Lady Lavender (14 page)

W
ash stayed at the site long after the aroma of chicken and exotic spices drifted on the still air and the Chinese cook summoned the crew to supper. Twice he walked the entire length of the tracks up to the proposed cut, calculating where to set blasting caps the next morning and how much dynamite he had to work with. By the time he had tramped back up to the rim, his hip was aching.

Still, he put off returning to town, finding small cleanup tasks to keep himself occupied. Finally his grumbling stomach demanded that he eat. Maybe he'd take supper in the hotel dining room instead of at Mrs. Rose's crowded table; food wouldn't be as good, but it would be quieter. He needed time to think. He mounted General and headed back to town.

He had always moved on to his next assignment as the Oregon Central Railroad connected Portland with
smaller cities and towns; he'd never experienced such a wrench at the prospect.

As he rode he tried to sort out his mixed feelings. In an odd way part of him was relieved; his absence could answer the nagging questions about his feelings for Jeanne. Another part of him was so full of regret at leaving her he couldn't think straight.

Usually he felt deep-down satisfaction at a job well done.

But instead of feeling satisfied about this job in Green Valley, he felt dead inside. He didn't feel like celebrating as he and Rooney usually did over a shot of Red Eye at the saloon.

The closer he got to town, the more uneasy he felt. Lights flickered along the main street when he rode in and tied up at the hotel. Maybe he'd feel better with some of Rita's steak and potatoes filling his belly.

No, he didn't want to see Jeanne.
Not yet. Not until he'd decided what he would say to her. But an hour later, even though his stomach was full of dinner plus apple pie and a half gallon of black coffee, the empty feeling was still there. A weight like a blacksmith's anvil pressed on his chest, crushing down harder with every breath.

He wanted to see Jeanne.

He paid his supper bill and drifted next door to the Golden Partridge. Need for Jeanne made his whole body ache. But dammit, he didn't feel right making love to her now, knowing he would be leaving so soon. That knowledge in itself made his heart constrict. He hadn't
seen this coming. If he'd thought it through that night after the Jensens' dance, maybe he'd never…

But he knew better. He hadn't thought, he'd just let himself feel something he hadn't allowed himself to feel since Laura.

Rooney strode through the saloon's swinging doors, sized up the table of cowboys and ranchers engaged in a poker game, then settled himself beside Wash at the bar.

“Been here long?” He signaled the bartender.

“Nope.”

Rooney ordered a beer. “Missed you at supper.”

“Stayed late at the site.”

“Missed one of Sarah's fine meat loaves.”

Wash downed the last of his whiskey and signaled for a fill-up. “Guess I did.”

“Missed the sheriff's visit, too. Seems Montez is on the loose.”

Wash's head came up, but all he did was grunt.

Rooney eyed him sideways. “Missed seein' Little Miss an' me playin' checkers.”

“Yeah? Did she win?”

Rooney chose not to answer that. “Missed seein' Jeanne, too.”

Wash said nothing.

“You gonna sleep at the boardinghouse tonight?”

That thought carved a gut full of red-hot desire in Wash's belly. He said nothing.

Rooney leaned closer. “Heard from Sykes, didja? He movin' you on to Gillette Springs?”

“How'd you know that?” Wash grumbled.

Rooney tapped his head with one long forefinger. “Comanche smarts, I guess. Haven't seen you with such a long face since Laur—”

“Shut up, Rooney.”

But his partner just grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “Don't worry, son. You'll live.” Then he ambled off to join the poker game.

 

Jeanne waved at Tom Roper, the liveryman, and walked on past him into the interior of the stable. Tom had been friendlier since the railroad had made such progress, and since he'd seen her wagonload of lavender; in fact, he had nodded his head in admiration.

It was dark inside the stable, and it smelled of straw and horses. She left the broad hinged door open so she could see her way to the wagon loaded with her harvested lavender. Even from here, she could smell the fragrant lavender fronds.

She sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes.
I thank you, God, for the life of my child and for the bounty of my field.

Abruptly the door swung shut with a thump and Jeanne's eyelids snapped open. She could see nothing but thick, velvety blackness. “Monsieur Roper?”

Silence.

“Tom?”

And then a low, oily voice spoke close to her ear.

“Buenas noches, señora.”

 

Wash finally dragged himself up the boardinghouse porch steps, hoping to see Jeanne, but she was not there.
“No, Colonel,” Mrs. Rose explained. “She worked all afternoon makin' those pretty wreaths of hers. Just now she's gone over to the livery stable to get some more lavender.”

“How long ago?”

The landlady pursed her thin lips. “About half an hour, I'd say. I've been watching over Manette until she gets back. Should be any minute now.”

A sense of unease settled in his chest.
Montez is loose.
All at once he needed to see Jeanne, wanted to make sure she was all right.

He wheeled toward the staircase, took the steps two at a time and burst into his room. From the top shelf of the carved wooden armoire in the corner he withdrew his gun belt, slid six cartridges into his revolver and strapped the weapon around his hip. He couldn't really say why, just following an instinct.

The main street was dimly lit. The mercantile was closed and the only light shone from the saloon and the front windows of the hotel. Wash moved quietly toward the edge of town and the livery stable, staying in the shadows and working to keep his breathing steady. On cat feet he drew near the barnlike structure that held horses and the wagon loaded with Jeanne's lavender crop.

The wide door was shut, but the owner, Tom Roper, was in the adjacent yard working on a pinto quarter horse by lantern light. Wash signaled his intention to enter the stable. Tom waved him on and Wash automatically slowed his steps.

No sound came from inside. No lamplight showed
under the broad door. He approached the closed entrance at an angle, and when he was close enough to touch the wall, he unholstered his gun and flipped the safety off. Very deliberately he laid his left hand on the one-by-four board that served as a door handle and yanked it back, hard. The door shuddered open.

Wash stepped into the gloomy interior. “Jeanne?”

Silence. The hair on the back of his neck began to bristle.

“Jeanne? Where are you?”

A rustle of straw drew his attention, and in the next instant he heard a familiar voice.

“The lady, she ees not here,
señor.
”

“Montez! What are you doing here?”

“I sneaked in to visit…with my horse. We are good
amigos,
me and my horse.”

Wash turned toward the voice. It came from his left and he squinted, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. “Where is Mrs. Nicolet?”

“She don' like me because my skin is darker than her preetty milky-white skin. I do not know where she is,
señor.
”

The Spaniard was lying. “I don't believe you.” Gradually he could make out the shadowy outline of the man's frame.

“I cannot help that.” Montez made a slight movement with one arm. Wash studied the outline of the Spaniard's body and noticed something that made his blood run cold. Why would the man's shape look wider than it had a moment before?

Because he was hiding Jeanne behind him.

Sweat dampened the neckband of his shirt. He couldn't shoot for fear of catching Jeanne with the bullet. At least he could tell she was standing up, and that meant she was conscious. And maybe—
maybe
— Montez hadn't hurt her.

Over the sound of Montez's raspy breathing Wash could hear the whistled signals Tom was using to train the pinto out in the yard. If he could get Jeanne to run for the stable door…

Maybe if he spoke in French, Montez would not understand, but Jeanne would. He racked his brain for the right words.

“Je compris,”
he managed. That told her he knew she was there, hidden behind the Spaniard.

What next? Run for the door.
“Vas au fenestre.”
He pronounced each word with elaborate care.

“Speak American,” Montez snapped.

Wash ignored him.
“Vas quand je dis
trois.” Go when I say
three.

Suddenly Montez had a knife in his hand.

“Un,”
Wash said. He waited two interminable breaths.

“Deux.”

The Spaniard hunched his body and came at him, the knife glinting silver.

“Trois!”
Wash yelled. The blade sliced his shoulder, but the sound of small boots and the stable door crashing open told him Jeanne had escaped.

Montez launched himself again, leading with his blade. Wash clenched his teeth so hard his jaw cracked. In half a second he'd be a dead man.

He slammed his elbow into the Spaniard's chin just as a searing pain pierced his shoulder. He swore aloud. Without thinking, Wash brought his revolver up and fired.

Montez crumpled to the stable floor.

Wash heard a woman's cry and then Tom Roper's shout. He shook his head to clear it and walked toward the liveryman.

“Better get the sheriff, Tom. There's a dead man lying on your floor.”

F
rom the moment Montez sprawled on the floor, every thing seemed to happen at once. Jeanne flew back into the stable and walked straight into Wash's arms, in spite of the blood seeping through his shirt from the knife slice.

“The gunshot,” she said in a strangled voice. “I thought it was you.”

Wash just tightened his arms about her shaking body.

Tom Roper bent over the Spaniard's inert form, his hands propped at his waist. “What's he wanted for?”

“Breaking out of jail, for one thing,” Sheriff Dan Rubens said from the doorway. He was followed by his new young deputy, Curt Tempelhaus, who took one look and turned ashen.

“And maybe assault,” Wash added. He bent and put
his mouth against Jeanne's temple. She was trembling so hard the lace cuffs at her wrists fluttered.

“Did he hurt you?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head. “
N-non.
But he touch me, here.” She laid one hand on her breast and a shudder racked her frame. The top four buttons on her shirtwaist had been ripped free of the buttonholes; Jeanne clutched it together at her throat.

Wash had to bite his tongue to keep his voice calm. “Anywhere else?”

She buried her face against his shoulder. “My neck.” Her voice was muffled but not tearful. Gently he tipped her chin up and perused her skin from throat to hairline. An angry red band encircled her neck. Finger marks. Wash felt his control wobble.

The sheriff straightened. “Anybody else here at the time?”

Tom Roper cleared his throat. “Far as I knew, Miz Nicolet was the only one in the stable, Sheriff. Until Colonel Halliday came, just a few minutes ago.”

The short, graying sheriff turned to Wash. “You know the dead man, Colonel?”

Wash nodded. “Yeah. He worked on my survey crew. I fired him a while back.”

The sheriff nodded and a frown pulled his gray eyebrows together. “Will you be around a while longer, Colonel? Might have an inquest.”

“Long enough,” Wash answered. “Maybe another week.”

Jeanne's body went absolutely still.

Oh, hell! He had not told her about leaving. This was
a cowardly, backhanded way of letting her know, but he hadn't had a chance to explain about Sykes or the letter or what his work for the railroad entailed. He prayed it would help that he had a $400 check for her in his pocket.

The sheriff glanced once in Wash's direction and stalked out. Liveryman Tom coiled and recoiled a length of rope and finally exited to see to the horse he'd been training.

In the next minute the undertaker and his wagon rattled in and took the body away.

For a long time Jeanne said nothing, just stood there in the circle of his arms. When she stepped back to look up at him, there was fire in her green eyes.

“You are leaving.” Her voice sounded tight as new barbed wire.

“Jeanne, let me explain. The letter came just this after—”

She snapped her head up. “You have known this all along? That you would be leaving?”

He began to perspire. “Yes. I didn't exactly know how to tell you.”

Her face was white as paste, her eyes bruised looking. Wash swallowed hard. “I'd give anything if you hadn't found out this way.”

Her voice hardened. “It does not matter how I found out. I should have guessed long ago.”

“Jeanne…” He reached for her but she jerked away.

“Do not touch me!”

“At least let me explain.”

Her lips formed a thin line. “You do not need to ex plain. I understand well enough.”

He closed his hand around her upper arm. “Listen to me, dammit!”

Her eyes went wide, then instantly narrowed. “
Alors,
I am listening.”

Wash gritted his teeth. “I wanted to tell you, I just didn't know how. When I got to the boardinghouse Mrs. Rose said you weren't there, that you'd gone to the livery stable to get more lavender.”

“And so?” She spit the words at him.

“Rooney told me Montez was loose. I didn't want you to be alone here.”

Jeanne moved away from him and was silent for a long moment. “For that I am grateful,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “I am angry because…”

“Because I'm leaving? Or because I didn't tell you before?”

She dropped her head to hide her face, then raised it immediately. “Why did you want to tell me at all? Is it because we are…close?”

He caught her wrist and pulled her toward him. “We're more than ‘close,' Jeanne, and you know it.”

Jeanne let out a shaky sigh. “
Oui,
I do.”

He had a strange expression on his suntanned face, as if something in his mouth had turned sour. For a moment a twinge of sympathy tempered her fury, but she brushed it aside. It felt much more satisfying to be angry.

“I've known I'd be leaving all along,” he said quietly. “I just didn't know when.”

“Perhaps it does not matter?” She hated the way she sounded, like a quarrelsome fishwife.

“It matters,” he said. “I just don't know what to do about it.”

Jeanne straightened her spine. “I could perhaps go with you?” She had to ask; she could not simply wipe him out of her heart.

“You and Manette, you mean?” Wash shook his head. “I'd only be there a month at the most, then Sykes will move me on to another town.”

“No. That I cannot do. Manette must remain in one place to go to school.”

Wash groaned. “This afternoon I thought hard about the Oregon Central. About resigning my position. Sykes could replace me and I could stay here. Work at something else.”

“You must not do that,” she said. “I know what your work means to you.” His job with the railroad was his way of healing his past wounds. He'd said it was his salvation. She could not ask him to forego that.

He looked up at the ceiling, his lips tense. “Gillette Springs is only forty miles east. Maybe I could—”

She stopped his lips with her fingers. “
Non,
you could not. You would exhaust yourself riding back and forth for only a few hours together.”

He caught her hand, turned it over and pressed a kiss into the center of her palm. “Jeanne, if we're not careful, we're going to talk ourselves out of something we—”

“Something we both want?” she blazed. “Is it not clear that we want two different things?” She turned away and started for the stable door. “You want your
railroad, and I want a home for Manette and a place to grow my lavender.”

Wash walked beside her without speaking. At the boardinghouse, Mrs. Rose took one look at Wash's haggard face, bandaged the knife slice on his shoulder and poured him a cup of double-strength coffee.

“I heard about the fracas over at the livery stable. You both look like you've been through one of those new-fangled clothes wringers.” The landlady brewed a cup of peppermint tea for Jeanne and shooed her upstairs with a glass of warm milk for Manette.

In tense silence Wash and Jeanne climbed the stairs to Manette's room. Rooney was perched on the edge of the neatly made bed, reading aloud from an open book on his lap while Manette sprawled on her belly, her chin propped in her hands. Rooney marked his place with a finger and looked up.

“Heard about Montez,” he said. “Too bad.”

Wash and Jeanne glanced at each other. Rooney cleared his throat and continued the tale of
The Orphan Princess.
“‘Then the cruel king ordered the guards to lock his daughter in the dungeon.'”

“But that's not fair!” Manette objected. “It wasn't her fault his glass horse broke.”

Rooney wet his lips. “That's just the way it is, Little Miss. Life ain't fair sometimes.”

Behind him, Jeanne sucked in an audible breath. Rooney shot a glance at Wash.

Manette cocked her head at him. “Why isn't it always fair?”

“Well…” Rooney scratched his beard. “Uh…if things
was always the same, always fair and always just, it'd be like having sunshine every single day. Wouldn't it get kinda boring?”

“No!” the girl shouted.

“Non.”
Jeanne murmured.

“Not on your life,” Wash growled.

Jeanne set the milk on the nightstand. “Finish your story,
chou-chou.
Then you must go to sleep.”

Wash caught Jeanne's eye and tipped his chin toward the hallway.

She shook her head.

He grasped her elbow and propelled her into the hall and down the stairs. “There's a lawn swing out on the front porch. We need to talk.”

She hesitated. “It will do no good, Wash. We are headed down two different paths.”

“Please, Jeanne. There's more I want to say.”

His eyes looked smoky, like the blued steel of his revolver, and in their depths was an expression she could not read. Desperation?

She said nothing and let him guide her through the screen door to the wide front porch. The late summer night was quiet except for the rhythmic scrape of crickets and an occasional burst of song from an evening sparrow in the pepper tree overhanging the porch. Honeysuckle twined along the front fence, wafting a flowery scent on the warm air.

Jeanne drew in a shuddery breath. “The night is beautiful, is it not?”

Wash settled his long form onto the porch swing,
pulled Jeanne down beside him and pushed off with his foot.

“Jeanne…”

“I have always liked summer,” she said quickly. “I came to Oregon in the summer, across the desert in a schooner wagon.”

“Alone?”

“Ah, no. I joined a wagon train. It is dangerous for a woman and a child to travel alone across the country.”

“Must have been hard traveling,” he said in a low voice.

“We came by rail to El Paso. That part was not difficult.”

“Jeanne…”

“Manette liked the train,” she added without a pause. “And—”

Wash groaned. “You know what?”

She blinked. “No, what?”

“You're not letting me talk again. Won't let me say something I've been wanting to say.”

She dropped her head until her chin brushed the lace at her throat. “It is because I am frightened.”

“Frightened of what? Of me?”

“Oh, no. Not of you. Well, yes, in a way.”

He twisted to face her. “‘Yes' in what way?”

She raised her head and looked straight into his eyes. “I do not want to be unhappy.”

“I don't want you to be unhappy. I'm trying to figure—”

“Wash.” She laid her hand on his forearm. “It is not possible. When you are gone, I will miss you.” She
lifted her hand away and laid it in her lap. “But I will manage.”

“I imagine you will,” he said drily.

“
Oui,
I must. A woman should not depend on a man for happiness. I have to make the best of
my
life.”

Wash's throat began to ache. “I have something for you. The railroad's paying you for the land you got cheated out of, so…” He dug in his shirt pocket. “Here's a check for your $400.”

“
Vraiment?
But I thought—”

“Don't think, Jeanne. You've got enough money now to do anything you want, buy a house. Buy another farm.”

He slipped his own monthly pay into her hand. “My room and board is paid up for six months. I want you and Manette to stay here in town, at the boardinghouse.”

“But I cannot repay you!”

“I don't ask for repayment. I need to know you'll be safe and warm, come winter.”

“This will matter to you? Even though you will be gone?”

“Damn right, it matters to me.”

Her eyes shone with tears. “You are a good man, Wash.”

Wash tried to smile. “Well, hell, this ‘good man' is not feeling very good about things right now.”

But something inside him eased, now that he'd told her everything. Everything he could afford to tell her, that is. He couldn't tell her that he loved her; he wasn't really sure what that would be like. He wanted her, for
damn sure, but that wasn't the same thing, and he'd be lying if he said it was.

In all the years since Laura, this was the first time he'd really cared about a woman. But his mind felt hazy and unfocused, and some kind of knot in his gut wouldn't let him think it through.