Willow: A Novel (No Series) (35 page)

After the hardscrabble, hand-to-mouth way his life had gone so far, the idea appealed to Vancel.

Damn, but the judge’s daughter was a fetching thing, trim through the waist and nice and round at the hips and bosom. Her soft hair, pinned up loose and soft around her head, glimmered like corn silk under a summer sun.

Willow Marshall was carrying flowers, and she knelt between the two graves, laying half the blooms at one stone, half at the other. She didn’t so much as look toward the fenced-off resting place marked with Steven Gallagher’s name, and that struck Vancel as odd. More than odd, considering the way she’d acted the day he’d brought those wasters in.

Vancel was pondering that when rock-hard hands suddenly closed over his shoulders, whirled him around, and flung him hard against the weathered-board wall of the church. Devlin Gallagher was glaring at him, his eyes wild, his lips drawn tight across his teeth.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” rasped Gallagher.

Vancel sometimes wondered if he was ever going to get to Mexico, where he could live in peace and enjoy the luxuries he’d worked so hard to secure for himself. “Doin’?” he echoed, stalling.

“You obviously didn’t come here to pray,” drawled Devlin, and for all the smooth softness of his voice, he scared Vancel Tudd clear to the bone. It was no wonder
that one or two old-timers had altered the judge’s first name from Devlin to Devil. “Is there something about my daughter that interests you?”

Tudd shivered. “No, sir, Devil—Devlin—there ain’t. I saw her puttin’ flowers on the Forbes boys’ graves and I was wonderin’ why she didn’t bring none for Steven, that’s all.”

The oddness of that clearly struck Devlin Gallagher; his eyes shifted to his daughter, then darkened. When they came back to Vancel’s face, however, they were knife-sharp and clear as a mountain creek.

“You stay away from Willow, Tudd. You’ve done all the harm to this family that there is to do.” He paused and drew a deep, raspy breath. “And so help me God, Vancel, if you so much as tip your hat to my daughter as you pass her on the street, I’ll kill you.”

“You’d hang for it,” Tudd said, but he was bluffing, and Devlin clearly knew that.

“Maybe I would,” Gallagher agreed. “Then again, maybe I wouldn’t. I’m a judge, and a solid citizen, and you’re a second-rate bounty hunter. Seems to me a jury might make a distinction.” He paused. “Get out of here, Tudd, before I kick your ass.”

It wasn’t a day for fighting, as far as Vancel Tudd was concerned. He drew a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and walked away.

*   *   *

“Willow?”

She looked up from Coy’s grave and into the ravaged face of her father. “Papa, what are you doing here? It’s the middle of the day.”

Devlin crouched down on his haunches, as Willow had seen Steven do so many times. “I might ask the same question of you. I didn’t know you were close to your half brothers.”

Inwardly, Willow sighed. She had come to town to escape lying to Gideon, and now she would have to lie to her father. “They don’t have anybody else to come and pay respects,” she hedged, finding it almost impossible to meet those watchful eyes of his.

Devlin pulled a bright yellow dandelion from the ground and assessed its spiky face. “I guess not. Steven was all they had in the world—except for you.”

Willow lowered her eyes. She was sorry that Coy and Reilly were dead; she even mourned for them, if only in a remote way. The truth was, she had never known them well. Had never forged a bond with her half brothers like the one she and Steven had always shared.

“Yes,” Willow agreed. “With Mama and Mr. Forbes both gone—and Steven, too—there’s no one to remember them properly.” She paused, aching with secrets that were too heavy to bear. “Have you been by the house, Papa? Daphne’s father is there—”

“I’ve been there,” Devlin broke in. “They’re talking calmly and Daphne seemed to be holding her own.”

Willow looked away, then sniffled once. “Good,” she murmured.

Devlin stood up straight again, his knee bones making a popping sound as he did so. “Which isn’t to say that Jack Roberts is going to let her stay here. Frankly, I don’t understand why she wants to. Steven is gone and . . .” His voice broke. He swallowed and spoke again, gruffly.
“Gideon is married to you, after all, and the two of you seem to be getting along fine.”

Willow kept her eyes averted. “Daphne and I are friends. She wants to stay because of that.”

“She’s a mighty loyal friend, then. Very few girls her age would give up the kind of life she has in San Francisco to live on the frontier. What does she plan to do, now that Steven’s . . . no longer with us?”

The bluntness of that question caused Willow’s eyes to shoot involuntarily to her father’s face. “What?”

“Don’t, Willow. You yourself told me about Steven and Daphne, the day he was killed.”

With everything that had been happening, with all her riotous feelings sweeping her this way and that, Willow had forgotten mentioning that her brother and her friend had met in the stables behind the Gallagher house after the dance.

“Yes,” she confirmed lamely. Now what was she supposed to say, to do? Damn Steven anyway. “Well . . .”

But Devlin hadn’t noticed her hesitation, it seemed. He broke in with, “There is nothing for Daphne here. Why in God’s name does she want to stay? Virginia City is a nice town, but it isn’t San Francisco. I can understand you not wanting her to go back there, but . . .”

A slow flush crept, scalding, up Willow’s neck and into her face. What would happen if she told her father the truth? Surely the secret would be safe with him, and he’d know what to do about all its attendant problems.

On the other hand, knowing might be worse for him than what he was going through now.

“I don’t know why Daphne wants to stay here,” Willow lied firmly, and it appeared that her father believed her.

Unless, of course, that was merely what he wanted her to think.

*   *   *

Gideon left the saloon late, with Jack Roberts’s loud lecture ringing in his ears. Even though he’d deserved every word of it, he still smarted as though he’d been pelted with small, sharp stones.

He had just reached his horse and unwound the reins from the hitching rail when Zachary stepped out of the darkness. He had the damnedest way of just
appearing
like that. “If I had a wife like yours, Gideon,” he said companionably, “I wouldn’t be in town right now, dallying in some saloon.”

In no mood for a round with Zachary, Gideon scowled. He hung one stirrup from the saddle horn to check and then tighten the cinch around his horse’s middle. “You don’t have a wife like mine, though, do you?”

Zachary sighed heavily and gripped the post of the hitching rail in both hands. “Why the hell don’t you go home, where you belong? Sweep Daphne off her feet again, con Jack into thinking you’ll make a fine son-in-law in spite of it all. And then head back to San Francisco and your railroad shares and all your wheeling and dealing. You’ve had your tumbles in Willow Gallagher’s bed.”

Gideon had been about to mount up. Now, feeling cold all over, he turned to face his brother squarely. “Her name is Willow Marshall.”

“On paper, maybe,” Zachary countered smoothly. “But
she’s a Gallagher, through and through, and we both know that.” He paused, smiled oddly. “Your Willow,” he said, “is a little outlaw. Eventually, she’ll get tired of being your dutiful wife, Gideon. She’ll run off with somebody more exciting, just like her mother did all those years ago. You might have kids of your own when she flies the coop. And, like the judge, there won’t be a damn thing you can do to stop Willow from going or to make her come back.”

Gideon felt a chill move through him. It had more to do with the tempestuous history he and Zachary shared than any worries he had concerning Willow.

Though, God knew, there were a few of those, too.

“Is that all you wanted to say?” he asked, refusing to rise to the bait.

“No,” Zachary said, as Gideon climbed into the saddle. He never knew when to quit. “Your life is in San Francisco, Gideon, not in this godforsaken wilderness. What the hell are you
doing
, buying land and cattle, playing like you mean to settle down?”

“You know,” Gideon drawled, looking down into his brother’s face, “it’s a curious thing, your interest in seeing me go back. And I’ve wondered the same thing about you—why you stay here in Virginia City, I mean.”

Light from the saloon fell on Zachary’s face, casting shadows that hid his expression. “Have you?” he countered mildly. “I thought you were smarter than that, little brother.”

The realization was no great surprise. So why did it feel like a kick in the teeth? “It’s Willow, then,” Gideon said. “You want my wife.”

Zachary nodded and smiled as he stepped back up onto the board sidewalk. “When you come to your senses, little brother, and go back to your board meetings and your rich mistresses, I mean to be right here, waiting to console her.” His shoulders moved in a shrug. “It might take some time, I grant you, but Willow will come around. Won’t that be convenient? She won’t even have to change her name!”

“You’re insane,” Gideon said, taking up the reins but making no move to ride away. “You just told me that you expect Willow to take up with an outlaw.”

Zachary’s grin was somehow chilling. “I’d make a fine outlaw,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

Gideon swung his right leg over the saddle horn and landed deftly on the ground, face-to-face with his brother. “What I
think
,” he said, “is that we ought to settle this, once and for all.”

Zachary held up both his hands in affable abstention and took another step back, probably to get out of fist range. “Oh, no,” he averred. “I won’t fight you, Gideon. I mean to wait and watch, that’s all. Bide my time. You’ll trip up soon enough. You’ll leave the territory, or you’ll get yourself killed—wouldn’t
that
be a shame?—who knows which? The point is that once one or all of those things happen, Willow will be in need of consolation.”

Gideon’s fists ached and the blood throbbed beneath his temples. “You’ll fight,” he breathed, advancing on his brother. “That’s the only choice you’ve got.”

Zachary paled, but a smirk played on his mouth. “Gideon, Gideon,” he scolded ruefully, “what would that
do to your reputation in this town? You’re supposed to be an upright landowner, a cattleman. A deputy U.S. marshal. What will people say if they see you brawling in the street like some common roughneck?”

Shrugging out of his coat, Gideon smiled. “Why, Zachary,” he said, “you ought to know by now that I don’t give a damn what people say about me.” He undid his cuff links, dropped them into the pocket of his suit coat, then hung the garment from the horn of his saddle. Zachary backed up again as his brother calmly rolled up his sleeves. “You know, Zach,” he went on, in measured tones, “I’ve been taking all kinds of guff from you ever since you came here. Before that, too, from the time we were little kids. And I’m dead sick of it.”

“Gideon,” Zachary said, sounding nervous now.

Gideon advanced on his brother, filled with bloodlust, not just over the things Zachary had said about Willow, but over a lifetime of tricks and lies and out-and-out bullying. Of the two of them, Gideon had always been the one with a head for business, with the acumen to manage and increase the family fortune. Zachary, though several years older, had a less impressive set of skills.

He gambled, threw away thousands of dollars “courting” women he never intended to marry, and often had to borrow from their grandfather’s vast estate to make it through to the next dividend payment.

Although Gideon doubted he’d ever be able to prove it, he knew in his bones that several of the near misses he’d had as a kid—hurtling down a flight of stairs when he was three, being locked in a shed that conveniently
caught fire when he was eight, almost getting trampled by a horse on more than one occasion—had been Zachary’s doing.

Zachary would have loved to see Gideon dead. He stood to inherit so much, in the event of his younger brother’s tragic death. Or, at least, he
had
, until Willow came along, anyway.

Catching the lapels of Zachary’s impeccable suit coat in his fists, Gideon rasped, “Thanks to you, dear brother, Willow is my wife. And I love her. So it looks like your little joke blew up in your face, doesn’t it?”

Zachary’s eyes went round, and his breath was quick, ragged. He tried to pull away, but he’d never been the stronger one. “Gideon, for God’s sake . . .”

Gideon was half-blind with anger now, with an accumulation of memories, things Zachary had done to him, said to him, set in motion behind his back. “No. God isn’t going to have any part in this,” he spat out. “I mean to do it all myself.”

“Wait!” Zachary cried. “Gideon, you can’t; I was only—”

“Let him go, Gideon.”

The voice was masculine, and somehow it reached through the fog of Gideon’s fury and touched his reason like a cooling hand. He sighed and dropped his hands, releasing his grip on Zachary, stepping back.

Zachary immediately bolted, his coattails flying as he whirled around, the heels of his boots making a clomping sound on the wooden sidewalk, fading away into the night. Gideon faced his father-in-law, head-on.

“I wanted him to bleed,” he said.

“I know,” answered Devlin.

It struck Gideon then that Devlin looked old. He was far thinner than he had been before Steven’s death, and his eyes had an unnerving, hollowed-out look, as though he’d been scraped raw on the inside.

“Is Willow all right?” Gideon asked.

“She’s fine, or so she says,” the judge answered. “I’d like to talk to you, though. Mind letting me buy you a drink or two?”

Gideon was brutally tired, but he sensed that Devlin would relate something important, maybe vital. “Anything but panther piss,” he replied.

*   *   *

Much later, Gideon collected Willow from the judge’s house and they drove home through the starlit night, in the buggy. The nearer they got to the ranch house, the more clearly they could hear the lowing of the weary cattle.