Broddock-Black 05 - Force of Nature (22 page)

❧

Hours later when the Empire Cattle Company’s buildings were no more than smoldering ash, Flynn offered his thanks to all the men who had come to help. The crews from other ranches started for home, their task complete, hoping the demise of the Empire would mean a peaceful future for them all.

The stars were out, the night wind cool where it blew in from the mountains, and only Flynn’s and Hazard’s men remained.

“I’ll bring Jo back to Helena as soon as she’s recuperated,” Flynn said, standing with Hazard near the remains of the ranch house. “Or if she wishes to stay with me, we’ll be down for a wedding.” He spoke out of gallantry, his emotions in chaos—the events that had taken place in the billiard room demoralizing. But honor required he make such an offer and he made it.

“Jo shouldn’t be moved now. I understand. If you’d like us to go back with you,” Hazard offered.

“No, I mean, it’s not necessary,” Flynn added in a milder tone. He couldn’t deal with company right now. Nor was he sure he could inflict himself on anyone else.

“Very well. I’ll leave some men to serve as messengers should you have to reach us quickly.” While Hazard recognized Flynn might wish to be alone, he wanted Jo to have advocates from her family should she want or need them.

“I don’t anticipate trouble.”

Hazard nodded. “I agree. Now if you’re sure, we’ll head back.”

Everyone was on their best behavior. Even Trey was unusually reserved, Jo’s abduction and captivity impossible to discuss without awkwardness.

Their farewells were muted and tactful.

And the two troops parted company at the Sun River ford.

J
o had been offered food and tea on Flynn’s orders the moment she reached his house and afterward a bath had been readied for her. Sobered by her food, she washed and soaked, had fresh water brought in and had washed some more as though she could scrub away the awful stench of the English. As if so simple an act could remove the horror from her mind and body and soul.

Eventually, in some small measure, it did. The security of Flynn’s home helped; the quiet solitude allowed her to reconcile the tumult in her brain into manageable areas of mindful consideration.

And perhaps the English were dead by now.

Perhaps they could never harm anyone again.

But almost as quickly as she felt relief at the thought, she questioned whether she wanted responsibility for another person’s death.

Now that she was still alive, she qualified, and in a position to be benevolent. That wasn’t always a certainty during the torturous hours at the Empire ranch.

Suddenly feeling an acute and pervasive chill, she dressed, with the help of a maid who found her some clothing that would fit well enough to allow her to go out and sit in the sun.

She spent the rest of the afternoon in an uneasy fidget of activities, restless and fitful, skittish, needing constant variation to keep her mind distracted from the tumult of her emotions.

She ate the food the cook, Mrs. Beckworth, kept bringing her. Word of her ordeal having passed through the house like wildfire, every servant was solicitous, attending to her wishes with exactitude and sympathy. When she asked for some writing materials, she was brought four different kinds of paper and ink. After she wrote notes to her mother and Blaze and Daisy assuring them of her good health, a rider was immediately dispatched with the letters. The kitchen maid who’d helped her find clothes had carried a dozen different shirts of Flynn’s to her before shyly offering one of her dresses instead.

She was shown into Flynn’s library, extended an open invitation to make use of his extensive collection and for short periods she was able to thumb through one book or another. Until awful memories overwhelmed her once again and she was paralyzed with fear and self-reproach. With effort and conscious logic she brought herself back to the present, forced herself to look at each chair and table and drapery, assuring herself of her safe refuge, assuring herself of her blamelessness.

Throughout the afternoon, she fluctuated between trepidation and moments of calm, but when darkness fell and Flynn still hadn’t returned, she found herself in a virtual state of panic over him, over her safety.

“Take a wee bit of hot tea, miss,” the cook coaxed, having put a drop of laudanum in the sweetened drink. “Just a wee sip will calm your nerves.”

When Jo finally agreed, sat down and drank some tea, she did feel better, stronger, less shaken and uncertain.

“Mr. Ito won’t be hurt none, miss. I know that for a fact. He’s got a guardian angel on his shoulder, he does. Right from when he was a little boy.”

Jo’s face lit up, the thought of Flynn as a child captivating. “You knew him then?”

“I been workin’ here for more than twenty years, Miss. I knew him when he was just a wee tyke. Although,” she added with a smile, “he weren’t never too wee, not that one. He were bigger than me by the time he were ten.”

Over the course of the next half hour, Jo sipped on her tea and Mrs. Beckworth answered all the questions put to her, relating numerous anecdotes from Flynn’s youth: how he’d learned to ride and track like an Indian, how his father had begun teaching him mastery of the sword when he was very young, how his mother had insisted on half a day of school every day regardless of Flynn’s laments, how he spoke five languages before he was eight—the Japanese of his father, his mother’s Gaelic, English of course, and Absarokee and Nez Perce because his father had men working for him from both tribes.

Midway through a story of Flynn tracking his first Grizzly bear, Jo fell asleep. Smiling with satisfaction, the cook came to her feet, covered Jo where she lay in the big easy chair made for Flynn, then tiptoed out and shut the door.

When Flynn arrived shortly after, Mrs. Beckworth shushed him and pointed to the closed door of his library. “She’s wore out, poor thing. Now don’t go waking her up just yet. She needs her rest.”

“I’ll bathe first,” he replied as though he were taking her advice, as though he wasn’t relieved not to have to face Jo right now.

Once he’d bathed and dressed, he decided to have his supper before waking her. After he’d eaten and drunk more than he should, he walked by the library, went to his study instead and dropped into a chair near the window. Brooding and tormented, he looked at the star-lit sky with an unseeing gaze and drank some more.

❧

Hours later the door opened. He looked up.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” Still drowsy, Jo stood in the doorway, gazing at him from beneath half-raised lashes, desperately wanting his comfort.

“I needed a drink.” He tried to smile. “Go to bed. I’ll be in later.”

She could feel the distance in his voice as though he’d put up a wall in those few phrases. “When later?”

He tried to temper his tone, but the gruffness was unmistakable. “I don’t know. It was a long day.”

“For everyone.”

He held her gaze for a moment, the minute anger noticeable in her softly uttered words. “Yeah ... for everyone.”

“Are you sulking?” He was even dressed in black as though in deference to his surliness. And she didn’t deserve his anger.

“No.” He took a small breath. “I’m drinking.”

“You’re obviously angry.”

“No. I’m just tired.”

Her brows rose fractionally. “Of me?”

“No,” he said again, clipped and curt.

“Somehow I don’t find your answers comforting. I was hoping you’d hold me.” She winced as the words tumbled out, embarrassed to sound so imploring.

“I don’t know if I can do that right now.”

A flicker of outrage flared in her eyes, her moment of misgiving effectively squelched. “And why would that be?”

He didn’t answer, the dead moment of silence deafening. “I don’t know.”

Her gaze narrowed. “I don’t deserve this from you.”

He scowled. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You blame me for what—being alive?”

“No, I don’t.”

“But you can’t hold me.”

He set his glass down, his gaze shuttered. “Not right now.” “You fucking bastard,” she whispered.

He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again.

“Smart choice.”

“Don’t push me,” he muttered. “I’m not in the mood.”

“What are you in the mood for? Some games like the English?” Her voice began to rise. “You’re wondering if I enjoyed it, aren’t you? Or how much I did? Maybe you’d like to see!” She reached for the buttons at the neckline of the maid’s dress. “If these marks aren’t good enough”—she thrust one of her raw wrists at him—“you can count my bruises and scratches and decide if I resisted enough, if I’m unsullied enough for your goddamned bloody ego!”

He started to rise, thought better of it, his own temper tightly curbed but unpredictable. “Stop it,” he growled.

“No, you stop it, you damnable two-faced bastard!” She was shouting now, all the pent-up emotions she’d suppressed, her own uncertainties, boiling over. “You’re not sure what to do with me, now, are you?” she cried, snatching up a book and hurling it at him. “You’re not sure you can touch me again. You’re not sure I’m pure enough, you intemperate fuck! Maybe I don’t want you to touch me!” she screamed, advancing on him like one of the Furies. “Maybe I couldn’t stand to have you touch me ever again!” On top of him now, she lunged at him, pummeling him with her fists, wanting to shatter his insufferable, unexpressed condemnation, wanting to hurt him as much as he’d hurt her.

Silently enduring her assault, he warded off her blows to his face, absorbing the rest without any visible reaction.

“Damn you, say something! Tell me about your new and convenient double standard! Tell me why you have the unmitigated gall to be resentful when / was the one forced to accept their abuse, you bastard! Still bloody mute?” she panted, breathless from the intensity of her attack. “Maybe this—will get a word—out of you!” Sweeping his scabbarded sword from a nearby table, she whirled it up over her head, and swung it downward.

He ripped it from her grasp bare inches from his head, coming to his feet in a surge of power. “Don’t,” he growled. “That was my father’s.”

They stood inches apart, breathing hard, furious, convulsed with rage.

“At least you can get up for something,” she snapped.

“Now that I’m up, I’ll bid you good night,” he said through clenched teeth, his impulse to hit something almost irresistible.

“I’ll raise you one,” Jo rapped out. “I’ll bid you good-bye.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“Are you concerned for my welfare?” Her eyes were wild, insult in every syllable.

Enough to put his life at risk to save her, he thought, grimly. “Not any more,” he bluntly said.

“If you’re ever in Florence, look me up. Perhaps I can find you a virtuous woman to sleep with.” Her smile was vicious. “You prefer that now, don’t you?” And turning in a ripple of scented hair, she walked away.

He didn’t reply or move; he didn’t even move after the door shut on her. Jealous and judging, resentful, he stood victim to an uncertainty that encompassed a collective grievance more far-reaching than a lover’s quarrel. A grievance that had to do with ownership and a level of possession he wasn’t sure he even understood. And if he ever did, he suspected the fanatical sentiment wouldn’t be commendable.

And she’d been wrong about the blame.

He didn’t blame her.

He blamed himself for not knowing how to deal with what seemed an irreclaimable loss.

He was dead tired, probably half drunk too, but weary most of the violence that had been his life for so long that he wasn’t sure his sensibilities were still human.

Was there any hope for peace?

If not, was he capable of continuing the twenty-odd years of struggle?

He didn’t know.

Today had been his Armageddon of sorts, although he hadn’t realized it at the time, Jo rescued, the campaign successful, the English gone. Where was his elation and triumph? Where was the satisfaction? Where was the sense of absolute victory? Instead he was more angry than he’d ever been and filled to choking with discontent.

The door opened, interrupting his poisoned contemplation and he looked up to see his cook, in robe and slippers, scowling at him. “She’s leaving,” Mrs Beckworth said, accusatory and tart. “In the black of night.”

“I know.” He finally moved, began walking toward the door. “I’ll find her an escort.”

But that was all he was capable of doing.

He couldn’t speak to her; he wouldn’t have known what to say.

But after rousing Hazard’s men, he watched the preparations for Jo’s departure from his darkened study, standing like a brooding shadow at the window.

And when they were gone, when Hazard’s men and his daughter were no longer even a dark speck in the moonlight, he walked to the liquor table and poured himself another drink.

Slumped in the depths of a leather chair, he contemplated the amber liquid in his glass as though some relevant answer stirred in the Irish whiskey he drank because it reminded him of his mother.

No answers were forthcoming, of course, only chaotic, discordant questions, oppressive reminders of shortcomings and misdeeds, and the ugly memory of what he’d just done to Jo Attenborough because he couldn’t help himself.