The Outlaw Bride (10 page)

“Will asked us to Sunday service tomorrow,” Katherine ventured, keeping her voice low. The house rose in the distance, painted orange and purple by the sun as it sank beneath the bluff. An unexpected sense of coming home filled her.

Connor kept his gaze focused on the rutted road ahead of them. For a moment, he said nothing, and she thought he hadn’t heard her, or worse, ignored her. Then he sighed. “I know.”

“I—I thought it might be nice to go. To take Jenny.”

Conflicting emotions crossed Connor’s face in the dimming light until finally he shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

His jaw tensed and he adjusted his grip on the reins. “Because I said so.”

Katherine took a breath and attempted another route. “I thought it might be good for Jenny to be around other children.”

He turned to look at her, anger dipping his brow. The setting sun reflected in his eyes like a burning fire. “
You
think?”

His words struck her, as if he didn’t think she deserved an opinion on the matter. Maybe he was right. Maybe she didn’t. Who was she anyway but the hired help? Yet he had hired her to care for Jenny. That meant something to her. She couldn’t just sit in silence if she thought she could help.

“Yes I do,” she said, whispering the words quickly before her courage failed her.

“Oh, well then.” He shook his head. “If
you
think so. I mean you’ve been here all of what—fifteen days?”

She swallowed. “Sixteen.”

“Sixteen. Well, I guess that makes you even more of an expert on what’s good for Jenny. Far more than me, because I’ve only had six months. But you, no, you’ve had sixteen whole days.”

Katherine sat stunned. Had she heard him wrong? “What do you mean you’ve only had six months?”

Connor’s mouth pulled tight and he glanced down at Jenny before shifting his angry gaze at Katherine. “Never mind.”

Again the niggling voice poked her, demanding attention, but Connor’s expression clearly indicated he was far from amenable to further conversation. Frustration boiled inside of Katherine. Well, if Connor wouldn’t talk to her, she would go to town for Sunday services with or without him, and she’d find out what she needed to know from the people in town, just see if she wouldn’t.

“Well, I’m going to church on Sunday,” she stated, staring straight ahead. Purple smudged the skyline as the sun slipped beneath the bluff.

She could feel Connor’s gaze as it landed on her, and the cool absence of it when he finally looked away.

“Do what you want.”

“I will.”

“Fine.”

Silence descended, awkward and thorny. Connor drove the buggy up to the house, yanking harder on the brake than was necessary. He climbed down and walked around to her side, jerking his hand toward her. “Hand me Jenny.”

Katherine put her arm around the little girl as she rubbed her eyes and looked around, dazed from sleep.

“Jenny, sweetheart, go to your pa.”

Jenny’s brow crinkled and tears filled her eyes as she looked from Katherine to Connor.

“Don’t say that,” Connor said, his voice curt. He reached for Jenny.

“Why not?” Trepidation crept over Katherine.

Jenny climbed into Connor’s waiting arms and hugged his neck, nuzzling into the curve. Grief etched deeper into Connor’s features.

“Just don’t.”

His tone warned her to leave it, but her conscience wouldn’t allow it. Too many things did not add up. “What did you mean you had been gone until six months ago? Gone where?”

Connor glared at her. “Away.”

“Who looked after Jenny while you were away?” Blood pulsed in her ears. It couldn’t be true. Please don’t let it be true.

Connor hesitated, his hand cupping the back of Jenny’s head where it rested on his shoulder. “Her father. Jenny is Grant’s daughter, not mine.”

“Grant?”

“My brother.”

Katherine paced the kitchen floor, her hands twisting around each other. She had put Jenny to bed while Connor took the buggy down to the barn and unhitched the horses. Exhausted from a full day, Jenny had fallen asleep quickly, but Katherine didn’t fool herself into thinking it would come that easy for her.

Jenny was Grant’s daughter.

Connor’s words reverberated in her mind.

His girl.
She
was the one Katherine had been searching for. Right under her nose the entire time and she’d been too blind or stupid to see it. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to.

The knowledge sickened her.

Her husband had orphaned a little girl. And he’d done it because of her.

What did she do now?

The door behind her opened and Katherine spun around. Connor cast her a quick glance before turning his back and hanging his coat and hat on the peg by the door. His broad shoulders slumped. “Guess you’re waiting up for some kind of explanation.”

She nodded, half expecting him to tell her it was none of her business. But he didn’t. He motioned her to a chair at the kitchen table. Once she was seated he sat down across from her, his hands splayed flat against the smooth wood.

“Jenny’s my niece.”

Katherine pursed her lips, wrestling her emotions under control. Connor and Grant were brothers. A part of her had suspected it all along, she just hadn’t wanted to see it, to acknowledge how close to home the man’s death had hit for these people. The guilt of it was almost too much to bear.

“What happened to Jenny’s father?” The part that had turned a blind eye to the obvious resurrected itself as she prayed for a miracle, prayed she had the wrong house, the wrong people. That the telltale signs of tragedy that lurked in every nook and cranny of this house did not point back to her. That the responsibility for the sadness coating everything and everyone that stepped across the threshold did not rest at her door.

But it did. She knew it. And Connor’s words only confirmed it.

“He’s dead. Murdered.” His finger traced the outline of the wood grain. “Stagecoach robbery seven months back.”

Thick tears filled her eyes until she was afraid to blink for fear they would trip over her lids and fall down her cheeks. She covered her mouth and smothered a sob. There would be a reckoning. She would be judged and held accountable. She may not have orchestrated Rogan’s attack on the stagecoach, but maybe, just maybe if she’d agreed to go with him willingly he might have left the others alive.

But she hadn’t. And now Grant was dead and buried and only Jenny remained. And Connor.

Tell Con I’m sorry.

Sorry for what? For leaving them? For ripping Connor away from the life he had been leading to take on the mantle of father and sheriff once worn by his brother?

Guilt flooded her. How many other families like Grant’s were out there? How many more lives had been destroyed by the man she’d married? What if she had turned him in to the authorities? Could she have prevented this?

“Kate?”

“How long has Jenny been—” She stopped her question. She already knew. Amelia said Jenny used to be a little chatterbox. Used to be.

Connor bowed his head. “I didn’t know her before. I left Fatal Bluff eight years ago. Amelia and Bart said before Grant’s murder she was full of life. By the time I got here though she was—” he paused and looked up, worry paling his skin and leaching the life from his eyes. “Well, you see how she is now.”

“Has she said anything?”

Connor shook his head. “No. It’s like she’s crawled inside herself and won’t come out. Or can’t. I don’t know which.”

Quiet filled the room. Katherine’s stomach burned and she wondered if she might be sick.

“What will you do?”

“What can I do?” The sound of his voice matched the bleakness of his features.

“Children are resilient,” she offered, wanting to erase his pain and replace it with hope. “I lost my own father in an accident at Jenny’s age. It was horrible, but you get through it. Maybe she just—”

Connor cut her off, his gaze narrowing. “What do you mean you lost your father when you were Jenny’s age? I thought he died in a fire.
A year or so ago
, wasn’t it?”

The blood drained from her face, leaving her lightheaded.

“M—my father died when I was nine,” she said, stumbling her way around the truth and meshing it with the lie. “Mama remarried shortly after that. Mr. Stockdale was my stepfather.”

Connor nodded slowly. His gaze pinned her, left her cornered, trapped and on the verge of confessing. She hated lying. More than that, she hated lying to him. He deserved far better than this. But better was the truth, and the truth brought with it a pain all its own.

“How did your father die?”

“His wagon overturned. It had been full of supplies, and he was crushed beneath the weight.” She didn’t bother filling in more details than that. Didn’t bother elaborating that the supplies contained an accumulation of their lives to that point, or that they were traveling west from Missouri to start a new life after the war. The horror of that day had never left her, watching her father gasp for air. The other men struggling to pull him free. Her mother’s screams when their efforts were in vain.

“What was your name before that?”

The hair on the back of her neck prickled with unease. “Before what?”

“Before your mother remarried.”

“Mackenzie,” she told him, using her maiden name. At least that wasn’t a lie.

He stared at her for a moment until his gaze made her skin burn and sizzle. The air between them seemed charged with an undercurrent of awareness. Then Connor abruptly looked away, breaking the spell weaving its way around them.

“I’m sorry about your pa.”

Katherine nodded and pushed the ugly memories away. “It was a long time ago. And I survived. Jenny will too. It just takes time.”

He nodded. “I can take you to church tomorrow, if you want.”

The small concession surprised her, but while he had been busy unhitching the horses and she had been wrestling with the consequences of the crime perpetrated in her name, she knew she could never show her face in church.

She didn’t belong there.

Too much blood colored her conscience and stained her soul.

“No. That won’t be necessary.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Thought you said you were going.”

Katherine shook her head. She couldn’t imagine facing the Holkums now, knowing what her actions had wrought. They treated her like family, but all she had done was destroy those close to them.

“No. I—”
I
what? “I don’t have anything to wear,” she finally said. “Nothing suitable, anyway.”

Connor took her explanation at face value. How easily the lies were beginning to slip from her tongue. She wondered if there would come a time when the lies became so abundant they outnumbered the truths.

“Fine.” He rose from his chair and looked down at her. “It’s been a long day. We should turn in.”

Her gaze flitted away like a hummingbird, not resting on anything for more than a few seconds and avoiding Connor altogether. She wanted to turn in. She wanted to slip beneath the covers and find him there. Curl into his long, hard body and find solace.

But she didn’t deserve it.

She never would.

A sinking sadness filled her. Just returning the letter and ring would never be enough.

Grant’s words haunted her.

“…make sure she’s okay…promise.”

But she wasn’t okay. She wasn’t even in the same territory as okay. And Katherine couldn’t leave here until she was. She had made a promise, and this time she would not fail.

***

Connor stood over the chest nestled against the far wall of the bedroom, his back to the door. Sun streaked through the window and soaked into the aged cedar. The key dangled in his hand. He jostled it against his palm, debating what to do. It wasn’t that big a deal really. He’d never even seen Emily in these clothes, so what did it matter? It wasn’t as if she was coming back to get them. They were just sitting there, waiting to be eaten through by moths if they hadn’t been already.

Exasperated with himself, Connor crouched down and jammed the key into the lock before he could think on it any more. He’d put it off long enough. The minute he’d walked into the house he’d erased every hint of her, not that there was much left after all these years. But what he’d found he’d put away, out of sight.

The key turned with ease. Connor’s heart picked up its pace. He thought he could avoid the memories forever, just shove them aside and pretend they had never happened. Maybe he could have continued on that way too, but Kate had looked so damned distressed last night when she refused to go to church, too embarrassed by how she would look.

It had touched him somehow.

Something about Kate had slipped beneath his defenses. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment the change had happened, but it had. Swiftly and completely. And he was hooked. He knew it, and he hated it. But he couldn’t help it. All she had to do was look at him with those sea green eyes and he was done for.

Connor groaned and rubbed a hand down his face, letting it come to rest on the curved top of the chest. He could feel the ridges of the carvings he’d shaped into the wood all those years ago. Different flowers he’d found pictures of in books but couldn’t remember the names of after all this time. He was surprised she’d kept it, given how things had ended.

Inwardly bracing himself, Connor pushed the top open. Its hinges creaked in the quiet, the sound scraping along his nerves. He waited for her scent to waft up and assault him, but time and the cedar wood had done their job. He realized then that he couldn’t even remember Emily’s scent. Or the sound of her laughter. Every time he tried it was Kate’s sparkling laughter he heard.

Connor dug a hand deep into the chest and pulled out a soft green shirtwaist. With hesitant movements, he lifted the material and held it against his nose and mouth. He inhaled, slowly at first, then more deeply. Waited for her essence to fill his senses, for the bitterness and betrayal to overwhelm him.

Nothing.

“Connor?”

At the sound of Kate’s voice, Connor spun on his heel and sprang upward, the shirtwaist still in his hand. He stared, blinking, and stood there like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar.

“I thought you were in the garden.”

“I was.” She leaned a little to her left to peer around him. “What are you doing in here?”

He cleared his throat. “It is my room,” he said, throwing out the only justification he could think of for his being in her room fishing through an old trunk.

Hurt pinched her expression. “I know.”

“I mean…that is…” Dammit! Why did she always get him so tongue-tied? He was trying to do something nice and he couldn’t even get the words out without mucking it up.

“I’ll just leave you then.” She started to back out of the room.

“Wait.” He held a hand out, the shirtwaist dangling from it like a peace offering. He waved his other hand at the chest behind him, trying to get his brain and tongue to work in tandem. “There are clothes in here. I thought maybe you could make use of them.”

There. He’d said it. The deed was done.

Kate took a step forward and leaned to her right to peer around him. Her eyes widened, and then she turned on him. “Where did they come from?”

“Come from?” She would have to ask that question. “From…they belonged to Jenny’s mother.”

An emotion he couldn’t place rippled across her features. She shook her head. “Oh no. I couldn’t take her things.”

“She’s not going to mind. It isn’t like she’s got need of them. She passed on a while back.” He waited for the words to put a chokehold on his heart. They didn’t. Just a dull ache that faded with each passing beat.

Perhaps he should tell her the truth about Emily. It wasn’t any big secret. Not in this town. Besides, better she hear it from him, rather than the embellished version of the truth she’d pick up in town. The one that portrayed him as some kind of hero, swooping in and taking responsibility for Jenny.

He was no hero. If there had been a heroic bone in his body he would have returned long before and made amends with his brother, instead of riding in after Grant was already dead to pick up the pieces of his life.

Maybe if he told her that, it would build a bridge between them and give her reason to confide in him. He knew she was hiding something. She was far too evasive whenever the subject of her past came up.

In the end, he let the moment pass. He was not looking to get involved, regardless of his feelings. He’d done that once. It had ended in disaster.

“Anyway,” he said, closing the subject with a brusque tone. “The clothes are yours. You may as well make use of them.”