Loving Linsey (18 page)

He howled in pain, and she used the distraction to slide off the horse.

She hit the ground hard on her bad ankle. Her knees buckled. A shard of agony speared through her heel, up her leg, crippling her.

Hearing the thud of boots upon the ground, Linsey reined in her agony and, knowing she'd never be able to outrun him in her condition, searched the ground for a weapon. She gripped a fist-sized rock and waited with bated breath until the sour odor of whiskey closed in on her. A quick twist to the right put
her out of Bishop's reach and he fell to the ground.

Linsey reared up onto her knees and raised the paltry rock over her head. “Stay away from me, Bishop.”

“Now, Linsey, is this any way to act toward your intended?”

Linsey almost choked. She'd eat poisonous berries before she ever married a snake like him. “I'm warning you for the last time, stay away from me.”

“Why are you being so difficult? We are perfect for each other—your beauty and money, my social position . . .”

So that was it. She'd always suspected that Bishop lusted after her trust fund, but he'd never admitted to it until now.

“Now put down the rock, and let's get down to some real sparking.”

At the gleam in his eye, Linsey scrambled back, just before he lunged. His hand wrapped around her sore ankle, his fingers biting into the injured muscles. An agonized scream of pain and fury erupted from her throat.

Linsey didn't think, couldn't think past a desperation to make him leave her alone. She simply brought the rock down on his skull at the same time a loud
pop
rent the air.

He dropped like a sack of grain.

Linsey stared at him, stunned, paying little mind to the echo of a report swirling around her. “Oh, sweet Jesus, what have I done?” Her breath came in heaving gulps. God, what if she'd killed him?

Holding panic at bay, she leaned forward
and reached for his neck. A pulse beat strong and regular against her fingertips. She slumped back on her heels, relief rolling through her. He'd always been an irritating rodent, but she'd never have wished him dead. Especially by her own hand.

“Miss Linsey?”

Startled, Linsey twisted around. Through a cloud of dust, she discovered Jarvis sitting on a big bay, holding the reins to an extra roan, and Oren Potter dismounting a cream-colored gelding, a shotgun ready in his hand. She was amazed that she hadn't heard them approach.

“Did he hurt you?” Oren asked.

She got up off the ground and brushed the dirt from her skirts. “Not as bad as I hurt him. He'll have a knot the size of a lemon and a whopping good headache when he wakes up.”

Both men looked first at Bishop, who lay face down in the dirt, still as a stump, then at her, then at Bishop again.

Oren moved to his side, rolled him over with his foot, and studied him closely as if making sure he was still breathing.

Linsey tamped down a swell of guilt. It was his own fault, she thought defiantly. He'd only gotten what he deserved. If he hadn't been pawing at her, she wouldn't have bashed him over the head.

“Mine or yours?” Jarvis asked of the blacksmith.

“Hers. Other than a bump on the head, there ain't a scratch on him.”

Linsey listened to the exchange with puzzled curiosity. Only when Jarvis holstered his pistol did it click in her mind that the pops she'd heard hadn't been Bishop's skull cracking, but gunshots fired by one or both of these men. “It seems I owe the two of you my thanks.”

“And it seems you didn't need our help,” Mr. Potter replied. “You handled him just fine on your own.”

“Nonetheless, thank you for coming to my aid.”

“You can thank
me
by telling me where you left my balloon.”

“A mile or two back that way.” She pointed east, deciding that this wasn't the time to tell him what had happened to it. “I expect you'll find Daniel between here and there, too.”

“You didn't clobber him, too, did ya?”

“Of course not,” Linsey snapped. Though she probably should have, for sending her off with Bishop. “Last I saw, he was in perfect health and waiting by Mr. Potter's wagon. He figured you might have been looking for us,” she told the smithy.

“Your sister hailed me down. She's mighty worried about you.”

His voice was so gentle it almost brought tears to her eyes. “I figured she would be. I'd be deeply grateful if one of you could take me home.”

“Can you ride?”

“No. I've always meant to learn, but—”

“That's fine; I'll take you up with me.” Oren turned to the lamplighter and said, “Jarvis,
why don't you go on and fetch Daniel while I see Miss Linsey home?”

After Jarvis set his heels to the roan's flanks, Linsey gestured toward Bishop. “What should we do about him?”

“He'll have to walk. There ain't enough horses.”

“He has his own horse,” Linsey felt compelled to point out.

With a delightfully wicked glint in his eye, Oren gave the animal a deliberate smack across the rump and sent it galloping off across the prairie. “As I said, there ain't enough horses.”

Something wasn't right. Daniel felt it in his bones. He couldn't put his finger on it, but as he strode back to where the balloon had crashed, there was a knot in his gut that wouldn't go away. He'd had this same feeling just before he'd gotten the letter from his dad telling him to come home because his mother was sick.

Was his Dad ill now?

No, he didn't think that was it. It was something else. Almost as if someone needed him. But who? The only one he'd ever had the slightest connection to was his mother, and she was beyond needing anyone.

Daniel shook off the mysterious uneasiness. He could no more explain the feeling than he could explain why he was returning to the balloon to search for a stupid bauble.

Yet twenty minutes later, that was exactly what he was doing, scouring the crash site for
anything that might resemble a good-luck token. A glint of gold in the grass near the spot where they'd fallen caught his attention. Daniel bent down and extracted a delicate chain.
This
was her powerful protection? A four-petalled leaf trapped between two glass disks?

She seemed to think so. He'd never heard anyone sound so convinced about anything as when she claimed that awful things happened whenever she was without the charm.

His brows pulled into a sudden frown. She'd noticed the amulet missing just before Harvey had shown up. Before that, she'd twisted her ankle because the basket had ripped. Daniel recalled each development in backward sequence. The almost-kiss, the crash, the broken equipment, the ripping up of the stakes . . .

If she'd lost her token when they'd first arrived at the empty lot—

Daniel cut off the thought with a disgusted grimace and shoved the amulet into his trouser pocket. No sane, rational, logical person believed in such flights of fancy. And he was nothing if not sane, rational, and logical.

Except there was nothing rational about the way he felt around a woman who was as nutty as a pecan tree.

The pounding of hooves created a welcome diversion, and Daniel raised his head just as Jarvis reined in his horse. He dismounted, walked toward the tree in a daze, and stared up into the branches with an expression of such comical despair that Daniel might have
laughed if he didn't feel so bad. Jarvis had been fascinated with ballooning ever since he'd come across an article about Montgolfiers when he was fifteen. And though he'd been saving every spare cent he made, and often talked about seeing the country, Daniel hadn't realized until recently that he meant to do it in one of the hydrogen crafts.

A few steps brought him to his friend's side. Daniel pressed a consoling hand to Jarvis's shoulder. “I'm sorry about your balloon, Robert.”

He shook his head. Shaggy brown hair brushed the upturned collar of his box coat. “She ruint it, Dan'l. That consarned female ruint my air ship. Three-hunnerd dollars right down the shitter.”

Daniel didn't know what to say. He was glad, though, that Linsey wasn't around right now. Jarvis in a temper was not a pretty sight, and the farther away she got from him, the safer she'd be.

“Maybe we can fix it. Mrs. Mittermier is supposed to be magic with a needle and thread. I'll wager she can mend the tears.”

“That's the least of the damage. There's still the busted tanks, the car, all my meters . . .” He ripped his hat off his head and flung it to the ground. “
Damn
that girl! I shoulda let Harvey have her.”

Daniel's attention swerved from the tree to Jarvis. “What did you say?”

“I said I shoulda let Harvey have her. Me and Oren saw him gettin' a little too friendly with her, so we fired off a couple shots to scare
him off. And this”—he lifted both hands and jabbed them in the air at the tree—“
this
is what I get.”

You'll be sorry for this, Daniel
. He saw again the contempt in her eyes, heard again the accusation in her voice. He'd thought it humorous to send her off with the pretentious sot, thought it might even the score for all the trials he'd suffered at her hands.

He'd never once considered that he might be putting her in danger. “Where is she now?”

“Home, probably. Leastwise, that's where Oren said he was taking her.”

Without pausing to think about his actions, Daniel strode at a clipped pace to Jarvis's horse. He'd just inserted one foot in the stirrup when Jarvis clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“Where are you going?”

“To check on Linsey.”

“You got a death wish? That woman has been a curse to you for years, and you're willing to go off half-cocked because some fella was rolling in the dirt with her? What's gotten into you?”

For a moment Daniel just stared at Jarvis. Then the haze in his eyes slowly receded. Good question. Hadn't he already learned that his weakness for that girl always resulted in disaster? Besides, when had he been appointed her protector? She was safe, being escorted home by a man more than capable of protecting her from harm.

He dragged in and released several deep breaths. “You're right.” Again he said, “You're right; I'd only be asking for trouble.”

“That's the gospel truth. Hellfire, Dan'l, for a minute there you had me worried that you might be going soft for Linsey Gordon.”

Soft? For Linsey?

His wits might have been rattled up a bit lately, but he hadn't lost them completely. “No need to worry, my friend. The day I go soft for Linsey Gordon is the day Cooter Hobart gives up moonshining.”

An itchy nose means you will be kissed, cursed, or vexed, run against a gatepost, or shake hands with a fool.

B
y the time Daniel got back to Horseshoe, the sun had long since fallen behind the horizon, plunging the town into shadows. He made his way wearily up the stairs to his room, tossed his hat on the bed, then stripped out of his filthy shirt. He'd felt it was only fair that since he'd taken the first—and last—voyage in his friend's balloon, he should stick around and help him haul the mangled craft home. Now all he wanted was a bath, a meal, and sleep—all at once, if he could manage it.

Wearing just his trousers and socks, he returned downstairs to fetch the wooden bathing tub. He set the tub in the middle of the kitchen, placed an oil lamp with the wick turned down low in the center of the small table, then stoked the stove to boil water.

He'd just placed a metal pail under the sink pump when a grumpy voice invaded the peace.

“About damned time you decided to come home.”

Daniel glanced over his shoulder at his father, standing in the doorway. The tassel of his long flannel nightcap draped over his shoulder and brushed against his protruding stomach, which was covered by a matching red nightshirt that barely hid his knobby knees.

“I had to help Jarvis get his balloon out of a tree,” Daniel said.

“I heard you and the Gordon girl crashed the blamed thing.”

No, Linsey had crashed the balloon. But Daniel didn't bother correcting his father.

“What in Sam Hill did you think you were doing, Junior?”

He closed his eyes for a moment, then lifted the filled bucket out of the dry sink. “Not now, Dad.”

“Not now? Not now? I had to cancel visits with four patients and close up the shop just to come searching for you.”

It figured. Daniel Sr. couldn't dredge up any concern for the welfare of his only son, but he had plenty to spare for his practice. With a wry expression, Daniel replied, “You shouldn't have gone to the trouble on my account.”

“What were you thinking to take off in that contraption?”

Daniel sighed. It was the same question he'd asked himself a thousand times during the afternoon. It always came back to the same answer. “I don't know.”

“Where was your sense of responsibility?”

“I
don't
know.”

A critical gaze touched him clear to the bone as he poured water into the huge vat atop the stove. Daniel, Sr., had never been one to hide his disapproval, but tonight Daniel felt it keener than ever.

“You'd think for all the money I spent on sending you to Tulane, they'd have taught you some damned common sense!”

He'd never let him live down the fact that he'd paid for Daniel's schooling, would he? “Not when it concerns Linsey Gordon. I doubt even a genius could figure out what goes on in her mind.”

“It don't take a genius to see that she planned this whole thing just to get herself alone with you. A gal sets her sights on a fellow she fancies, then traps him into marriage by claiming he compromised her.”

Was that what happened between his mother and his father? Was that why they'd been so miserable together?

Daniel didn't let himself dwell on the question. He wasn't sure he wanted the answers. “That's a fine theory, Dad, but if she's so bent on forcing me into matrimonial bliss, why was she the one who insisted on walking back to town so her reputation wouldn't be tainted?”