Willow: A Novel (No Series) (8 page)

Finally, he turned and assessed Dove’s voluptuous body with appreciative eyes. Worry was etched in his handsome face, and Dove felt regret that her lovemaking had not smoothed it away. She sighed.

“Smile,” he urged gruffly, as he always did when he was about to go back to Evadne.

Obediently, Dove summoned up the requested smile, for she loved Judge Devlin Gallagher as no other woman, including Chastity, ever had. Loved him for who and what he was, the good with the bad, and never wished to change him.

Devlin was perceptive, and he read much from Dove’s wide green eyes. “You know I would live here with you always, if only I could,” he said gently. “I love you, Triskadden.”

Dove’s smile was real this time, requiring no effort on her part. “Wouldn’t that be a scandal, though, if you moved out of Evadne’s house and into mine, bold as brass?”

Devlin sighed. “It would be, indeed. Between Steven and Willow, there’s been enough of that sort of thing already.”

“Do you think Steven’s heard about the wedding yet?”

He grinned and shook his head. There was gray in his wheat-colored hair, and Dove felt a tug in her heart at the notice of it. “No—definitely not. There would have been some kind of incident if he had.”

Dove looked away as Devlin reached for his suit coat and shrugged into it. “What will happen now, Dev? Will Willow still marry Norville Pickering?”

“Good God,” sighed the judge, “I hope not.”

“That’s why you haven’t tried to dissolve her marriage to Gideon Marshall, isn’t it?”

Devlin was deeply troubled; Dove didn’t need to look at him to know that. She’d felt it, even before she’d held
him in her arms, given him the only solace she had to offer. “I’m not sure that’s possible,” he muttered. “Both Gideon and Willow claim they haven’t consummated the union, but there’s a—well, there’s some kind of charge between those two. If they haven’t been together already, they soon will be.”

“Would you want Gideon Marshall for a son-in-law, Dev?”

His chuckle was raspy, humorless. “I don’t think my personal opinion matters much, one way or the other. I can’t say I dislike the man, but . . .”

“But?” prompted Dove.

Devlin gave a ragged sigh. “Gideon came here to track Steven down—at the behest of the railroad. He told me that, straight out.”

The pit of Dove’s stomach quivered. “Do you suppose he can find Steven? Succeed where Vancel Tudd has failed?”

“I sure as hell hope not,” breathed Devlin, and then he approached Dove, bent to kiss the top of her head, and was on his way out of the house.

*   *   *

The morning hadn’t gone at all the way Gideon had planned it. He’d meant to find Steven Gallagher; instead, he’d ended up on the ground with Willow.

Swinging back into the saddle of the horse he’d borrowed from the judge’s stables, he rode away from the scene of his downfall without looking back.

Willow’s challenge rang through his mind and heart—
And you aren’t faithful to her anyway, are you?—
all the way
back to town. He hadn’t been strictly true to Daphne, that was a fact, and up until now that had never seemed important. Every man had at least one mistress, didn’t he?

Gideon swallowed hard. His pride smarted and his groin ached and his thoughts were all tangled up with each other. Fidelity was something Daphne, sophisticated as she was, had never demanded of him, probably never even expected.

It was the way of the world.

Men of means provided well for their wives and children; in his world, that was understood. A mistress, discreetly maintained of course, was considered his due.

But things were different with Willow, and Gideon knew he had a bitter choice to make. He could appease his physical needs with other women and let his “wife” do as she pleased, or he could be faithful—to a woman he couldn’t, in good conscience, bed.

“Shit!” he yelled to the blue summer sky.

*   *   *

Willow sat quietly on the ground, long after Gideon rode away, her arms wrapped around her knees, her eyes burning with unshed tears. Lord have mercy, what a mess her life was.

One tear trickled down her face and she dashed it away angrily.

A long shadow passed over her. “Willow?”

Willow’s head shot up and she gaped at her brother, both alarmed and relieved. He had the most disconcerting way of appearing and disappearing, like some kind of stage magician. “Steven! What are you doing here?”

Steven crouched to face her, the wind lifting his sandy
hair, his blue eyes bright with affection and mischief. He looked as Devlin must have, in his youth, powerful and handsome and arrogant, and for all of that, ingenuous.

“I came to see my sister,” he answered mildly.

Willow flushed, remembering what she and Gideon had done, conscious of the possibility that Steven might have seen at least some of the exchange.

God forbid
. “You took a terrible chance, Steven,” she scolded, testing the waters. “What if I hadn’t been alone?”

“You weren’t alone,” he said, taking in her rumpled clothes and misbuttoned shirt with discerning eyes, “unless I miss my guess.”

Willow colored again and averted her eyes, but she was still self-possessed enough to make an attempt at throwing her brother off
that
conversational trail. “You should be more careful,” she muttered. “Contrary to what you probably tell yourself, Steven Gallagher, you don’t lead a charmed life.”

Steven laughed and plucked a blade of grass to turn in his hands, as Gideon had turned a tiger lily only minutes before. “Lancelot is well away, m’lady,” he teased. “I made sure of that before showing myself. When did he arrive in our fair town?”

Willow flinched at the mention of the silly name she’d given Gideon in her innocence; she’d forgotten how much she had confided to her older brother over the years. “He came yesterday—just in time to stop me from marrying Norville.”

There was an awful silence, followed by a breathless “To stop you from
what
?”

Willow straightened her spine, then raised her chin a
notch. “You heard me, Steven. I was going to marry Norville. I was even standing at the altar. Then Lan-Gideon walked in and proceeded to inform the whole community that I couldn’t be married because I was already his wife.” Willow stopped the account there, closing her eyes, bracing herself for the inevitable explosion.

Instead, Steven gave a ragged burst of laughter. “I owe our Lancelot a debt of gratitude, it appears. That was brilliant!”

For a moment, Willow was puzzled. But then she realized that Steven thought Gideon had merely been bluffing. “I don’t think you understand,” she said quietly. “Steven, I really am married to Gideon. Truly.”

Steven’s mouth fell open; for once in his dashing and completely misguided life, he was speechless.

“It happened two years ago, Steven, when I visited San Francisco with Evadne,” Willow rushed to explain. “You remember, don’t you, when she decided to dress me up and present me to society?”

Most likely, Evadne had hoped to marry Willow off. Leave her behind in San Francisco when she returned to Virginia City.

“I remember,” Steven rasped, his aristocratic face completely devoid of color.

Painfully, knowing that it had to be done, Willow explained the prank Gideon had played on her, the prank that had turned out to be a documented reality.

At the end of the account, Steven shot to his feet, towering against the morning sun like an angry Adonis. “I’ll kill him!” he bellowed.

With what she hoped was a calming demeanor, Willow stood up and approached Steven, then caught his muscular arms in her hands. “Gideon could have made love to me that night, Steven,” she said rationally. “I thought it was our wedding night and I would have allowed him to. But he didn’t. H-he said it was all a terrible mistake and brought me back to the mansion . . .”

Steven wrenched free of her grasp, then paced back and forth in the deep, windblown grass, his face murderous. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about this?” he demanded, after some time.

Willow ached with embarrassment and residual pain. What a bumpkin she’d been, back then. How Gideon and Zachary and the others must have laughed at her gullibility.

“I didn’t want you to know, Steven. Surely you can understand how stupid I felt!”

Before Steven could reply to this, one way or the other, the hoot of a night owl rang through the bright June morning. It was a signal, of course; Coy or Reilly warning Steven that someone was coming.

Steven gave Willow one beleaguered look and disappeared into the cottonwood trees farther up the hill.

Two minutes later, Norville rode out of the brush on horseback, looking very pleased with himself. Dressed in black trousers and a smudged white shirt that was stained under the armpits, he was even less appealing than usual.

“Well,” he drawled, his tone scathing. “Fancy meeting you here!”

Willow was in no mood for an encounter with Norville,
and she stalked over to Banjo, who was grazing nearby, and took his dangling reins in hand. “You followed me,” she accused, swinging up into the saddle, ready to flee if Norville came any closer.

“We need to have a talk, you and I,” Norville reiterated, still in the saddle, placing his hands on his hips.

“About what?”

Norville flushed furiously. “About our bargain, Miss Gallagher. We had an agreement. Surely you didn’t think I was simply going to pretend that didn’t happen?”

Willow swallowed hard but made no move to ride away, though she longed to. This, like the confrontation with Steven just past, was unavoidable. “I can’t very well marry you now,” she said lamely.

“Of course not,” conceded Norville. “Think what it would do to the Pickering name. Your reputation wasn’t exactly pristine before; now, of course, it’s probably unsalvageable. I couldn’t marry you even if—
especially
if—you were divorced.”

Fresh relief swept over Willow in such an intense wave that she nearly swayed out of the saddle. A previous marriage was a definite disadvantage when it came to matrimony; there were many men who would be unwilling to wed a divorcee, and thank God, Norville Pickering apparently numbered among them. “I see,” she managed to say.

Norville gave her a speculative look that made her uncomfortable all over again. “I don’t think you
do
see, Willow. If you don’t want me to go to Vancel Tudd or the marshal with what I know about your brother, you’ll have to, er,
accommodate
me.”

A cold sickness welled in Willow’s stomach. “A-accommodate you?”

Norville rolled his colorless eyes heavenward. “Spare me the innocent amazement, Willow. You understand exactly what I mean and we both know it. I want you to be my mistress.”

At some unconscious urging from Willow, Banjo began to dance backward, nickering and tossing his head. “I am a married woman,” she reminded him.

Not that he appeared to care in the least.

“You are also the sister of a wanted man. Do you want to see your beloved Steven imprisoned, maybe even hanged, Willow?”

Just the image of Steven struggling at the end of a hangman’s rope before that final, inevitable stillness made Willow squeeze her eyes shut. Grief seared the back of her throat, and she couldn’t have spoken for anything.

Norville was editor of Virginia City’s newspaper, having inherited both the business and the family home when his father, Mance, passed away, and there was no denying that he had a way with words. “It’s a terrible death, you know, strangulation. Most hangmen are quite inept. Sometimes the poor fellow just flails a few feet above the ground, slowly spinning round and round, turning blue. Often, the tongue protrudes, and the bowels open.” He paused, grinding the image into Willow’s mind. “Would you like to see that happen to your
precious
Steven, Willow?”

She shook her head, sicker than ever, and forced herself to open her eyes.

“Of course you wouldn’t!” exclaimed Norville, spreading
his hands in an expansive, generous gesture. But then his eyes moved over Willow’s full breasts and trim hips like the slithering passage of a snake. He shifted in the saddle, about to dismount. “Get down from the horse, my dear.”

Would pleading save her? Looking at Norville, Willow knew that it wouldn’t. She lifted one suddenly weighted leg over the horn of her saddle and slid despondently from Banjo’s back.

She took one step toward Norville, then another. And the only thing that kept her from screaming in revulsion and fear was the thought of Steven with a noose tightening around his neck.

Norville, looking like the proverbial cat that ate the canary, simply leaned back against the trunk of a cottonwood tree, folded his arms, and waited.

Willow was within his reach when all hell broke loose. Suddenly, it seemed, there were horses everywhere.

Coy and Reilly were there, both of them excited.

His face taut and brutal, Steven sprang from the bare back of his sorrel gelding, a rifle dangling from one hand. Within seconds, he’d swung the rifle sideways and pinned Norville to the trunk of the tree with its cold steel barrel.

Norville’s eyes were the size of Maria’s tortillas.

Steven favored his captive with a blood-chilling grin. “Hello, Norville,” he said.

“Cut off his ears,” suggested Coy, Willow’s half brother, in an affable tone.

“Yeah,” Reilly agreed.

“Shut up, both of you,” Steven ordered, his eyes never
leaving Norville’s alternately crimson and snow white face.

Coy flung one beleaguered look at Reilly and shrugged. Willow noticed then that there was another man with them, a man she had never seen before. He was tall, with coloring much like Steven’s, but there was an emptiness in his eyes that was vaguely disturbing.

Norville finally managed a strangled “For God’s sake, Willow, call them off!”

Steven gave the rifle barrel an eloquent thrust into Norville’s twitching neck. “One more word, my friend,” he breathed, “and my brothers will have your ears—among other things.”

Norville’s gaze swung to Willow, pleaded with her piteously.

“Steven,” she ventured. Lord knew she had no great love for Norville Pickering, but if Steven killed or injured him, bad matters would certainly become worse, and in no time at all.