A Wanted Man (18 page)

She wandered over to the window and pushed the glass wide. The sky was broad, deepening to indigo. A few brave stars winked on, along with a thin slice of bright silver moon.

A lovely evening, the kind of evening that was meant to be shared.

And suddenly she missed her parents terribly.

She’d never really been alone in her life. She’d had them, and Mrs. Bossidy, and guards and maids and nurses. She’d had so much company that sometimes she’d thought she was going to go mad with it, as if even her most secret thoughts did not belong just to her.

And she’d had him.
Sam
. Though he’d been in her life for a narrow sliver of time, it was an important few weeks, weeks when she’d learned a great deal about herself and what she truly wanted.

She wondered how long, when this was all over, it would take for her to stop looking up and expecting to see him there.

Her elbows on the wide sill of the window, she leaned out. There were lights in the bunkhouses, the squeaky wail of someone practicing a fiddle. Another light glowed, very faintly, in the window of a tiny cottage across the yard.

She breathed in. It smelled so
different
. All those years, she’d often dreamed of how other places would look. But she hadn’t considered the smell. She’d been so accustomed to the scents of Newport, the brine of
the sea, fresh-clipped grass, the lemon wax the maids used on the furniture, that she never really noticed them anymore.

Here she detected the smoky tang of sage. Smoke itself, from a fire somewhere. Horses.

She closed her eyes. Even if the rest of her senses were stripped from her, she would still know she was in another place because the air felt unique against her face. Warmer, drier.

When she opened her eyes he was standing right there outside her window, a mere foot away.

She smiled.

“You don’t look surprised to see me,” he said quietly.

She shook her head. Wasn’t he always there, somewhere, watching over her? Or perhaps her senses detected his presence without conscious awareness: his scent, his warmth, a disturbance in the air stirred up by his potent energy.

“For a moment during dinner,” she said, “I thought that you were going to call a halt to the whole thing and drag me away.”

“I was tempted.” His shirt was very white against the darkness of his skin. A fresh growth of beard shadowed his jaw. Unthinkingly, she touched his jaw, the stubble prickling her fingers, alerting her nerves.

“The most difficult part of your charade is going to be keeping a smooth face.”

Time hung, frozen and potent as the moon.

And then he brushed her fingers away and continued as if she’d never touched him. “Next time you decide to pull something like you did at dinner, it’d be a lot kinder to my heart if you talked it over with me first.”

“It was a sudden inspiration.”

“Get those often?”

“More and more all the time.” Even though they were alone, he still carried himself with Artemus’s posture, his shoulders rounded and back hunched, making him appear both softer and shorter than she knew him to be. “I’m only sorry that I didn’t seem to do much good. I thought maybe I’d bumble some information out of them if they considered me no threat.”

“That’s often the way it goes. You pull at threads all over the place, and none of them seem to lead to anything, then, when you’re just about ready to give up, one tiny piece of information shows up that’s exactly what you need.” He smiled at her; he did that now so easily that she’d almost forgotten how difficult it had been to pull that from him once. “Of course, my usual approach is less patient and a lot more effective.”

“I don’t want to know about it.”

His grin grew wicked. A rogue’s smile, a pirate’s smile. “Back to your illusions about what a fine, upstanding gentleman I am, are we?”

“No,” she said. “But Artemus, now…that’s my sort of man.”

“Artemus is a ninny.”

“Better a ninny than a chest-thumping, brainless gorilla,” she said cheerfully, and he pretended to scowl.

Oh, that life could be this simple, enjoying a warm evening together, friendly banter and harmless flirtation. She had worried that he’d be angry about her unplanned investigating. Oh, he’d given her the obligatory warning, but his rebuke had been mild. Everyone else would have bundled her off for safekeeping and never let her out again. He alone did not treat her like an invalid. Perhaps because he’d never seen her as one, and so did not have that image in his
brain of her weak and fragile prevailing over all others.

“I do appreciate what you tried to do tonight,” he said. “This is not your fight, and yet you have thrown yourself into it. I don’t know why you would put yourself out so far.”

She opened her mouth to toss off something light. It was an adventure, it was the right thing to do, it was opportunity to investigate a new career—would the Pinkertons hire her, did he think? And though they were all some small portion of the truth, they were the least part of it.

“You know why,” she said softly.

He went still, his gaze fixed on her. And then he transformed from Artemus into Sam. He straightened, his eyelids lifted from their somnolent state, his chest expanded. For a moment she thought that he might accept what she’d just offered, and they would go on from there, to someplace new and wild and wonderful. Her breath caught and held.

And then he shrugged, shifting his gaze across the broad, empty stretch of yard between the main house and the bulk of the outbuildings. “Anyway,” he said, “we did learn something. They don’t want us wandering around alone, and they were uncomfortable talking about the man you sketched.”

So he would ignore her careful overture, and their relationship would remain light and so much less than it could be. Well, it was probably for the best. If they had begun down that path, where did she really think it would end? No place good that she could envision.

“It could be as simple as what they said,” she pointed out reluctantly.

“Could be. But it’s not.”

“So what’s next?”

“I’ll nose around tonight. See if there’s anyone who likes to talk. And we let some underling or another give us a tour tomorrow.”

“Maybe we’ll even get lost,” she suggested.

“Maybe we will.”

Over his shoulder Laura saw the door to the small cottage open, a flare of light.

“Does someone live there, do you suppose? It seems too small.”

“Where?” He swiveled. “They pointed out every other damn building in the place to me this afternoon. Nobody said a word about it.”

“Well, there’s certainly somebody there now.”

The light in the open doorway silhouetted a small woman, her hair loose down her back. A man, hat in hand, stepped up on the porch.

“You think that’s Collis?” he asked.

“Yes. His left shoulder is always a fraction lower than his right.” She stopped. “Well. Would you look at that.” The figures twined about each other, and his head lowered.

“Guess Collis’s got a friend.”

She leaned farther out to get a better view. “You think they’re going to do it right out there on the porch?” she asked matter-of-factly.

He lifted an eyebrow. “I suppose a proper guard would be covering your virginal eyes right about now.”

“They’re not virginal.”

Forgetting the show on the porch, Sam snapped around to gape at her. She grinned at his shock.

“I studied art remember? My
eyes
aren’t virginal.”

“Mmm-hmm.” His eyes gleamed with speculation.

She couldn’t hold his gaze.
The rest of me
is
too
darn virginal, or I wouldn’t have had to look away
.

“They’re going in,” she said.

“So they are,” he said, as the door swung shut. “I think I’ll go see what’s going on.”

“Sam! You know what’s going on.”

“Never know when a thread’ll start unraveling. Until then you gotta keep tugging.”

“Uh-huh.” Curiosity sparked. “Maybe I’ll come with you.”

“Oh, no you won’t.”

Laura considered trying to brazen it out. The idea of being left behind to rest while Sam investigated caused an automatic kick of protest; it seemed like she’d been ordered to rest while others had fun for most of her life. But then she envisioned what he might see when he reached the cottage and knew she didn’t dare.

“Take care,” she called.

“Don’t I always?”

“No. No, you don’t.”

He grinned and faded into the night.

L
ucy Bossidy had had some difficult days in her thirty-six years. Not that anyone knew she was thirty-six, though unlike most women, she hadn’t been trying to pass as younger. Instead everyone thought her older. And a widow.

The worst of those moments had been many years ago, before she’d come to Sea Haven. It had been a dark time, one she remembered mostly in a blur of incessant terror and worry, and then a long plummet into grief.

Not again
. No, not again.

She stood beside Laura’s bed. Her empty bed, bare and accusing in the darkness.

When she’d first awoken to find her gone, she figured it had to be a mistake, another one of Laura’s larks. It was not the first time the girl had gone hieing off in search of adventure and freedom. Laura had never seemed to understand how much danger existed for unwary young girls.

Intellectually she understood that Laura felt con
fined, desperate to break free of the restrictions that bound her. But Lucy
knew
what it was like out there. She’d tried over and over again to explain it to Laura. It became her primary goal to ensure Laura appreciated that safety and security and warmth were to be cherished, not escaped. Because the alternative was simply too awful.

She sank to the edge of Laura’s bed, trailing her fingers over the pillow.

She hadn’t taken her pillow. They’d taken a fair number of things, so many that Lucy had burst into a furious rant when they’d tallied it all up. How could that horrid man have stolen all that away, and Lucy, too, without alerting Hoxie and Peel?

But she knew it was mostly her fault. She
knew
Laura was susceptible to the man. Knew even more how young and blossoming women could fall under the spells of handsome and fascinating men with charmingly dangerous edges. It was a flaw in the character of many women that they were romantic fools over roguish and inappropriate men, the lure of reforming them darn near irresistible.

She’d known, and she hadn’t stopped it. How could she ever have believed that merely getting rid of the fellow would be enough? Young passion just wasn’t extinguished that easily. Forbidden desire was one of the most treacherous illusions on the earth, and if anyone knew that, Lucy did.

Oh, Laura undoubtedly believed what she’d written in the letter. She
had
gone of her own free well. That did not, in any way, ensure that she was out of danger. He could have her in bed right now—

No
. The image was too terrible. She would not think of it.

The compartment suddenly constricted around her, the air becoming heavy and precious. She jumped up and dashed out of Laura’s cabin, through the beautiful sitting room that she’d come to hate at least three hundred miles ago, and out into the still, empty yard.

The fresh air filled her lungs, settling her nerves enough that she no longer felt she might scream at any moment. Her gaze traced the horizon, her spirits rising, until she realized she was searching for a horse, a figure. Waiting for Laura to come home.

She started to pace, back and forth over the rocky ground.

Most of the day she’d clung to the thin hope that Laura might return momentarily. That she’d come to her previously reliable senses and realize what she’d done. If not for her own good, than for Sam Duncan’s. Because if anything happened to Laura—and in this case
anything
could be something as minor as a hangnail—Leland Hamilton would ensure that Duncan never took another easy breath as long as he lived. If he lived very long at all.

But as the night descended, too soon, too dark, she’d understood that Laura wasn’t going to show up with apologies so they could be on their way and forget that the whole thing ever happened—

She screamed as she went down. Pain stabbed in her ankle, her palms as they hit the ground. She lay there, stunned.

Stupid, lumpy, holey
ground
. In Newport they had a lovely, smooth lawn, and—

“Are you all right?”

Hiram charged from his car, sprinting toward her like a bull in the streets of Pamplona. “What happened? Is it Duncan? I—”

“No, nothing like that.” Oh, yes,
of course
it would
be Mr. Peel who saw her sitting ignominiously on her rear on the ground. “I just fell in a hole.”

“Oh.” He extended a hand. “I’ll help you up.”

“That won’t be necessary.” She hid a wince as she put a bit of weight on her ankle.

“Don’t be stupid.” He stepped about her, clamped underneath her arms, and hauled her to her feet with all the grace of a shearer wrestling a ram.

“Thank you,” she said grudgingly. She whacked her gritty palms on her skirts as she turned to face him.

“What the hell are you doing wandering around out here in the night?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” She kept forgetting how big he was. If the ox had lumbered at her out of the dark when she wasn’t expecting it, she would have been frightened out of her boots. “Suppose you didn’t have that problem.”

“I—Yeah, that’s right,” he said with enough edge in his voice that even Lucy felt a spurt of guilt. Absurd. It wasn’t as if the man’s feelings could possible be hurt. One must have them to hurt them. “I dropped right off, not a worry the world. It’s not like I care the least bit for Laura. It’s just a job.”

“You’re right.” She touched him gently on the sleeve. “That was unfair. I’m sorry. It’s just…” She felt the press of emotion high in her throat and swallowed hard. She refused to fall apart in front of people. Most of all, she refused to fall apart in front of
him
. “Where’s Mr. Hoxie?”

“He left.”

“What do you mean, he left?”

“He headed into town.”

“But…Sam took all the horses!”

Hiram shrugged. “He decided to walk. It’s only a few miles.”

“But—but—” Did
everybody
around here plan to go
gallivanting around the countryside without clearing it with her first? “We talked about this: we were going to wait here in case she came back, then we were going to go on into Ogden, just like Laura suggested!”

“We didn’t talk about it.
You
talked about it.” He had his feet planted wide, sturdy and grounded. Solid. It would take a runaway coach slamming into him at top speed to get him to budge an inch.

“But we agreed!”

“Nope. We just didn’t disagree. Not much profit in it. Easier to let you say your piece, then go ahead.”

“But—but—” She was
not
unreasonable, dammit. Not obstinate and unwilling to listen. Why did they persist in treating her like she was?

“Why didn’t you go?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it again. Red suffused his cheeks, the tips of his ears. His gaze skittered off into the darkness. “Somebody had to stay here in case Laura found her way back.”

“Mm-hmm.” All the fight whooshed out of her.
She
was here. And he’d stayed because he didn’t want to leave her alone.

“What’s Mr. Hoxie planning to do when he gets back to Silver Creek?” she asked.

“Ask around. Maybe someone saw them, or—”

“No one saw them,” she said flatly.

“They could’ve.”

“No. He’s not that stupid. He wouldn’t have taken her anywhere that they could be seen and noted.” Worry again had her by the throat, a relentless squeeze. “Sh-she’s g-g-one.”

“Aw, no, don’t do that.” He patted her on the back, nearly sending her back to her knees. “Don’t cry.”

“Too late.” Dammit. She would have rather burst
into tears in front of the entire staff of Sea Haven than in front of Hiram. But it seemed she wasn’t to have a choice. The tears rolled over her, unstoppable as a tidal wave, as elemental. It was almost a relief to surrender to them.

“Crap.” He grabbed her by the back of the neck and hauled her up against him, driving an
oof
out of her as she slammed up against the solid wall of his chest.

“I can’t lose her, too!” she wailed. Tears spilled out of her eyes, dripped out of her nose. Maybe she should be grateful that it was only Hiram witnessing this after all. She could feel her eyelids swelling, and it wasn’t going to be a pretty sight. But since he already thought the worst of her, it shouldn’t matter if he saw her looking like death warmed over. “Not another—”

“You won’t,” he said. One huge hand cradled the back of her head, gentler than she would have expected him capable of. The other rested at the hollow of her back, pressing her to him, his fingers widespread, so long that the smallest reached to the upper curves of her rump. With another man, in any other situation, it would have been a wildly sexual posture. “Wait. Another, ‘too’?”

Had she said that? Fifteen years, and she’d never slipped once.

She opened her mouth to deny it. But she didn’t want to. To deny it would make it seem unimportant, as if it had never happened. As if
she
had never happened.

“I had a daughter,” she said.

She felt his surprise in the reflexive tightening of his arms around her. But he didn’t comment, just waited patiently for her to continue. Who would have thought Hiram knew when to keep his mouth shut?

“It’s not an unusual story, I suppose.” The fury of
tears receded, leaving the deep well of loneliness. She was surprised how easily the story spilled out after so many years of being bottled inside. “I fell in love, and I believed him when he said he meant to marry me. He was so handsome, so charming. He was from a far richer family than mine, and I thought every wish I’d ever made in my whole life had come true when he began to court me.”

When she stopped talking she could hear Hiram’s heartbeat, she realized, loud and very steady. Comforting.

“I believed him when he said he had to prepare his family before they met me. And when he said it would be no sin to anticipate our vows a bit, and that he couldn’t survive another day if he didn’t have me.”
Thump. Thump. Lovely heartbeat
. “I believed him a
lot
. Except when he said he didn’t want me anymore. Or our child.”

He bent down, his chin rubbing soothingly across the top of her head. “You lost her?”

“I—” Her voice shook. She took a deep breath and steadied. “I gave her away.”

She waited for the shock. The recriminations. But all she got was the slow circle of his hand on the small of her back, the rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek as he took a deep breath.

“I had no money. My parents didn’t want to…didn’t want to see what I’d done.”

“Bastards.”

Her shoulders lifted, fell. “No, they—” She started to say they were just parents, parents who were ashamed that their daughter had gone against everything they’d taught her.

But she
had
needed them then. She never would have
turned Laura out in a similar situation. If she—God forbid—came back from her adventure with Duncan in the family way, Lucy would move heaven and hell to help her. And she wouldn’t say “I told you so.”

At least not more than once.

“I couldn’t take care of her. I had no money. I had no way of making any.” She ran through the reasons, all those justifications that had played through her mind then, and every day since. Though she knew in her head they were right,
knew
it, in her heart they still felt like excuses.

“They were a lovely couple. I worked so hard to find the right ones. He was a doctor. She taught school because they hadn’t been able to have any of their own, and she wanted to be by children. And when I gave her to them—” She squeezed her eyes shut. It hurt, the burn behind her lids, the ache in her chest. Hurt so bad that for a long time she’d thought she might die of it. “She said I was her hero.”

He was swaying, back and forth with her in his arms as if he were holding a baby. The rhythm eased the tight twist of pain, if only a little.

“You are,” he whispered gruffly against her hair.

She blew out a long breath.

He smelled good. Like sweat and horses and grass, but still good. Manly.

“It was two years before I found my way to Sea Haven. There wasn’t much work, but I didn’t care very much, either. But then I became a ‘widow’ and a nurse and went to work for the Hamiltons. Laura saved me.”

“You’re not the only one,” he murmured. She remembered when Hiram had showed up at Sea Haven. He’d been young and wild when he’d come to work for them, angry at the world, and she really hadn’t thought
he’d stay. But he had, and after a while all the anger had seeped out of him.

“I can’t lose her, too.”

“You won’t.” His voice was absolutely sure. “I won’t let you.”

Heavens, but it felt good to have a man’s arms around her. She’d blocked it from her mind. Had punished herself for ever having enjoyed it. But oh, that intoxicating oblivion that overwhelmed worry, blotted out hurt, swept away anything but pure physical drive—what a wonderful thing it was. At least for a while. She hadn’t forgotten that, much as she’d tried to.

She turned her head and pressed her mouth—open, damp—against his chest. The cotton fabric was thin; her lips could detect the springy texture of the hair on his chest, the searing heat he carried within that huge frame.

“Mrs. Bossidy?”

“Lucy,” she murmured.

“I don’t know if I can call you that.”

She arched her back and tilted her head up. The move pressed her lower regions against him, and the ache settled, strengthened. Heavens, but it felt good. Wonderful. How had she managed to ignore this for so long? “Try.”

He cleared his throat. “Lucy.” His head came down, closer, closer, until she could feel the wash of his breath on her lips.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” she warned him. “It can’t. It’s just…distraction.”

“Mmm-hmm,” he murmured. Which didn’t really sound like agreement.

But then his mouth came down on hers, and she forgot everything.