Explaining Herself (38 page)

Victoria waited, terrified, for more gunfire. Sheriff Ward certainly did seem to want Ross dead, after all. Every second drew her tighter, until Ross called, "Victoria, it's safe. Just try not to look."

She could imagine Alden lying to save his life. Not Ross; never Ross. So she led Blackie into the clearing, where Alden stood alone and Ross was carefully catching hold of a spooked, riderless horse's saddle. Only after looking twice for some sign of trouble did Victoria realize that the horse wasn't riderless at all
—and why it was spooked.

She pressed a hand to her mouth, hard, while her nausea rose in proportion to her slow comprehension.

Sheriff Ward hung half off the mount to which he was still tied. His mouth was still gagged with Ross's black bandanna. His arms, still cuffed behind him, hung at an awkward, upside-down angle.

"It was self-defense," said Alden numbly while Ross cut the body loose so that it could slide to the ground. "It was."

He wasn't holding the gun they'd left with him. It lay in the grass beside him.

"Self-defense," he repeated, and she turned back to stare at Sheriff Ward. Ross, kneeling beside the body
with one hand on his neck, met Alden's eyes and shook his head. Alden had killed him.

He was still wearing the handcuffs she'd put on him. The key was still in her pocket!

A slow cry began, deep in her, and she pressed her hand harder against her mouth, making a fist to keep it all in. She didn't want to be around guns anymore. She didn't want to be around dead people. She didn't want to notice that the horse must have been spooked for several minutes, because Sheriff Ward's head
—

The cry came out of her anyway, and Ross glanced sharply up. "I said don't look!" he commanded, more sharply than he'd ever spoken to her, but she couldn't turn away.

She had to know things, even now. She had to know the grim ease with which Ross wrapped the corpse in the picnic blanket, then tied it onto the horse. She had to see the way he paused to look over their other three prisoners, in case one of them had been hurt. She had to watch him pick up Alden's gun and, instead of giving it back, unload it and slide it into a saddlebag. He'd had to learn all of that, she thought. What kind of a life had Ross lived, that he'd had to learn all of that?

She forgot she was even holding his pistol until he came to her, took it from her hands, and seated it gently back into his holster. His head was down the whole time. Only after she said nothing did he slant his gaze up at her and his green-brown eyes, through his dark lashes, seemed naked. "I'm sorry you had to see that," he apologized.

She said, "I'm not."

At least now she knew what she must try to make up for.

Laramie asked Victoria to ride her own horse, with her own sidesaddle, the
rest of the way into town. Con
sidering that their little parade now included a corpse, he figured they could use all the respectability they could get. Not that he meant to use her for that respectability. When they reached town, he sent her to the telegraph office not just to wire for a marshal from nearby Big Horn, but so that she wouldn't have to ride the gauntlet of Main Street with him, Wright, and the rustlers.

But it probably helped that she wasn't sitting straddle behind him, like before. And until they resolved what they'd been discussing, before Alden's sudden bent for murder interrupted them, he wasn't sure he should enjoy the heaven of her arms around him anyway. He wasn't sure she would want his, either.

"The . . . undertaker?" murmured Wright, uncertainly, when they reached the jail. He still seemed dazed. Killing did that to a fellow
—even a son of a bitch.

"He'll be here," Laramie assured him dourly, cutting the sheriff's incongruously wrapped, red-and-white-checked corpse down from its horse. "Help me carry him inside."

Once they dumped the thing in its own cell, Wright just stood there, staring at it. So Laramie had to herd the other rustlers in by himself. He gave pennies to excited little boys to run and fetch the local ranchers
—and Thaddeas Garrison—to the jail.

"I'm going home now," announced Wright then, suddenly turning for the door, but Laramie caught his arm and pushed him into the deputy's chair instead.

"It will look better if you stay," he warned.

"Look better." Alden Wright stared up at him, both confused and somehow insulted. "I said it was self-defense."

He was an idiot. Laramie just wasn't sure how he
felt
about the man's idiocy. Wright had clearly m
urdered
the sheriff
in
cold blood. Gagged, Ward
couldn't even have taunted him. Cuffed, Ward hadn't likely threatened him.

You could have killed him,
Wright had complained back at the box canyon
—trying to make things easy on himself, Laramie guessed.
Why didn 't you kill the son of a bitch ?

Then he'd been forced to sit there, waiting for Laramie and Victoria's return, watching the sheriff and maybe thinking through everything Ward had said about
Julie
, over and over. Maybe Ward had smiled. Maybe he'd even laughed. Either way, Alden Wright had snapped, and become a killer himself.

Assuming he wasn't already, at the least, an accomplice.

Alden Wright was rich. A rancher. A bachelor. He'd seduced Laramie's sister, led a lynch mob to them, and abandoned
Julie
during the worst days of her short life. Laramie tensed with more than ten years of slow-burning fury, to think of it. And now that they were more or less alo
ne, except for the captive rustl
ers, he finally managed to do what he'd been failing at since arriving in Sheridan.

He asked a question. "You think you loved her?"

Wright's head came up, and some of die glazed look to his eyes cleared. "I
did
love her."

"She told you where our hideout was, and you told
—"

"My father!" Wright stood, turned angrily away, ran a hand down his face. "Just my father. Do you think I haven't regretted that, every day?"

Laramie stared at him and thought,
Not the way I have.

"I was so angry that year. My father wanted to send me to college, but I was going to prove what a great rancher I made, so that I could settle down and marry Julie. He said he'd use the information to straighten
things out between your family and the Wards. He said nobody would get hurt."

God, what an idiot.
He'd also been young; Laramie admitted that to himself with extreme reluctance. But...

'You sat there." His voice shook on those words
— the drawback of allowing himself to feel things again. 'You sat there and watched them do it."

"And a twelve-year-old boy showed more grit than I did," Wright agreed, and spun to face him again. Tears glittered in his wild eyes. "Yes, I did that. I betrayed her, and I let her father and brother die, and I never confessed it to anybody until Victoria, and
her
only because ..."

He gestured with one confused hand, and Laramie found himself nodding agreement.
Because she was Victoria.

"I was a coward, and a fool, and
—and a libertine!" Wright planted both hands on the desk between them. "If you want to kill me for that, you go right ahead. I probably deserve it. But don't you dare say I didn't love her. Maybe I didn't love her right, or enough. God, she went to Howe instead of me! If she'd just come to me .. ." He shook his head. "I didn't deserve her. But I loved her."

Laramie stared at him and felt a final shifting, a final cracking, deep inside where the hatred had protected him all these years. The last of his heart's shell seemed to fall away
—and it hurt.

God, it hurt. That was the problem with stopping. Stopping was when a fellow remembered to hurt. But his family had been murdered, and he'd wasted his life ever since. Maybe it was long past time to hurt.

He glanced back toward the cell where they'd put the dead sheriff. "Did it make you feel better?"

Looking confused again, Wright shook his head.

"No," he said, voice hollow. "I thought I would, but I just feel..."

Ugly. Used. Worthless. Humiliated.

"She's still dead," explained Wright. "So it didn't really help at all."

"It never does." Laramie took a deep breath, rolled some of the kinks out of his shoulders, exhaled.
Julie
—-Julie—
was
dead, but not at her own hand. She hadn't died of a broken heart. "It doesn't look like self-defense," he offered.

Wright shook his head, a spectrum of emotions from betrayal to resignation shifting across his face. "What?"

"I wasn't there," Laramie warned. "But when I rode in, it looked more like he'd been trying to escape."

The front door of the jail creaked open, and he spun to face the intrusion, afraid someone important had overheard. Someone important
had
overheard. Victoria.

Despite that he had said nothing illegal, offered no alibi, Laramie felt guilty. She believed in right and wrong, not in helping a killer
—

But she said, closing the door behind her, "I thought that, if he was trying to escape, maybe he moved fast and scared you into
thinking
he would hurt you. Not that I was there, either."

Between them, she probably had the most clever criminal mind. When she came to Laramie's side and slid her arm around him, gazed approvingly up at him, he knew he wouldn't care if she
was
a criminal. He loved her, every curious, contradictory, troublesome inch of her
—and from the way she was looking at him, he must have somehow stumbled back into the world where she loved him, too.

Or maybe he'd never left it.

'Yes," said Wright, slowly. "I'll try t
o remember more ... carefully."

Laramie ignored him to gaze back down at the most beautiful face in all the world. The one he still wasn't sure he deserved. The one who'd helped him come closer than he'd ever expected.

I
heard,
Victoria mouthed up at him, and maybe he looked confused, because she sighed, ducked her head, then seemed to force herself to face him. "I listened outside the door. I'm sorry
—for everything. Forgive me?"

He stared down at her for another long minute. Forgive
her?

Then he laughed.

Laramie had a rusty, uncertain laugh. Victoria adored it. She adored him. She adored him even more when he sank onto a bench and pulled her into his lap with him, his arms tight around her, her skirts draping across him to his knees, and overcame his smile just long enough to kiss her.

Oh, but he had to be the best of kissers.

"Uh, excuse me," interrupted Alden from where he sat remembering. "I'm not quite sure of proper etiquette in such circumstances, and I'm loath to deny Mr. Laurence anything at this point, but as the lady's actual escort, it does seem I should register a protest. No offense."

It was Ross, his arms still tight around her, who unleashed another of his beautiful smiles and made it real. "We are engaged to be married."

His eyes searched hers, as if even now he had any doubt. She bit her lower lip and nodded encouragement. Yes, they were. Engaged. To be married.

If it was a respectable engagement, they would have plenty of time to collect proof to support all of her instincts about this man she loved. It might put her family's mind at ease, whether she needed it anymore or not.

"Oh," said Alden. "She, er, hadn't mentioned that before now. My apologies."

Ross shrugged, and Victoria draped her arms over his hard shoulders. She'd never felt him so relaxed.

"And thank you for not killing me," added Alden, his laugh only a little uneven.

But Ross looked at Victoria when he said, "I should have gotten the whole story first."

The door to the jail opened and Victoria's father walked in. As soon as he saw Vic and Ross, he stopped still, stiffened. His gray eyes began to narrow.

Ross stood so quickly, only his arms around her kept Victoria from falling onto the floor. "Boss," he greeted. "I
—"

Then he just stared, an almost amused look of helpless resignation stealing onto his dark, angled face. He'd lost his words again.

"Ross wants to speak to you," finished Victoria quickly.

Papa glared from him to Victoria
—who wriggled her feet back to the floor and tried to convey in her smile how very happy she was—then back to Ross.

Then her father turned around and walked back out.

"He'll get used to the idea," she assured Ross confidently. "It's not like you're a sheep farmer," she reminded him, sliding her hand into his, weaving their fingers together.

Ross looked doubtful. "Just a gunman and cattle rustler."

"A
reformed
gunman and rustler."