Deborah Camp (6 page)

“Quite useful, was it?” he repeated, regarding her proud carriage and haughty expression. She was wrapped too tight, he thought. What she needed was a good, stiff drink to loosen her up. She carried her education like a lantern, holding it aloft for all to see and so that it would leave the rest of her in shadow. It galled him no end. “Where’d you get your school learning?”

“In Dallas,” she said with a toss of her head. “I went to boarding school until I was sixteen.” Her emerald eyes met his. “And where did you receive yours?”

“Memphis. Military school.”

“Were you in the war?”

“Wasn’t every able-bodied man?”

“Confederate?”

“What else?”

She found the exchange strange, but more normal than most others she’d had with him. She took courage from it.

“I’m glad you’re educated. Perhaps we can share reading material.”

“Perhaps,” he said, drawling the word. “Perhaps we can share more than that.” He was glad to see her cheeks grow pink with fury and embarrassment. Serves her right, he thought. Miss High-and-Mighty needs to be knocked down a few pegs. “Was your husband in the war?”

At the mention of Fayne, she turned aside. “No, he was too old.”

“Too old?”

“Yes.”

“How old was he?”

Striving for an iron will, Zanna whirled about face. It
was time to take the bull by the horns, she told herself. “Let’s get something straight between us.”

“My thoughts exactly,” he said, his tone dipping to a dangerous purr that made the fine hairs at the back of her neck stand on end. His hazel eyes, droopy lidded and insultingly frank, moved down her body and then up to her flushed face.

Zanna restrained her anger and fought her shame as the import of his words rang in her head and offended her moral upbringing. “The next time you speak to me in such terms I shall return you to jail where your fate awaits you at the end of a rope.”

He settled his hands on his leather belt. “Are you going to threaten me with that every time I say something you don’t like?”

“Only when you talk to me as if I’m a hurdy-gurdy girl.”

“That’s your problem. What I said was harmless. Your mind soiled it.”

“My mind did not!” She snapped her jaws together.

“Let’s be honest, you and me.” He offered a smile that was at once condescending and endearing. “You’ve got yourself a gambler. I’m no good behind a plow or with a hammer in my hand. Maybe you’ll get lucky and find a farmer in that jail next time. But you drew a bad hand with me, ma’am, so why not fold and let me ride off tomorrow?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

His grin rivaled the brightness of the sun at high noon. “Hell, yes! I can’t think of anything I’d like better.”

“We have an agreement,” Zanna said, poking a finger at the center of his chest. “And you’re not going to weasel out of it.”

“I’m not cut out for this life, lady!”

“You should be down on your knees giving thanks instead of complaining. You were headed for hell and you’ve landed in paradise.”

“This is your paradise, not mine.”

“You’d rather spend eternity in hell? Fine. I’ll send one of my hands for the sheriff and he can turn you over to the Texas Rangers.”

“Oh, hell!” He spun around, presenting his back to her. “Talking to a woman is like talking to a mule.”

“You’ll get plenty of practice at that around here,” she sassed. “Come along and I’ll show you the stables, then I’ll instruct you on how I want that porch built.”

Grandy looked over his shoulder at her as she walked briskly from the barn. She filled out the pants in fine form. Her hips were round and tightly packed. His mouth went dry just looking at her.

“Hey, lady.”

“My name is Suzanna,” she said, stopping but not turning to look at him.

“Suzanna,” he said, trying it out. “What’s a man supposed to do out here for some loving when he gets the itch?”

She knew he expected her to blush and stammer and run away from his vile suggestion, but Zanna refused to oblige him. She was no shrinking violet, she told herself to bolster her nerve as she delivered a supercilious glare. He was already beginning to grin in anticipation of her mortification.

“We have some goats out back. You catch ’em, you can have ’em,” she said in a cool voice that wiped the grin off his face and put it on hers.

His dream was from his boyhood. The farm of Grandy’s youth was so real in his mind that it frightened him.

In the porch yard stood his father, tall, gaunt, joyless. Grandy had never known his father to laugh. Smiles were doled out once at Christmas and sometimes when the crops brought in better than an average price. Denby Adams had never been one to show pleasure. Showing the back of his hand had been more to his liking.

In the doorway stood his mother. Willowy, thin, anxious. She wore a pinched expression of worry. She spoke in whispers, afraid to do anything that might be construed as disobedient. Amanda Grandville Adams had ceased being a woman when she’d given birth to the first of her five children. Her husband stopped calling her “Mandy” and started referring to her as “Mother” even when they were in bed.

Around Grandy were his brothers and sisters, all clamoring for him to stand between them and Father. Like Mother, they whispered and shivered and cried softly. The sense of futility he’d known intimately as a boy returned full force. Grandy wanted to scream. His throat tightened until it felt raw. The scream jammed into the tight space, gathering into a lump that threatened to choke him.

Was it a lump? Was it inside his neck or around it? He lifted trembling hands to his throat and felt the scratchy rope. He clawed at the hangman’s noose even as he felt the floor give way beneath him.

“Up with you! Those cows are bawling and need milking.”

Grandy opened his eyes and saw a single flame surrounded by pitch black. He was in hell. The scream broke loose and filled the emptiness around him. It was answered by another scream. So it was true. Hell was a black place of screams and moans. He’d heard that all his life, but he’d never believed it until now. Where were the shooting flames that would melt his flesh and reduce his soul to ashes?

“Good heavens!”

Heavens? He blinked, trying to clear his eyes and his head. Who was speaking of heaven in hell?

“You scared the life out of me!”

Life. Death. Heaven. Hell. He shook his head, closed his eyes, tried to think and remember. His cheek was pressed against cool flooring. He opened one eye to see a cot beside him, the covers pulled from it and tangled about
his feet. He’d fallen out of bed? Was that all? He recalled a woman, a marriage, a different farm from that one in Tennessee.

“Do you have bad dreams often? Are you awake now? Grandville Adams, are you awake?”

“Yes. No.” He flipped onto his back, then sat up and rubbed his face with his hands. A light tunneled through the darkness. He extended one hand to stop it from engulfing him. It drew back to reveal a pale face framed by chestnut curls. Then Grandy knew he was alive. He clutched the side of the narrow bed he’d been shown to in the spare bedroom. A child’s room, although she’d said she’d borne no children.

“It’s almost five o’clock,” she said, keeping the lantern near her so that her frown was clearly visible to him. “Can’t you hear those cows a-bawling?”

“Five?” He closed his eyes again, thinking that his nightmare was continuing. He wasn’t awake after all. In the dim distance he heard the plaintive complaint of a cow with a swollen udder. The sound brought back all the horror of the life he’d escaped when he was a frightened thirteen-year-old.

“Get up, will you?” She grabbed his forearm and gave him a shaking. “You should have been up an hour ago.”

“Let go of me.” He jerked his arm away from her, depressed to know that he was, indeed, awake. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Around here, it’s morning. Now get moving.” She set the lantern on the table beside the cot. “If you’re not dressed and sitting on a milking stool within fifteen minutes, I’ll send in a couple of my hands to light a fire under you.”

She swept out of the room in a swirl of calico and lace. Grandy fell back with a groan, tempted to drift back to his hellish nightmare.

Zanna waited until she heard him moving around in the spare bedroom, then she left the house and went to the
bunkhouse. The hands were sitting outside at the long table where, weather permitting, they took most of their meals. Lanterns burned along the center of the table. The smell of bacon, eggs, and buttermilk biscuits made Zanna’s mouth water.

“Morning, boys,” she said, greeting all seven of them. “Perkins, got some grub to spare?”

“Of course.” Perkins made room for her at the end of one long bench. His gaze took in the other men around him. “We thought you’d breakfast with your new mister.”

Zanna sat down and eyed the platters of food. She nodded when one of the cowboys offered to pour coffee. Besides Perkins, the foreman, there were Lefty, handling the coffeepot; Charlie, a young drifter from Montana; Packsaddle Bill and Donny, cowboys who’d ridden with Perkins for years; Jack, an older cowpoke with a knack for black-smithing; and Butch, the boyish cook. Zanna had grown close to them since the death of her husband. She loved taking meals with them and she refused to allow Grandville Adams to deprive her of that small pleasure.

“He’s shy,” she said, constructing the lie as she reached for a platter of eggs. “He asked to take his meals alone. I’ll probably share dinner with him, but I might as well eat breakfast and supper with y’all. I told him I’d bring what’s left to him and he can eat it in the house. He’s peculiar that way, but we’ve all got odd customs.”

“Yes, ma’am, I reckon we do,” Packsaddle said, passing the bacon to her. “We was all dumbfounded hearing ’bout your marriage. Known this fella long?”

“Long enough.” She smiled and took two biscuits. “You’ll pardon me, Packsaddle, but I don’t discuss my private life with anyone but my husband.”

“Why, sure.” Packsaddle ducked his head and stroked his whiskers.

“There should be plenty left for your mister,” Butch said, offering a youthful smile. He was well into his twenties,
but his freckles and big-toothed grin made him seem years younger. “If not, I’ll rustle up something for him.”

“That’s good of you,” Zanna said before diving into the delicious breakfast. “He’s milking the cows and seeing to other chores now, but I imagine he’ll be hungry as a lion by sunrise.”

“Butch was just telling us about the terrible winter his brother wrote about from up Montana way,” Perkins said, guiding the conversation back to a more comfortable trail.

Zanna released a sigh of contentment, glad to nestle into this familiar corner of her life and put her new boarder out of her mind. Not for the first time that day, she wondered if she might have gotten more than she bargained for in Grandville Adams.

By early evening Zanna was pleased with the way things had progressed. She’d kept Grandville away from her hands by keeping him as busy as a bee. First the milking, then the stable work, then work on the porch he was to build. He grumbled and groaned and fussed, but she paid him no mind. She had him by the short hairs.

He’d eaten leftovers for breakfast and supper, but dinner would be different. The hands usually made do with cold biscuits, coffee, milk, and cornbread before they turned in. Zanna would have to find something for Grandville to eat. If only she weren’t a disaster in the kitchen!

She gathered eggs, placing them in her basket of straw, and headed for the house, wondering if she could boil eggs for his dinner. Eggs and bread. Wouldn’t that suffice? She looked toward the stables where he was supposed to be seeing to the horses and making ready for tomorrow morn’s feeding. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to coerce him day in and day out to do his chores. He was rebelling a little now, but he’d soon get that out of his system.

The ground rumbled beneath her feet and Zanna shaded her eyes with one hand to look in the direction of an approaching horse and rider. The moment she saw the big
palomino, her heart froze solid in her breast. She brought her hand down to clutch the basket, holding it close against her body as if it were a shield of armor.

Zanna couldn’t say why, but Duncan Hathaway always reminded her of the pictures of a cobra she’d seen in an encyclopedia. Maybe it was his eyes, narrow and coldly black, or perhaps it was his large head supported by a thin neck and bony shoulders.

Duncan was lean and rangy. His mouth was thin-lipped and bracketed by deep grooves. He bore little resemblance to Fayne, with whom he’d shared a father. Fayne’s mother had died and his father had remarried twice. His last wife had borne Duncan. Fayne and Duncan had shared supreme confidence. Neither had ever known a moment of self-doubt.

As Duncan brought his golden palomino to a prancing halt, Zanna knew why he’d come. News of her marriage had reached him. She could sense his seething fury beneath the cold glint of his eyes. He lifted a gloved hand to touch his brow and his smile was chilling.

“How do, Zanna,” he said, glancing around quickly to make sure he was alone with her. “Heard a funny thing about you.”

Zanna waited, refusing to speak to him unless it was an absolute necessity.

“Heard you got hitched to a jailbird.” He crossed his wrists on his saddle horn and hunched his shoulders. “That ain’t true, is it?” When she didn’t answer, just stared at him as if she were seeing through him, he angled forward an inch. “
Is it?
” he hissed.

“I’m married,” Zanna said, her voice sounding unnatural even to her own ears. Why couldn’t she be herself around Duncan? Why did she have to stammer and stall and simper? “It was my right to do so.”

“Your right?” Duncan chuckled and wiped his mouth with the back of one rawhide glove. “You’ve done gone round the bend, ain’tcha? You’d better hightail it back into
town and get your crooked lawyer friend to cancel this here marriage before you land yourself in a pile of it, little sister.”

Zanna stared at the glove he passed over his mouth and something shriveled inside of her. She’d never seen Duncan’s hands. He always wore the gloves, splotched with sweat and blood and other unsightly stains. When he was called to the table, he merely exchanged the rawhide for black kid leather. Fayne had told her that Duncan’s hands were scarred by fire and one of his fingers was deformed. Zanna guessed that his heart was also scarred and deformed, providing he had one.