The Rustler's Bride (9 page)

“It can wait. Let it simmer.”

“So…” Victoria drifted back to the scarred worktop in the middle of the kitchen and leaned one hip against the edge, picking a spot where blood and grizzle would be less likely to stain the new overalls she’d bought at the mercantile. The denim fabric Levi Strauss was using now was much more comfortable than her old canvas ones.

The chopping knife flew up and down so fast Mrs. Flynn’s plump fingers were a blur. She finished the task and swept the meat into another pot. “I have a plaid shirt in his size. Blue, like his eyes. A patch on one elbow, and a bit of fraying around the collar. Has a good few washes left in it.”

Victoria shoved her hands into her pockets. “Did he tell you anything else?”

The housekeeper looked up, a subtle reproach in her fleeting glance. “I’m not sure I should be telling you things you ought to know already.” She gave a tiny shrug, as if to give herself permission, and then she went on, “His grandma on his mother’s side was from the Nordic countries. That’s where he gets his fair hair and blue eyes. His grandpa was Cajun. That’s where he got that fancy name. Beaulieu. He said it means a pretty place. His ma loved that name for what it meant.”

“Cajun. Hmmm.” Victoria picked up her coffee cup and took a sip. French, exiled from Canada over a hundred years ago for refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to the British who’d conquered them. That might be where he got his arrogance.

“Where are his parents now?”

“Dead.” Mrs. Flynn clattered her pans. “That’s all he said when I asked. I’m thinking his heart is sore with it. His eyes went blank, like when a curtain comes down at the end of a play.” The housekeeper stole a quick look across the table. “If there ever was a man in need of a home and family, he’s one.”

Victoria made no reply. Mrs. Flynn straightened and wiped her hands on a cloth she took from a hook at the end of the worktop. “I’ll get you that shirt. Can’t let a man be tortured all day with that yellow thing he was wearing this morning at breakfast.”

****

Victoria waited till sunset. Every night, her father took a walk up to the small cemetery on the hillside just to the west of the house. That was the ideal place to start her diplomatic efforts.

She located Declan in the forge, talking to the blacksmith, Abe Leatherhorn.

“I refuse to believe that Hell is hot,” Victoria said as she stepped inside. She inhaled a deep breath of the air that smelled of coal smoke and the peppermint candies Abe was addicted to. “It must be chill and damp.”

Abe roared with good humor. “Miss Ria, what’s you want? You’se want something to be buttering me up.”

Abe had grown up a slave. He had a mat of ebony curls streaked with gray, a bellowing laugh, and huge muscles that bulged beneath his gleaming skin. As always, he wore nothing but singed cotton pants, a tall leather apron, and expensive Montana boots. Every year, he hoarded his wages so he could order a new pair of handmade boots in the latest style, the way a woman might scrimp and save to buy a new gown. He said it was because the first half of his life he’d had no choice but to go barefoot.

Victoria winked at Abe and jerked her head toward Declan. “You get off easy this time. He’s the one I want.” She turned to Declan, who was cranking the iron handle that stirred air onto the coals, making them burn hotter. “I need you to carry something heavy for me. Do you have a moment?”

He straightened, hesitated an instant. “Sure,” he said in that lazy drawl men use when they are reluctant to agree but feel unable refuse.

It did not escape Victoria’s notice that her husband had taken no steps to protect his new shirt against sparks. And, when he’d turned the handle over the coals, it seemed to her that another shoulder seam had just popped open. She had Mrs. Flynn’s shirt in the burlap back over her shoulder, but it could wait.

Declan picked up the black revolver he’d been showing to Abe when she entered. Outlaw’s weapon. Not a nickel plated one that would gleam in the moonlight. He rammed the pistol to the gun belt that circled his lean hips. He had a pair of guns, outlaw style.

He noticed her curious gaze. “The sheriff returned them to me. The deputy rode over to bring them. Not O’Malley,” he added when he saw her frown. “The older one. Sanderson.”

She nodded but said nothing. In silence, Declan followed her around the corner to the back of the stables. She pointed at the shovel leaning against the wall, and the steel bucket next to it, and the heap of pungent earth beyond them.

“Compost,” she said. “I needed to fertilize a rose bush.”

Declan picked up the shovel and dipped the blade into the heap, as gingerly as a child might dip his toes in the river in the middle of the winter chill.

“Manure, you mean,” he said.

“Compost,” she corrected him. “Manure is just…manure. Compost is manure mixed with earth and rotting vegetation.”

She held her breath as a gust of wind blew their way. Perhaps it wasn’t the best possible day to start her diplomatic efforts. Although the ground had dried as soon as the sun came out after the storm, the compost heap still retained the moisture. It was a smelly pile of sludge. Declan bent down and rammed the shovel into the side. When he lifted it out, it made a slurping sound. The torn seams on his shirt unraveled a little more.

“Stop,” Victoria said.

Declan dropped the shovelful into the bucket and craned to peer down his side, inspecting the fabric. “It’ll hold up.”

“I didn’t mean the shirt.” Victoria dropped to her haunches. A plump worm was wriggling in the hollow made by the blade of the shovel. She found a twig on the ground and lifted the creature to safety on the other side of the compost heap.

“There,” she said softly. “Watch out, Mr. Worm. You don’t want to be chopped in half.” She glanced up at Declan over her shoulder. “They can mend, you know. If you chop off a bit by accident, they’ll grow it back.”

Declan made no reply, merely wiped the sweat off his brow with his sleeve. There was another rasp of tearing fabric. Victoria winced. She darted a glance at her burlap bag. Perhaps she should give Declan the new shirt before he ended up half naked, with bits of yellow fabric fluttering around him like decorations on a Christmas tree.

Before she could put her thought into words, Declan had resumed his task. Grunting with effort, he eased the shovel into the compost heap and yanked it up with a sharp wrench of his arms and shoulders as the moist earth stuck together and resisted being parted.

“That’s enough,” Victoria said when the bucket was half full.

Declan set the shovel back against the wall. His face looked ashen. “Oh dear, Victoria said. “Do you have a delicate nose?”

“No,” Declan replied. “I have cracked ribs.”

Victoria bit her lip, full of remorse. Of course. Because he refused to show his pain, she’d forgotten. His skin had almost healed, with just a pink scar across his chin and some scabbing over the left eyebrow and fading green and purple bruising beneath the eye.

“Didn’t seem to bother you last night,” she said feebly.

He did not smile. Not even a tiny smirk.

“Where do you want this lot?” he asked.

“Up on the hill.” She pointed toward the setting sun.

He made an impatient motion with his hand to usher her along. When Victoria set off, Declan picked up the bucket and followed her. She wanted to fall back, so she could watch his slim hips and broad shoulders and that cocky way the black Stetson rode on his head. Then she realized that with the wind from the west, perhaps it was more prudent to keep ahead of him, upwind of the smells.

“Here,” she said when they reached the small cemetery. “This is my mother.”

A mesquite tree provided a slim shade over the blooming rosebush that grew inside a square piece of ground protected by a small iron fence. Behind the rose stood a polished granite gravestone with gold lettering. Ellen Sinclair. Born 1837. Died 1863. Beloved wife and mother. To one side, a little further away, a dozen white crosses stood in two neat rows.

“It’s only family inside the fence,” Victoria said. “The rest are ranch employees.”

Declan spoke in a low voice. “Your mother is alone.”

Victoria nodded. “No stillborn babies. I was her first and last.” She stared at the sunset that painted the sky pink. It was long ago, and she’d been too young to mourn, but now, sharing it with someone, the grief seemed fresh and sharp.

“I was only two years old when she died. I can’t remember her.” She drew a shaky breath. Her voice caught. “I can’t remember her at all. I wish I had some memories. At least one memory. But I have nothing. Only a few pictures I can’t even recognize because I can’t remember what she looked like.”

Declan moved to stand beside her. “My parents also died young.”

She glanced up at him from the corner of her eye. “How did they die?”

He made no reply but turned aside to pick up the bucket he had set down on the gravel ground by a small prickly pear cactus. “Where do you want this?”

“Can you put it over there?” She pointed inside the small enclosure, by the rose bush, and pulled an old wooden ladle from her burlap bag. “I don’t want to just pour out the compost and risk some splashing on the headstone,” she explained.

She stepped over the knee high iron fence and knelt on the ground. The rosebush had been planted into a small pocket of fertile land her father had carved into the desert, working tirelessly with a shovel and a pickaxe, like a miner in search of gold. She dipped the ladle into the compost and carefully spread the mixture at the root of the rose. When she was done, she patted the loose layer down with the curved bottom of the ladle.

Declan stood in silence while she worked.

Melancholy settled over Victoria. It seemed wrong now what she was doing. Trying to manipulate people. Maybe she should just wait. Let time pass and see what came. A year was a long time. If her marriage was meant to be, then it would be.

But a second later she heard the crunch of footsteps coming up the hill and knew it was too late to avoid a confrontation. Victoria turned to watch her father approach. When he reached them, he put down the big clay jug he carried up every day at sundown to water the rose bush and gave her a belligerent stare.

“What’s he doing here?” he asked, with a jerk of his head toward Declan.

A shiver rippled over Victoria at the sight of her father. He was standing with his legs braced, hands loosely fisted by his side, a grim expression on his stark face. The setting sun gilded him, from his tall boots to his wide brimmed hat. The orange glow made him look like a bronze statue of an ancient warrior waiting for the battle call to sound.

“He carried the compost up for me, father.”

“I could have done that.” Her father opened the small gate, picked up the clay jug from the ground, and joined her inside the enclosure. Victoria had noticed he always used the gate, as if stepping over the fence was a mark of disrespect.

“Wait a moment, father,” she told him. “I haven’t quite finished with the compost.” She turned to the blooming rose again and patted down the rich mixture she had already patted down once.
Say something
, she ordered in her mind.
One of you big oafs, say something friendly
. When both men remained in stubborn silence, she had to speak up and break the tension.

“I wish I could remember what she looked like,” she said, her tone wistful. “Do you mind describing her to me, father? I like to hear you talk about her.”

Her words faded away. There was no response. The last of the breeze had stilled, and in the silence she could hear noises from the stable yard—the steady clanking of Abe’s hammer against the anvil, voices, a burst of laughter. Carefree sounds.

“What did your wife look like, Mr. Sinclair?” Declan asked quietly.

There,
Victoria thought.
Sterling qualities.

She peered up from the corner of her eye. Her father was standing by the gravestone, head bent, hat in his hands. For a long moment, he remained still. When he spoke, his voice was low and hesitant. “She was no beauty, my Ellen. But then, she didn’t have to be. She had a quality beyond beauty. A shine. Like the stars in the night. She smiled at a man, and they would forget every ache in their body, every moment of misery in their lives.”

 He lifted his chin and let his gaze come to rest on Victoria. “There’s nothing of her in this one. She’s all me. Dark highland looks and quick temper. Ellen was the gentlest person I’ve even known. It might be blasphemy to say this, but they say God knows even when the smallest sparrow falls from a branch. Maybe God knows, but I’m not sure he cares. My wife did.” He made a small motion with his hand toward Victoria. “That’s the one thing you’ve got form your mother. The love of wounded creatures.” He looked over his shoulder at Declan. “She’s always bringing home injured animals. Even vermin.” His voice grew hard. “And that’s the category I put you in. Vermin.”