The Bad Luck Wedding Dress (24 page)

It seemed to happen in slow motion. Moonlight glistened off the barrel of the revolver in Frank Bailey’s upraised hand. Then, sneering evilly, he brought it down, butt first, whacking Jenny on the side of the head.

Like a puppet whose strings had been cut, she crumpled to the ground and lay still.

Emma followed after her sisters. The tears that spilled from her eyes and ran across her temples were the first she’d shed in six long years, the only tears she’d cried since the morning Papa told her their mother had died.

A male cat with four different colors in its fur will bring good luck.

CHAPTER 14

JACKSON PETERS, EDITOR OF the
Daily Democrat
and Wilhemina’s husband, threw down his cards in disgust as Trace raked in yet another pot. “I’d have been better off staying at that damned dance, after all. You know, McBride, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were cheating.”

“Cheating? Me?” Trace’s brows arched in innocence. “Now that’s a dangerous accusation to make down here in the Acre. You throw that word around too much and you’re liable to end up in your own obituary section.”

Peters snorted and counted his chips.

Trace began another stack for his. One more hand, he told himself. That should give Jenny enough time to do whatever it was she had in mind. Imagining what it might be had kept him half hard since he left her.

He dealt the cards and picked up his hand, paying closer attention to the room around him than to his chance at a straight. This was the first time he’d visited the End of the Line since he sold it, and the twinge of bittersweet he experienced upon entering the building had surprised him.

The smell of the place was the same, the music was the same, and the people were the same. Trace was damned different. It made him feel strange as hell.

Not spotting his old friend, he’d concluded that he arrived too late and turned to leave. That was when Peters had called out, summoning Trace to his card table with a taunting remark about his bad luck marriage. At that point, Trace had decided to play cards.

His efforts to quell this bad luck business at the dance had worked all right, but he knew a little extra effort wouldn’t hurt. Before the end of the first hand he discovered the newspaper editor kept a card or two up his sleeve. After all, Trace had known every card he dealt the man. No one ran card games for a living without learning how to cheat.

Peters continued to run his mouth, and Trace felt perfectly justified in his actions. Taking almost five hundred dollars off the newspaperman had soothed his temper—up to a point. But every time he about decided he’d fleeced the scoundrel enough, the fool would mention Jenny’s name again, and he’d hang around for one more hand.

Peters called it quits first. “It’s been a pleasure, gentlemen,” he said, shoving back his chair and standing. “I do believe I’ll have myself one last drink, then toddle back home.” He appeared a bit green at the idea.

Trace watched him join a red-eyed cowboy at the bar and debated how long he’d let Peters suffer before offering him a way out of his misery. A ban on columns about the infamous dress and a few positive statements about Fortune’s Design in “Talk about Town” would suffice nicely for the return of his cash, Trace decided.

Glancing at his watch, he calculated he had ten minutes to kill before heading home to Jenny. He allowed five of them to pass before rising to let Peters off the hook. Halfway to the bar a commotion in the front of the saloon snagged his attention. “What the hell?” he blurted.

Marshal Timothy Courtright held three squirming, twisting, hollering Menaces in his grip. “McBride!” the lawman called. “I ought to arrest you for neglect. I ran across this trio not half a block from here. I was looking for my deputies when these children of yours all but knocked me down and went to blabbering on about your wife’s bad luck.”

The girls in the Acre on a Friday night? Oh, God
. Trace’s hand gripped the back of a chair. His knuckles turned white, and fear threatened to knock his knees out from under him.

They all shouted, “Papa!”

As Trace headed toward them, Katrina slipped from the marshal’s grip. Courtright scowled when Maribeth drew back her foot and kicked his shin. “That’s enough!” he bellowed. “They’re your trouble now, McBride. I’ve got enough of my own already. Some liquored-up cowboy has his former sweetheart cornered in a hotel dining room, and he’s threatening to shoot her and everyone else in the hotel unless she marries him tonight.” Giving the older two girls a shove toward their father, he turned to leave.

Emma whirled around and called after him, “Marshal Courtright, you can’t leave! We need you!”

He didn’t hear her over the clamor filling the saloon, and he didn’t stop, disappearing through the front door.

A sick feeling replaced the fear gripping Trace as he took in his daughters’ wild eyes. Something was wrong. Very wrong. “What is it?” he demanded.

“It’s Mama,” Maribeth cried as Katrina launched herself into his waiting arms.

“A bad man pointed a gun at her,” Katrina added.

Then he noticed Emma’s tears.
Oh, hell
. He extended a hand toward his eldest child and she grasped his fingers like a lifeline.

“He hit her, Papa. With the gun. I saw it. She fell down.”

Maribeth’s voice was full of fear. “He rode past us. He had her in front of him on his horse. He took her away.”

He had to force the words past his fear. “Who? Who was he?”

“He said his name, Papa. It was Frank. It was Frank Bailey.”

The name hit Trace like a fist. For the briefest of moments he closed his eyes. Then he asked, “What else do you know?”

“He said he was taking her to the Lucky Lady. You have to hurry, Papa. You have to save her.”

He had to save her
. The words echoed through his mind as he considered the situation. Courtright had his hands full; Trace would have to go alone. First, though, he had to see to the girls; he had to get them home. He could take them there himself, but that would eat up time. Someone else, then. Who?

Rachel. She’d do it if he paid for her time.

He rubbed his hand along his jaw. Maribeth’s words had painted a scene that grieved him beyond words.

After pressing a kiss to Katrina’s brow, he set her away from him. “I’ll take care of it. But I need your help. I need you to promise me you’ll stay here in my old office until I come get you.” He paused a moment then added, “Fairy’s promise, girls.”

Their expressions showed surprise that he knew their private pledge, but each of them nodded their assent. He shooed them up the stairs and into his office, then handed Emma the key. “Lock the door behind me, Emmie. Don’t open it for anyone but me or Miss Rachel, all right?” Outside he waited until he heard the lock click before hurrying down the stairs.

The scent of smoke hung in the air that swirled around the brawl spilling out into the street from the saloon next door. Trace ignored both the fight and the distant sounds of gunshots as he headed for Rachel’s. He was quaking in his boots.

Frank Bailey had his wife.

JENNY FOUGHT consciousness, instinctively fleeing the fear poised to consume her. For a time, she battled successfully, but all too soon she awoke to find herself lying beneath a canvas in the bed of a buckboard, her wrists and ankles chafed raw by a tightly bound rope, her mouth gagged by a foul-tasting cloth.

Memory returned in a flash and, with it, anger underscored with fear. Big Jack wanted her punished for what she’d done to his daughters. How could that man be so insane? She’d sewn a dress, for goodness’ sakes. A dress! Would they kill her because of a dress?

She was very much afraid she knew the answer to that one.

Cold seeped into her bones, and she realized her hands and feet had gone numb. From somewhere nearby a coyote howled, its thin, mournful note sending shivers up her skin. She had to do something. She couldn’t lie here, meekly accepting her fate—whatever that might prove to be.

Was there any chance she could roll from the wagon without his detection? Would she even want to? The rate her luck was going she’d hit her head on a rock, then lie on the road as easy bait for the coyote.

Luck. That word made her want to scream. Being trussed in the back of a buckboard made her want to scream. So she tried, but the little sound that escaped the gag in her mouth sounded like a sob even to her own ears.

Frank Bailey called, “Whoa, boy.” The wagon rolled to a stop. She heard the creak of springs and thud of boots against the ground as he descended from his seat. Desperation and a measure of fight brought her knees tightly to her chest and she curled into a ball. She wouldn’t make this easy for him. He’d have to drag her from the wagon. If not for the gag in her mouth, she swore she would have bitten him again.

He hauled her from the backboard, then hoisted her over his shoulder. She buried her fingernails in his back, despite the lack of feeling in her hands.

“Bitch,” he snarled. “Dammit, aren’t you smart enough to be scared?”

He stank of sweat and smoke and stale whiskey. He jostled her extra hard, pounding his shoulder into her stomach, and she thought she might be sick all down his back. She was scared, all right, but the flame of anger burning inside prevented the fear from overtaking her. Frank Bailey climbed a porch step then paused. Jenny heard the squeak of a turning knob. Hinges yawned as the door swung open.

She had the sensation of entering a tomb.

He carried her forward, into the inky darkness, then suddenly, she felt herself falling. She landed on something soft. A mattress?

A bed.

Jenny’s anger deserted her as horror took its place.
Not that. Please, Lord, not that
.

A match scratched and flared, and soon the muted yellow glow of lamplight displaced the darkness. She gazed around the small room. Rough wooden walls, a thick coating of dust. This was obviously not the Lucky Lady’s main house.

Bailey placed the lamp on a small bedside table and stared down at her, a sullen scowl on his brow. Jenny watched him intently. He appeared awfully unemotional for a man bent upon rape. Or murder, for that matter.

For some reason, it frightened her all the more.

What did Frank Bailey have planned?

His lips quirked up in a humorless smile. “Mary Rose lied to our Pa to save me from a whippin’ one time. She’d bake peach cobbler for dessert once a week just because it was my favorite.” He reached out and fingered a lock of her hair.

Jenny shuddered.

“Pa wants me to deal with you. He’ll give me money, and I want it to get the hell out of this state. Besides, there’s Mary Rose.” Leaning over the bed, he said, “I’ll unwrap your mouth, but if you get too noisy on me I’ll shut you back up. Got it?”

She nodded and he reached down and untied the gag.

Jenny wanted to spit but her mouth was too dry. “Water?” she whispered, ashamed to ask for anything.

He shrugged and left the small cabin, returning moments later with a canteen from which he poured water into a dull tin cup. She struggled into a seated position, then accepted the drink he put to her lips, hoping whatever was floating in it wouldn’t hurt her. A nervous laugh clogged her throat. At the moment, bad water was the least of her worries. A bigger one concerned just what had Big Jack meant when he said “deal with.”

Jenny worked up the nerve to ask him.

He removed his hat and hung it on a hook beside the door. Glancing over his shoulder, he said, “Pa wanted something permanent.”

Permanent. Jenny swallowed hard. “You mean like a scar? Something that never goes away?”

His smile suddenly twisted. “Not exactly.”

It made her wish she’d not asked any questions.

He approached the bed. “This place is the old homestead of the Lucky Lady. Back when I was doing stages, I’d hole up here for weeks and never see a soul. We keep it stocked with necessities—canned goods and bullets. Nobody ever disturbs the supplies.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

He shrugged. “I took you away from town and prying eyes in order to have some privacy to do what needs doing. You need to know we’re alone out here. No one will show up to help you. I can make this last a little while or a long time, depending on how you cooperate.”

Fear swept through her like a cold, winter wind. He planned to kill her. She could see it in his eyes.

Extending a finger, he trailed it through her hair. Jenny shuddered.

“It won’t be that easy for me, if that makes you feel any better. For all the stage jobs I’ve done, I’ve never killed a woman before.”

The confirmation rocked her. She drew a deep breath, trying to calm herself, to think. Being afraid wouldn’t help her survive, and that must be her first concern. She needed an idea. She needed a plan.

Quickly, she considered her options. He had superior strength, a gun, freedom of movement. All she had was her intelligence, but it gave her a chance. She’d have to outwit him. Her thoughts coursed like river rapids until she conceived a strategy. “Mr. Bailey, you need not necessarily begin with me. May I offer a suggestion?”

He laughed. “Gutsy woman, aren’t you?”

“So I’ve been told. Nevertheless, I believe you can accomplish your objective quite simply.” She licked her dry lips. “My husband is well-off financially. My parents are extremely wealthy. I don’t doubt that between the two of them, they would be willing and able to provide a sum in excess of what Big Jack intends to give you.”

He didn’t speak. He hunkered down in front of the fireplace and busied himself with building a fire. Before long, a thin flame flickered in the hearth, the crackle of cedar sap sounding too much like gunshots for Jenny’s peace of mind.

“Nope,” he said finally, standing up straight. “I’m afraid that won’t do. I have Mary Rose to think about.” He walked to a chest that sat at the foot of the bed, inserted a key in the lock, and flipped up the lid. Jenny held her breath as he withdrew something sheathed in dark brown leather from its depths. A knife. A bowie knife.

She flinched when he leaned down and cut the rope binding her ankles, saying, “You’re a pretty lady, Mrs. McBride. Real pretty. It’d be a shame to let it go to waste. I figure it’s time for us to get down to the bargaining.” He eased a hand up beneath her skirt. “Sure is a pretty dress you’re wearing. Purple is just about my favorite color. And that black lace. It gets a man to wantin’.” His touch along her thigh made her skin crawl. “Don’t forget, the more you cooperate, the easier the dyin’ will be.”

His other hand ripped her bodice, and as he leaned for a closer look Jenny reacted instinctively.