Bride On The Run (Historical Romance) (13 page)

A vision flashed through his mind—Anna, looming over the supine Eddie, hellfire blazing in her eyes as her shaking hands brandished a limb that was nearly as big as she was. Anna, the destroying angel, the passionate protector of innocence.

The innocence she herself had so brutally lost.

His fingers toyed with the satiny contours of the
rifle stock as he remembered the feel of her in his arms, remembered each lush, ripe curve of her sensuous woman’s body and the warm, eager moistness of her mouth. Even now the memory raised the familiar straining tightness against the crotch of his trousers. Even now he was almost crazy with wanting her.

But no more, Malachi vowed, steeling his resolve. He would accept Anna’s help with the children. And he would keep his side of the bargain when the time came for her to leave. But leave she would. Her presence in this canyon was a danger to him and to his children. He could not allow her to stay.

Anna was dreaming of blood—Harry’s blood…
She was covered in it, her hands, her clothes, her streaming, matted hair. Her bare feet left carmine blotches on the floor as she stumbled forward, groping her way through a serpentine maze of corridors that writhed and moved, separating and joining, changing shape even as she passed
.

Behind her, she could hear them coming, the sinister footfalls echoing off the walls, each step resonating until they seemed to be all around her, filling her ears and head, altering the very rhythm of her heart
.

Frantic to escape, she dodged like a frightened animal, one way, then another. Down there—the passage was long and straight. She ran headlong into the tunnel, her feet still leaving blotches of blood. But what she thought was a straight passage only doubled back upon itself, taking her deeper into the labyrinth
.

Wild with terror, she plunged off in a new direction
—
only to run headlong into a large, solid lump of flesh. As she stumbled backward, Sam Johnson’s greasy face leered out of the darkness. He was pointing at her, his face fixed in a drooling grin
.

His laughter echoed behind her as, wheeling, she raced down a side passage. She was floating now, her limbs pumping with laborious grace, as if she were moving through layers of water. Up ahead—was that a light? Anna struggled toward it, her heart all but bursting with effort. Rounding a bend, she stopped cold. The two bounty hunters stood directly in her path, their faces as cold as granite slabs. The shorter man held the Wanted poster, the taller man a hangman’s noose, which he thrust, sneering, into her face
.

Again she found herself running—running with leaden limbs that moved only with the most agonizing effort. Her pulse was pounding like a steam engine, threatening to burst her very heart. Her breath came in wrenching gasps. She had to get away, had to find a moment of rest or she would die here in this choking, evil blackness
.

Suddenly, at the far end of a passage she saw Malachi. He stood like an angel in a slanting ray of light, smiling and holding out his arms to her. With a little cry Anna ran toward him, floating through the murky air in a daze of happiness. Malachi, her refuge, her defender, her love. He was here, wanting her to come to him, to be his—only his—forever
.

He caught her in his arms, pulling her close, his lips devouring her face, her hair, her eager, hungry mouth. She felt his love washing over her like fresh, cool water. The awful stain of Harry’s blood was gone. She was clean. She was safe. She was free
.

His kisses awakened wellsprings of joy inside her. She closed her eyes welcoming the freshets of need that surged and quivered in her body. It seemed so natural to love this man, her husband
.

“
So I have you at last
.”

The blade-thin voice in her ear was not Malachi’s. Anna’s eyes shot open. A scream strangled in her throat as she found herself staring into the dark, glittering eyes of Louis Caswell
….

She awoke with a jerking spasm of terror. For a long moment she lay still, her heart galloping. The night was silent around her, broken only by the chirp of a cricket and the distant murmur of the river. The cloud-veiled moon glimmered softly through the window, illuminating a dim square of light on the opposite wall.

Turning onto her back, she stared into the darkness, willing her knotted muscles to relax, her breathing to slow. She was safe for the moment. But that moment would not last. The dream had brought that home with a certainty as final as death itself.

How real it had seemed for a moment—Malachi’s arms around her, comforting her, protecting her from the terrors that filled her nights. But when the terror became real, she knew, he would not be there to protect her. She would face the danger as she had faced everything else in her life—alone.

But, sweet heaven, how she had wanted him—wanted him from that first moment when she had stepped out of the ranch house and seen him, dusty and sunburned, his silver eyes squinting at her through the glare of sunlight. He was so big and silent
and awkward, so tender beneath the layers of strength and stubbornness. Even then she had wondered how his arms would feel, his kisses, the hard, masculine thrust of his body….

Oh, blast! This wasn’t helping at all!

Disgusted with herself, Anna sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. What she needed right now was a good, cold dose of reality. And her best chance of finding it lay in the words of the one woman who had truly known Malachi Stone—the one woman he had loved.

Dropping her bare feet to the rug, she fumbled for a candle and a match on the nightstand. The flame was small and furtive, and she held it low so that Malachi, if he happened to be prowling the yard, would not notice the light through the window. The flickering flame illuminated the pieces of checked gingham that were piled on the dresser. The previous afternoon she and Carrie had chosen the cloth from among the bolts in the chest, and Anna had measured the excited girl for a new dress and cut the fabric. Since she had no desire to go back to sleep, now would be a good time to begin stitching, Anna reminded herself. But the lure of Elise’s journal was too strong. The dress would have to wait.

The slim leather volume lay under the mattress where she had left it earlier. What was she looking for? Anna asked herself as she worked it out of its hiding place and thumbed through the mildew-specked pages. Reading the journal would only make her restless and melancholy. So why torture herself? Was it because the journal was the key to Malachi? A way to know him as Elise had known him?

Dismissing the question, she opened the book and, as if selecting tonight’s arrow to her own heart, knelt on the rug and began to read.

The early pages were familiar in their tone and content. The drudgery, the loneliness, the fact that Malachi was always working and steadfastly refusing to take her back to Santa Fe.

Stifling a yawn, Anna turned the page to a new entry, and suddenly the words, hastily scrawled in a surge of excitement, seemed to leap of the page at her.

A
nna huddled in the light of the flickering candle, staring wide-eyed at the shakily scrawled lines, so unlike Elise’s usual precise, elegant script. Malachi’s perfect wife had been unfaithful to her marriage vows. She had given herself to a near stranger, a man she had known only a few hours. How could she have done such a thing—to Malachi, to her beautiful children?

But Anna already knew the answer to that question. She had read the frustration written into every line of Elise’s journal. The loneliness, the privation, the unfilled needs. Yes, for all her shocked outrage, Anna understood, and she knew better than to cast the first stone. She was in no position to judge what Elise had done.

But what had happened after that fateful turning point? And what connection, if any, did Elise’s affair have with her death?

Stop
! Anna’s instincts warned, but she had come too far along this path to turn back. She had walked
in Elise’s footsteps. Now she had no choice except to follow them to the very end.

Heart pounding, she turned the page to the journal’s next—and final—entry.

Here the writing wavered and trailed off into little spatters of ink, as if the hand holding the pen had fallen into spasms of trembling. The rest of the page was blank, as was the rest of the journal.

Anna sat with her feet growing numb beneath her, the candlelit page blurring in her vision. Questions
seethed in the dark recesses of her mind—questions whose answers she had no wish to learn.

She remembered Carrie’s heartrending story of her mother’s death. Had Elise set out to run away with her lover? Was that how she’d drowned? Was that why her clothes were missing—because, unable to carry them as far as the camp, she’d packed them in the dory and set out by river?

And Malachi—what if he’d known about the tryst? What if he’d arrived unexpectedly and caught the lovers together? He had gone to prison, Anna recalled, for beating a man. Was he capable of murder, as well? Could he have killed them both?

No
! her heart screamed.
No, it wasn’t possible
!

Anna glared down at the open page with fury and loathing. Why had she ever opened Elise’s journal? Why had she allowed it to draw her in, to raise ugly questions that she had no business asking?

And why hadn’t Elise taken the journal with her? Had she simply forgotten it? Or did she have some perverse need to leave behind a record of why she had vanished?

Anna’s hands went cold as she thought of Josh and Carrie. No—Elise’s children could never set their innocent eyes on this book. Its contents would destroy everything they believed about their mother. It would haunt them for the rest of their lives. She could not allow such a thing to happen.

Staggering to her feet, she forced her numb legs to move, to carry her into the dark kitchen where embers still glowed in the belly of the big iron stove. Her hands shook as she lifted one of the iron lids, ripped a page from the back of the journal and dropped it
onto the coals. The damp, mildewed paper smoldered for a perilous instant; then the flame died, leaving the page intact save for its blackened edge.

With a muttered curse, she seized the poker and thrust the limp paper into the bed of orange coals. It burned, but with excruciating slowness, sending out a thick spiral of whitish smoke. Hastily now, Anna ripped out a handful of pages and stuffed them into the black maw of the stove—too many pages, she swiftly realized. The musty paper was smothering the feeble blaze. Frantically she stabbed at the smoky mess with the point of the poker. Choking, white smoke had begun to pour out of the stove. It stung her eyes and throat as she struggled to separate the papers.

“What are you doing, Anna?” Malachi’s raw whisper exploded out of the silence behind her.

Anna stiffened as if she had felt the point of a blade between her shoulders. Her thoughts whirled like the crown of a runaway dust devil. How much did he know about his wife’s infidelity? Nothing? Everything? Enough to murder her?

“Anna?” His voice had dropped to a growl. Goose bumps rose along her arms as she slipped the remains of the journal into the folds of the nightshirt, flattening it against her side. “I asked you what you were doing,” he said.

“Nothing.” Her voice shook, betraying her frayed nerves. “I—was cold. That’s all. Yes—I was just stoking the fire.”

“With
this
?” He peeled a soggy scrap of paper from the lip of the hole. “I’d have an easier time believing it if you told me you were sending smoke
signals! What the devil is going on? And what’s that you’re hiding?”

His hand flashed out with the speed of a striking rattler, seizing Anna’s wrist and whipping her around to face him.

“Let me go, or I’ll scream!” she whispered, meeting the cold, gray moons of his eyes. “I’ll wake the children—”

“Go ahead.” He called her bluff, then forced the remains of the journal from her reluctant fingers. She stumbled back against the stove as he released her. Fortunately, at this late hour, the surface wasn’t hot enough to burn her.

But she forgot about burning when she righted herself and saw his face in the hellish glow of the exposed coals. He was staring down at the tattered remnants of his wife’s journal, his faced blanched with the shock of recognition.

“This is Elise’s handwriting,” he rasped. “Where did you get this, and what the devil were you trying to accomplish by burning it?”

Anna pushed herself away from the stove and squared her shoulders, steeling herself against the withering power of his eyes. She thought of the children, asleep behind the closed doors of their rooms, and she spoke now for their sake.

“What am I trying to accomplish? I’m getting rid of something that should never be allowed to see the light of day. Something with the power to destroy two precious young lives—and you, Malachi Stone, would be a fool to stop me!”

She saw the anger die in him like a blaze doused
with cold water. He slumped in the darkness, his face a rugged slab of pain.

“It was a diary? Hers?”

Anna nodded, hoping he would not demand to know what she’d read. She would not lie to Malachi. The time for lying was over. “I found it beneath a floorboard when I was looking for my earring,” she said. “I should have left it alone—”

“But you didn’t. You read it.”

“Yes, and made up my mind to burn it.” Did he know what the journal contained? Was that the reason for the anguish that furrowed his rough-chiseled face? “I was afraid the children might find it,” she said. “There were things inside they…shouldn’t see.”

“Things?” His free hand caught her upper arm, the fingers tightening painfully. “What things, Anna? What did Elise tell you?”

She glared up at him, thinking she would give anything if he would just back off and spare her—spare himself. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t make me tell you. You’ll only wish I hadn’t.”

The papers in the stove had dried out enough to catch fire. The damning pages burst into flame, the orange glow dancing through the grate, casting twisted shadows on the whitewashed wall. Malachi’s shadow loomed above Anna’s like a beast of prey about to strike. For the space of a heartbeat she was afraid. Then, once more, his shoulders sagged in defeat. His grip slackened on her arm, then fell away, leaving only a tingle where his fingers had so nearly bruised her flesh.

Anna’s eyes widened as he turned toward the stove and dropped the last crumpled remnant of Elise’s
journal into the flames. The pungent odor of burning leather drifted upward as the cover began to smolder.

“Come on.” He slid a large, rough hand behind her elbow and steered her none too gently toward the front door. The cool night breeze struck Anna’s face as he swept her out onto the porch, leaving the door open to air out the smoky room. “You seem to know her side of the story,” he said, sinking onto the step and pulling her down beside him. “Before you pass judgment on either of us, you might as well hear mine.”

Anna huddled in the darkness, not touching him, but close enough to feel the tension that emanated from every nerve in his powerful male body. The night was alive with moon shadows, punctuated by small animal sounds and the rushing murmur of the Colorado. The dog sidled up to Malachi and thrust its muzzle beneath his hand. Absently, Malachi scratched the massive head. His eyes gazed outward toward the river. What was he remembering? Anna wondered. Clearly he knew about his wife’s affair. But how had he found out—and what had he done about it?

Aching with dread, she waited as he cleared his throat and shifted his weight on the step. When he spoke it was more to the night, more to the sky and the river than to her.

“It took a long time for me to realize that Elise wasn’t quite well in her mind,” he said. “Oh, she was rational enough when it came to everyday things, like the house and the children, but sometimes—” he exhaled painfully as if groping for words “—there was this rigidity of will that defied all common sense. She’d get a bone in her teeth about something, and
when that happened she wouldn’t let loose of it until she had her way, no matter what the cost.”

No matter what the cost
. Elise’s own words echoed in Anna’s head as she listened. There were two sides to this story, she reminded herself. She could no more afford to give full credence to Malachi’s version than to his wife’s.

“I know Elise wanted you to go back to Santa Fe,” she said. “And I know the kind of tactics she used to try to persuade you.”

He glanced at her, as if he were startled that she’d spoken. “Then you also know those tactics didn’t work,” he said curtly. “I couldn’t leave. I’d invested everything I had in this place, in the hope that it would give us a decent life. There was nothing in Santa Fe, no way for me to support my family. But here I had something of my own. A source of pride…and hope.”

“Yes, I know.” Anna reached over and laid a sympathetic hand on his knee. His muscles tightened beneath her palm, warning her that he was in no condition to be touched. Regretting the impulse, she pulled her hand away and tucked it between her knees.

“We were at an impasse,” he said. “I’d tried to make her happy, but there were needs I couldn’t satisfy—the need for friends, for society, for comforts that were impossible here. I should have known it would only be a matter of time until she tried to leave me.”

He fell silent for a moment, brooding on his own words. Anna’s eyes traced the craggy lines of his profile, cast into stark relief by the moonlight. Yes, it
was beginning to make sense—his disappointment in her, his need for a plain, hardworking woman with no illusions about romance. A woman who would be content with her lot in this lonely place. A woman who would not try to leave him for another man.

“I was late getting home the day it happened,” he said. “I’d told Elise and the children that I was going to Kanab to buy lumber, but the truth was I’d gone for the piano. I was bringing it back as a surprise, but it was the very devil to haul over that road. Kept shifting on the turns, and the weight of it damn near broke the wagon bed.” His voice trailed off as if he’d just realized he was rambling, going on about the piano to avoid the horror of what had happened next.

“I rolled in through the gate to find the children frantic and crying. It was nearly dusk, and their mother had been missing all day. I asked them if anyone else had been here, and they told me about the photographer. When I checked the wardrobe and saw that her clothes were missing, it wasn’t hard to guess the rest.”

“Did the children know she’d taken her things?” Anna asked, aching for them.

“I don’t think so. They hadn’t thought to look, and I kept it from them as best I could.” His hand raked his sweat-dampened hair, making it stand in peaks between his fingers. “Lord, I was just grateful she hadn’t taken them with her!”

“So why did you go looking for her?”

“For the children’s sake mostly. I could hardly tell them their own mother had picked up and left.” He gazed toward the corral where the mules snorted and stirred, dreaming, perhaps, in the darkness.

“One of the two dories was missing, and the children had traced her tracks to the landing. She would have needed a boat to carry all the things she’d taken with her. The fact that the current was high and dangerous, and that she’d never learned to handle a boat well made drowning even more plausible. I figured, if nothing else, I could search for a while, make certain she’d really gone, and then go back and tell Josh and Carrie she’d drowned. It would at least give them some sense of closure.

“Carrie said you brought her body back, and that you wouldn’t allow them to look at her.” Anna knew she should leave well enough alone, but the question would torment her forever if she did not ask. Was the body Malachi had found really Elise’s? Had she drowned, or had he killed her—and perhaps her lover—in a jealous rage?

“I did bring Elise’s body back,” he said. “And no, I didn’t let my children see her. The memory would have haunted them to the end of their days.”

“How did you find her?” Anna whispered, wanting the truth but dreading what she might hear.

His hand had stilled on the dog’s head. Doubtful whined and nosed his palm. Malachi, for once, ignored the beast. A shudder passed through his body as he spoke.