Claudia Dain (41 page)

"I don't know," she answered.

"Why?"

"I don't think I want to love," she said, lifting her chin and staring into the reverend's large brown eyes. She half expected a rebuke. She got a smile.

"Love is a choice, Anne. Always," he said. "It's not earned, but given, and never to anybody who deserves it."

"I didn't say he didn't deserve it," she said, lifting her brows. Reverend or not, she wasn't going to let him insult Jack.

"No, you didn't." He smiled. "And didn't you vow, just yesterday, to love him all the days of your life, as well as to honor and obey? How's it going?" He had a huge grin on his face. She smiled back and relaxed in her chair.

"A bit rocky," she said.

"Usually is," he said.

"Really? Did you and Constance ever—?"

"All the time." He grinned. "The first year she must have cried once a week and I left the house in a rage just as often."

"You seem so happy now."

"We are. We worked it all out. I'd come back, she'd stop crying, and then we'd start talking."

He'd come back. It all rested on that. But Jack would leave and he wouldn't come back. No matter what anybody said.

"Anne," the reverend said, coming around from his desk and taking her by the hand, "
'...love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.'
Honor your marriage vows to Jack; he doesn't deserve any less."

"He'll leave me," she said, not quite aware she had spoken the words out loud.

"You don't know that."

"I do."

"No, you only know that you believe he will. Give him a chance to fulfill the vow he gave you, the vow to love,
 
honor, and cherish. A man doesn't leave someone he cherishes."

But he didn't cherish her, did he? That was the whole trouble; she didn't know. She didn't know what love was supposed to look like in a man. But she wanted to believe that if anyone could show her, it would be Jack. Maybe that was something.

* * *

After a tearful hug in the bearlike embrace of Reverend Holt, Anne started home. She had a lot to think about and she wasn't in any hurry to get where she was headed; Miss Daphne always had a pile of work to be done and she just needed some quiet time to ponder all that the reverend had said, especially about that verse, "Lean not unto thine own understanding." She hoped she had the guts to tell Miss Daphne that she knew the
whole
verse now.

She didn't have long to ponder; the streets were busy, everyone sharing the news about the murder. She didn't want to think about the murder anymore, much less talk about it, since it would only force her to defend Jack and she wasn't sure she could do that right now. She was flat exhausted.

"Good morning, Anne Scullard!" Martha O'Shaughnessy called out as she walked toward her from the mercantile. "How does it feel to be a married woman?"

She obviously hadn't heard about Bill's murder or she wouldn't have asked what it felt like to be married to the town's top suspect.

"It feels just fine, Mrs. O'Shaughnessy," Anne said, smiling politely.

"Anne Scullard," Martha repeated under her breath and then her breath caught in her throat and she reached out for Anne.

"Are you all right, Martha?" Anne asked, taking her basket of packages. "Do you need to sit?"

"No," she gasped, then grinned. "I knew that name was familiar. I kept telling Shaughn and he kept waving me off, but I'm not likely to forget that name, now, am I? No, things like that don't happen often, praise the Lord."

"Amen," Anne murmured, completely lost as to Martha's meaning.

"I'm so glad he turned out well after such a bad start. I had my doubts, sending him off like that, had half a mind to keep him for myself, but that wouldn't have been right, his having family and all. Family first, I always say."

"Who are you talking about?"

"Why, little Jacques!" she exclaimed with a huge smile.

"Oh," Anne said blankly. "Perhaps I can walk with you into the Demorest, it's right here and you might want to rest a bit before you go on down to your place," Anne said, seriously frightened for Martha, who had always been the most solid of women. This threadbare conversation was nothing like her.

"Oh, Anne, I'm all right! Don't you understand? Jacques's parents had been killed, murdered for their stock, and the little boy was all alone out there, sitting by the river like the lost child he was. Why, he couldn't have been more than four at the time and no more than a good stone's throw from where his parents lay. Sitting in a square of dirt, huddled and rocking and staring with big blue eyes down at all these lines he'd made. His house, he called it. I'll never forget that. Poor little thing, sitting in the dirt and pretending it was his house."

"You're the woman," Anne said, her face going white. "You're the woman in his dream."

"He dreams about me? Poor lamb, it must be a nightmare if he dreams of that day," Martha said. "I was down in Texas living with my brother. His wife had died and he needed a woman to keep things for him. I wasn't there long since he married again not a year later, but I was there long enough for that murder. Never caught the bandits, not that I ever heard, and of course, I never had any contact with Jacques after he went to New Orleans; his father's sister, I think it was, took him in. I never knew how that turned out, but I just couldn't imagine anyone not taking to that boy. Sweet as sugar with blue eyes that rivaled an angel's and the most polite manners I'd ever seen."

"How did you know?" Anne thought to ask. "How did you finally remember after all these years?"

"Why, it was saying your name." Martha smiled and clasped Anne by the arm. "That was his mother's name—Anne Scullard."

Chapter 24

Anne didn't even have time to let that knowledge settle before Martha was bustling off, full of excitement. Jack was walking down the street with Sheriff Lane and Grey and Blakes. A somber foursome they made, but Martha wouldn't be put off by that, not after years of worrying and wondering.

She reached them in front of her own place, the Mustang Saloon, and stopped them by the very force of her smile.

"I knew your name," she said. "The first time Shaughn told me about you, I knew I knew you but I didn't know how."

She was looking at Jack and it was Jack who responded.

"Ma'am?"

Martha reached out and touched his arm, sending him a grin as bright as a hundred candles. "Don't you know me? But I wouldn't expect that you would, being as you were smaller than a jackrabbit and twice as quiet. I declare, I never knew a boy so quiet and composed; please and thank you and not much else came out of his mouth that I ever could tell. My, but your ma was pleased by you; she thought the sun rose and set on you, that's a fact. I'm Martha, Jacques," she urged. "Martha Conner, back then. I was down on the Brazos, with my brother, Pete."

Jack just looked down at his boots and shook his head.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I don't recall... Did you call me Jacques?" he asked, looking at her face.

"Of course, child, Jacques Scullard, and your mama was Anne and your pa Eduard, God rest them both. It's been many a year I've prayed that all went well for you, Jacques, and now, here you are, as handsome and fit as any man has a right to be. Your mama would be so, so pleased," she said brokenly, tears welling in her eyes as she stroked his arm.

Jack looked at her hard, at the lined face and the large-bosomed shape of her; he could see nothing that was familiar, but the sound of her voice as she had spoken, the tears so ready to spring up, stirred something. Her hair was silver brown and she wore it in a coronet of braids. He liked the way that looked and, he remembered, he'd liked it once before....

"You used to borrow flour and salt from my mama," he said softly.

"Yes, and she eggs from me. My brother had five good layers," she sniffed. "She loved to make you pies and crumbles."

Yes, she had. His mother had loved to bake for him, luring him into the house for a treat and a nap. She would watch his every mouthful, a smile wide on her beautiful face. Then she would lay him down and sit on the bed to take off his shoes and he would try to fight the sleepiness that tugged at his body, trying so hard to be like his daddy, who didn't need to take a nap in the heart of the day.

He remembered. He remembered it all.

Jack reached out and laid a hand over Martha's clenching fingers, pressing the touch of her into his arm, this dim and distant connection to all that he had lost in one splintered moment so many years ago.

"You look fine, Jacques," she said, looking up at him, tears welling in her eyes.

Jack smiled down at her and whispered, "Thank you, ma'am. And thank you for the lunch; it lasted me all the way to New Orleans and I savored every bite."

With a small cry of emotion, Martha threw her arms around Jack and embraced him with all the care and affection of a mother. As Jack wrapped his arms around her, he bent his head down and caught her scent; the same. It was just the same as when she'd wrapped her arms around a lost boy and carried him back into the world, buying him new shoes for his trip. It was the last hug he'd known as a boy and was the closest thing now to his mother's hug as he was going to get. So he let her hug him. Yeah, he let her, the deep joy of the act enfolding him as surely as her arms did.

"What are you doing, Ma?" Shaughn said, coming out onto the boardwalk.

She pulled away and sniffed and pushed a pin back into her high-bound hair. "I was saying hello and welcome to a man I knew as a boy. This is Jacques Scullard, Shaughn, and I told you that his name sounded familiar!"

"Jacques?" Shaughn asked.

"Of course, Jacques! With a name like Scullard, what else would it be but Jacques? I would have figured out who he was days ago if you'd only given me the right name. Why did you have to keep calling him Jack Skull?"

Jack looked over at Shaughn and said, "Yeah, why'd you tell her my name was Skull?"

Shaughn coughed a few times and then with a sweep of his hand said, "Come on in and have a drink. It's too hot a day to stand around outside."

It was overcast and breezy, but the whole lot of them went into the saloon.

"You all just sit while I go on back and dish you up some food; I've been aching to feed this boy again for years and it'll be something hot this time, Jacques, and better than a box lunch!"

"Thank you, ma'am," came a round of amused male voices. Grey and Blakes were used to it; Jack just seemed to attract this sort of thing from most women. It appeared he'd started young, judging by Martha's comments.

Anne followed Martha to the small room at the back that served as kitchen. The Mustang didn't serve food as a rule, not like the Demorest, but if a customer got hungry and wanted a little something, it seemed a shame to let him walk out the door when Martha could throw together something that would keep him satisfied and spending his money in the Mustang. Why should the Demorest get all the business? It had been Martha's idea and Shaughn hadn't said a word against it, especially as she was doing all of the work.

"How can I help?" Anne asked.

Martha was already pulling out the chicken she'd made that morning; it wasn't quite hot, but she could make a nice gravy and it would only take a few minutes for the corn bread to warm....

"Thank you, Anne, I've almost got this together, but if you'd just divide those chickens into man-sized servings while I stick this corn bread in. And there's a fresh apron hanging behind the door on a hook."

Anne found it and tied it on, then picked up a knife and began dividing the chickens into parts.

"So, you knew Jack's mother and father," Anne said, probing for information the way she was probing the chicken. "What were they like?"

"Oh, nice folks," Martha said, heating up the stock for the gravy. "Such a tragedy."

"What happened?"

"Shot dead, both of them, and their stock stolen; horses mostly. That man had a knack with horses and could get them to do most anything. He had a real eye, too. Folks around there respected him, sought him out when they were looking to buy. And you know the talk about horse dealers, not an honest one in a hundred, but he was that one. Fine man."

"And his wife?"

Martha smiled in memory and stirred in some flour with the heated chicken stock. "Pretty as daylight. Devoted mother. Friendly when you came to call and had a free hand when it came to lending. We shared a cup of coffee a time or two, sitting in that little house. Her table was fine, walnut with scrolled legs; she said it came all the way from Louisiana. That's how it came out about her family being from there. His, too."

"Pretty as daylight? Was she blond?"

"No, hair black as pitch with eyes to match. His hair was lightish and the bluest eyes I ever saw. Jacques takes after his pa more 'n' his ma, I'd say, though there's some of both in him."

"It's strange, isn't it, that he'd marry a woman with the same name as his ma?" Anne asked.

Martha shrugged. "Anne's not so uncommon a name and hers, I think, was Annette, though no one called her that, 'cept maybe her man."