”Hiram’s lady friend is amazing. She sewed the pouches and pockets in this dress just like I asked.”
“
You
are amazing,” he answered and she flashed him a wicked grin, turning toward him but peering over her shoulder at her image one last time. It didn’t escape Deacon’s notice that his wife preened like a peacock when she wore her new finery.
On the way to the dining hall, Deacon and Miri stopped at the front desk, arranging for their baggage to be carried to the stage depot for transport back to Eclipse. With her tall stature, fulsome breasts, exotic eyes and silver hair, Miri was breathtaking and unforgettable.
Deacon recognized the way other men coveted Miri. Usually he wondered if he’d been fair, scooping her up before anyone else discovered the secret woman beneath her disguise. This time though, he remembered her fierce declaration of love for him and did his own preening.
She’s mine.
While she went on to the room, he brought the horses to the back of the hotel and waited for Beauregard. When Miri didn’t join him disguised or otherwise, Deacon left the horses tethered and returned to the hotel room.
* * * * *
Preparing for the ride back to Eclipse, Miri changed into her buckskins. Glad for the layers of male clothing, she discarded her female costume and assembled her Beauregard disguise, mindful of the coming cold.
She looked forward to the trip with Deacon and it had begun to seem to her as if she’d never get her fill of being with him.
He loves me.
She sighed. She couldn’t quite believe in all this yet. She’d never said
I love you
to anyone before unless she counted Possum and Ketchum. But she knew even before they’d exchanged their closet vows, she’d been plumb simple-silly over Deacon.
It hadn’t taken her but a moment to decide she liked partnering with him. She worried some she wouldn’t last in his affections and decided she’d do her best to carry her own weight.
That’s why she decided to get the hang of tasting his man parts. She loved it when he pleasured her that way and from his reaction earlier in the day to her awkward attempts, she could see he’d enjoy it just the same.
She wanted him to crave her as much as she wanted him. She knew she’d gotten the better part of the deal. Aside from Possum and Ketchum—and they weren’t possessions as much as friends—she didn’t own squat.
The only thing Deacon got with Miri was a new roof on his cabin by the river and her—but he seemed real certain that was enough. He’d not tarried, simplifying her transition from being bounty hunter Beau Beauregard to wife Miri McCallister.
When she’d told him straight out that she didn’t know how women acted or dressed, he’d helped her with her female wardrobe, steering her to the women’s clothes at the CQ Mercantile.
Deacon had ignored the scandalized clerk when he’d stood with Miri in the unmentionables section, discussing cotton drawers versus silk pantalettes. Seeing that the older woman was about to have a fit of the vapors, Miri had urged him over to the ranch supplies.
“See, nothing to it,” he’d murmured, winked at Miri, turned to the clerk, tipped his hat and departed. Miri had been well pleased that although the store employee had sold Beau honey many times, she didn’t recognize Miri McCallister as the same person.
When she’d come away with cotton drawers and no dresses, he’d listened again.
“Deacon, I can’t run in skirts, nor kick, nor defend myself. If women dressed right, I’d be willing. But the way those skirts drag and the corset squeezes the breath out of me, why that’s plumb stupid. I won’t do it.” She’d been militant and defiant.
He’d scratched his jaw, considering her words, thinking about the problem not her anger. He was smart that way.
“We’ll talk to Hiram’s lady friend, Roberta Harris. She owns Tailored Dreams, a millinery and sewing shop here in town.”
He hadn’t waited for her agreement. He’d simply taken her arm and guided her to the shop.
Inside, Miss Harris had provided a thick book filled with pictures and they’d all sat at a table studying the sketches. He’d made every decision easy until the only hard part had been standing still to be measured. By the end of the session, Miri called her Roberta and they’d gotten cozy, exchanging gossip about Eclipse citizens. Deacon had disappeared.
The next trip to town, he’d left after he’d escorted her to Tailored Dreams to pick up her first outfit. “I’ll be back after I talk to Hiram.”
She’d stood in front of the mirror, gawking at the fashionable woman wearing a split riding skirt, white ruffled shirtwaist, vest, leather boots and a flat-brimmed hat. It was amazing. She knew it was her, but it wasn’t. She’d been trying to get used to her appearance when the bell on the entrance announced Deacon’s return.
When he’d opened the door to the fitting room she’d been smoothing her hand over the vest, studying the swell of her breasts under the ruffled shirt. He’d stalled in the doorway, a splash of red staining his cheekbones. He’d been quiet on the way home and ferocious in his lovemaking when they arrived.
“Well, thanks to Deacon, I’m getting plenty of practice being female.” Miri grimaced and then grinned at her Beauregard disguise reflected in the mirror.
She didn’t doubt that Deacon would use their current case to get more detective business. She didn’t mind letting him direct things. Though his methodical approach to planning ventures was different from her spur-of-the-moment decisions, when they compared ideas, their end conclusions were usually pretty much the same.
A quick search of their room confirmed that she’d left nothing behind. She wasn’t surprised when a knock sounded. She swung open the door, expecting the arrival of the hotel porter to fetch their trunk downstairs for shipping. Instead, she faced Lydia Lynch accompanied by Adam Crispin.
“Well howdy-do,” she drawled in her best Tennessee twang. “Sure wish I had a gun in hand instead of a tip for the hotel employee.”
Crispin didn’t have the same trouble. He held his derringer pointing at her heart.
“Beau, I want my brother,” Lydia said as soon as she stepped through the door, Crispin following.
“What’s his interest in Ned?” Miri asked, nodding at Lydia’s companion.
“I want my plates, you little cocksucker,” he snarled.
“Well, all righty then. Guess the only thing left to know, Miss Lynch, is if you took part in the counterfeiting business while you were running the Pleasure Dome.”
Miri addressed her question to the brothel owner but kept her gaze on Crispin’s gun.
Deacon eased his grip from the knob, leaning closer to the door to better hear the murmur of voices on the other side—definitely more than one. The porter coming down the hall pushing a luggage cart before him gave Deacon what he needed.
Wearing the old man’s hat and jacket, he knocked at the suite, then hunched over the cart, keeping his head low as the door swung open.
“Here to pick up the trunk,” he muttered, wheeling the cart before him.
Two steps into the room, he shoved it as if it were a battering ram, knocking Adam Crispin to the floor. Deacon jumped him, wrestling for the gun in the gambler’s hand.
“Oh no you don’t,” Miri said in Beau’s voice, blocking Lydia’s move toward the exit.
Deacon stood, pulling Crispin with him to his feet, and Miri cuffed Lydia’s arms behind her.
“Good work, partner,” she drawled. “Things were just gettin’ interestin’. Crispin here wants his plates.”
“Is that right? Guess this is our lucky day.”
“Deacon, thank God you’re here. I don’t know anything about plates. I’m here because I need your help.” The owner of the Pleasure Dome looked at him beseechingly.
“What do you want, Lydia?” Deacon asked. “More to the point, why are you with Crispin?”
“I came to beg you to help me free Ned.” She glared at Miri. “You caused this mess when you posed as my butler. Now you can help fix it.”
“What’s Crispin doin’ with ya?” Miri drawled in Beau’s voice.
“He offered to escort me here when I discovered Deacon was staying at the Ellis.” She looked at Beau with disgust. “What are you doing here?”
“Lydia, meet my wife’s cousin, Beau Beauregard,” Deacon said before Miri responded.
“Don’t be stupid, Deacon. I knew all of Annie’s relatives and this bumpkin is no relative of hers.”
“My present wife is in the salon below, waiting for me to join her,” Deacon corrected Lydia. “We’re here on our honeymoon. Now maybe you’d like to explain why you’re here with the head of the counterfeiting ring. On the other hand, Beau and I should thank you. We won’t have to track Crispin now.”
Lydia glared at Crispin, then turned to Deacon. “I need to get back to my house. I don’t know what Adam is involved—”
“Shut up, Lydia,” Crispin snarled before she could say anything that might incriminate him further or reveal where she stood in the counterfeiting business.
The fact that the madam closed her mouth at his order told its own tale about her involvement.
“Lydia, you can tell your story to the US marshal. Crispin, I’m sure the Fort Worth sheriff will be pleased as punch to have company.” He looked at Miri and smiled grimly. “Ready, Beau?”
Christmas 1884
“Who pledges to guide this child in the ways of the Great Spirit in the Sky?” Robert McCallister bent over Samuel Elliot McCallister Jr., smoothing the fluffy blond hair on the baby’s head.
“His mama and I do,” Sam said gruffly. The idea of Snake McCallister, reformed whoremonger and retired killer, making the commitment would have been ludicrous if the vow hadn’t been delivered with such conviction.
Deacon’s throat tightened at the aura of love surrounding Sam and his family. He spoke the words over Charles Wolf McCallister Jr., and Charlie and Naomi held their son and pledged to guide Wolf on the path of a true warrior.
Granted, Deacon improvised with the christening, delivering it in words that embraced the complexities of both the Indian and white spirit worlds. But that didn’t make the occasion any less solemn or real.
When the last baptism candidate stood before him, Deacon touched Miri’s forehead with a drop of the mountain water Charlie had fetched from the purest stream.
“And do you, Miracle Beauregard McCallister, accept me as your guide and teacher as I accept the miracle of you? Will you follow the path to the Source of all Knowledge as we learn the way together?”
Her nod was jerky, her whispered acceptance a husky, “Yes.”
Deacon settled the white shawl around her shoulders, much as he’d wrapped each baby in a christening blanket. “May we all walk in the path of truth and leave treachery and discord behind.”
Later, Miri swore she’d felt a tingle of warmth brush over her as Deacon said his words. Ketchum had rumbled a deep response in his throat as if he felt an otherworldly touch too.
After the christenings, the gift-giving and another slice each of Eden’s apple pie, Miri sat in the front room of the McCallister house, surrounded by family as the end of Christmas 1884 drew near.
Deacon met her gaze and winked, making her grin.
“It was a mighty fine year, partner,” she drawled in Beauregard’s voice, a persona she liked to don when emotion threatened to overwhelm her.
“Only the first of many, wife,” Deacon answered, crossing the room to hug her to his side.
Because of the late hour, the knock on the front door startled all of them. Deacon left the front room with Charlie and Sam close behind. The Eclipse sheriff stood with two other people on the porch when the McCallisters opened the door.
“Merry Christmas, Hiram. Always a pleasure to see you,” Deacon greeted him.
Ketchum, wearing a holiday bow, growled softly as he took his place in the line of McCallister males.
“You’re back,” Miri whooped and skidded across the floor, flinging her arms around Hiram for a bear hug.
“Yep, and brought you a present.” He nodded at the man and woman standing behind him.
“Ben, Laura?”
Deacon waited as Miri hugged the woman and pumped the man’s hand, then turned to him with an introduction.
“This is my husband, Robert McCallister. Deacon, these are my friends who run the Hearth and Home. We met back when we were all strays left to grow up in the Tennessee Home for Foundlings and Orphans. Why we’ve known each other…” Whatever else she had been going to say, her welcoming expression changed to puzzlement and her words piddled to a halt.
“What might you folks be doing away from the orphanage on Christmas Eve?” As he asked, Deacon held Miri’s hand, entwining her fingers with his.
The woman named Laura began to cry, Ben looked belligerent and then crumbled as Hiram revealed what they’d been up to.
“The crate you sent came back on the stage. I asked the driver, Conner Spokes about it. He said it being an orphanage and you wanting them to get their presents, he tried to make delivery. When he couldn’t find it, he asked around. There is no Hearth and Home for Orphans and Foundlings.”
“Well that can’t be right. Mr. Stokes must have gotten confused.” Ben and Laura flinched under the evidence of Miri’s trust.