True to the Law (26 page)

“I’ll pay you.”

“You would have to. I like Bitter Springs.”

“I think you like Miss Morrow.”

“You mean
Gertie
?”

Mackey ignored that. “Your continued presence here is a complication that I don’t need. Go back to Chicago, Mr. Bridger. I’m sure you will have no difficulty finding work there.”

“I have work here.” This time he did open his jacket and reveal the star pinned to his vest. “Satisfying work.”

Mackey’s expression was skeptical. “Really? Keep in mind that I just had the tour. No vagrants. No disturbances of any kind.”

“Thank you.”

“I wasn’t compli—” He stopped when he realized Cobb had deliberately chosen to misunderstand. “How much?”

Cobb named a figure.

“That’s what I owe you. What will it take for you to leave town?”

“I only want what’s owed me. Even you aren’t rich enough for the other.” Before Mackey tried to convince him otherwise, Cobb decided it was time to take the offensive. “Did you ask Miss Morrow about your stolen property?”

“You overstep, Mr. Bridger. What has become of your reputation for not asking questions? My conversation with Miss Morrow is nothing I care to discuss with you.”

“That’s fair.” He pushed the stool aside and set his feet on the floor. Leaning forward, he unfolded his arms. He pressed his hands together and made a steeple with his fingers. “She’s not a thief.”

“I wasn’t looking for your opinion.”

“I know. That’s why I’m not going to ask you to pay for it. I thought you should consider the possibility that you’re mistaken about her.”

Mackey carried his drink to the sofa. He did not sit but rather settled his hip on one of the wide arms. “Is that why you’re still here, Mr. Bridger? You think you know Miss Morrow well enough to draw conclusions about her guilt or innocence? She lived in my grandmother’s home, virtually in the shadow of my grandmother’s bed, for two years. I saw her with some regularity; I spoke to her on numerous occasions. I think I know her capabilities far better than you.”

Cobb thought about the sketch he kept in the pocket inside his vest. Andrew Mackey had not been able to describe the shape of her eyes. He hadn’t mentioned the asymmetrical dimple. It seemed unlikely that he had ever noticed the faint indentation in her chin. For all that Mackey had attended to Tru this evening, Cobb could not dismiss the impression that the man’s interest was serious but not sincere.

“Who is Franklin?” Cobb asked. The question, coming as it did without warning, had the desired effect. Although his face gave nothing away, Mackey’s hand tightened perceptibly around his glass. Cobb clarified his question so there could be no mistaking his meaning. “Franklin Mackey.”

“More questions, Mr. Bridger?”

“Humor me.”

Mackey shrugged. “My cousin. I have to believe you already know that. Why ask?”

“Who is he to Miss Morrow?”

“Still my cousin. A great-nephew to my grandmother. I’m unaware that he is anyone to Miss Morrow. Did she say something that would make you believe differently?”

“No. On the way to her telling me how she came to be in Bitter Springs, she shared a little about being Mrs. Mackey’s companion. She mentioned you, of course, and other members of the family. The greats, she called you.”

“Yes. She would.” He did not pretend that it did not annoy him. “It is how my grandmother referred to us.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbed it. “What did she say about Frank?”

“Nothing,” said Cobb. “No, wait. She said he was young.” He did not add Tru’s pause or her inflection, the two things that gave some deeper meaning to the description. It was a meaning he still did not understand.

“Yes,” said Mackey. “Frank’s young. Recently graduated from Princeton.”

“Your alma mater.”

“Yes. She told you that?”

Cobb shook his head. “I learned something about you before I agreed to work for you.”

Mackey nodded. “Of course you did.” He pushed away from the arm of the sofa and stood. Returning to the drinks cabinet, he finished his whiskey and set down the empty tumbler. He reached inside his jacket and removed a folded bank draft. He held it out but not far.

“Your money,” he said. “I noticed there is a bank here.”

“The Cattlemen’s Trust.”

“Yes. I assume they’ll accept this draft drawn on my account in Chicago.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Then as soon as you take this, we’re settled.”

“We’re done,” said Cobb, coming to his feet. “I don’t know if we’re settled.” He went forward, took the check, and kept going.

* * *

Tru was lying in bed on her back, holding a cold compress to her eyes, when she heard the unmistakable sound of the kitchen door rattling. She’d made a point of using her keys to lock both doors. It had to be Cobb, she thought. Andrew would have come to the front entrance.

Putting aside the compress, she got out of bed, grabbed her robe and belted it on the way to the bedroom at the rear of the house. The window looking out on her backyard did not open easily, but anger gave her incentive and strength.

She braced her arms on the sill and poked her head out. The porch’s small peaked roof prevented her from being able to see the trespasser. “Go away!”

Cobb backed off the porch and kept backing up until he had a view of the window. He tipped back his hat and squinted. A break in the clouds briefly revealed the moon, and he could see Tru leaning so far out of the window that it was easy to imagine her taking a tumble.

“You’re going to break your neck.”

“I’m going to break yours.”

“Let me in. Your door’s locked.”

“I know. I locked it. Go away.”

The only movement he made was to rise and fall on the balls of his feet. “I think the Stillwells are sleeping.”

“That’s what people do at night.”

“I don’t. Apparently neither do you.”

“Don’t you have vagrants to round up?”

“All accounted for.” Cobb pointed to the Stillwell home. “I think someone’s stirring. I see lamplight that wasn’t there before.” He dropped his hand back to his side but kept watching the Stillwell residence. “The light is getting brighter. It could be that we’ve attracted the attention of your neighbors.”

Tru did not believe him. She was on the point of telling him so when she heard Evelyn Stillwell call out from an upstairs window.

“Is that you, Marshal?”

“It is, Mrs. Stillwell.”

“Land sake’s, son. What you are doing out there?”

“Just finishing my rounds. I thought I saw someone creeping back this way.”

“The Collins boys, I bet. They cut between Miss Morrow’s and this place regular like. Probably sneaked out of the house on some kind of dare. They are a trial to Heather and Jefferson that way, but they don’t mean any harm. I’d look for them at the cemetery if I were you. They’ve been known to go there. I bet if you scare them, that would slow them down for a while.”

“That’s a good thought, Mrs. Stillwell. Thank you.”

Holding out her lamp, Evelyn pushed herself forward and turned her head. “Evening, Tru. I guess you heard the boys same as I did.”

“I’m not sure it was Rabbit and Finn,” she said. “But I did hear something.”

Evelyn nodded. “Good to know the town’s got someone looking out for us.”

Tru sighed, and although Mrs. Stillwell could not see her clearly, she forced a smile just the same. “It certainly is. Goodnight, Evelyn.”

“’Night, Tru.”

Cobb watched both of them duck back into their homes like turtles retreating into their shells. He retreated himself, taking a meandering route around the nearby homes before he circled back to Tru’s. This time the door was open.

The first thing he looked for when he walked in was the shotgun. It was in the rack. He shed his coat and hat and stepped into the kitchen. Tru had left a lamp for him. He picked it up, peeked in the dining room, and then went to the parlor. The stove was still warm but the light came from embers. He saw that she had drawn the curtains. She wasn’t sitting in her favorite chair. He picked up the book she had been reading.
Triumphant Democracy
by Andrew Carnegie. No wonder she left it on the table.

Cobb climbed the stairs. Her bedroom door was open, but he stood just outside in the hallway and knocked. Tru was sitting in a chair by the fireplace. She waved him inside. He set the lamp down. That was when he saw the compress lying in her lap.

“Headache?” he asked.

Not looking away from the fire, she nodded.

There was no twin for the chair she was sitting in, but there was a chair at the writing desk and a padded stool at the vanity with a ruffled skirt. He chose the chair, dragged it by its back legs to the fireplace, and spun it around so he could sit with his forearms resting on the curved back. He had a clearer view of her face although she did her best to keep it averted. She had scrubbed it clean, probably for his benefit, but there was still evidence to suggest she had been crying.

Even as he thought it, she flicked a tear away from the corner of her eye. Cobb reached in his pocket and held out a handkerchief. She took it without making him insist on it.

“Thank you. I left mine on the nightstand.”

He glanced in that direction. It looked as if she’d left not just one, but several. “
Triumphant Democracy
?” he asked. The question did what he meant it to do. It provoked her to turn her head and fully face him. “Is the title misleading? It doesn’t end well?”

She sniffed, gave him a watery smile. “You saw the book. I’ve barely started it. Jim is insisting I read it. Jenny won’t. She says she’d rather impale herself on a knitting needle.”

That made him smile as well. “I thought about Jenny at dinner tonight. It occurred to me that she would not have tolerated Andrew Mackey’s nonsense.”

“You think I did?”

“I think you did better than hold your own. You bested him. It was my tolerance I was referring to. I gave him too much rope.”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t think you did. You were right not to interfere. He is . . .” She looked back at the fire.

“Jealous?”

She shrugged.

“Possessive?”

“A dog in the manger,” she said quietly. “I was thinking more of a dog in the manger.”

His faint smile revealed his appreciation for another moral fable. “I followed you this evening.”

“I know. Andrew saw you.”

“I wanted him to. Did he confront you about the brooch?”

“He never mentioned it.”

“Something else then?”

Her nod was barely perceptible. “Something else.”

Cobb did not press. “He paid me tonight. He also told me to leave.”

“I thought he might. He thinks you overstepped.”

“Yes, he made that clear.”

“Are you going?”

“No.”

“Even if I asked you to?”

“No, not even then.” He waited to see if she would argue, but her confrontation at the window earlier seemed to have left her drained. He regretted that. “Why were you crying?”

Tru had no defenses. She turned over her hands in a helpless gesture. “Dinner was exhausting.”

“And your walk?”

“Eggshells all the way.”

“I see.”

She spared him a glance. “I’m not happy with you either.”

“That goes without saying.”

“You gulled me from the beginning. I’ve been thinking about our meeting on the street. You planned that.”

“I did.”

His easy admission took some of the wind out of her sails. “Dinner that first night?”

“I watched for you from the window in my hotel room.”

She turned in her chair and drew her feet under her. “Why did you really come to Bitter Springs? And don’t tell me it was because Andrew wanted you to make sure I stayed here. That doesn’t require your skills. You could have told him to find someone else and saved yourself the trouble of boarding a train.”

“I wanted to meet the woman who makes Andrew Mackey afraid.”

Tru blinked. “That was Charlotte.”

“I’m sure he feared her. But I wasn’t speaking in the past tense. He’s afraid of you. He’s afraid of you
now
, and I still want to know why.”

Tru stared at him. “You’re wrong.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You are. Do you know what he asked me tonight?”

Tears unexpectedly welled in Tru’s eyes. The handkerchief remained balled in her fist.

“Tru?” He watched powerlessly as her tears spilled past the dam of her lashes. It was then that the answer came to him, and he could do nothing to stop her from saying it aloud.

“He asked me to marry him.”

Chapter Ten

Tru swiped at her tears, not with the handkerchief but with her fingertips. She sniffed and turned her chin into her shoulder. It hardly mattered that she was avoiding Cobb’s concerned study. She felt his pale blue gaze as if it were a physical touch.

She stared at the flames, unaware that her tears captured the firelight as they slipped over her cheeks. “He’s been engaged three times,” she whispered. “Did you know that?”

“I did.”

“That means three women said yes to him before they said no.”

Cobb did not care about what three other women said. He cared about
this
woman. He cared about this woman’s answer. He waited her out. Her words, like her tears, spilled slowly over the dam.

“His fiancées ended the engagements. Charlotte told me that. She suspected he provoked them to it.”

“Provoked them? How?”

Tru closed her eyes and this time pressed the balled-up handkerchief to each one of them in turn. “I don’t know,” she said, risking a glance in his direction. He wasn’t watching her at all now, but staring past her chair to the window, perhaps even looking beyond it as she sometimes did, looking all the way to the Pennyroyal. “She never said more. I didn’t ask.”

Tru kept her legs curled to one side, but she sat up straighter. There was no hitch in the next breath she took. “I told him I needed to think about it.” That brought Cobb’s eyes back to hers. She saw no curiosity, no dread. He merely looked upon her without expression, his features shuttered by the remoteness of his regard. For reasons she did not properly understand, her face crumpled and she began to weep.

Standing, Cobb swung his chair out of the way and stepped into the breach. He tossed the compress in Tru’s lap aside before he bent and scooped her up. Far from resisting his effort, she helped him by slipping her arms around his shoulders and burying her damp face against his neck. He carried her to the bed, set her down on the edge, and pried the handkerchief out of her bloodless fingers. He soaked it in the basin of water on the washstand, wrung it out, and used it to catch her tears at first and then finally to erase them.

“Like velvet,” she murmured.

“Hmm?”

“Something my mother used to say. When I didn’t want my face washed, she’d say she would wash it like velvet. I’d forgotten that until now.” A breath shuddered through her, but no tears followed in its wake. “Thank you.”

Uncomfortable, Cobb nodded shortly.

Tru’s fingers brushed the back of his hand. “You’re welcome.”

He looked down at his hand then at her. A small furrow appeared between his eyebrows.

One corner of Tru’s mouth lifted. She mocked him lightly with that smile. “That’s what you say when someone thanks you.”

“I’ll try to remember that.” He laid the handkerchief on the nightstand and looked her over. She was fighting sleep or at least fighting being alone. There was only one way to tell the difference. “I should go,” he said. He meant to move, but his brain did not relay the message to his feet. He stood exactly where he was.

“You should,” she said. She found his hand again and this time her fingers curled around his. “But don’t.” She raised her face. Her eyelids felt too heavy to raise her lashes higher than half-staff. She regarded him from under them. “Please don’t.”

He did not argue with her or with himself. “All right.” Withdrawing his hand, he hunkered in front of Tru and loosened the belt of her robe. He watched her ease the robe over her shoulders while he removed her slippers. He rose and helped her to her feet, keeping her steady long enough to toss the robe to the foot of the bed and lift the covers. She slipped into bed on her own and turned on her back. When she started to move toward the center, he put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

“What are you doing?”

Tru glanced at his hand then at him. “I sleep on this side now.”

Cobb nodded, removed his hand. “I’ll pull a chair over.”

Her smile was sleepy, content. She turned on her side, facing him, but she did not close her eyes. “Thank you.”

A brief hesitation, then, “You’re welcome.”

Tru’s smile deepened. She burrowed under the covers and pressed her shoulder into the pillow.

Cobb pushed the chair that she had been sitting in closer to the bed, judging the distance to be just right when he could stretch out his legs and rest his heels on the bed frame.

“You won’t leave?” asked Tru.

“No.”

“There’s a book in the nightstand drawer.” She pressed her fist against her mouth to cover a yawn.

Cobb realized that she was fighting sleep
and
being alone, not one or the other. He reached for the drawer, opened it, and felt around for the book. He knew by the size, thickness, and feel of the paper cover that it was a dime novel. “Nat Church?” he asked before he pulled it out.

“No. Felicity Ravenwood. She has romantic adventures and wears extraordinary hats.”

Cobb examined the cover and saw proof of both those things. Felicity seemed to be in danger of losing her poise and her hat to a dark-haired villain. At least Cobb assumed the man bending Felicity over his arm was the villain, otherwise the dagger she was clutching made no sense.

He read aloud. “
Felicity Ravenwood and the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
.” Cobb cocked an eyebrow at Tru and appreciated that she had the grace to blush. “No, thank you,” he said, dropping the novel back into the drawer and closing it. “I’ve read the original.”

She nodded sleepily, eyes drooping, and then she was still.

Tru had no idea of the time when she woke and no proper sense of how long she had been sleeping. Except for the residual glow of spent logs in the fireplace, her bedroom was almost entirely in shadow. The lamp on her nightstand had been extinguished. So had the one that Cobb carried into the room.

Cobb was still sitting at her bedside. He was asleep now, his head lolled slightly forward so that it did not have the support of either of the chair’s wings. She could tell that his legs were still elevated because of the way the blanket covering him was draped. She wondered at what point he had stopped feeding the fire and found a blanket instead.

She inched closer to where he was sitting, her attention caught by the object in his lap. It was difficult to make out at first, partially covered as it was by a fold in the blanket, but she recognized it before she teetered on the edge of the mattress. She resisted laughing out loud but did nothing to suppress her amused grin.

Cobb Bridger had succumbed to Felicity Ravenwood’s siren call.

She did not try to feign sleep when he stirred. If he woke, she wanted him to know that she was here, waiting for him, and if he slept on, it merely delayed what was inevitable.

It was an odd notion, inevitable. It might involve a flicker lasting no longer than a single beat of a hummingbird’s wing, or it might span all the heartbeats in one’s lifetime. There was anxiety in anticipation of it and comfort in its certainty. Without meaning to, she fell asleep again, this time with inevitably on her mind.

* * *

Tru was warm, deliciously so. She backed into the heat, drawing her knees up and settling her bottom against the cradle of the stove. It did not occur to her just then that a stove had no cradle.

“Tru.” Cobb laid his hand on her shoulder, shook her lightly. He whispered, “Move over.” She didn’t. In fact, she snuggled deeper, pressing her bottom hard against his groin. He had nowhere to go that would not have him rolling out of bed. “You told me you slept on the other side.” Or at least closer to the middle, he thought. He was sure she had been at least as far as the middle when he gave up the chair and joined her.

His compromise to her comfort and his sanity was to stay on top of her quilts and draw his blanket over him. He didn’t know how he ended up under the covers, but he suspected it happened the same way she ended up pushed tight against him.
Naturally
.

Except for his boots, he was still fully clothed. There was a mercy. Not that she wouldn’t be able to feel the press of his cock on her backside if she woke. It was what had roused him from a deep sleep. He ached to rub it against her. If not that, then to take it in hand.

He did neither. She ground the cleft of her bottom against his groin. Cobb closed his eyes, groaned.

“Tru.” This time he forced her name from between clenched teeth. The sound of it was harsh, guttural. When it failed to move her, Cobb slid his hands between their bodies and laid his palms flat on her back. He pushed. She slid in the direction he wanted her to, but he almost landed on the floor. He flailed and found an anchor in the folds of her nightgown. He bunched the fabric in his fist and held on. She fell onto her back, trapping his hand, but her weight was enough to spare him the ignominy of falling out of bed. He rolled toward her, not at all surprised to find her awake and staring at him so widely that he could make out the whites of her eyes.

“So help me God, Tru,” he whispered. “You can’t—”

She laid two fingers against his lips, quieting him. She waited to see what he would do, and when he did nothing, she removed her hand from his mouth and slid it behind his neck. She pulled him down and welcomed him back.

Inevitable.

Tru feasted on his mouth. The need to have him, to touch and then to delight in the touching, was what urged her on. Her tongue speared his mouth. She ran the tip of it along the ridge of his teeth. She teased the underside of his upper lip and repeated the sweep of her tongue along the bottom one. There was parry and thrust in this kiss. Maneuvering and play and challenge.

She arched her spine. His hand slipped from under her back. He found her wrist and pinned it against the mattress at the level of her shoulder. She gave him the other one when he groped for it. And the kiss went on.

She stretched under him, rubbing, pushing, testing his will. She never believed for one moment that he was restraining her. He was restraining himself. She admired his effort, and then she renewed hers.

Turning her head, she changed the slant of the kiss. She caught the corner of his mouth, found his jaw. Her lips moved to his neck, and she sipped his skin. That kiss would leave a mark. She knew because he had left his mark on her.

Tru raised one knee. She slid the sole of her bare foot against his calf. She wanted to feel his flesh under her toes. Twisting slightly, she pressed her hip against his groin and wrested her hand from his as he groaned. Her fingers scrabbled with the tail of his shirt, pulling it free of his trousers. Still one handed, she tore at his belt while his mouth hovered over her lips. Tru lifted her head. It required nothing more than the whisper of her mouth against his to seal the kiss.

He loosed her other wrist. She opened his shirt and then unfastened his underwear. Her hands slipped inside the flannel drawers. His skin was warm against her fingertips. She pressed them lightly against his abdomen. He sucked in a breath, taking hers.

She found another button and opened it. One hand remained resting against his flat belly. The other circled his penis. Here the heat of him was like a furnace. Engorged with blood, heavy with desire, his cock jumped and twitched in her palm like a living thing. She tightened her grip, not with any need to hold him back but because she wanted to feel his pulse beat hard against the heart of her palm.

“For the love of God,” he said, tearing his mouth away from her. His hips jerked. Tru’s fingers uncurled in a spasm that matched his. At the end of it she was cupping his balls. Hardly daring to breathe, Cobb held himself very still, afraid that any movement would end this sweet torture. When her fingernails grazed his sac, he felt pleasure so intense that it edged dangerously close to pain.

Under the covers, he shoved the hem of Tru’s nightgown to her thighs and moved between her legs. Just as she had before, she helped him. He did not offer to see to her comfort his time. The pillows remained strewn around the bed.

Her breath caught when he pushed into her. It was the same, this feeling of him filling her, pressing against her both hard and intimately, and yet there was a subtle difference that captured her imagination and made her think she had not known all that was possible from this act.

He moved with more care, with measured strokes, and the rhythm that she had not understood before pulsed under her skin so fiercely that ignoring it was not possible. There were inklings of pleasure. Between her thighs, she felt herself contracting around him, using her body like a fist to keep him close. She raised her knees, lifted, and circled his hips. Her heels pressed against his thighs.

She moved in concert with him. Pleasure skimmed her skin. Her breasts swelled, and when her nipples scraped against the fabric of her nightgown, they pebbled. She lifted her hand, grazed her breast with the flat of it. Pleasure made her drive her hips into him.

Cobb pushed back. He knew what she was feeling now, knew that she was close. He knocked aside her hand and found the tip of her tender breast with his mouth. He laved the pink tip with this tongue until he heard her whimper. Her fingers knotted in his hair. The ache that impelled him to go on was matched by hers.

She said something that she only half understood when her body began to shudder. She clutched him as his hips quickened. She felt his breath on her neck, his fingers dancing over her breast. Pleasure no longer skipped across her skin. It dove deep and raised a flush across her chest that crept up her neck to her cheeks. She was warm, replete.