An Unwilling Husband (29 page)

A soft knock for entrance had him rubbing the stubble on his face, and he glared at the door with annoyance. “Come in,” he barked. He couldn’t avoid the world forever.

Clint Jennings stepped in, followed closely by his daughter Anna.

Garret leaned back in the chair and cocked his pistol. “Come to finish the job?” he asked.

Clint put his hands in the air and murmured, “Just want to talk, is all.”

The man had seen better days and looked as if he’d aged ten years in the past week. Hair unkempt, and three or more days without a shave, by the stubble on his face. Even his eyes held little life.

“Lenny!” Garret called, and had an almost immediate response from the girl. “Take care of Maggie. I need to take care of something,” he said in her language. Sure, he knew she had English. But for reasons unknown to him she didn’t want others to know, which was all right by him. Garret handed her his other pistol and followed the Jenningses.

“What do you want?” he asked after they’d stepped onto the front porch.

“I want to know what happened to my son,” the older man responded.

“Would you like me to start at the part where he threatened and kidnapped my wife or with the part where he tried to kill her and likely succeeded?” He was in no mood for small talk or niceties.

“I know nothing of any kidnapping.” Clint crossed his arms on his chest.

“All right, a while back your boy and some hired men came to rustle a number of our cattle. The next night, Maggie was out with us and your boy took her in her sleep and rode hell for high water back to your place. I can still hear the fear in her voice as she screamed my name to save her, Clint. It will haunt me until the day I die.”

Anna went pale. “Excuse me,” she said, and sat down on a chair at the far end of the porch. She put a handkerchief to her lips with a trembling hand.

Garret swung a steely gaze back on Clint. “You remember when your boy approached my wife at the dance? She had gloves on her hands to cover the damage done by trying to escape him. That claw mark across his face? It was given by my wife the night he and his men took her.”

Clint’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t tell him to do any of that.”

“But he did, and I didn’t kill him for it. He came looking for trouble on my land. Came here waving a gun and when Maggie tried to protect me from a bullet, he shot her, and he shot to kill. Now you tell me, Mr. Jennings, if someone did those injustices to your late wife, or to your daughter, would you let them live?”

Clint’s expression fell. The man’s eyes brimmed with tears.

A son lost by his father. A damn shame, when it could have been prevented. “I’m real sorry for your loss, Mister. It wasn’t ever my intention that it end up like this.”

Clint nodded. “Sorry for your loss too.” He tromped down the porch steps and turned. “This doesn’t change a thing, Shaw. You still owe the loan in full or your land is mine.”

As Garret retreated to the house, Anna stood.

“May I pay my proper respects to your wife?” she asked.

* * * *

Maggie sat on the front porch of the small cabin on Roy’s homestead. The scene before her came from her memories from childhood. Her toughened hands lay in her lap, and looked out of place against the soft material of her frilly cream-colored dress. This body wasn’t a child’s any longer, so why was she staring at Roy Davis, still living, chopping wood? It must be a dream but with the tug of fatigue at her limbs, this was a happy enough place to dwell in.

“Are you going to just sit there all day or help me with chores? Get moving, Margaret!” someone said in a familiar voice.

When she turned toward it, her mother stared crossly at her from the doorway, ignoring her adult form and questioning look. She bustled back inside. Maggie followed slowly, and the inside of the house was an exact replica of Aunt Margaret’s in Boston. The old biddy would soon appear from the woodwork. Save her mother’s rustlings in the kitchen, the house remained quiet, though.

“Why are you moving so slowly today?” Mother asked, as she stopped her hurried advance past her.

Indeed, her arms and legs felt like burlap sacks full of rocks and sand, but upon inspection, she couldn’t find the cause of the problem. She shrugged helplessly, finding it difficult to speak. Maybe if she sat down.

Nary a piece of furniture stood in the large entryway, and the darkest corner of the room drew her. She took a seat in the safety of the shadows. Her mother ignored her in her haste to finish unseen chores and upon perusal of the room,
Maggie Shaw
scrawled on the wall leapt out at her.

The door creaked open. Roy came into the entryway and threw his hat and coat on the floor. His face was no longer the aging face of the man she once saw as her father, but the youthful features of fifteen-year-old Garret. His face swelled and contorted, and blood flowed freely from his lip. The boy crumpled to the floor and gasped for air.

He gaped at her and opened his mouth to speak. “My, your wife is sleeping like the dead.”

The voice confused her. Feminine, and it had grated on her ears. Not at all what she had expected from her childhood friend. She was helpless to move. Since her arrival at Roy’s place, she had only grown weaker. Frozen terror overtook her when she tried and failed to stand. Suddenly, the scene melted away, revealing a new one. This one seemed to make even less sense.

By the feel and smell and coolness of the linens on her bare legs, she was in Garret’s bed. So weak and unable to move, her lazy eyelids were the only things she was able to open, and even those, just slightly. A full and feminine mouth formed the words so familiar in her dream. The plump lips smiled at Garret.

“I need to talk to you, Garret. Alone,” the woman said, much too intimately. Who did this woman think she was to speak so to him,
her
husband?

Garret didn’t answer and instead took the chair near her bed. He must have failed to realize she could see him.

Help!
she struggled to scream,
I’m here! Can you not see me?

The woman spoke again. “There has been talk around town. I asked Doc myself and he said your wife isn’t going to pull through this. Said it was a matter of time. A waiting game.”

The woman took a step toward Garret. He’d turned his head, so Maggie couldn’t gauge his reaction.

Anna Jennings.
The name came to her as a whisper through the fog.

“I know you care nothing for her,” Anna said. “My brother said so. And a man like you shouldn’t be alone. So...” The woman hesitated a moment more then closed the short distance between them.

Garret launched himself to his feet, pushed the rocking chair out from under himself and retreated the foot and a half of space he had between his back and the wall. “What the—”

“I will accept your proposal after she is dead. We can put all this behind us, Garret. We’ll just forget about her, and I’ll forgive you for your indiscretions.” Her tone had taken on a pleading note, and she placed her hand on his chest, spread her fingers wide to take in the expanse of his musculature. “I can make you happy where she failed.”

The gall of the woman!

Rage. Jealously. She didn’t care what caused it. She wanted to live. Yet when she tried to speak, only the barest whisper of a few molecules of air passed pathetically through her throat. She couldn’t take her burning eyes off the wretched woman’s hand on her trapped husband, and willed the strength to try again. “Get your hands…off my husband,” she whispered.

Garret snapped his head toward her. The look of anger on his face had morphed into shock and something more. Hope?

Anna stepped away from him, startled.

“Get out,” was all Maggie managed before strength left her completely.

“What did she say?” Anna leaned closer to her bed with an offended look on her prim face.

Garret turned to her with a smile. “I do believe my wife told you to get out. Please do so without reserve.”

A cross between a growl and a shriek came from Anna, an atrocious noise. She turned on her heel and left the room. Not before slamming the door, which banked loudly and then bounced open, prompting her to return and slam it again for good measure.

“Spoiled little beast,” he grumbled as he pulled his chair back to the bed.

Oh, how she wished to hear him speak to her, but the sweet heaviness of sleep pulled at her and she couldn’t hold on any longer. It would be a hard battle back and all uphill, but she would fight. Anna Jennings wouldn’t lay her claws on Garret ever again. Over her cold and lifeless body, would she allow it.

As Cookie often said, “Time to do work.”

Chapter 19

A faint ringing sounded in her ears and she stirred. The awful sound grew louder until it almost deafened her. It was the volume of her shrieks that had her ears begging for relief. Lenny leaned over her shoulder, a look of fierce concentration on her face and a sheen of sweat across her brow.

“What are you doing?” Maggie rasped in shock.

Lenny shot a horrified glance at Garret, who lay pressed down on Maggie with all his weight.

He shook his head. “Finish it. Do it quick, and we’ll talk about it after.”

Lenny pulled a knife away from her shoulder and threw him a dirty look. “He won’t let the doc at you anymore. Only me. I have to drain your shoulder but it’s going to hurt.” She leaned forward to start again.

“Wait, wait. Wait! Why is the doctor not here?” She panted. Son of a motherless goat, this was going to hurt.

Lenny sighed. “He believes in bloodletting. Which makes sense around your wound, because your blood is poisoned, but he was letting too much from your arms. It made you sicker. If that is even possible. Garret told him not to come back, so you get me.”

“Well, can’t you give me a sleeping draught or something?” she asked in desperation.

“You’ve been out for days,” Lenny exclaimed. “I don’t think you need more sleep. What do you want me to do? Whack you over the head with a pan?”

Hope filled her. A knock on the head would work.

“No,” Lenny told her. “Best if you don’t look.”

Before she went through such torture again, she’d gladly take another bullet.

Garret and Lenny dipped the knife into a glass of whiskey and heated it in the kitchen fire to sterilize it as best they could. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and knew pain that only belonged in hell. She lay sweating and spent while Lenny re-bandaged her shoulder.

It was best not to look at the damage. From the feel of it, she would only be good to travel in the roving freak show she’d happened upon once in the city. “Can you leave?” she asked Garret. She didn’t want him to see her in such a desperate state.

“Good luck with that,” Lenny grumbled. “Only time he leaves is when I bathe you and even then I nearly have to pull a gun to get him moving.”

How mortifying this situation had become. She cleared her raspy throat. “I could use a drink of water.”

Garret filled a glass from the bucket in the corner of the room, handed it to her and waited as she thirstily drank the water down.

“May I have more?” She would quite possibly never be satisfied again.

“Sorry, but you need to do a little at a time. We’ll wait an hour and see how you do with that much and then give you some more.”

“I’m famished.”

Garret grinned at Lenny. “Well, that’s a good sign, ain’t it?”

The bandage tightened and tied, Lenny patted her hand. “I’ll go fix some broth.” She disappeared into the other room.

Broth? How very disappointing.

It was late in the evening, and the candles were lit in the room. Many of them, near the bed to aid in Lenny’s need to see what she was doing. The light glinted off something. A delicate green gemstone set in a thin gold band adorned the ring finger on her left hand. She held it up to study it more closely, but found she hadn’t the strength for long, and looked to Garret for explanation.

“It was my mother’s. Thought since you’ve stuck to being my wife this long, you should be wearing my ring.”

The weight of the delicate jewelry meant more than she would ever be able to put into words. “It’s beautiful, Garret.” If she’d had enough fluids in her body to muster a tear, she would’ve.