Rusty stared again and his brow creased. “Damn. Have you ever seen a woman that size before?” He shook his head. “Look at her! She must’ve been raised by some of them African gee-raffes. She’s gotta be nearly six feet tall.”
Ned didn’t speak. He only nodded, his gray eyes following the buggy as it left town in a spray of dust. But he cared little about the larger figure in black. His gaze existed solely for the petite, brown-haired girl driving.
“She’s pretty, isn’t she?”
“The old crow in black?”
“No. Lettie.”
Rusty shook his head and tucked his hammer beneath his arm. “You’d better not let Jacob hear you say that. Hell, I’d sooner take the biddy in black.”
“What did Jacob give you?” Ethan asked once the buggy had pulled away from the dry-goods store, gesturing to the paper in her hand.
“I don’t know.” Since she had given Ethan the gloves and they had passed through the main flow of traffic, Lettie handed the reins to Ethan and glanced down, nimbly unfolding the paper with one hand. Her voice became trapped in her throat when the word
WANTED
seemed to leap from the page. Beneath it lay a crude sketch of Ethan McGuire.
Her hands trembled and she gasped, looking up at Ethan. His head had already lifted, and she sensed the way his gaze scanned the buildings and townspeople as they moved through town.
“It seems I’ll have more than the Star on my trail, doesn’t it?”
“It isn’t fair, Ethan. You haven’t done anything.”
“Life is rarely fair, Lettie girl.”
He turned the buggy down the side street that led to the boardinghouse, and Lettie glanced at him with worried eyes, wishing there were something she could do. She felt so helpless and alone in her plight.
She
knew Ethan was innocent. But no one else would ever believe her, and with each moment that passed, the evidence was stacked higher and higher in an appearance of Ethan’s guilt.
“Maybe if we could contact someone and tell them.”
“Tell them what? That I’ve been holed up in your bedroom?” He shook his head. “It wouldn’t do any good. In the first place, that makes me look even more guilty—hiding behind the skirts of a woman.” He glanced down at the somber fabric covering his legs. “Literally. In the second place, we have no proof that what you say is true. You’re the only person who knew I was there.” Through the veiling, she caught his quick glance in her direction. “And in the third place”—his voice grew husky —“Jacob would see me hanged for something he would consider to be far worse.”
“What?”
“Compromising his young sister.”
“I haven’t been compromised.”
“Haven’t you?” Through the veiling, she saw his lips tilt in a shallow smile, one she’d come to know so well because it mixed humor with pain. “Admit it, Lettie. You and I have… crossed the lines of respectability more than once. Your mother would have a fit of apoplexy if she knew I’d even been
inside
your bedroom, let alone that I’ve shared that garret with you for nearly two weeks. And now…”
Lettie noted the way he glanced down at his hands. Despite the lace edging on the cuffs of his bodice and the new white gloves, they still gave the impression of being masculine hands. Broad, masculine hands. Lettie could remember the first time one of those hands had touched her on the shoulder. It seemed like eons had passed since Lettie had mistaken Ethan for her Highwayman… but it hadn’t been that long at all.
When he looked up again, Lettie sensed Ethan taking an emotional step backward, as if he believed his own words and thought he had, indeed, compromised her situation. He had no idea that, in Lettie’s eyes, he had accomplished just the opposite. He had brought her a memory that would last a lifetime. One she could look back upon with a secret smile and a tingle of pleasure when reality once again became just a little too dull, a little too harsh.
Ethan swung the buggy onto the drive leading to the boardinghouse, then brought the conveyance to a halt next to the barn. The buggy rolled to a stop, and for a moment, there was nothing to break the stillness of the afternoon but the impatient snuffle of the horse.
“I’m glad you came into my life, Ethan McGuire,” she murmured.
Ethan shook his head. “You shouldn’t be.” He paused, then added, “You know I’ll have to go, don’t you? Once this is over.” His voice was low, almost impossible to hear.
“I know.” In fact, she’d known for some time. Ethan McGuire could never make a life for himself in her world. She’d been aware of that reality long before his face had become the artwork for a wanted poster. She couldn’t imagine his staying in a sleepy Illinois town. She doubted he would ever make a good farmer, and she certainly couldn’t see Ethan behind the counter of a mercantile or china shop. He belonged in a world apart from her own: a big city where his innate energy would blend into the hustle and beat of hired carriages, theaters, and restaurants. And even if those obstacles could be surmounted, Madison was a small, straight-laced community. Ethan’s drive and tainted past would be as out of place here as a banana plant in clover.
Ethan handed Lettie the reins and stepped from the buggy, then took a few steps before halting and asking, “When I’m gone, will you tell people what happened?”
Lettie didn’t like the sound of that question. It sounded much too much like talking about a person after they’d died, but she couldn’t tell Ethan that. Instead, she wrapped the reins around the buggy rail and stepped to the ground. “I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone would believe me if I did.” She walked around the back of the buggy, studying Ethan and trying to see beyond the veiling of his bonnet.
The crackle of paper reminded her that she still carried the wanted poster. Crumpling it into a ball, she shoved it deep into the recesses of her skirt pocket. But the pressure of the wadded paper against her hip only served to remind her of just how tenuous her relationship with this man had grown. If they weren’t careful, Lettie would probably be forced to tell her story one day… and she could indeed be talking about the dead.
She walked around the back of the buggy, studying Ethan’s rigid posture. “Like you said before, I haven’t any proof that you were ever here. Since I have a reputation for… having an overactive imagination, people might not believe me.”
She stopped a few feet away from him, and her breathing quickened slightly. “Sometimes
I’m
not sure if this is really happening. Every now and then, I wonder to myself if I’m just dreaming all this.” She glanced away from his profile to stare out at the grass and the trees crowding next to the creek line. “I don’t think I could bear it if you were to leave without—”
“Lettie…”
His voice was filled with warning, but she ignored him and continued as if he had not spoken.
“—without leaving me with some proof of my own.”
“Lettie, no.”
“I’m not asking you to—” she began quickly, but he turned.
“Yes you are,” he interrupted firmly. “Though you aren’t saying the words, you want me to make love to you, give you the ultimate proof of my existence.” A shade of his usual bitterness coated his words.
She took a deep breath, then finally admitted the truth to herself, despite the way she trembled slightly in fear and shame at her own wantonness. “Yes. I guess I do want you to love me.”
“I want you too, Lettie.”
“Then—”
“No.”
She regarded him in hurt confusion, laying her own turbulent emotions bare within her gaze. “Why?”
“Lettie …”
From deep within, she felt the first unfurling bud of an emotion she had tried to ignore, then tried to deny. And knowing they had so little time together somehow gave her the courage to whisper, “I love you, Ethan.”
“You don’t love me,” he denied fiercely.
Her shoulders stiffened beneath an inexplicable pang of hurt. “How can you be so sure?”
“Love doesn’t happen in such a short space of time. Not to men like me.”
“And are you some expert on the subject?” she bristled. “Are you telling me you’ve been in love dozens of times and know all about it?”
“No.”
She paused. “Then are you saying…” Hesitating, she rephrased her question. “Do you love me, Ethan?”
“No.”
“You could never love me?”
“Lettie, there’s no sense in going over this. As you so eloquently put it, I don’t belong here in Madison and you can never escape. Let’s just leave it at that.” He strode away, moving toward the glider swing that stood a few yards beyond the chicken coop.
Lettie waited a moment, then followed him. He seemed to stiffen at her approach but did not move away. Instead, he reached out idly to push the glider back and forth.
“Could you ever love me, Ethan?” she whispered.
His body grew tense, even as his hand continued to push the glider. Instead of answering her question, he said, “When I leave, you’ll have a whole lifetime ahead of you.”
“A lifetime in Madison.”
“A lifetime with another man.”
“Another man who won’t be you.”
His hand grew still. “I can’t tell you that I love you, Lettie. I can’t tell you that I care.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
There was a long space of silence that was punctuated by the weary squeak of the glider and soft luff of the grass.
“Won’t.”
“Then you
do
feel something for me?”
Once again, the silence stretched between them. Then Ethan turned. Even as she watched, something within the hard facade he’d built around his feelings seemed to crack. She felt an almost physical pain at the depth of loneliness she saw mirrored in his eyes. He fought to cover his emotions, but the wall he’d built around his heart had grown a little less impenetrable, and his true feelings were still evident.
“Yes. God help me, but I do.”
When the reverent silence of the Madison City Thrift and Loan altered slightly, Silas Gruber looked up from his account books and found his wife standing in the doorway to his office—or, rather, preening in the doorway. She was leaning against the molding in such a way that the tight cinching of her waist could not be mistaken. Nor could the lush swell of her bosom and the full sweep of her hips.
When she saw that she had his attention, Natalie threw him a brilliant smile and straightened.
“Busy?”
He hesitated a moment before answering. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
“Good. Then I won’t keep you.”
Lifting her skirts, she glided forward amid a wealth of rustling indigo taffeta and perched one hip on the corner of his desk before leaning toward him. Silas could barely breathe when a soft whisper of lilac water wafted his way, its subtle scent combining with that of sweet feminine skin. His eyes dipped to latch onto the fullness of her breasts, their swells made even more enticing by the extra padding Natalie used, and the taut stretch of taffeta that seemed ready to split from the pressure of the firm mounds.
“Well?” Natalie prompted when he didn’t speak.
Silas glanced up at her face. “Well what?”
She laughed and whirled away from the desk, once again affecting a sophisticated pose. “What do you think of my new hat?”
Silas pressed his lips together, wondering why she’d been brushing up against him like a hungry cat if she’d wanted him to look at her head all this time.
“It’s very nice,” he muttered. “But now I have other things to do.”
She pouted at him in mock disappointment. “Really, Silas, don’t get all grumpy and grouchy on me. Aren’t you going to ask me about it? Why, you haven’t even taken a good look.”
Silas’s fingers tightened around the pen in his hand, but he obediently looked up at his wife’s hat, even though he knew she was simply goading him into asking her where she’d bought it and how she’d obtained the money to buy it.
“It’s very nice,” he muttered again, barely glancing at the tiny blue bonnet with its swirl of scarlet veiling and spray of ebony feathers.
He glanced pointedly at his account books again. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Natalie frowned in displeasure and glided toward him, stepping behind his chair and bending low over his shoulder so that he was forced to look at her.
“I think this color does marvelous things for me, don’t you?”
“Mmm.”
“It makes my eyes seem darker, my skin paler.”
Silas cleared his throat, darting a glance out of the windows that surrounded his office above the forest-green wainscoting. A few of his tellers were surreptitiously watching their exchange. “I suppose.”
Natalie straightened, then bent over his opposite shoulder. “Aren’t you going to ask me where I bought it?”
Once again, Silas’s jaw tightened. “No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
Natalie frowned again in displeasure when he refused to surrender to her baiting. Pulling herself upright, she moved across the room to the door in such a way that her bustle swayed enticingly from beneath the elaborate swags of fabric draped below her tiny waist.
“For your information, the hat was shipped to me on the eight o’clock train from Chicago”—she paused dramatically, glancing at Silas over her shoulder—“along with a shipment containing an entire wardrobe selected from the finest
couturiers
of Europe.” Her dark eyes sparkled with silent derision. “
You
could never do that for me, could you, Silas?”
“Natalie, I told you to stop this nonsense,” he growled in warning.
“But someone else obviously can,” she taunted, barely heeding his words, her chin tilting at a defiant angle. “Someone who is more of a man than you could ever be, Silas Gruber.”
Silas rose from his seat with such force that his chair crashed against the back wall. Despite the startled glances of those within the bank, he strode toward his wife and grasped her by the elbows, shaking her. The hat she’d been so proud of threatened to topple from her head.
“Who is he, Natalie? Who have you been seeing?”
Her face twisted in an ugly expression of disgust and triumph. “As if I’d tell you! You’re nothing but an old lecherous coward, Silas. You couldn’t even stand up to the board of inquiry in Chicago. Instead, you let them send you whimpering and whining to this po-dunk town in the middle of nowhere.”
“I
told
you! There was nothing else I could have done.”
“Save your excuses for the board, Silas. I don’t want to hear them. Since you’ve been unable to… satisfy my needs for quite some time, I’ve gone elsewhere.”
Silas felt his whole body tighten in rage and jealousy. “Damn you, who is he!” he ground out between clenched teeth, his hands tightening around her arms until he could feel the bones beneath his fingers like fragile twigs. He shook her once more for emphasis. “
Who is he!
No one has the kind of money you’ve been flaunting around. No one here in Madison. No one honest.”