Twin of Ice (30 page)

When Houston woke, it was full light and Kane was holding her and smiling angelically.

“We have to go,” she said, sitting up, shrugging off his hands and pulling on the remnants of her torn clothing. The front of her riding habit was missing so many buttons that it was decidedly indecent. “They’ll be after us soon, and I don’t imagine they’ll stop to rest this long.”

He caught her arm. “Hot after the murderer, right?”

“I really don’t think this is any time for laughter.”

“Houston, I want you to tell me what you have planned. Why are you runnin’ toward Mexico?”

“I’ll tell you as we get the horses saddled,” she said and stood, waiting impatiently until Kane also rose. “I think we can hide in Mexico,” she said, putting the saddle blanket on her horse.

“For how long?”

“Forever, of course,” she answered. “I don’t think that the law ever forgives one for murder. I think we can live there quite frugally, and I hear that people don’t ask as many questions there as they do in this country.”

He caught her arm. “Wait a minute. You mean that you’re plannin’ to live in Mexico with me? That if I’m an outlaw, you’re gonna be one, too?”

“Yes, certainly, I’m planning to live with you. Now, will you please saddle your horse so that we can ride?”

Houston didn’t say any more because Kane grabbed her about the waist and twirled her around. “Honey, that’s the best thing that anybody’s ever said to me. You don’t care about the money after all.”

“Kane!” she said, exasperated. “Please put me down. They’ll find us and you’ll—.”

She stopped because he planted a hearty kiss on her mouth.

“Ain’t nobody comin’ after us, unless it’s the sheriff’ cause he’s mad at you for tearin’ up his jail. Oh, Houston, honey, I wish I could see that man’s face.”

Houston took a step back from him. What he was saying made no sense to her, but in the pit of her stomach was a little feeling of fear. “Perhaps you should explain that remark.”

Kane drew three circles in the dirt with his toe. “I just wanted to see how you…ah, felt about the fact that I wasn’t a rich man anymore.”

She gave him a look that had stopped many a forward cowboy. “I would like to know about Jacob Fenton.”

“I didn’t tell you a single lie, Houston, it’s just that I guess I didn’t tell you all of it. I did find him dead at the foot of the stairs, and I was taken to jail for his murder, but the truth was that the servants had run out of the house and knew he was already dead. Although, I didn’t ask if any of them actually
saw
him die. That was real clever of you to think of that.”

“So why were you in jail when I got there? Why weren’t you released immediately?”

“I guess I was, sorta. Houston, honey,” he held out his arms to her. “I just wanted to know for sure that you liked me for myself and it wasn’t my money you wanted. You know, when you walked out of that jail after I told you that I’d lose my money, I thought for sure that you were goin’ to Westfield to see what you could get before I was hanged.”

“Is that what you thought of me?” she said under her breath. “You think that I’m that low a human being that I’d leave the man I love alone to face a murder trial and not lift a finger to help?” She turned toward the horse.

“Houston, baby, sweetheart, I didn’t mean nothin’. I just wanted to know for sure. I didn’t have any idea you’d do somethin’ as damn fool as…Well, I mean, I had no idea that you’d blow the jail to kingdom come and near kill me.”

“You seem to have recovered well enough.”

“Houston, you ain’t gonna be mad, are you? It was just a little joke. Ain’t you got any sense of humor? Why, ever’body in town will—.”

“Yes,” she said, glaring at him. “Go on. What will everybody in town do?”

Kane gave her a weak grin. “Maybe they won’t notice.”

She advanced on him. “Won’t notice that I removed the entire side of a jail that had two-foot-thick stone walls? Perhaps they all slept through the explosion. Yes, perhaps they
will
just drive past the building and not even notice. And maybe the sheriff will forgo telling the story of the decade about how one of the Chandler twins stuck dynamite into the wall to rescue a husband who wasn’t even charged with murder. Maybe every person for miles around won’t be laying bets as to when I’ll find out my error and whether
I’ll
be charged with murder.” She turned back to the horse, every muscle in her body aflame with anger.

“Houston, you have to understand my side of it. I wanted to know if it was me you loved or my money. I saw an opportunity to find out and I took it. You can’t blame a man for tryin’.”

“I most certainly
can
blame you. Just once, I’d like you to listen to me. I told you that I loved you—you, not your money—yet you never heard a word I said.”

“Oh, well,” he shrugged, “you said that you couldn’t live with a man you couldn’t respect, either, but you came back, and it didn’t even take all that much persuadin’. I guess you just can’t help yourself.” He gave her a crooked grin.

“Of all the arrogant, vain men I have ever met, you are the worst. I am very, very sorry that I ever rescued you. I wish they had hanged you.” With that, she mounted her horse.

“Houston, baby, you don’t mean that,” Kane said as he climbed onto his horse and began to ride beside her. “It was just a joke. I didn’t mean no harm.”

All day long they rode, and every minute, Kane was either presenting arguments to her or thinking of further excuses as to why she should be grateful to him for what he had done. He said that Houston could be more sure of her feelings for him now. He tried to make her see the humor of it all. He chastised her for using boys to help her and warned of the danger she’d placed them all in. He tried anything he could think of to get a reaction out of her.

But Houston sat on her horse as rigid as a human body could be. Her thoughts were on the people of Chandler. After the horror of the mine disaster, they’d want something to lighten their mood and they’d no doubt milk this story for every drop of humor. The sheriff would embellish it for all it was worth, and the Chandler Chronicle would probably run a series of articles on the whole affair, starting with the wedding and ending with…ending with a man who should have been hanged.

When Houston thought of Kane, her blood boiled, and she refused to listen to a single word he said. The fact that she had given him her love and he had doubted it so publicly, doubted her in such a spectacular, outrageous way was particularly humiliating.

She had her first taste of what was to come when they stopped at the stage station and traded horses. The old man asked if they were the couple from Chandler that he’d heard about. He could hardly recount the story for laughing so hard, and when they left, he tried to return the twenty dollars Houston had given him.

“That story was worth a hundred dollars to me,” he said, slapping a grinning Kane on the back. “I owe you eighty dollars.”

Houston put her chin in the air and went to her horse. She was doing her best to pretend that neither man existed.

Once they were on the trail again, Kane started talking to her with renewed vigor, but he lost a lot when he kept pausing to laugh.

“When I saw you standin’ there, and you were sayin’ you were gonna bust me out and save me from the hangin’ tree, I couldn’t think of what to say, I was that stunned, and then when Ian started yellin’ that the heels on them little boots of yours—,” he had to pause to wipe the grin off his face. “Why, Houston, you’ll be the envy of every woman west of the Mississippi. They’ll all wish they had the courage and the bravery to rescue their husbands from the jaws of death and—.”

He stopped to clear his throat and Houston glanced at him. He was unsuccessfully trying to control his laughter.

“When I think of the look on your face atop that horse. What’re those women that wear horns on their heads? Lady Vikings, that’s what you looked like, a lady Viking come to rescue her man. And the look on Zachary’s face! If my head hadn’t been hurtin’ so much—.”

He broke off because Houston kicked her horse’s side and raced ahead of him.

Whatever Houston had expected, when she reached Chandler, it was worse. Ignoring Kane as best she could, she rode on the outskirts of the town to the north side so she would see as few people as possible on her way to Kane’s house.

It was six o’clock in the morning when they rode up the hill to the Taggert house, but already there were about twenty couples who just “happened” to be strolling in front of the house. Most of the Taggert servants were in the front drive talking to the townspeople.

Houston held the front of her destroyed habit together and mustered as much dignity as she could and rode to the kitchen entrance, while Kane dismounted at the front and all the people ran to him.

“Probably wants to brag,” Houston murmured. Somehow, she managed to get through the kitchen and Mrs. Murchison’s smiles and unsubtle questions.

Upstairs, Houston dismissed Susan and drew her own bath. After a short time in the tub, she climbed into her bed and went to sleep. She heard Kane enter the room at some time, but she pretended to be fast asleep and he went away.

After nine hours of sleep and a huge meal, she felt physically better, but her mood was worse. When she walked in her rooftop garden, she could see the street and the extraordinary number of people who were strolling in front of the house.

Kane came into her room once to tell her that he was on his way up to the Little Pamela to see if any help was needed, and he asked Houston to go with him. She shook her head in refusal.

“You can’t hide in here forever,” he said angrily. “Why aren’t you proud of what you did? I sure as hell am.”

After he had left, Houston knew he was right, that she had to face the townspeople and the sooner she got it over, the better. She dressed slowly in a serviceable blue cotton, went downstairs and asked that her buggy be hitched.

It didn’t take Houston but ten minutes to find out that Kane’s prediction of how the people of Chandler would react was dead wrong. She was not being cast as a heroine who’d rescued her husband, but as a silly, flighty woman who went hysterical first and asked questions later.

She drove her little buggy through the back side of town and up the road to the Little Pamela. Perhaps at the mine they’d need so much help that they wouldn’t have time to talk about her escapade.

No such luck. The victims of the disaster wanted something to laugh about and Houston’s escapade was their target.

She did the best she could at holding her head high while she helped to clear the debris and tried to make arrangements for the relocation of the widows and orphans.

Her real complaint was that Kane was enjoying everything so much. At the wedding, he’d been hurt because the people believed that any woman would prefer Leander over him, but now he had very public proof that Houston was in love with him.

Houston kept thinking of all the times he could have told her that he wasn’t really being charged with murder. He could certainly talk fast enough when he wanted to, so why was he so tongue-tied the night she informed him that she’d just inserted dynamite under his feet?

As the day wore on, and the people became more bold about asking her questions (“You mean you didn’t ask the sheriff what his chances were or talk to an attorney? Leander was in on all of it. He could have told you. Or you could have…”), Houston wanted to hide. And when Kane walked past her, gave her a hearty punch in the ribs, a wink and said, “Buck up, honey, it was only a joke,” she wanted to cry that it might be a joke to him, but to her the public humiliation was horrifying.

Toward evening, she saw Pamela Fenton standing nose to nose with Kane and, on the cool evening breeze, she heard the words, “At the wedding, you said that you wouldn’t humiliate her. What do you think you’ve done now?”

The thought that someone was fighting her case was gratifying to her.

At home, she had dinner in her room and Kane made one more attempt to talk to her, but she just looked at him. He stormed out of the room, complaining that she had no sense of humor and was too damn much of a lady too damn much of the time.

Houston cried herself to sleep.

The next day, Houston was arranging flowers in a large vase in the hall outside Kane’s office. She was still angry, still too hurt and humiliated to speak to him, and she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the safety of her own house.

Kane had the door to his office open and with him were Rafe, Leander, and Edan. Kane’d called a meeting to discuss the possible consequences of the mine explosions. Kane had been concerned when he found out that the miners’ widows would probably not be given any compensation.

Houston listened to the men discussing the future of Chandler and she felt a great deal of pride at what her husband was doing. She wondered how she could ever have believed that he would foreclose on the people whose mortgages the Chandler National Bank held. Yesterday, Opal’d had a long talk with Houston and told her why Kane had used blackmail to get Houston to come back to live with him.

“He loves you so much,” Opal’d said, “and I don’t see why you have to be angry with him now.”

It might have worked, except at that moment she heard three women in the hall giggling like schoolgirls. They’d come to see Houston and “catch up on the latest news” was what they told the maid. Houston politely declined to see them, or anyone else.

Now, standing in the hallway, she listened with pride to the reforms her husband was planning, but then she heard Leander ask a question that caused her back to stiffen.

“Is this a bill from the City of Chandler?” Lee asked.

“Yeah,” Kane answered. “The sheriff wants five hundred dollars cash to repair the jail. I think it may be the only bill I ever
wanted
to pay.”

“Maybe you could have a grand openin’ and Houston could cut the ribbon,” she heard Rafe say.

There was a long silence. “If she ever speaks to him again,” Edan said.

There was another pause.

Leander spoke next. “I don’t think you ever know a person. I’ve known Houston most of my life, but the Houston I knew and the one who’d blow out the side of a jail aren’t the same woman. A few years ago, I took her to a dance and she wore a very becoming red dress, but Gates had said something that had hurt her feelings and she kept clutching her cloak so every inch of that dress was covered. She was so nervous by the time we reached the dance that I said that if she wanted to keep wearing the cloak it was fine with me. Damned if she didn’t spend the whole evening sitting in a corner looking like she was about to cry.”

Houston’s hand paused as she held a flower. It was odd how the same episode could be seen in two ways. Now that she looked back on it, maybe she had been silly to be so upset about a red dress. Now, she seemed to remember that Nina Westfield often wore just that shade of red that had caused Houston so much anguish that night.

Smiling, Houston continued with the flowers.

“If she was gonna break out of the mold, she could’ve done it with less danger to my hide,” Kane said. “You don’t know what it’s like to have somebody tell you that they’ve just lit dynamite under your feet and there ain’t nowhere you can run.”

“You can stop bragging,” Edan said. “You loved what she did and you know it.”

Houston’s smile grew broader.

Leander laughed. “Too bad you didn’t get to see what happened after the explosion. Everybody thought another mine had gone up and we ran out of our houses in our underwear. When we saw the jail, with half of it blown away, we just stood there; not one of us could understand what had happened. It was Edan who first remembered that you were in the jail.”

A little laugh escaped Houston, but she got it under control.

“Listen,” Edan said, “as soon as I saw that jail, I knew Houston was involved. While the rest of you’ve been worshipping at her feet over the years and telling yourselves what an ice princess she is,
I
’ve been following her around. Under her prim little exterior is a woman…Well, you wouldn’t believe some of the things that woman does on a regular basis.”

Houston had more difficulty controlling her laughter. Edan sounded half-appalled, half-admiring. She thought of the time he’d hidden and watched the pre-wedding party. The day he’d told her that he’d seen it, she hadn’t allowed herself to think about anything except that he’d heard about their plans for the mines, but now she thought of the boxer, and the cancan, and, oh Heavens,
Fanny Hill.
At the time, she’d been terrified that Kane would find out some of the things that she did, such as The Sisterhood’s stag parties, and infiltrating the mine camps, but, in the end, he’d caught her in nearly all of it and her life hadn’t ended. The night she wore that red dress, she was sure that if she showed it to anyone, her reputation would be ruined and she wouldn’t be a fit wife for Leander.

But look at what she’d done in the last few months! There was the time she had climbed down the rose trellis in her underwear. Then there was inviting all those people to live with them and telling Kane—who had to support them—about it later.

The more she thought, the more the laughter bubbled inside her. Before they were married, she was quite sure who was marrying Kane Taggert. He requested a lady, and she was sure that she could fill the bill. But when she began to remember the things she’d put him through, and all the times he’d said, with that special look of disbelief on his face, that he’d had no idea what he was getting when he married a real true, deep-down lady, Houston could no longer control her laughter. It exploded from her in a sound that made the vase on the table tremble.

She grabbed the side of the table and kept on laughing as her knees grew weak.

Immediately, the men came running out of the room.

“Houston, honey, you all right?” Kane asked as he took her arm and started to pull her upright. But it was like trying to get a piece of seaweed to stand.

“I covered my red dress because I didn’t want anyone to think I wasn’t a lady,” she cried, “but then I blew out the side of the jail.” She put her hands over her stomach as she fell the last few inches to sit on the floor. “Was my hat on straight?” she asked. “Was it on straight the night I challenged the boxer to a muscle showdown?”

“What’s she talkin’ about?” Kane asked.

Edan was beginning a smile, and it broadened as he said, “You lost it while you were dancing.” He started to laugh. “Houston, I took a bottle of whiskey with me that night because I thought I’d be bored watching a ladies’ tea party.” By the time he finished, he was on the floor with Houston.

“And Miss Emily!” he gasped. “I can’t walk past her shop with a straight face.”

Houston was laughing too hard to speak clearly. “And Leander! I was so careful all those years. I never let you know about Sadie or any of the other things.”

Leander, smiling, watched. “You know what she’s talking about?” he asked Kane.

Rafe answered. “This sweet little empty-headed lady that looks too delicate to do anything but embroider, regularly handles a four-horse wagon.”

“I can drive twelve,” she declared and that sent Edan and her into new peals of laughter.

“And she has a right that can flatten boys as big as she is,” Kane said with pride, “and she can leave her own weddin’ to follow her pigheaded husband when he’s made an ass of himself in front of the whole town, and she can pay my mistress to get outta town and she can scream.” He stopped when he said the last and began to look embarrassed.

Leander looked down at Houston on the floor, her arms around Edan, both of them weak with laughter, and he turned to Kane, saw the way the man was watching Houston with a mixture of pride and love. “And to think that I called her an ice princess,” Lee murmured.

Kane rocked back on his heels, his thumbs in his belt loops and said, “I melted the ice.”

Both Lee and Rafe shouted with laughter, as much at Kane’s pride as at his words.

Rafe nodded down at Houston. “You better do somethin’ with that piece of ice ’fore she melts and runs down into the cracks in the floor. I don’t think you wanta lose her.”

Kane stooped and lifted Houston into his arms. “I ain’t never lettin’ this lady go.”

Houston, still laughing, snuggled against him as he carried her toward the stairs.

“No sir,” Kane said, “Ain’t nothin’ separatin’ us. Not other ladies or kids of mine that she don’t know about or the hangman. I guess that’s why I love her so much. Ain’t that right, Houston?”

Houston looked up at him with stars in her eyes.

He put his head toward hers and whispered so the others can’t hear. “When I get you upstairs, you’re gonna explain to me what a ‘muscle showdown’ is. And don’t you start laughin’ again. Houston!”