Lady Lavender (3 page)

“Coffee,” he muttered. His own hands were shaking by the time he found the coffee mill and a small bag of coffee beans. He chunked up the fire, brewed the coffee extra strong and found two patterned china cups. He grabbed the bubbling pot off the stove and carried it through the doorway.

She was still sitting where he'd left her. Trying to control her trembling hands, she reached for the cup, then quickly set it down on the porch and blew on her fingers. “Hot,” she explained.

“Couldn't find any saucers,” he said more calmly than he felt. He settled himself not too close beside her.

“There are no saucers. They were broken when I came in the wagon from New Orleans.”

“Drink it black?” He had a hard time getting the words out; being this close to her made his heart beat in an odd, ragged rhythm.

Her forehead wrinkled.
“Pardon?”

“Do you want milk or sugar?
Du lait? Sucre?
”

Her frown lifted. “Ah,
non.
”

A long, awkward silence fell. He let her drink her coffee while he gazed over the purple fields and tried to gather his thoughts.
She's sure not gonna like what I'm going to tell her.

A heavenly scent invaded his nostrils—probably the lavender. He leaned imperceptibly toward her and drew in another breath. No, it was her. Soap and something spicy.

Wash gulped his coffee and tried to think of how to tell her about the railroad.

J
eanne could scarcely swallow the hot coffee the tall man had poured into her grandmother's china cup, but it was not because it burned her tongue or tasted like scorched peppercorns. Her throat was so tight she could not even swallow her own saliva.

He'd come to talk about her farm, the only mainstay she'd found in five years of widowhood, outside of her daughter. And outside of her handed-down family knowledge about growing lavender. How precarious her life seemed at times. Whether she and Manette managed in this untamed, rough land depended solely upon her skill as a farmer. Their survival hung by a thin stalk of lavender.

Gingerly she lifted her cup from the porch and tried again to sip it, mostly just to gain some time. It was lukewarm now, but still the tightness closed her throat. Strange, but he seemed as ill at ease as she did. Three
times his mouth opened to form a word, and three times his jaw snapped shut with a decisive click.
Mon Dieu,
what did he wish to say?

Once more his lips opened and this time she couldn't help but notice how nicely shaped they were—not too full but… She calmed an odd flutter in her chest…sensual.

This time some of his words tumbled out. “I'm sure glad you didn't shoot me, ma'am.”

“I meant to,” she said in a quiet voice. “I do not like strangers.”

“How long have you been farming out here, Miz Nicolet?”

She looked up sharply. “How is it you know my name?”

“I asked around in town.”

For an instant she forgot to breathe. “Why?”

He hesitated. “Well, because it seems like…” He smiled at her, his teeth white against his tanned skin. “Seems like you've settled on land you don't own.”

“But I do own it,
monsieur.
I have the deed to prove it.”

He slurped down a mouthful of coffee. “Problem is, Miz Nicolet, you've been swindled.”

“Swindled? What is that?”

“Hoodwinked. Gulled.”

“Hood—?”

“To put it straight, ma'am, you've been cheated.”

“Ah,
non.
I paid all my money for this land, and Monsieur Lavery shook my hand and brought the deed to show me.”

“I'm sure he did.”

The man's usually rich voice sounded odd. Did he not believe her? “Yes,” she reiterated, “he did.”

The man chuffed out a long breath and stared out over her lavender fields. “I don't exactly know how to tell you this, Miz Nicolet, but—”

“Then do not.” Her hand shaking, she lowered her half-empty cup onto the porch beside her. “Please, do not say anything that will make me feel sad about what I did. Please,
Monsieur
…?”

“Halliday. Wash. Short for Washington, but just call me Wash.”

Jeanne followed his gaze as it skimmed over her lavender crop. “It is beautiful in the afternoon light, is it not?”

He nodded without lifting his eyes from the fields.

“This valley, it reminds me of the land near Narbonne, where I grew up. My mother grew lavender to sell at the market. And now I do, as well.”

“I can see that, ma'am. You have a fine crop here.”

“I let it grow as it will, and each summer the ground is covered in purple. I leave some of the stalks uncut until they go to seed.”

The air was sharp with the spicy fragrance. Each year her lilac-tinted sea had pushed farther and farther up the canyon sides. “It makes a small income for Manette and me. I feel safe here.” Up until now.

For an instant Wash closed his eyes. He sure understood safe. “It's almost dusk, ma'am. I've got to get back to town, but before I go, could you show me your deed for the place?”

She could not answer.

“Ma'am?”

“I can show you, yes. But not today. The deed is at the bank in Smoke River.”

He turned his face toward her. His eyes were nice, gray like her grandfather Rougalle's, with fine sun lines crinkling the corners. Her heart stuttered at the expression in their depths. Such sadness. She did not like that look.

Liar! You like it very much, even if it is sad.

Something about this man's eyes made her chest hurt. She wished he would smile once more.

“How about meeting me at the bank tomorrow morning?”

She looked at him so long he wondered if she'd heard him.

She turned her head and looked into his eyes, saying nothing for a good two minutes. At last she dipped her kerchief-swathed head in the slightest of nods.

“Very well. Tomorrow.”

Wash unfolded his long legs, stood up and stepped down off the porch. “Eleven o'clock.” He touched the brim of his brown Stetson, then turned away and strode toward General where he patiently waited at the end of the footpath. His hip hurt like hell from squatting on the porch, but he worked to keep his gait smooth.

 

The eleven o'clock sunlight on a midsummer morning in Smoke River revealed a number of town folk briskly crisscrossing the dusty main street on their way to buy feed or pick up their mail. The grocer, Carl Ness, was
sweeping the board walkway in front of his displayed bushel baskets of ripe peaches and bloodred tomatoes. He hummed a tune as he worked his broom down as far as the barbershop where he stopped abruptly, leaving an obvious contrast between the barber's dirty, leaf-strewn frontage and the grocer's clean expanse of walkway.

To the left of the grocer's sat the Golden Partridge, quiet at this hour but not empty. The minute Carl stashed his broom, he ambled toward the saloon where Wash knew he'd sit nursing a beer and glowering at Whitey Kincaid.

Whitey Kincaid was the barber. Watching Carl from the sheriff's office across the street, Wash laughed out loud. What was known as the “Boardwalk Battle” had been waged since he'd been a boy attending the one-room schoolhouse twenty-some years ago.

The struggle between the two men had started years ago, when Whitey's prize mare had stumbled into Carl's carefully stacked boxes of potatoes and fresh-picked corn and broken its leg. Whitey had put the horse out of its misery and then come gunning for the grocer. The sheriff arrested both of them, Wash recalled, and three days in the same cell at the jerry-rigged jailhouse had fanned the animosity into an unspoken war both were determined to win.

Wash gazed at the saloon and ran his tongue over his dry lips. No time for a drink; Miz Nicolet should be riding into town any minute and he had to keep his head clear. He sure didn't relish telling the French lady how easy it was to get the wool pulled over a foreigner's eyes out here in the West.

The sound of hooves pulled his attention to the far end of the street; sure enough, it was the lavender lady herself. Her young daughter rode in front, holding a sheaf of dried lavender fronds on her lap.

The woman rode astride, her sky-blue skirt rucked up revealing black leather boots, an expanse of ruffled white petticoat, and the flash of one bare calf. His mouth went dry as a dustbin.

He strode up the street to meet her. “Morning, Miz Nicolet.”

“
Bon jour,
Monsieur Washington.” She drew the skinny mare up in front of the redbrick bank building next to the hotel.

Wash plucked Manette off the horse and carefully set her on the ground, then reached up for her mother. No stirrup, he noted. How the hell did she mount, anyway?

He closed his hands around her waist and felt a jolt of heat dance up both arms. When she laid her hands lightly on his shoulders, the warmth swirled into his chest. He lifted her down and found he couldn't bring himself to release her. Her high-collared white shirtwaist swelled over her breasts and nipped into the waistband of her skirt.

She glanced at him from under the wide brim of a straw hat banded with a blue ribbon. He didn't see her eyes for more than a half second, but her mouth had gone white and tense.

“Manette, take the lavender over to Monsieur Ness.”

But Manette was absorbed by a scraggly dandelion
poking up between the wood planks of the boardwalk and the grasshopper clinging to the flower head.

“I'll take it,” Wash volunteered. He needed to be away from her to regain his equilibrium. “Meet you at the bank.”

Jeanne scarcely stammered out her thanks before he had gathered up the sheaf, bound in twine, and started for Ness's Mercantile & Sundries.

She turned to her daughter. “Manette?” But just now Manette was looking for bugs under the walkway. She would probably eat one or two, as she was insatiable in her curiosity, and very often hungry, as well. She squinted at something cradled in her tiny palm, a grasshopper. And then whoop! It was gone.

Like life, Jeanne thought. Like youth. You blinked and it was over.

Inside the bank the air was cool, the light dim. Jeanne stepped up to the teller's window. “I wish to see my safe box, if you please.”

The blond youth behind the iron grate glanced up at her, then focused on Wash, who was suddenly standing at her shoulder. “Sure thing, Mrs. Nicolet. Just step this way.”

Manette settled herself on a bench to wait, and Wash followed Jeanne through the grille and toward a private room.

“I heard all about you, Colonel Halliday,” the boy said as he led the way. “About gettin' shot and being in prison and—”

“Take my advice, Will. Don't join the army.”

“Pa wouldn't let me anyway. Says I have to be a banker, like him.”

“Not a bad life,” Wash said.

“Not very much excitement, bein' stuck in a bank all day.”

Wash grinned. “Excitement is highly overrated.”

Jeanne's breath stopped. When he smiled, the perpetual frown on his face lifted. He was not so frightening, now.
Alors,
he was almost handsome. Or would be if his smile ever reached his eyes. Surreptitiously she studied his profile while the boy returned and plunked the small steel box onto the polished desktop.

“
Merci,
William.”

The boy unlocked the box. At the click, she leaned forward, plunged her hand inside the receptacle and drew out a rolled-up parchment tied with ribbon.

“Here is my deed,” she said with a note of triumph. “See for yourself.”

Wash unrolled the document and scanned the words. He'd known it all along, but his heart sank anyway. “It's like I said, ma'am. You've been swindled. This deed is fake.”

Her face turned white as cheese. “How do you know this?”

“Well, look here, ma'am.” She stepped up beside him and studied the document he held out.

“There's supposed to be two signatures, buyer and seller. Only got one here. Yours. Doesn't prove a thing.”

She stared up at him. “You mean it is false?”

“'Fraid so, ma'am.” He breathed in her scent and his fists clenched.

Her whole body went rigid. “You mean I do not own my farm? My lavender?”

Wash wished he could drop through the floor. “The Oregon Central Railroad owns it.”

“But I paid money to Monsieur Lavery. I paid him all the money I had!”

“I'm real sorry, Miz Nicolet. You're not the first person to get taken in like this, but I know that doesn't help much.”

“You mean I have nothing? Nowhere to live? No land? No lavender to sell to Monsieur Ness at the mercantile?”

He nodded.

Tears shimmered in her eyes. “But what will I do? I must care for Manette.”

His fists opened and closed. “Maybe I could get your money back. I work for the railroad, see, and—” He broke off at the look on her face.

Her tears overflowed, spilling down her pale cheeks like fat droplets of dew. Wash's throat ached. Dammit, watching her cry ripped up his insides. He closed his hand about her elbow.

“Come on, Miz Nicolet. You need some coffee.” He folded the deed into her hand and ushered her out past the teller's window. Manette scrambled off the bench where she'd been waiting, took one look at her mother's face and flung her small arms around her skirts. “Don't cry,
Maman.
Please don't cry. It makes me feel bumpy inside.”

Absently Jeanne smoothed her hand over her daughter's red-gold hair.
“C'est rien, chou-chou.”
The words sounded choked.

Manette tipped her head up and pinned him with a furious look. “Did you hurt my mother?”

Wash flinched at the question. Of course he'd hurt her mother. He'd yanked every bit of security out from under this woman in less than three minutes. He released Jeanne's elbow and knelt before the girl.

“If I did hurt your mama, it was not on purpose.”

“Make her stop crying, then.”

“I would if I could, honey. I think maybe some coffee might help.” He gestured toward the hotel across the street. “Do you think that's a good idea?”

“Yes. And some ice cream, too?” She was out the door like a nectar-hungry bee.

Wash rose to his feet with a grimace, fighting the urge to wrap the sobbing woman in his arms. Gently he took Jeanne's elbow. Her entire body trembled like wind-whipped aspen leaves.

“Oh, hell, I'm sorry.” He grasped Jeanne's upper arm and guided her out onto the boardwalk and across the street to the hotel dining room.

She gave no sign that she had heard his words.