Dorothy Garlock (25 page)

“Hush now, my darling Mary,” he said to her, his voice little more than a whisper but still full of a deep strength. “You no longer have anything to fear. There’s nothing here that will do you harm. You’ve just been having bad dreams and are confused, nothing more.”

“Stay . . . away from me!” Mary shouted, more afraid than ever.

“You’ve been asleep for a very long while,” he pressed on, bending carefully down onto one knee right at the edge of her bed, his hands held out before him. “We’ve all been watching over you, waiting for you to come back to us, back to those of us who love you.”

“Just—just . . . I don’t—don’t know what . . .”

As she watched Abe reach out to Mary with his voice, Hallie felt a warm flow of hope rush through her. Even though she knew that Abe’s feelings toward her friend were misguided, that he was wrong to believe her to be his dead wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, Hallie hoped that he might be able to reach her, that he might be able to calm her by offering his love and affection.

“I’m here, my love,” Abe said and reached out his hand.

On hearing his words, Mary’s hand shot out and slapped Abe hard across the face. The crack of her hand against his skin rang loudly through the room.

“Mary!” Pearl shouted, the word exploding from her.

But Mary’s fragile body, still bone weak from her ordeal, gave out before the sound of Pearl’s voice had faded. She collapsed into a heap, her confused head dropping onto the bed, all of the fight having left her. Slowly, the pain that had been written across her face disappeared. Without a word, Abe rose from where he knelt and covered her unconscious body with the sheet, smoothing her dark hair from her face when he had finished.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. President,” Hallie offered him.

“I am not hurt,” he answered stoically. “I may not be the youth who roamed the wild woods of my childhood Illinois, but I am not yet so frail as to be mortally pierced by the slap of a fevered woman.”

“The poor thing thought ya was somebody else,” Hank said.

“She weren’t in her right mind,” Pearl added.

“No, she was not,” he agreed with a faint nod of his dark head. “My poor Mary is still not recovered from all that she has had to endure. All that we can do is continue with what has been done already . . . and wait.”

As she watched Abe standing beside Mary’s bed, his shoulders seemed to slump further, his chin near his chest. She couldn’t help but wonder if, when Mary’s hand had struck him, for an instant he was no longer Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States, but Abe Morgan, cattle rancher born and raised outside of Bison City, Colorado.

Could he have imagined how frightening he must have looked to the newly conscious woman he believed to be his wife? Could he have realized that she would have feared him as she feared Chester?

Hallie had no answers for those difficult questions. She turned to find Eli staring intently at her, his eyes boring holes into her as they silently asked the same questions over and over again. Without a doubt, Hallie knew that she would have to tell him the truth, the whole messy truth, sooner rather than later. The way that he was looking at her made it abundantly clear that he would accept nothing less.

Chapter Twenty-three

H
ALLIE STOOD IN
the open door to the barn and breathed deeply. Outside, the sky had turned a rich, deep bluish-purple as the sun settled into its nightly resting spot beneath the horizon. Stars spotted the cloud-bruised night sky, and a soft wind rustled the leaves on the trees. It all seemed the perfect, peaceful end to a day that had been nothing of the sort.

“It’s too bad my day wasn’t as beautiful,” Hallie muttered to herself.

Fawn’s early-morning arrival at the Morgan ranch had been the beginning of her misery. The way in which the arrogant woman had spoken, her voice both condescending and sickeningly sweet, had set Hallie’s teeth on edge. It was so staged, so fake, as if she were an actress onstage attempting to lure an audience into believing her act.
And the way she had spoken to Eli, the way that she had grabbed him by the arm . . .

It had been an even greater indignity to have to listen to Mrs. Morgan agree with the litany of Fawn’s many charges against them. In trying to care for the injured woman, she and Pearl had done all that they could to make her more comfortable: cooking the meals; doing the cleaning and washing; and, worst of all, listening to her never-ending complaints. To realize that it had all been regarded as worthless had been hard to bear.

After her brief awakening, Mary had once again slipped back into the murky depths of sleep. In those few short minutes when she was awake and back among her friends, she was gripped by a fear so real that it had made her act hysterically. When she spoke Chester’s name, Hallie gasped with surprise. The interest that Eli showed over the matter only made things worse. Mary had retreated into unconsciousness, but the damage she left behind was greater than that of the storm that injured her in the first place.

When Mary had settled back into her deep sleep, and Fawn left for the day with the unwanted promise that she would return early the next morning to care for Mrs. Morgan, Hallie hoped that she and Eli would have a chance to talk. She wanted to tell him about Chester, about their desperate flight from Whiskey Bend, and even about her feelings for him. But when she’d finally approached him after supper, he’d given her a scowl and stalked away without a word.

Now, as she looked to the sky and marveled at its beauty, she wondered if it was too late to undo the damage done, if he would ever speak to her again. Then, from the growing darkness before her she heard his voice.

“Tell me the truth.”

Eli walked toward the big barn in the murky twilight, rocks crunching beneath his boots. Even though the onrushing night held with it the promise of cooler air, a fevered heat boiled in his breast. The throbbing pain of his arm merged with his anger, a reminder of more trouble to come.

The whole day had been one messy confrontation after another—from Fawn showing up at their door to his mother’s biting comments and constant complaints and finally the awakening of Hallie’s friend. Eli felt as if the world were pressing down on him, eager to put him in the earth beside his brother and father.

Who in the hell is this Chester, anyway?

When the name had first burst from Mary’s chapped lips, he felt as if a snake was coiled around him and beginning to squeeze. In spite of Hallie’s feeble protestations, he knew that she was deathly afraid of the man. Mary’s eyes darted about the room in fear when she uttered his name. He couldn’t help but wonder if this Chester was the one responsible for what happened in the cemetery. Was he even now watching the ranch, waiting for the moment to strike them down, each and every one of them?

I feel betrayed!
After all that he and his family had done for the women, after the time he spent at Hallie’s side, and especially after the passionate kiss that they shared, he couldn’t believe that she wasn’t what she pretended to be. Didn’t she trust him enough to let him help her if she was in trouble?

“Goddamn it,” he swore.

Finally, as his anger began to get the best of him, he decided to come to the barn and give her a piece of his mind.
No matter how evasive she is, no matter how much she tries to stonewall, I will insist on an answer! I’ll make her tell me why they all left Whiskey Bend and who the hell this Chester person is!

Eli stopped in his tracks before the open door to the barn. There, in the glow of the lanterns, stood Hallie. In the encroaching darkness of early night, she hadn’t seen him, allowing him to stand and observe her. He was struck by her simple beauty, recalling how much he enjoyed the sound of her voice and gloried in the warmth that filled him every time she was near. As if his anger were the flame of a candle, it flickered, nearly went out, but clung to life, albeit not as hot as before. Still, as much as he wished the moment to stretch on forever, he knew that there were things he simply
had
to know.

“Tell me the truth,” he said.

The suddenness of Eli’s voice speaking from the darkness startled Hallie and a tremor of fear raced through her, but she refused to answer, staring intently into the night until she was sure it was he who spoke. Even then, he could see tenseness in her.

It was a long while before Hallie chose to reply and then the words finally came as little more than a whisper. “I wanted to tell you long ago,” she began, “but every time I tried, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“Then tell me now,” he urged her.

“I just . . . I just . . . ,” Hallie trailed off.

Eli crossed from the blackness of dusk into the meager light of the barn. He came to her, still tense with the irritation he’d felt earlier, his back stiff and rigid; but with every step, the anger left him until he stood before her, the only desire in his heart to take her into his arms, hold her close, and reassure her that everything would be all right. She wouldn’t return his gaze, so he took her hands in his and gently squeezed them.

“Look at me,” he said.

Hallie refused, gently shaking her auburn hair.

“Look me in the eyes, Hallie,” he said again, his voice stern.

This time, she did as he said, and he found her green eyes wet with tears that threatened to overflow. At that moment the last of his anger vanished as if it were a puff of smoke, leaving in its place nothing but a concern that pulled at his gut.

“Tell me,” he said, his voice now gentle with worry.

And so she did. She told him how she and Pearl had witnessed Chester beating Mary in the streets of Whiskey Bend; how they had hatched a plan to ferry their friend away from a life of misery; how in doing so Pearl had shot the evil man in the leg; and how they had raced quickly away from there into the unknown west; and, finally, why Mary had run into the swollen Cummings River. She even told him what had occurred at the mercantile in Bison City, her voice cracking with emotion as she recounted the man’s threats. When she had finished, she sighed with relief that the burden of her secrets had been lifted from her.

“And you expect Chester to come here?” he asked when she had finished.

“It’s just as Mary said,” Hallie answered as the tears she’d so valiantly held back finally broke free and tumbled down her cheeks. “He will do everything he can to find us and make us pay for taking Mary away from him. He’ll kill us if he gets the chance!”

“Then we just can’t let him have that chance.”

“But how?” she said, sobs racking her small body. “He’ll come for—”

Eli shushed her by placing his fingers gently against her lips. Just the touch of his skin against hers sent bursts of heat racing through him.

“Believe in me, Hallie,” he soothed her. “I’ll not let him hurt you or Pearl or Mary. I and every man on this ranch will do all we can to protect you.”

“But Chester will—” Hallie began again.

This time he hushed her by placing his lips against hers in a deep kiss.

When Eli’s lips found hers, Hallie felt as if all her problems simply ceased to be, freeing her to revel in the passion and emotion that flooded through her body. But before the warmth could completely envelop her, she pushed against Eli’s broad chest, breaking the kiss and bringing a worried look to his eyes.

“Why did you do that?” he asked quietly.

“What happened to your arm? What happened in town?” Hallie began, finally asking the questions that had been consuming her thoughts for days.
If I told him the secrets I kept hidden, he could do the same!
“You came back from the cemetery bleeding and I want to know what happened. After all we’ve been through together, after all that I’ve told you, the least that you can do is be honest with me and let me share your troubles as I have allowed you to share mine.”

Slowly, Eli nodded. And he, in turn, told his story. He told her of all the emotions that he’d felt as he’d climbed the hill on the outskirts of town, of how he’d knelt before the pair of tombstones and given voice to things that had previously been unspoken, of the first gunshot and the burning in his arm, and of how he had escaped, into the woods and then to Bison City.

“Do you think this has something to do with Chester?” Hallie asked when he finished.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I suppose he could have followed us to town but why wouldn’t he have tried to ambush me on the way? Why take the chance of being spotted in town? Besides, there’s a feeling in my gut that this has to do with Caleb’s death. Whoever followed me to the cemetery was likely the same bastard who killed my brother. He—”

This time, it was Hallie’s lips that brushed his. The sudden urge to put her arms around him, to kiss him and comfort him, to give in to the passion than she’d delayed, had become a siren call that she could no longer refuse to answer. Eli was momentarily surprised, but in only seconds his passion rose to meet hers, and he held her close as his lips tasted her sweetness.

As their kiss grew, refusing to end, Hallie knew that she had given her heart to this man, this cowboy who had saved her life. The fear of Chester and of the strange man who had accosted her in the mercantile vanished in his arms. Now, having unburdened all the heavy secrets that had weighed upon her, to give unto him all of her, she felt free to give of herself, completely and unreservedly.
He can have me . . . all of me!

“Sweet Hallie! My sweet, sweet Hallie!”

Without another word, Eli swept her up in his powerful arms, ignoring the pain of his wound, and began to carry her toward the rear of the barn. With every step he took, the passion in her heart grew; it was as if the sun had decided against setting, to rise once again and blaze from the heavens.

“I’ll keep you safe,” he repeated to her as they went.

“I know.”

He stopped before each of the lanterns that were spread about the barn and Hallie leaned down to blow them out, the darkness of night steadily encroaching with every flame extinguished. When the last lantern went out, the inky blackness was nearly complete, save for the soft glow afforded by the early moon. Still, Hallie felt no fright, no fear of what she could not see, instead finding love and solace in the glow of their passion.