Liz Ireland (7 page)

“No, a gambler.”

Davy’s face brightened considerably. “I bet you’ve run into an outlaw!”

Lang nodded, frowning. His own brother, for one. His own brother, who was once as young and innocent and exuberant as Davy. The depression he’d been fighting since Emma had informed him he was wanted as a murderer returned.

“Maybe someday soon I’ll tell you about outlaws, Davy, but right now, shouldn’t you take a nap? You’ve got to rest to get better. You can’t fight outlaws with chicken pox.”

The boy sank against the pillows. “Shucks, I don’t know if I wanna get better, really. I like it here! Don’t you like Miss Emma, Johann?”

“Sure.” He swallowed. Much more than he ought to.

“My daddy says Miss Emma’s better’n a doctor.”

Lang tilted his head. “Is your daddy coming back to see you any time soon?” He felt he should be more prepared for the next round of visitors.

Davy lifted his head proudly. “He’s too busy with plowin’ and plantin’. But he’ll be here once that’s done.”

Lang nodded. A few weeks, probably. He should be mended by then.

Hoofbeats and the rumbling of wagon wheels heralded Emma’s return, and Lang stepped over to the window. When he looked out, his heart sank. She wasn’t alone.

All the way from Midday, Rose Ellen had been alternately scolding, whining, pouting and lecturing. “I told you that you’d be lonely all by yourself. You’d have been better off in Galveston with me. At least then you’d be respectable!”

Emma bristled. “I’m respectable now.”

Rose Ellen turned on her with cold eyes. “Being nursemaid to two poverty-stricken people whose families won’t even take care of them? Cooking and doing laundry for some stranger from who knows where? What do you really know about this Mr. Archibald, Emma?”

“He’s been a perfect gentleman so far….”

“Oh, Emma, you are so naive!” Rose Ellen exclaimed. “You know nothing about men. They often make a good impression at first, but it’s breeding that tells in the end.”

Like with William Sealy?
Emma thought bitterly, though she said nothing. Rose Ellen would never side with a sharecropper’s daughter like Lorna McCrae over a scion of the Sealy family.

Rose Ellen straightened determinedly. “Well! I can see it’s just my God-given duty to get rid of all these hangers-on and convince you to go back to Galveston with me, where I can keep you company and take care of you. Yes, take care of you, Emma—don’t look at me like that! Older isn’t necessarily wiser, you know.”

Emma sighed. Could she say nothing to convince her
sister that she wasn’t going to Galveston? Would no ever be enough?

Dreading their return to the house and having to expose Lorna and Davy to her sister—not to mention dealing with the Johann Archibald problem—Emma had allowed the horses to lumber back to the house at their leisure. But now the house was in sight, and there was no putting off the inevitable. She tapped one of the horse’s rumps lightly with the crop and the animals trotted forward.

“I swear all the jostling from traveling has given me the most terrible headache!” Rose Ellen said. “Maybe when we get to the house you could give me one of those headache powders. Oh, and a toddy! You always know just what to do for my headaches.”

Emma smiled tightly. Usually she was proud of her nursing ability. But the prospect of waiting on her sister hand and foot was not appealing. In fact, she dreaded it. But there was no ignoring Rose Ellen’s demands. Rose Ellen had a knack for sapping all attention away from others and toward herself. In fact, now that Emma recalled her life before Rose Ellen’s marriage, much of her time had been spent catering to Rose Ellen’s whims, and taking care of Rose Ellen’s needs. Certainly, a great deal of effort had been expended in Rose Ellen’s social life, which had been lively, at least by Midday standards. Sometimes it seemed as though Emma had spent the first half of her life watching Rose Ellen live hers.

She blushed lightly as the reed-thin voice of her conscience reminded her that she should be ashamed to hold such petty resentments against her own flesh and blood. And yet, she couldn’t deny that she dreaded having Rose Ellen’s needs supersede her own, as they always did. And most of all—something she could barely admit even to herself—she dreaded the moment when Johann laid eyes
on her sister. Her beautiful sister, whom no man had ever been able to resist…

“I swear, Emma, I’d forgotten how quiet you are! I never know what you’re thinking.”

As the wagon pulled up to the front of the house, Emma sighed, pulled up on the reins, then turned to her sister. Maybe it was best just to be honest…sort of. “I’ll tell you straight, Rose Ellen. You probably won’t like the way I run my household, and you won’t approve of the people I have staying with me, but nothing you say will make me change.”

Her sister bridled in astonished anger. “Well! It’s clear I got here just in time! Thank heavens Janine warned me about you, Emma. It’s clear you’ve lost your mind, or at least your manners!”

Emma took a breath to gather her patience. “I’m just warning you not to say a mean word to Lorna, or Davy.”

“And what about your boarder?”

“Mr. Archibald is an invalid, and doesn’t like to be disturbed. You probably won’t even see him.”

Rose Ellen shook her head, but for the first time in her life had the good sense not to argue. Instead, she turned to her daughter. “Did you hear, Annalise? You’re not to bother Mr. Archibald!”

Annalise nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Emma took in the girl’s somber expression and felt a piercing pain in her heart. So far she hadn’t seen the girl crack a smile, and she never spoke unless spoken to. Annalise, too, had spent her life in the shadow of the force that was Rose Ellen, and obviously the experience had been just as spirit-withering for her as it had been for Emma.

Annalise dutifully got up and began gathering things from the wagon. Emma helped them both down, noting
that Rose Ellen didn’t make a move to carry her own things this time.

“At least I can look forward to sleeping in my old bed again,” Rose Ellen said with false brightness.

Emma winced. “Oh…well…”

Rose Ellen shot her a look of utter disbelief. “You haven’t put Mr. Archibald in my room!”

“No, he’s in Daddy’s.”

“What? The best room in the house?”

“Well…he
is
paying,” she lied.

Rose Ellen frowned. “If it’s that girl, we’ll just tell her to move.”

Lorna was now sleeping in the attic room. “I’m afraid Davy is the one in your room.”

Rose Ellen shrugged. “Even better. Little boys can sleep anywhere.”

“But he’s ill. With chicken pox.”

“So? Annalise has had chicken pox. There’s nothing to fear.”

“
You
haven’t had them, Rose Ellen,” Emma reminded her.

Rose Ellen blinked. “Good heavens! You mean I might end up catching a disease from some little pauper boy?”

“We’ll just have to be careful,” Emma assured her.

But there was much more to be careful about than just Davy and his chicken pox. For starters, she had to make sure her sister never laid eyes on the outlaw, who would be staying just one room away.

Now, how was she going to manage that?

D
espite Emma’s best intentions, and her vows to be conciliatory and patient, her nerves began to unravel from the moment Rose Ellen stepped foot in the house.

Everyone was on edge. Lorna sensed immediately that Emma’s sister didn’t approve of her and didn’t want her in her family’s home, which set her off crying. She cried whenever she saw Emma, or Rose Ellen, or even Annalise. Annalise was shocked at the idea of having to share a small spare room with her mother, and displeased with the loose state of affairs in Aunt Emma’s household. She spent the balance of the day on the verge of tears herself, and everywhere Emma turned, it seemed that she was faced with her niece’s disapproving scowl.

But at least Annalise was silent. Rose Ellen, on the other hand, was very vocal. Though she kept her promise not to say anything—
overtly
—to Lorna, she managed to make her feelings known by venting her rage at the house in general.

“Honestly, Emma!” she exclaimed the minute she entered the kitchen. “Those new curtains are so tacked together and cheap looking! Wherever did you get them?”

“I made them,” Lorna confessed, bursting into a flood of tears.

It took twenty minutes of Emma’s consoling to convince Lorna that the yellow-checked curtains were sweet and just right for the room—which they were. But Rose Ellen, she discovered, who usually couldn’t stand old things, expected everything in her ancestral home to stay just as it had always been, with Emma serving as curator.

“What happened to Daddy’s old chair?” she asked in outrage, seeing that the item was missing from the parlor. The worn-out old chair now resided in the spare bedroom.

“I moved it upstairs,” Emma said.

“By yourself?”

“Lorna helped me.”

Rose Ellen’s piercing gaze of disapproval alighted on Lorna only for an instant, but an instant was all it took to dissolve Lorna onto the settee in a pool of tears. Emma spent ten more minutes explaining that it wasn’t Lorna’s fault—she would have moved the old chair nevertheless. The truth was, after their father’s death, she hadn’t been able to bear looking at it empty. It had made her feel so alone.

Now when she was bumping into hysterical people wherever she turned, it was hard to believe she’d ever been alone. And in the back of her mind was always the fear that her “boarder,” the reclusive Mr. Archibald, would be discovered.

“I’d better check on Mr. Archibald.” She grabbed the wrapped whiskey bottle, eager to get away from the tension permeating the downstairs.

Lorna ran after Emma as she headed for the stairs. “Emma, there’s something I have to tell you.”

Emma turned a little more sharply than she should have. Her sympathies were all with Lorna, but her patience with everyone was wearing thin. “Honestly, Lorna, I was tired of looking at that old battered chair every day. I swear it.”

Lorna shook her head. “It’s not about the chair, it’s about…” She lowered her voice. “Mr. Archibald.”

Emma’s brows shot up in inquiry. “What about him?”

“With your sister showing up and all, I almost forgot to tell you. While you were away, I caught Mr. Archibald downstairs, snooping around your desk.”

“Snooping!” Emma frowned.

“Don’t you think he was just hunting for cards…or poker chips, or something like that?”

They should be so lucky! There was no telling what an outlaw would be searching for…but Emma could guess at several likely possibilities.

“I made him go upstairs immediately,” Lorna explained. “And I don’t think he’ll be back down again any time soon. He almost didn’t make it back up the stairs again at all. The poor man tried to hide it, but by the time he reached the landing he looked greener than a tree frog.”

Emma pursed her lips. None of this was good news—except perhaps that Johann wouldn’t be in any shape to leave. While that suited her feminine interest, it also worried her. How long could she shelter a wanted man in her house with so many people about, especially when he seemed to be getting restless?

She marched upstairs and rapped lightly at his door. When she heard “Come in,” she pushed the door open and found him sitting up in bed. There was no evidence of the man’s having looked like a frog mere hours before. His color was improved. And his smile—a row of even white teeth gleaming out at her from beneath his dark rugged growth of beard—made her heart skip erratically in her chest.

She slipped inside and leaned against the shut door, holding up the bag. “As you requested.”

“Ah, the spoils of victory!”

Emma skirted the bed and sat down in the chair by the window. She took the preposterously large bottle out of the bag and held it up for his approval.

He laughed. “Why didn’t you just bring a whole keg?”

She lifted her chin. “I hope you appreciate the scandal I created at the mercantile. Folks in town now believe I’m a tippling spinster.”

Again that grin sent her heart into unnerving palpitations. “Why didn’t you just explain that you had a new gentleman friend who enjoys his liquor?”

“They wouldn’t have believed me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve never had a gentleman friend,” she confessed. Immediately she regretted it. Why should she tell this man anything at all about her personal history?

“I can’t believe that.”

Discussing her nonexistent love life with a desperado wasn’t something she wanted to do, and gazing into his coal-dark eyes made her so tongue-tied she doubted she could carry the conversation much further anyway. She looked down at her hands. “We have some visitors.”

“I noticed.” He nodded toward the bottle and glass on the table beside her. “Feel free to pour a glass for me at any time, by the way.”

She opened the bottle and poured the whiskey into a large glass. “It’s my sister, Rose Ellen.”

A frown creased Johann’s brow, and for a moment it almost seemed as if he had a prior acquaintance with her sister. “Is that what all that caterwauling downstairs is about?”

“You heard all the way up here?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that woman’s voice could be heard all the way up to Montana.”

Emma took a generous slug of the whiskey herself. “I
didn’t expect her, or of course I would have told you. And by the way, I explained to her that you were a boarder.”

His dark brows arched with interest. “A lie, Emma?”

She shifted uncomfortably on the stiff spindly chair. “I didn’t feel like explaining your mysterious appearance on my doorstep. You see, Rose Ellen is the suspicious type. Rose Ellen might think you aren’t who you say you are.”

For a moment their gazes met and held; then Emma finished off the glass. She set the empty down on the table and leaned back, feeling somewhat more relaxed. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t contradict my story. I’ve also explained to my sister that you are an invalid, which you are. You shouldn’t be getting out of bed.”

“Lorna tattled?”

She nodded, noting that he didn’t look the least bit remorseful for having flown his coop. “She said you looked as if you were searching for something.”

His eyes sparked with curiosity. “Do you think I’m a thief?”

She didn’t know what to say. Reason told her that he absolutely was a thief—he’d murdered someone during a bank robbery, the posters had said. And yet he didn’t seem like a murderer, or a bank robber, or even so much as a lowly pickpocket. “What were you doing downstairs?”

He shrugged. “I’m not used to being penned up like this.”

A jail cell would be much worse
, she thought.

Maybe it was good that there were more people in the house. He would be more likely to keep to himself if he feared who might be standing just outside his door. “You’re not to leave this room again until I tell you you’re well enough.”

He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

“My sister used to be the sheriff’s sweetheart, you know,” she added for good measure.

He let out a rough chuckle. “I never met a lawman yet who had good taste in women.”

She regarded him closely and felt a grin tug at her lips. Whiskey was potent stuff, and it was going straight to her head. It made her want to finish that conversation she’d been afraid to finish just minutes before. “Why don’t you believe I’ve never had a gentleman friend?”

He didn’t hurry his answer, which pleased her. He didn’t strike her as a silver-tongued slicker who would say anything just to get what he wanted. “Maybe because I’ve been around you enough to know that you’ve got qualities any man in his right mind would look for in a woman. If you haven’t had gentlemen come calling on you before now, my only answer is that the men around here must all be crazy.”

“Or maybe they were sidetracked,” she said, coming to a realization.

He frowned at her in question.

She poured another glass of spirits, but this time was careful to hand it to him instead of tossing it down herself. She had an inkling that she would regret having said as much as she had already. “If you met my sister, you’d understand. No man can resist her.”

“I could,” he answered, taking a slug.

She shook her head. “Rose Ellen has a magical effect on men. You’ve never seen her up close. She’s very beautiful.”

“She needs to be, with a personality that reduces grown women to tears.”

“It’s just that Rose Ellen has certain standards….” Emma didn’t know why she was standing up for her sister. Maybe it was just reflex, like poking someone’s elbow.
Hearing someone speak ill of a family member naturally made her leap to the defensive.

“And no one ever meets them,” Johann finished for her.

She smiled. “No, no one ever does.” Some part of her wanted to think that Johann, or Lang, or whoever he was, was different, that he would not fall for Rose Ellen’s undeniable charms. But she wasn’t a fool. The past was all the proof she needed that Johann would fall for her sister like a boulder dropping off a cliff.

But what did she care if a man who was undoubtedly an outlaw had a weakness for her sister? She stood resolutely, determined not to let her pride sting when the inevitable meeting took place.

She just hoped it didn’t take place too soon.

“I’d better check on Davy,” she said.

“He was hoping for licorice whips.”

She grinned. “He’ll get them.”

“Then he’ll be a happy boy.”

Just then, a crash shattered the silence in the house below them, followed by muffled words in a harsh tone, then quick footsteps and a familiar anguished wail.

“It will be nice to have one happy person in the house,” Emma muttered with a sigh as she left the room.

Lang sat in bed rubbing his itchy beard and brooding. About the only advantage of Emma’s sister’s arrival was that now, instead of agonizing about being wanted for murder, he discovered that his mind was focused on a whole new dilemma. Namely, the pros and cons of living just over the Colby dining room.

He hadn’t met Rose Ellen yet and already he disliked her intensely. Part of his animosity stemmed from having read the insulting remarks she’d written to Emma. Of course, he wasn’t supposed to have looked at those any
more than he should have been eavesdropping on the conversation downstairs now. But that didn’t change the fact that Rose Ellen was an arrogant snob who didn’t appreciate her sister’s worth.

He drummed his fingers and listened some more to the spirited discussion going on below. It was mostly a one-sided affair, with Rose Ellen alternately asking Emma to wait on her hand and foot and then berating her for her bad judgment. For instance, for taking in a boarder.

Him. He had to agree with Rose Ellen on that one.

Restless, he climbed out of bed. He couldn’t pace very well with his leg being what it was, so he lowered himself into Emma’s spindly little chair and drummed his fingers angrily against the table. He didn’t like to think of Emma being browbeaten, or belittled. In her letter, Rose Ellen had repeatedly told Emma she should give up her house—giving the proceeds to Rose Ellen, naturally—and live in Galveston. Maybe she was here now to make her appeal in person. Would Emma back down? He sensed that Emma at her core was a stubborn, independent creature. Then again, that sister of hers seemed to have the personality of a tornado.

It shouldn’t matter to him so much anyway, he thought to himself. He stood again, and went to the bureau. On top of it lay a shaving cup, brush and razor on a small silver plate. This beard of his was driving him crazy!

Rashly he filled the washbasin with water and began shaving off the dense facial hair, feeling more human as the skin beneath became exposed. And for a few minutes he was able to concentrate on the task of shaving, not on the sounds of argument below.

But when he was finished, his thoughts drifted back to Emma. He turned and eyed the bag the whiskey had arrived in. There was something still inside it. Curious, he
reached in and brought out a stack of thick folded paper. He unfolded one of them and gaped in astonishment at what he saw.

Amos!

It spooked him at first to see his brother so clearly—the lanky hair, the severe jaw, the cold, steely eyes. It was like suddenly having a bad dream come to life. For the past few days, that’s what his month with Amos had seemed like—a bad dream. Here was evidence that his time with Amos’s gang of cohorts had had definite repercussions. The picture resembled himself, especially now that he was clean shaven, and bore his name underneath. To anyone who recognized him, there was an offer of a hundred-dollar reward.

Lang felt sick.

He hobbled to the mirror, examining his face. His hair was actually darker than Amos’s, and curlier, but that was something a crude drawing couldn’t really capture. Anyone looking at him, then this picture, might very well believe that he was the killer advertised in it.

He was holding the picture up, still examining it against his own image, when a cold realization occurred to him. Emma. She’d gone to town today and pulled down these posters herself, in broad daylight. And there was only one reason she would have done such a thing—she knew the picture was of him, and she wanted to protect him.

The hand that was holding the poster dropped to his side, and he stared at his reflection, thunderstruck. Why would Emma Colby want to save his worthless hide? She knew it wasn’t lawful to aid a criminal. Why would she put her own reputation on the line to keep him from harm?