second and I’ll get you something a little more…current.”

With that, Rue reluctantly left the pizza on the hall table and hurried upstairs. When she returned, she paid the delivery boy with modern currency and a smile.

The young man thanked her and hurried back down the walk and through the front gate to his economy car. He kept glancing back over one shoulder, as though he expected to find that the house had moved a foot closer to the road while he wasn’t looking.

Rue smiled and closed the door.

In the kitchen, she consumed two slices of pizza and put the rest into the refrigerator for later—or earlier. In this house, time had a way of getting turned around.

On one level, Rue felt grindingly tired, as though she could crawl into bed and sleep for two weeks without so much as a quiver of her eyelids. On another, however, she was restless and frustrated.

As a newswoman, Rue especially hated not knowing the whole story. She wanted to find her cousin, and she wanted to uncover the secret of this house. If there was one thing Rue was sure of, it was that the human race lived in a cause-and-effect universe and there was some concrete, measurable reason for the phenomenon she and Elisabeth had experienced.

She found her purse and the keys to her Land Rover and smiled to herself as she carefully locked the front door. Maybe the dead bolt would keep out burglars and vandals, but here all the action tended to be on the
inside.

Rue drove into town, past the library and the courthouse and the supermarket, marveling. It had only been that morning—and yet, it had
not
been—that the marshal’s office and the general store and the Hang-Dog Saloon had stood in their places. The road, rutted and dusty and dappled with manure in Farley’s time was now paved and relatively clean.

Only when she reached the churchyard did Rue realize she’d intended to come there all along. She parked by a neatly painted wooden fence and walked past the old-fashioned clapboard church to the cemetery beyond.

The place was a historical monument—there were people buried here who had been born back East in the late seventeen hundreds.

Rue paused briefly by Aunt Verity’s headstone, crouching to pull a few weeds, then went on to the oldest section. Almost immediately, she found the Fortner plot, a collection of graves surrounded by a low, iron fence.

She opened the little gate, which creaked on rusty hinges, and stepped inside.

Jonathan Fortner’s grave was in the center and beside his stone was another one, marked Elisabeth Fortner. Rue felt tears sting her eyes; maybe Bethie was still alive in that other dimension, but she was long dead in this one. So were her husband and all her children.

After she’d recovered from the shock of standing beside Bethie’s grave, Rue studied the other stones. Sons, daughters, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law, even grandchildren, most of whom had lived to adulthood, were buried there. Obviously, Jonathan and Elisabeth’s union had been a very fruitful one, and that consoled Rue a little. More than anything else, her cousin had wanted a lot of children.

When Rue turned, she was startled to see a handsome young man crouched by the metal gate, oiling the creaky hinges. He smiled, and something about the expression was jarringly familiar.

“Friend of the family?” he asked pleasantly. Rue had him pegged for the kind of kid who had played the lead in all the high school drama productions and taken the prettiest girl in his class to the prom.

Rue allowed herself a slight smile. “You might say that. And you?”

“Jonathan and Elisabeth Fortner were my great-great-grandparents,” he said, rising to his feet. He looked nothing like Bethie, this tall young man with his dark hair and eyes, and yet his words struck a note of truth deep inside Rue.

For a moment, she was completely speechless. It seemed that every time she managed to come to terms with one element of this time-travel business, another aspect presented itself.

Rue summoned up a smile and offered her hand. “I guess you could say Bethie—Elisabeth—was my great-great-cousin. My name is Rue Claridge.”

“Michael Blake,” he replied, clasping her fingers firmly.

Rue searched her memory, but she couldn’t recall Aunt Verity ever mentioning this branch of the family. “Do you live in Pine River, Michael?”

He shook his head and, once again, Rue felt a charge of recognition. “Seattle—I go to the university. I just like to come out here once in a while and—well—I don’t know exactly how to explain it. It’s like there’s this unseen connection and I’m one of the links. I guess this is my way of telling them—and myself—that I haven’t broken the chain.”

Rue only nodded; she was thinking of the overwhelming significance a simple decision or random happenstance could have. If Bethie hadn’t stumbled into that other dimension or whatever it was, then Michael would probably never have existed. In fact, just a few months before, when Elisabeth had not yet stepped over the threshold to meet and fall in love with her country doctor, there had surely been no Michael Blake. That would explain why Aunt Verity had never talked about him or his family.

On the other hand, Michael had grown to youthful manhood; he had a life, a history. He was as solid and real as anyone she’d ever met.

Rue’s head was spinning.

“Are you all right?” Michael asked, firmly taking her elbow and helping her to a nearby bench. “You look pale.”

Rue sat down gratefully and rubbed her right temple with a shaking hand. “I’m fine,” she said hastily. “Honestly.”

“I could get you some water….”

“No,” Rue protested. “I’m okay. Really.”

Michael brought a small black notebook from his jacket pocket, along with a stub of a pencil. “My grandmother would really like to meet you, since you’re a shirttail relation and everything. She lives with my mom and dad in Seattle. Why don’t you give her a call sometime?”

Rue grinned at the ease with which he invited a total stranger into the inner circle of the family, but then that was the sort of thing kids did. “Thanks, Michael.”

He wedged one hand into the pocket of his jacket, holding the can of spray lubricant in the other. “Well, I guess I’d better be getting back to the city. Nice meeting you.”

“Nice meeting you,” Rue said hoarsely, looking away.
Did you think about what it means to change history, Bethie?
she thought.
I know I never did.

Michael had long-since driven away in a small blue sports car when Rue finally rose from the bench and went to stand beside her cousin’s grave once again.

“Maybe I should just leave it all alone,” she murmured as a shower of gold, crimson and chocolate-colored leaves floated down onto the little plot from the surrounding maple trees. “Maybe it would be better to walk away and pretend I believe the official explanation for your disappearance, Bethie. But I just can’t do it. Even though I know I could stir up ripples that might be felt all the way into this century, I have to hear you say, in person, that you want to stay there. I have to look into your eyes and know that you understand your decision.”

And I have to see Farley Haynes again.

The stray, ragtag thought trailed in after the others, and Rue immediately evicted it from her mind. For all practical intents and purposes, Farley was just a figment of her imagination, she reminded herself, little more than a character she’d seen in a movie or read about in a book.