“The brute,” Izannah said, furiously sympathetic.
“Lord have mercy,” said Mrs. Dunlap.
Emmeline drew a great, shuddering breath. “Did you—send Ezra—around town with the news?” she managed between watery gasps. “About the wedding being called off, I mean?” She couldn’t have borne it if guests had begun to arrive, full of merriment and the expectation of a ceremony.
Izannah was patting her hand—the same hand that bore an invisible tattoo of Gil’s. “Yes, dear, of course I did. Don’t worry. By now, everyone in town knows that Gil Hartwell has come back. It’s very romantic, don’t you think? Even though he should be shot—Gil, I mean.”
“Do stop prattling,” Emmeline pleaded. She’d developed a headache, and her wretched sobs had turned to hiccups. “Brandy,” she cried. “Get me some of Grandfather’s brandy, please, and quickly!”
Izannah hastened to comply, for she was fond of drama, being young and quite sheltered, and probably reasoned that brandy could only make the situation more interesting.
Mrs. Dunlap offered a few lame protests, and actually winced when Emmeline downed one dose of liquor in a
decidedly unladylike gulp, then held out the snifter for another.
• • •
Gil had arrived in Plentiful aboard the afternoon stagecoach and gone straight to Emmeline’s grandfather’s house, having learned from one of his fellow passengers that she’d taken up residence there several years before. Now, with the first confrontation behind him, he bought a horse at the livery stable and rode right through the center of town. His aim was to let folks know he was back, and that he wouldn’t be taking to the back roads like a man with some cause for shame.
His cabin and the hundred and sixty acres he’d proved up on before marrying Emmeline lay two miles south of town, and it took him half an hour to make the ride. If his wife were there, waiting for him, the way he’d dreamed she would be, he’d have had good reason to hurry. As it was, he could take his time.
Gil’s heart, already bruised, sank to his boots when he saw the state his property had fallen into while he was gone. The roof of the cabin had caved in, probably under heavy winter snows, and part of the corral fence was down. The doors of the barn gaped open, and the hay inside had long since rotted. His horses and cattle had been sold, driven off, or stolen, and the outbuildings he’d sweated to put up—the well house and the privy, the chicken coop and the storage sheds—were nothing but piles of fallen timber, dappled with bird scat.
None of which would have mattered, Gil thought, swinging down from his horse, if Emmeline had been beside him.
He swept off his hat and ran his forearm across his eyes. At least he’d gotten back to Plentiful before she’d married Montgomery. Christ in heaven, he thought, he’d stood a lot in his time, but he wasn’t sure he could have borne that. Just the idea of Emmeline sharing that sidewinder’s bed was enough to make a man’s belly clench.
Gil slapped his hat against his thigh, startling the skittish livery-stable horse, threw back his head, and let out a yell. He was home, by God, and Emmeline was well, and still his wife. For the time being, it was enough.
He calmed the gelding, whistling softly through his teeth, and then led it to the stream and the mantle of deep, sweet grass that grew beside the water. After removing the saddle and bridle, Gil tethered the animal to a birch tree by a long rope and left it to its supper.
There was fishing line inside the cabin, along with a few hooks, and it wasn’t long until Gil had caught a meal of his own farther down the creek bank. He had a feast of trout sizzling in a pan, over an open fire, when Montgomery rode in.
Gil had been expecting the visit, and though he didn’t hold with gunplay, he had laid down his hunting rifle within reach, against the trunk of the apple tree Emmeline had planted to shade the house. It was tall now, that tree, and weighted with hard green fruit.
“I see you’ve changed out of your wedding clothes,” Gil said as Montgomery leaned forward in the saddle, his face shadowed by the brim of his hat. His mount was a big sorrel, deep-chested with sturdy legs. “I guess the least I can do is offer you dinner.”
Neal swung one leg over the pommel of his saddle and slid deftly off the horse. “I ought to shoot you right here and now,” he said, and though Gil could see that the other man was smiling, there wasn’t so much as a hint of humor in his voice.
“That might be a hard thing to explain, even for you. How I managed to get myself shot on the very day I came back and ruined your plans to marry my wife, I mean.” Gil’s stance was easy and loose-limbed, and his hands rested on his hips, but he could see that hunting rifle out of the corner of his eye,
and reach it in a blink. He sighed and shook his head. “No, sir, no jury in the world would see that as a coincidence. I guess you’d better just leave me be, and go find yourself another woman.”
Montgomery took off his hat, and his fair hair glinted in the last blinding dazzle of a summer sun. “I’ve found the woman I want,” he replied, “and I’ll have her.”
Gil dropped to his haunches beside the fire and turned the trout in the pan. He remembered the way Emmeline had responded to his kiss, there on that fussy settee in her parlor, and smiled to himself.
He was home. Emmeline still cared for him, whatever her misgivings, and Neal Montgomery hated him as much as ever.
Life was good.
E
MMELINE PINNED
G
IL’S BROOCH TO THE BODICE OF HER
nightgown just before she went to bed, and lay down telling herself she mustn’t be foolish about things. True, the man told a good story, and he could make her dizzy with a look, but there were certainly other factors to consider. He’d been gone seven years, she reminded herself, with not a word from him in all that time, and she’d spent perfectly good money putting up a suitable monument in the churchyard.
Lying in the darkness, Emmeline blushed to think of the scandals Gil had spawned with his unconventional doings. First he’d gone off and left her, and she’d made an idiot of herself, going around in widow’s weeds long past the customary mourning period, proclaiming his good character to all and sundry. And now he’d returned, on the very day she was to marry Neal Montgomery. By now, everybody in Plentiful and half the tribes in the Indian nation were surely talking
about how close Miss Emmeline had come to taking on one too many husbands.
She closed her eyes, willing herself to go to sleep and thus escape her contradictory feelings, but even after all the brandy she’d imbibed since Gil’s departure, she was wide awake. She couldn’t help thinking that this would have been her wedding night, if Mr. Hartwell hadn’t returned from the dead in such a timely fashion. She’d be lying in Neal Montgomery’s arms at that very moment, no doubt, with her nightgown on the other side of the room, an unwitting bigamist.
Heat rushed through Emmeline, causing her to perspire from head to toe. For all her efforts to be modest and circumspect—teaching piano lessons, attending church services, marking her lost husband’s passing in the accepted way—there could be no denying the truth—hers was a harlot’s body. Her breasts yearned to be weighed in a man’s hands, to be suckled and teased, and there was a melting ache in the deepest regions of her femininity that could not be denied. Her hips waited to cradle a man, and her long, shapely legs were poised to part even now.
But it wasn’t Mr. Montgomery, the man she had almost married, who inspired these disgraceful thoughts. It was Gil Hartwell she wanted, now as always, and she wanted him with an anguish that was downright humbling.
In retrospect, she wondered if she would have been able to bear Mr. Montgomery’s touch at all. His kisses had never made her feel the way Gil’s did. Would Neal’s caresses have ignited her senses? Would she have thrashed beneath him, like she had with Gil, and cried out in animal satisfaction while he appeased her?
Emmeline raised both hands to her cheeks in an effort to cool her burning face. It was no use telling herself not to think
about Gil, and she couldn’t work up any interest in anyone else.
After an hour, Emmeline rose, lighted a lamp, stripped off her nightgown, and bathed her fevered flesh in tepid water from the basin on the washstand. That done, she put on fresh drawers and a camisole, and then her favorite petticoat. Over these, she donned a cornflower-blue dress that brought out the color of her eyes. She brushed her hair, braided it, and wound the heavy plait into a loose knot at the back of her head. She took the porcelain brooch from her nightgown and pinned it to the high ruffled neck of her dress, then changed her mind and put the trinket away, very carefully, in her bureau drawer. After washing her teeth with salt and baking soda, Miss Emmeline sat down in the rocking chair next to her window and waited for the far-off dawn to come.
• • •
Gil made a bed in the fragrant grass beneath Emmeline’s apple tree. Cupping his hands behind his head, he gazed up at the countless stars strewn across the endless Montana sky. This surely wasn’t the homecoming he’d dreamed about all those years, but his time at sea had taught him some valuable lessons, one of which was that he needed almost nothing to survive.
Oh, yes, he wanted Miss Emmeline as much as he ever had, and he loved her even more. But he had his freedom now, and he knew the value of that as few men did. He could make some kind of life without her if that was the way the cards were dealt.
Gil hoped matters wouldn’t come down to that, of course, that he and Emmeline would be able to find their way back to each other through the emotional wreckage. At the same time, he knew he’d get on if they didn’t, and so would she.
One of the many things he loved about Emmeline was her strength.
Somewhere far off, a coyote howled and was answered by another animal. The creek whispered over its bed of smooth rocks as it always had, and a soft breeze rustled in the silvery leaves of the birch trees on the other side of the water. The sounds, so familiar and so long missed, soothed Gil’s spirit, and he slept.
He dreamed, as he often did, of that night in Sydney Harbor when the light of the moon had turned the still waters to liquid opal. He remembered the fear, and the desperation, and saw the dark shadows gliding back and forth below, waiting. Waiting.
Gil broke out in a cold sweat, and he knew he was in the grip of the nightmare, but somehow he couldn’t lift himself above it, into wakefulness. He’d gone over the side of the
Nellie May,
clinging to a rope, carrying nothing with him but the brooch he’d bought for Emmeline, resting on his tongue like the fare for a dead man’s passage across the River Styx. His only garment was a pair of drawers, tied tightly at the waist with a drawstring.
The water was warm as an old maid’s bath, and mirror-smooth, since the tide was out. He lowered himself into it, as other men had done before him, and would after him, trying not to think about the moving shapes below. In truth, he knew, there was more to fear from the two-legged predators patrolling the decks of the ship than from the legendary sharks. Gil had made two other attempts at escape over the course of his captivity, and his back, an unbroken expanse of scar tissue from the whippings he’d received for his trouble, was an ever-present testimony to the high price of failure. If he was collared again, he knew the captain would surely kill him, as an example to others who might be spinning some reckless scheme to get away.
He swam slowly, concentrating on absolute silence, praying inside his head. The shore was within fifty yards when
Kenyon, the man swimming just ahead of Gil, went under the surface with one gurgling cry. Blood bubbled up from below, and Gil felt watery echoes of the graceful, rolling motions of the kill against his skin. The prayers gave way to soundless screams, and he did the only thing he could—he continued to move toward shore, blindly and without hope. Behind him, the carnage continued as other sharks gathered, and vaguely, as if from far in the distance, he heard men screaming, while others called mocking offers of salvation from the decks of the
Nellie May.
Gil gained the beach, by some miracle, and lay sprawled in the sand, alternately shuddering and retching. As far as he knew, of the seven men who had begun the ordeal, he was the only one who had survived.
He awakened now, and was not surprised to find himself on his belly, with his arms spread wide over his head and his fingers digging into the dirt. His body invariably relived that night as vividly as his mind did when the nightmares came, and he rested under the apple tree for several long moments, trembling and fighting the need to weep. Those things, too, were part of the involuntary ritual.
When he’d collected himself sufficiently, Gil got to his feet, pulled on his trousers, and buttoned them. He stumbled to the creek, checked on the horse, and then knelt on the bank to splash cool water on his face. When the last remnants of the dream had dissipated like smoke, Gil found the flask in his saddlebags and drank deeply. After pissing in the tall grass over near the barn, he got back into his bedroll.
There was only one thing he could think of that would drive away nightmares better than cold water and whiskey, and that was a tumble with Miss Emmeline. He’d been celibate since the day he left her, and he had no intention of breaking his wedding vows now. He just hoped she’d be quick about deciding whether to take him back or not, because waiting
was a lot harder, now that he could see and touch her and hear her voice. One hell of a lot harder.
• • •
Emmeline forced herself to have breakfast with Izannah and teach her nine o’clock piano lesson before she went out to the carriage house to hitch up the judge’s surrey. She laid the satchel she’d taken from her grandfather’s safe upon arising on the floorboard, securely against one foot, and took off.
There were less direct ways to reach Gil’s property than by driving south on Main Street, but Emmeline was not given to deceit. Furthermore, she harbored no illusions that, by taking elaborate precautions, she could stem the flow of gossip. The speculative stares and hesitant waves she received as she passed through town were proof that she was right.