Lady Lavender (6 page)

R
ooney pushed his way through the bank lobby filled with ranchers and their wives, some in fancy dresses and big, showy hats. The chatter fell silent at the entrance of the large, craggy-looking man. He shouldered his way to the teller's cage.

“Wash!” he bellowed. “Wash Halliday, where are you?” His shout echoed off the wall and he pushed his way past the storekeeper's wife, Linda-Lou Ness.

“Well, I never!” she huffed. She turned away with a sniff loud enough to frighten a horse. Just one person met him with a smile, and that was Zinna Langfelder, the undertaker's spinster daughter.

“Good morning, Mr. Cloudman.”

Rooney spared her a nod and pressed on through the grillwork gate. “Wash! We got trouble.”

Wash was on his feet in a heartbeat, laying a hand
on his partner's muscled shoulder to slow him to a stop. “What's wrong?”

“Smoke! Don'tcha smell it? Comin' from the west, out near Green Valley.”

Wash went cold all over. Jeanne's cabin!

Half an hour later he reined up on the cliff overlooking Jeanne's cabin and her lavender crop. From what he could see, the source of the gray-black smoke was either the chicken coop or the back side of the cabin. Or both.

“Must've been set on purpose,” Rooney yelled. “Wind'll spread it to the trees, and the whole valley will go up.”

Wash pounded down the steep trail, cursing under his breath. He didn't care whether it had been set or not; he cared only that the twelve-foot flames now licking one corner of Jeanne's cabin didn't swallow the small structure completely.

But what does it matter?
The cabin was going to be torn down anyway when the clearing crew arrived. Sooner or later, Jeanne would have to get out.

But not this way!

A slim figure in a blue denim work skirt was clawing open the chicken coop door so the hens could scatter away from the fire. “Shoo!” she shouted. Waving her arms, she advanced on the clucking birds. “Shoo, I tell you!”

She straightened the instant she saw him at the gate. Wash dropped from his mount and started to run, Rooney close behind him. “Manette?” he yelled.

“Under the porch!”

He stooped, then went to his knees and scrabbled under the wood planking with one arm. His fingers brushed something soft, a girl's pinafore, maybe. He grabbed a handful and yanked.

Out tumbled Manette, dusty but grinning, a tiny green frog in her fist. Wash scooped her up and thrust the squirming girl into Rooney's arms. “Get her out of here.”

Rooney carried the girl to his horse and headed up the steep canyon trail. The last thing Wash saw was Manette's rosy face turned up to the gruff horseman who held her securely in front of him. She was talking, lifting her frog so Rooney could admire it.

God help him, Wash thought with a little jerk in his heart. Rooney hated frogs.

He sensed Jeanne at his elbow and pivoted. “Get some blankets,” he ordered. “Towels, anything.”

She shoved her wool shawl into his hands and streaked through the open cabin door.

The fire was spreading. From the chicken coop to the side wall of the cabin, Wash could see nothing but greedy flames. He plunged toward the thickest smoke and attacked the fire with Jeanne's shawl.

No use. He beat at the flames, but the wool fiber began to smolder almost immediately, and the next thing he knew he was flailing away at the fire with a scrap of burning fabric. It smelled like scorched onions.

Then Jeanne was beside him, her arms so full of bedding and dishtowels she could scarcely see over the top. “Here.” She dropped the load at his feet and grabbed
the blanket on top. Wet, he noted. Smart girl. She had soaked everything under the kitchen spigot.

Without speaking, they whacked at the flames, beating the wet blankets against them in an uneven rhythm and stamping out rings of fire that ignited in the grass until they were soot-smeared and out of breath. Sparks had nibbled holes in all the blankets except for one bath towel that burst into flames in Jeanne's hands.

Smoke engulfed them. Wash could hear Jeanne coughing, and he dragged her upright and wrapped his bandanna over her nose and mouth. Then he ducked his own head under an embroidered tea towel and picked up his fire-singed blanket.

Foot by burning foot they beat down the flames, slapping wet towels against smoking boards, and stomping out bits of smoldering grass with their feet. Wash's bad leg ached, and the muscles in his arms stung. Jeanne showed no sign of slowing down, even though her slim arms must hurt like hell. Gasping to draw in clean air, they worked toward each other from the corners of the cabin.

At last the flames died, and the billows of acrid smoke began to dissipate. Trembling with exertion, they stumbled to a halt facing each other.

Jeanne's cheeks and forehead were streaked with soot and ash. Her denim skirt showed scorch marks where the hem had been singed. Lucky her petticoats hadn't caught fire! Her hair had come unpinned and now tumbled haphazardly about her shoulders. To Wash, she looked beautiful.

Dazed and red-eyed, they stared at each other. “Close
call,” Wash grated. He gathered up the ruined blankets and towels and tossed them in a heap beside the porch. “Sorry about your sheets 'n things.”

“I am not sorry,” Jeanne announced, her voice raspy. “A few quilts—it is a small price to pay for my home.”

“Rooney thinks someone started the fire on purpose. You see anyone around earlier this morning?”

She looked up, her face white. “
Non.
But I do see a horse, on the ridge.”

“No rider?”

“
Non,
the horse only. Its color was strange…like the red glints in Manette's hair.”

Montez. Had to be. By God he would pay for this.

Rooney clattered his horse down the hillside, a still-chattering Manette secure on his lap. He dismounted at the gate, lifted the girl down and sent her pelting down the path to her mother.

“You're all dirty,
Maman!
”

Jeanne knelt to clasp her tight. “
Oui, chou-chou,
I have been working hard.”

Manette's blue eyes widened. “You need a bath. And Mr. Wash, too—he's even dirtier than you are!”

Rooney guffawed. “Observant little miss you got there, Miz Nicolet. Didja know she likes frogs?”

Jeanne stood up, Manette's arms still circling her waist.

“Thank you for keeping her safe, Mr.—?”

“Cloudman, ma'am.”

“Mr. Cloud—”

“Rooney to my friends.” He grinned at her, then
glanced at Wash. “Ya find out who set it? Wasn't a trace of anybody up on the ridge.”

“Yeah, I know who it had to be. Tell the sheriff to put out a warrant for Joe Montez.”

“Sure thing, Wash.” His graying eyebrows waggled. “You stayin' here?”

Jeanne shot Wash a look, but he couldn't read it. He met her gaze and held it. “Thought I'd help clean up. Catch the mare and…maybe round up the chickens.”

“Right.” Rooney's tone betrayed his skepticism, but he saluted smartly and about-faced. “See ya tomorrow.”

Jeanne jerked upright. “Tomorrow? You will stay here until tomorrow?”

“Thought I would, yes. I don't want you and Manette to be alone out here. I'll sleep out on the porch.”

“That is…that is most kind.”

Wash swallowed. That's not all it was, but he didn't want to think too hard about it now. He turned his back and strode off the porch. “I'll round up your mare, Jeanne. Probably didn't wander too far.”

Her softly spoken
“Merci”
kicked his heartbeat up a notch. The woman had a voice like an angel. A seductive angel.

He found the mare in a narrow side canyon, munching quack grass. He slipped a rope over its head and led it back to the cabin where Jeanne kept the animal tied up. Wash rubbed it down with a handful of dry grass and hobbled her away from the scorched back wall of the cabin.

The chickens were another matter. Hens clucked from the field of lavender, but as soon as he drove one back
to the coop he heard another that he couldn't see. He recalled there were six in all, but he tramped up and down among the fragrant bushes and couldn't find a single one.

After a frustrating hour, Jeanne appeared on the porch and motioned to him. “Here,” she said as he mounted the step. She grasped his hand, turned it palm up and opened her fist. Dry corn kernels sprayed over his calluses.

Within twenty minutes, the five remaining hens had pecked their way along the trail of chicken-feed he'd dribbled out of his hand, right up to the coop. He slammed the wooden door after the last one.

Now what? Probably needed the wood box filled.

The wood box sat just outside the cabin door, next to a smaller box for kindling. Both containers were chock-full.

“Good Lord,” he muttered. “This woman is damn self-sufficient. She sure doesn't need any help from me.”

He plopped down on the porch and lowered his head into his hands. Laura had been helpless as a butterfly. He'd rescued her cats, helped her over fences, shaded her face with his hat when she started to sunburn. He'd felt needed. He'd liked the feeling it had given him—as if his presence had mattered.

Jeanne was about as helpless as a riled-up scorpion. She didn't need him. She didn't need anybody. What a woman!

Jeanne tiptoed out the door, took one look at Wash and quietly piled her arms full of small logs, then stuffed
a handful of twigs and small broken limbs into her apron pocket. Wash didn't even raise his head.

Alors,
he had been busy, and on her behalf, too. She had watched him rub down her mare and tie its foreleg to a wooden stake. She heard the chickens crooning contentedly, safe now in the coop.

The sun spilled warm light down on the man's dark head and wide shoulders; as she watched, his shadow on the porch floor lengthened. He was a handsome man,
un homme très beau,
with his tanned features and long legs that walked unevenly when he was tired. Oh, yes, she had noticed.

She liked the man, she admitted. She did not know why, she just felt a kinship between them. A mutual respect. She liked the way his gray eyes laughed at the world. The way his mouth curved into an occasional smile.

But, she reminded herself, she could not trust him. She would not ever again trust any man…and this man in particular. He worked for the railroad.

 

By suppertime, Wash had roused himself enough to appreciate the enticing smell of a bubbling pot of stew, and now a dilemma nagged at him. What about tonight?

He could roll up in his saddle blanket, but Jeanne had sacrificed her bedding to fight the fire. What would she and Manette do to keep warm? He asked the question over a brimming bowl of chicken stew and received a blank look.

“I have yet another quilt. Manette and I will be
perfectly comfortable.” She piled two more biscuits onto his plate. “When I come from France to marry my husband, I bring my…how do you say…box of hope.”

“Hope chest,” Wash supplied while buttering his biscuit. “Young ladies fill them up with things for their marriage.”

“Trousseau,” she blurted. “I come with my trousseau. I have many quilts I make myself. And sheets with embroidery.”

Wash leaned back in his chair. He didn't want to think about her embroidered sheets. “You burned some of them up today.”

“
Oui,
I did. But I can make more. When I have money for my lavender, I will ask Monsieur Ness to order some muslin.”

“Oh, no, your lavender,” Wash groaned. “With the railroad coming you'll have to harvest early.”

Her beautiful blue-green eyes turned to stone. “How early?”

“I'd say within a week. You'll have plenty of time, I promise.”

A doubt niggled at his brain, but he squashed it down and ate another biscuit.

 

No night spent on the windswept plains of Kansas, or even in the prison barracks at Richmond, was as hard to get through as this one, wrapped in a blanket lying across Jeanne's cabin entrance. He rolled his lanky form over onto his other side. Porch sure was hard.

The air still smelled of smoke, both from the supper Jeanne had cooked on the woodstove in her kitchen
and from the fire that had almost wiped out the whole cabin. Every little noise from inside brought him wide-awake. He heard Jeanne's soft, steady voice reading a bedtime story to Manette, in French. Heard the mumble of Manette's nighttime prayers. An owl
hoo-hooed
from a nearby fir tree, and then he heard the sigh of a cornhusk-stuffed mattress as a body lay down on it.

The bed Jeanne slept in was hidden behind a curtain that sectioned off part of the small cabin. Manette had her own bed, she had told him proudly. “
Maman
does not like my spider box under my pillow.”

The cornhusks whispered again. And again. Was she sleepless, as well? Why?

She was frightened because of the fire and her smoky blankets and her mare and the chickens and…what? The more he thought about her, the more his hands burned to touch her skin.

His groin began to ache.

God help him, it was hot, urgent desire he felt, but Jeanne was not a woman he could tumble like a barroom dove. This woman was the kind a man courted, the kind who deserved a man's honorable intentions.

He didn't feel honorable. He was damn lonely and he was damn hungry. Still, the deepest need he felt was to just talk to her.

Talk! He couldn't remember if he and Laura had ever just talked. He rolled over once again and laid his forearm over his eyes.

I
n the morning Jeanne dressed hurriedly and went to feed the chickens and her mare. She had to step over the man sleeping across her doorway; his breathing did not change so she knew she had not awakened him. She fed the mare some oats and flung handfuls of grain onto the ground for the chickens, then turned back toward the cabin.

Sunlight flashed off something metallic on the hill side and she caught her breath. At the head of the valley, five horsemen studied her lavender field. Dumbfounded, she stared at them.

One man gestured toward the ripening bushes and then pointed to her cabin.

Her neck hair began to itch. What did they want? One of the men untied a canvas-wrapped bundle from behind his saddle and dropped it onto the ground. The
clank of metal brought her wide-awake. Tools. It was the railroad clearing crew Wash had mentioned.

They had come to clear her field!

Her home!

She whirled toward the cabin, raced up the porch steps making no effort to be quiet. Wash's inert body, still extended across her doorway, did not even twitch. Jeanne drew back her foot and buried the toe of her boot where she judged his midsection would be.

“You lied to me!” she screamed. “You promised I would have time to harvest—” She broke off to aim another blow.

A hand snaked out and caught her boot. “Good morning,” a calm, sleep-fuzzy voice said. “Was there something you wanted?”

“Oui,”
she shouted. “
Cochon!
I want you to suffer for what you did. I want—”

Wash sat up, still holding her foot. “Believe me, Jeanne, I am suffering.”

“You mock me. I am so angry I could…” He released her foot and she drew it back to kick him again. Oh, she could not hurt him enough!

He raised both arms to protect his face. “For heaven's sake, what did I do?”

She faced him, planting her hands on her hips. “You know what you did. You lied to me. All men lie, but you—you are the worst! You promised!”

He struggled to his feet and they faced off. “What? What did I promise?”

“You promised I would have time to cut my lavender
before…before…” She could not bring herself to say it. “And now, this morning, they are here.”

She pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling. She would
not
let him see her cry.

He took a step toward her. “Who is here?” He spoke with his jaw clenched, and she realized he was very, very angry. Even in his bare feet he towered over her. She straightened to her full height and lifted her chin.

“Five men from your railroad,” she snapped. “They are here. Your clearing crew. And they have with them shovels and things to destroy my lavender.
Mon Dieu,
how could you lie to me about this?”

“Hell, I didn't lie to you.”

“What do you call it, then? Those men are ready to cut—”

“They're here early, but I'll talk to them,” he said, stuffing his feet into his boots. “Where are they now?”

Jeanne pointed beyond the chicken coop. “Up there, on the side of the hill.”

Wash stalked off. He tried to reason with them, but the men said they were on Sykes's schedule, not his, and there was nothing he could do about it. When he returned she was still shaking with fury. “
Et alors?
Have those men not come to destroy my crop?”

He stepped up onto the porch and confronted her. “They won't cut your lavender today. They came to…uh…clear the buildings first.”

“You mean my chicken house?” Her throat was so tight her voice cracked. “My cabin?”

“Yes.”

“Today? You mean now?”

“Yes, today. Look, Jeanne, I'm as surprised as you are.”

She bit her tongue to keep from screaming. “You are not surprised,” she accused. “You knew this. You did not tell me the truth, you said I would have time—” She stopped to suck in an unsteady breath.

He stepped in closer to her, so close she could see the dark shadow of a beard on his chin, see his gray eyes burning with anger. And something else. Without thinking, she raised both arms and pounded her fists against his chest.

“I do not ever again trust you! I hate you!”

He wrapped his arms around her so tight she didn't have room between their bodies to keep pummeling him. Trapped, she dropped her head until her forehead rested on his shirtfront, blinking back the tears that stung into her eyes.

“Got it all out of your system?” he asked quietly.

“I will never get it ‘out of my system,' as you say. Never.”

“No doubt you're a woman of your word.” He let out a breath that gusted warm against the crown of her head. She jerked, but did not look up.

“Of course,” she muttered into his chest. “
I
do not ever lie!”

“Jeanne, believe me, I'm sorry about this.”

“
Non,
you are not sorry. You want your railroad.”

“Jeanne, just lis—”

“And I want my house. My lavender.”

“Look, the house goes first. They're going to raze it
this afternoon, so you'll have to pack up your…” His voice clogged up and the unfinished sentence hung in the morning air.

“I will do no such thing!
Jamais!
Those men will have to chop me up with their shovels before I—”

Wash grabbed her shoulders and shook her, hard. “Hush up, will you? Just…be quiet.” He looked at her oddly, hot light kindling in his eyes, and then his mouth was bruising hers. For an instant she forgot that she hated this man and gave herself up to the glorious sensation of his lips on hers. Her insides turned to warm molasses.

When at last he lifted his head, they were both breathing unevenly. He leaned his forehead against hers. “We'll get through this, Jeanne. Trust me— Oh, hell, never mind. I'll send one of the men into town for a wagon to haul your things.”

 

In tight-lipped silence Jeanne made breakfast for Manette and Wash, scrambled eggs and the last of the bread for toast. Manette gobbled her plate clean; Wash pushed his eggs around and around with his fork and hoped Jeanne wouldn't notice.

No such luck. Jeanne noticed everything, even his uneaten piece of burnt toast.

“You are not hungry?” she inquired, her voice accusing.

Wash groaned inwardly. He
was
hungry, but not for scrambled eggs. He wanted another taste of her soft honey-sweet mouth.

A horse-drawn wagon rattled up outside. Wash
dropped his napkin beside his plate and bolted for the door.

The rest of the day he and Jeanne spent without speaking a word to each other while they packed up pots and skillets, china and tableware, and whatever bedding was undamaged after the fire. Wash even loaded Manette's prized spider box and her Mason jar full of grasshoppers, stuffing them between two quilts so Jeanne wouldn't be upset by the crawly things.

Two men from the clearing crew helped to jockey in the cast-iron woodstove and settle the chicken coop into the space remaining. Finally they tied Jeanne's gray mare to the back end with a lead rope.

She made a last inspection of the now-empty cabin, then marched out and climbed up onto the driver's bench next to Manette. Wash left General tied to a tree stump and drove the draft horse and the wagon up the winding trail to the ridge. At the top he reined to a halt.

“You might want to take one last look? Valley looks real pretty in this light.”

She turned her face away but did not look down at the cabin. He picked up the reins. She kept her back rigid and her eyes fixed straight ahead for the three-mile trip to town. Not once did she glance back.

Rooney was waiting at the livery stable. Manette scrambled down from the wagon and threw her small arms about the older man's knees. Wash almost laughed at the look of consternation that crossed his friend's weathered face. Manette had apparently adopted him.

Rooney bent down to her level. “Hullo there, Little Miss. Got any new critters to show me?”

Wash arranged with the liveryman to store the loaded wagon until Jeanne had relocated. For tonight, she and Manette would sleep at the Smoke River Hotel.

All he wanted to do tonight was close his mind to the pained, set look on Jeanne's face. He could feel himself withdrawing from her; not letting himself feel anything had gotten him through his prison years. He figured it could get him through this.

“Care for a steak supper?” Rooney offered.

Jeanne shook her head. “I could not eat, Mr. Cloud— Rooney. I am not hungry.”

“
I'm
hungry,” Manette sang.

Rooney grinned. “Well, come along, then. I know a hungry miss when I see one. Wash, you joining us?”

Wash shook his head. He couldn't eat, either. “I'll get Jeanne settled at the hotel and then…”

He didn't know what then; he knew only that he couldn't stand to look at Jeanne's eyes any longer. In silence he walked her into the hotel foyer. The clerk scowled at Jeanne, but Wash ignored him and got her registered. Surreptitiously he even paid the bill. He knew her lavender crop would bring her some money, but it wasn't harvested yet. Right now, he'd bet she hadn't a penny to her name. He hoped she could harvest some of her lavender before…

Rooney and Manette walked into the hotel dining room, her small hand clasped in his big one. Jeanne watched them go, still with that stricken look on her face, then turned away to climb the stairs to her room.

He knew what being uprooted felt like. He didn't want
to think about Jeanne and her cabin. Mostly he didn't want to feel what she must be feeling.

He clumped down the hotel steps, marched three doors down to the Golden Partridge and ordered a double shot of Red Eye. After an hour Rooney sidled up beside him. “Finally got her all wised up, didja?”

“Don't make jokes, Rooney.”

“Creepin' crickets, man. Wasn't a joke. She musta' finally heard what you been saying all along, and she caved in.”

Wash raised his head enough to glare at his partner. “That woman never ‘caves in.'”

Rooney busied himself pointing out to the bartender a bottle of scotch whiskey he fancied. “That bad, huh? Well, ya know what the Comanche say—‘women and cats do as they please.'”

Wash didn't bother to answer. The less he thought about Jeanne Nicolet the sooner his railroad track would go down. Then he'd move on. One thing he liked about working for the Oregon Central—you never spent too much time in one town. There was always another site to scope out along Grant Sykes's planned route. Another clearing crew, another bunch of track layers.

Rooney signaled the bartender for another and propped his chin on his fists. “Right now you want out of this Smoke River mess, huh? Find a new town with no pretty widows growing lavender?”

“Right now,” Wash said without looking up, “I don't know what I want.”

“Got you comin' and goin', has she?” Rooney chuckled over his shot glass.

“Part of me wants her to be safe. Another part of me wants her to sweat in hell for making me—”

“And,” Rooney added in an amused voice, “another part of you wants to clear out and leave it all behind, like a bad dream.”

Wash groaned. “How'd an old coot like you ever get so damned smart?”

The older man laughed. “This old coot took to a woman once. Got more than I bargained for.”

“She doesn't have her cabin anymore. The clearing crew is knocking it down.”

“Right. I think it's prob'ly for the best, don't you?”

Wash felt his face flush hot. “You do, do you?”

“Yeah, I do. For one thing, Little Miss can go to school in town. And for another, with the new railroad line, Jeanne can ship her lavender sachets and smelly doodads all over the state.” He shot Wash a sly smile. “Folks in Portland will smell as good as folks here in Smoke River.”

Wash merely grunted. But he kept listening.

“New folks will settle here,” Rooney went on. “Build ranch houses and schools, mebbe a church or two. Ranchers can ship their beef east without drivin' 'em two hundred miles to a railhead.”

“Yeah.”

Rooney punched his upper arm. “You told me you went to work for Sykes to do something constructive, to take the taste of killin' bluebellies and Indians off yer mind.”

“Yeah, that's true.”

“Well, son, now you've made the choice, you pay the price.”

Wash lowered his head. “I've uprooted a woman and her child. She has nowhere to go. Sacrificed her crop. Even made a shambles out of trying to be a friend to her.”

“Wise up, Wash. You ain't tryin' to be Jeanne's friend so much as—”

Wash drove his elbow into Rooney's ribs. The older man grabbed his side, coughed for a long minute, then choked out a sentence that turned Wash's belly upside-down.

“Ya damn fool! You're falling in love with her.”

Rooney strolled off to join the poker game at the barroom table, leaving Wash with a lump in his belly as big as a cannonball.