Bride On The Run (Historical Romance) (6 page)

Anna shifted the basket, which was so heavy. Too heavy for a girl as young as Carrie, she thought. “Why do you call him Doubtful?” she asked.

“Mama named him. When Papa brought him home as a scruffy little pup, she took one look and declared that it was doubtful he’d ever amount to anything. The name stuck.”

“You must miss your mother,” Anna said.

Carrie twisted one black pigtail, her clear, dark eyes staring at the ground. “I don’t know why Papa
thinks he has to find us a new mother,” she said. “We manage just fine on our own.”

Anna set the basket down next to the clothesline and picked up a set of Joshua’s overalls. “I haven’t seen you do anything but work since I got here,” she said. “Don’t you ever have any fun, Carrie?”

The girl gazed at her for an instant before she bent down, picked up a wet dishcloth and fastened it to the line with a wooden clothespin. Everything in the wash was tinted with the rusty brown of river water—lending new meaning to Joshua’s earlier mention of “pump water.” Water from the well was evidently too precious to be used for bathing and laundry.

Carrie reached for a dark cotton work shirt so large that it could only be Malachi’s. Anna caught herself gazing at the shirt, imagining his rangy, muscular frame filling the body, the loose, soft collar, the frayed sleeves.

“Fun isn’t everything.” Carrie grasped the shirt’s hem and shook out the creases, sprinkling water on the dry ground. “Work’s more important, that’s what Papa says. It takes all of us working, even Josh, to keep this place running as it ought to.”

“But don’t you have any friends?” Anna persisted. “Don’t you ever go visiting or attend parties?”

“No parties around here. And even if there were, I wouldn’t have the proper clothes to wear. But sometimes a family passing through on the ferry will stop for the night. Sometimes, if they have a girl near my age, we’ll visit for a while, and later on maybe I’ll even get a letter. I guess that’s about as good as having friends.”

“But don’t you ever get away from this place? Not
even for a visit?” Anna’s gaze traced the girl’s finely drawn profile. Yes, Carrie would be a ravishing beauty in a few years. Then heaven help her—and her father.

“We used to go to Kanab sometimes when Mama was alive. And once we even went to visit her family in New Mexico. But now Papa doesn’t have time to take us much of anyplace. He needs to be here to run the ranch and the ferry.”

She lifted a small, brownish shirt out of the basket and began pinning it to the clothesline. The dog had stretched out on a patch of warm red sand. He lay with his nose on his paws, watching them.

Anna reached into the basket and came up with a large cotton union suit, still heavy with water. The garment was so faded and stained by river mud that there was no way to tell its original color, and so long that even when she grasped the shoulders and lifted her arms as high as she could, the legs trailed on the ground. A smile teased at her chapped lips. Wrongheaded, stubborn and irritating he might be, but by any woman’s measure, Malachi Stone was a lot of man.

Beyond the high willows, where the river ran, she could see the tall poles, rigged with cables for securing the ferry in its path across the rushing Colorado. She imagined Malachi erecting the timbers, stringing the cable—the backbreaking work of it all.

“We’re all right here, the three of us.” Carrie took the heavy union suit from Anna, doubled it smartly at the waist and hung it over the clothesline. “We manage fine, and we don’t need a new mother to help us.”

“You do manage well.” Anna squeezed the excess water out of the sleeves and legs, relieved that her own position had already been made clear. “But surely you don’t plan to spend your life in this place. What’s going to happen when you and your brother are grown?”

“Josh will go to college,” Carrie said. “Papa’s already saving the money for it. Me?” She shrugged. “Papa can’t afford to send us both. But I’ll get by. Anyway, as Mama used to say, it’s no skin off your nose.”

“True.” Anna studied the girl’s thin, work-worn hands. Her calico dress might once have been pretty, but now it was worn and mud-stained from too many washings in the river. Worse, the dress was so small that the cuffed sleeves ended halfway between Carrie’s elbow and her bony wrists. No wonder Malachi had been so desperate to find a mother for his children. What a shame he hadn’t had better luck.

Anna’s own clothes lay at the bottom of the basket, brown and soggy from their baptism in the Colorado. To be sure, the girl would have given them a good scrubbing, but they would never be presentable again.

She sighed as she shook the wet creases out of her dress. The lavender voile had been the prettiest gown she owned, and she had worn it to impress Malachi on their first meeting. If only she’d known what lay ahead…

“I tried to get your things clean,” Carrie said a bit defensively. “But they were pretty muddy to start with, and there’s only so much you can do when you’re out of soap. I tried making some soap last week from lye and drippings, the way Mama used to,
but I couldn’t find her recipe. All I did was make a mess.”

Anna draped the once lovely voile over the clothesline. The skirt was so tattered that even if the mud and the washing hadn’t ruined it, the dress would have been unwearable. Likewise the petticoat, drawers and camisole. The corset would be mud-stained forever, but she would have to salvage it because it was all she had. “It’s all right,” Anna soothed. “I think I noticed a case of soap in your father’s wagon. And since he’ll also be bringing my trunk I’ll have plenty of other clothes to wear.”

Carrie turned away and began pinning up the ragged petticoat. “Might as well have them clean anyway,” she said, then glanced back at Anna as if remembering her manners. “I’ll bet you could use some breakfast. Soon as I gather the eggs, I’ll go inside and fix you something.”

“Please don’t bother,” Anna said quickly. “You have enough work without having to wait on me. I’ll just go inside and rustle up something for myself, maybe some bread and jam.”

The corners of Carrie’s mouth twitched wryly. “We ran out of Mama’s jam this spring. But there’s bread and a little milk. Help yourself.” She tossed Anna’s drawers and corset over the line and secured them with the last of the pins. Then she gathered up the wash basket and strode off, clearly anxious to end what had become a strained conversation. The dog stood up and, with a baleful glance at Anna, followed his young mistress in the direction of the chicken coop.

Anna picked her way back to the house, avoiding
the rock chips and cactus spines that littered the dooryard. Everything in this place seemed to have sharp points and cutting edges, even the people.

The morning air shimmered with heat. Anna brushed back a lock of sweaty hair, feeling hot, dirty and plain miserable. She had no bathwater, no proper clothes, not even a brush to run through her tangled locks. Right now, she groused, if a bounty hunter were show up and offer her a warm bubble bath and a fresh gown in exchange for her freedom, she would bloody well be tempted to take him up on it!

Her discarded boots lay on the porch, dried, now, into grotesquely shriveled shapes. One of them looked as if the dog had chewed on the leather laces. Anna sighed, then gathered the boots up and whacked them against the side of the house to loosen the dried mud. She would be wise to take better care of them, she reminded herself. She had nothing else to wear on her feet.

In the kitchen she hesitated, then decided to clean herself up and put on her shoes before having breakfast. She couldn’t do much about the baggy flannel nightshirt, but at least she could wash her face and get the tangles out of her hair. Carrie was bound to have a brush or comb she could borrow.

Josh had mentioned last night that his bedroom was next to her own. Carrie’s, then, would be the third room, the one just off the kitchen, its door invitingly ajar. Hoping the girl wouldn’t mind, Anna opened the door and stepped gingerly over the threshold.

Someone, at least, had tried to make the small, neat room look pretty. Sun-faded calico curtains hung at the window and the patchwork quilt that covered the
bed was worn, but still colorful. A braided rag rug covered the bare planking between the dresser and the big pine chest that stood against the far wall.

Anna was glancing around for a hairbrush when she noticed the photograph—a small oval portrait in a silver frame whose fineness seemed out of place amid the room’s shabby furnishings.

Drawn by curiosity, she picked up the frame and studied the face in the portrait—the wide, dark eyes, the abundantly curling ebony hair and pale, perfect oval face. No question as to who it was. Elise Stone had passed her striking features on to her children. Carrie would look a good deal like her one day.

Anna knew she should put the portrait down, find the hairbrush and leave. But something held her gaze to the high cheekbones, the elegant neck, the delicately arched brows and deep, compelling eyes. Malachi had loved this woman. He had courted her, wed her and brought her here, to this desolate place. She had given him a son and daughter. Now she was gone, claimed by the onrushing river.

And no one, Anna realized, could ever truly take her place. A second wife would mother Malachi’s children, share his fortunes and, in time, even warm his bed. But no mere mortal could measure up to the memory of this haunting face. Malachi’s wife, his true wife, was the most beautiful woman Anna had ever seen.

M
alachi arrived home late that afternoon, hot and muddy and in such a black mood that even the dog, after trotting out to meet him, slunk behind the house without so much as wagging its tail.

Damn the luck! Damn the dirty, rotten luck!

At the corral he swung off Beelzebub’s back, unlooped the wire that secured the gate and waited for Josh to ride the other mule inside. “Get them some water and oats, son,” he said. “I’ll be in the house.”

Carrie had come out onto the porch, her hands coated with flour. She stared, perplexed, at the two mules in the corral. “What happened, Papa?” she asked. “Where’s the wagon?”

“Floating down the river in pieces, if it’s not buried under twenty feet of landslide.” Malachi stomped the mud off his boots. “The wagon’s gone, along with everything in it.”

“Oh, Papa!” Carrie’s hands twisted a corner of her apron. Hell of a life he’d given the girl, Malachi thought. She was pretty and smart, and she was stuck
at the end of nowhere working her fingers to the bone. Just like Elise.

“Where’s Anna?” he said. “She’ll need to know what happened to her trunk.”

“She wandered off about an hour ago. Said something about finding a place to bathe so she could be clean when she got her good clothes back.”

“The river’s too muddy for bathing.” Out of habit, Malachi lifted the lid on the pot of stew that simmered on the stove. It smelled good, but today he had no appetite. The wagon would be expensive and, unless there was one to be had in Kanab or on one of the ranches, ordering a new one could take weeks. The very prospect made him feel tired. And even that was pleasant compared to the thought of telling Anna what had happened to her trunk.

“What did she do all day, lie in bed?” he asked.

“Not really.” Carrie rolled the biscuit dough out on the floured bread board, then set about cutting biscuits with the edge of a tin cup. “She helped me hang the wash, and she cleaned up the kitchen. Later on, when I needed wild onion for the stew she went out and found some for me. She’s not too bad to have around—but maybe that’s because she doesn’t plan on staying.” Carrie shot him a wary glance. “She
isn’t
planning to stay is she?”

Malachi shook his head, then ran a hand through his dusty hair. “Did she tell you much about herself?”

“No, Papa. The little talking we did was about me.”

“And you say she went to bathe?”

Carrie’s long, nimble fingers arranged the biscuits
in a greased baking pan. “I told her the river was too muddy, but she said she’d manage. If you ask me, she’s got a stubborn streak almost as wide as yours.”

Malachi hesitated, sighed, then turned back toward the door. “Your brother hasn’t eaten since noon,” he said. “See that he’s fed when he comes in.”

Anna’s trail wasn’t hard to follow. Her little pointed boots left distinct prints that led down among the willows and emerged on the path where he had found her last night. The place brought back the memory of it with the force of a slap—her slap—which he had justly deserved. He had said things to her that no man should say to a woman. Any woman.

Why in hell’s name had she kissed him? What had possessed her to do the one thing that would lay him open like an ax blow, exposing everything he had tried so hard to hide? Malachi thrust his hands into his pockets and began to walk, the line of delicate footprints drawing him on.

Where the water seeped into the sand, forming treacherous, sucking pools, she had taken off her boots and gone barefoot. He worried for a moment, then felt the lightness of relief at the sight of her wet tracks emerging on a long sand bar.

The river boiled between its banks, still thick and brown with runoff from the storm. Anna would not have tried to bathe here. But there were springs around the next bend, trickling down the cliffs that rose above the river. If she’d made it far enough to see them, that was the way she would go.

Malachi strode now along the path made by her narrow, almost childlike feet. Why was he following her? he lashed himself. The last thing he needed in
his present state of mind was to catch a glimpse of Anna undressed. As for seeing to her safety…He cursed under his breath. Let the fool woman stumble off a cliff or get struck by a rattler. The way things stood right now, that seemed to be the only way he was going to get rid of her.

Ahead, and high to the right, he could see the ledges where crystal pure water wept down the coppery rock, leaving bluish-black streaks in its wake. Clumps of brilliant green foliage festooned the cliff-side like a hanging garden. Yes, the spot would draw Anna like a magnet. She would be somewhere nearby. If he had any sense he would sit down right here and wait for her, or, better yet, go back to the house and eat. Perversely, Malachi did neither. Anna’s footprints led him like a golden strand from a siren’s net, on a path he had no conscious wish to follow—a path to his own damnation.

The water was deliciously cold. Anna gasped as it soaked her hair and trickled in icy streamlets down her bare back. She willed herself to endure it. Cold didn’t matter. Clean did.

She had no soap, of course. That would have been asking too much. But at least the water was clear of mud. And this hollow below the overhanging rocky ledges, lush with maidenhair fern and exquisite clumps of white-and-yellow flowers, was a miniature paradise amid the harshness of the canyon. As the mud and grime flowed away beneath her bare feet, Anna’s spirits began to rise. Everything would be all right, she reminded herself. Before sundown Malachi would be back with her trunk. She could look forward
to putting on decent clothes, pinning up her hair and looking like her old self again. Maybe then she could work on persuading him to give her the fare to California.

A little tune stirred in her throat. She began to hum. Then, because it felt so good, she began to sing.

Malachi was mounting the long slope below the ledges when the sound of Anna’s voice stopped him in his tracks. He stood transfixed for the space of a long breath, listening to the velvety timbre of her rich, husky voice, the way it played with words and melody, lingering on each note and syllable. Even he, with his unschooled ears, could tell this was no amateur performance he was hearing.

Who the devil was this woman?

At a slower pace now, he moved upward through the thick clumps of tamarisk, Anna’s voice still floating in his ears. One thing was certain. If this woman was a whore, she was no ordinary whore. Nothing about her, in fact, was ordinary. But if she wasn’t a prostitute, who—or what—could she be? What would a woman with Anna’s looks and talent be doing at the bottom of the biggest hole in the country, married by proxy to a stranger?

The more Malachi thought about the answers to those questions, the less he liked them.

Her voice was a seductive purr that stirred his senses like the touch of silk on bare skin. Malachi felt the honeyed heat of desire, felt his own arousal as he imagined her standing naked among the ferns, water trickling over her ivory breasts and down her belly….

The woman had lied from beginning to end, he reminded himself harshly. She had lied to Stuart, she had lied to him, and, given the chance, she would lie to his children as well. But the time for lying was over. He would get the truth if he had to shake it out of her.

“Anna!” Malachi’s shout startled a flock of roosting quail. They exploded from a mesquite thicket, shattering the peaceful spell Anna’s song had cast over the canyon. “Blast it, what are you doing up there?”

“What do you think I’m doing?” A small thread of panic ran through her defiant answer. “Where are you? You’ve no business coming up on me like that!”

“At least I had the decency to yell,” Malachi snapped. “Get yourself dressed if you’re not. We need to talk.”

He heard the light crunch of bare feet on gravel,
then the sound of her hands sluicing water from her body. Malachi struggled to ignore the sweet, forbidden images that swam in his mind. “Shake your boots good before you put them on,” he said. “Scorpions and tarantulas like crawling into dark places.”

He heard the whack of leather against stone. “Ha! No scorpions. Not even a baby one. You were just trying to scare me, weren’t you?”

“No, just giving you a sensible warning. You’re not in Salt Lake City anymore.”

“You needn’t remind me!” The feathery pink tamarisk branches stirred and she stepped into sight, wearing nothing but her boots and the old nightshirt that Carrie had found for her. It clung to her damp curves, just closely enough to reveal that she had nothing on underneath. Her wet hair lay flat against her elegant little head, and drops of water glittered like jewels on her face and throat. For the first time he noticed the pearl studs, gleaming like miniature moons against the golden skin of her earlobes—the sort of baubles a man with taste and money would give such a woman.

She stood glaring up at him, her chin thrust out in defiance. “Tell me you brought my trunk down and I’ll be getting out of here soon,” she said. “After last night, those are the only words I want to hear from you, Malachi Stone.”

Malachi steeled himself like a man about to be shot. “Your trunk’s gone,” he said flatly. “The wagon with it. Carried away by the slide.”

“What?” Her eyes widened in disbelief. “I don’t believe you! This is just another one of your cruel jokes!”

“I didn’t realize I was in the habit of playing jokes,” he said. “Even so, I wouldn’t do it now. Your things are gone, Anna. And you won’t be leaving anytime soon. Not unless you want to ride into Kanab astride a mule, wearing nothing but that flannel nightshirt.”

He saw her expression change, saw her features collapse as if she’d just been kicked in the stomach. Her body sagged, and for a moment Malachi expected her to faint, or at least burst into tears.

But Anna did neither. Malachi saw the anger simmering in her eyes, saw it heat and boil, giving off little amber sparks of rage. It was a damned good thing she didn’t have a gun, he thought. She would blow a hole through his chest without so much as a flicker of regret.

“Just about everything I owned was in that trunk,” she said, the words as cold and dead as a January dawn. “Last night, when we had to leave the wagon, I begged you to take it along. But no, you couldn’t be bothered. You actually threatened to make me walk if I so much as—”

“Now wait just a minute, lady!” Malachi cut her off, his own temper rising. “If I’d taken the time to get your trunk off the wagon, the slide would have gotten us, too. Be grateful for small favors. At least you’re alive!”

“And with little more than a pair of muddy boots to call my own!” The fury building in her was evident in her seething eyes, her rigid neck and her small, clenched fists. Malachi remembered the hot sting of her slap on his face. He was not about to let slapping him become one of her regular habits.

“Just simmer down!” He reached out and pinioned her arms against the sides of her body, holding her like a doll between his big hands. It was a move of self-protection, with no thought of tenderness or intimacy. All the same, as he held her, desire forked through Malachi’s body with the force of a lightning bolt. That in itself was not surprising, given the thoughts he’d battled as she dressed. But the surge of tenderness that followed caught him completely off balance.

He found himself wanting to catch her in his arms and cradle her close, to stroke her with his hands and press his lips against the wet sleekness of her hair while he murmured little phrases of comfort. He wanted to take the wretched events of the past two days and force them to come out right. Against all reason, he wanted to protect her, to make her happy.

“Let me go!” Anna’s words were breathy with suppressed rage. Her eyes were amber pools of fury. Malachi fought for his very soul as he held her at arm’s length, reminding himself of the way this voluptuous little golden-haired angel had lied to him.

“Who are you, Anna?” he demanded.

“Why should it matter now?”

“It shouldn’t—didn’t, in fact. Not until I heard you singing. A voice like that wouldn’t belong to a common whore.”

“Oh? What about an uncommon whore, then?” Her sarcasm cut like a blade dipped in acid.

“Don’t, Anna.” He loosened his painful grip, but still did not let her go. “In the two days since we met, you and I have done each other enough hurt and
damage to last halfway to doomsday. Don’t you think it’s time we declared a truce?”

“What do you want from me?” She glared up at him suspiciously.

“The truth.” He let his arms drop to his side, releasing her. “Nothing more, nothing less. And you can start by telling me who you really are.”

Anna faced him, her arms tingling where his powerful hands had gripped them so tightly. A ray of late-afternoon sunlight slanted across his light-brown hair, touching the unruly locks with subtle glints of red. His face was smudged with trail dust, his gray eyes bloodshot with weariness. Inexplicably she found herself wanting to reach up and smooth the sweaty hair back from his forehead, then to brush a tentative fingertip along the curve of his wind-burned lips. He was a good man, and so tired…

But that would be foolish, she reminded herself. Malachi had every reason to detest her. If she were to reach out to him, he would be quick to let her know it.

“I’m waiting,” he said.

“Why should I waste my breath telling you things you wouldn’t believe anyway?” Anna retorted.

His jaw tightened, and for a fleeting moment she thought he was going to be angry again. But then his breath eased out in a weary sigh.

“Walk with me,” he said.

When Anna hesitated he took her arm. His touch was light, but forceful enough to convince her against arguing. Together they moved down the rocky slope, through tall clumps of pink-plumed tamarisk and silky spring willows. The sun hung low above the rim
of the canyon, casting rainbow patterns of light and shadow on the towering walls. A mourning dove fluttered from the top of a mesquite bush, its wistful call echoing across the canyon.