Fair Is the Rose (17 page)

She didn't quite believe him, but she buried her face in his shoulder and hid from her doubts. She didn't want him to explain. She knew he kept things from her, as she did from him. There was more to Macaulay Cain than she understood, and she thought it best to keep it that way. It was less dangerous not to know.
For a while anyway.

He broke away, his fingers brushing the stray blond hair that covered her eyes. Without warning, he took her right hand in his and his lips touched her palm, electrifying the scarred flesh of the rose. "Tell me about this, Christal," he whispered, every word sending chills down her spine.

She pulled her hand from his grasp. His kiss made her feel skittish and vulnerable.
Branded twice.

There was a hefty bounty on her. The marshals probably didn't know about it so far away in Wyoming Territory, but the bounty would hold whether she was found here or back in New York. All she could tell Cain was that she was mistakenly wanted for her parents' death. And though she could bare her soul and plead for his understanding and sympathy, there was still a large part of her that didn't trust him. He was an outlaw; the bounty on her might be too much temptation. Perhaps he'd even believe she'd be better off back at Park View Asylum than fighting it out on her own in Wyoming. He'd turn her in, never knowing he'd given her a death sentence.

"Tell me about it, Christal."

"Please," she gasped, suddenly afraid of the intimacy they'd woven.

"You never told me about your husband. I want to know about him—" She tried to pull away but he caught her up in his arms once more. He shook her as if that would expel the truth from her. "I want to know about him, Christal. Did he hurt you? Did he give you that scar?"

"My husband had nothing to do with this—this scar." She shook her hand at him, angry that he wouldn't let her go, angrier still that her lonely, terrified heart longed to trust him.

"I want to know if you loved him."

She stared up at him, shocked by this last inquiry, her mind whirling with all the reasons why he would want to know such a thing. Then suddenly she knew why. He didn't want another man between them, dead or alive. He wanted her to be his and his alone.

"Did you love him, Christal?" he
asked,
his voice rough and demanding.

"No," she choked out shamelessly.

"Tell me about the scar."

"No." She pulled away and refused to look at him. "Why won't you tell me?"

She could hear the anger beneath his words. Her past was becoming a very sore point with him. She had no other weapon but the truth.
"Because you're an outlaw.
A criminal.
How can I tell you my secrets when
I
know all of that?"

He was silent, as if trying to control his temper. "Yeah," he finally said, "you see me as an outlaw, all right. That's why you can't share your past with me. But you almost spread your legs right here on the cold dirt. Don't you care you might be sleeping with a killer, girl? No, 'cause you didn't even want me to disprove it. So what kind of a lady are you?"

She gasped. Fury burned on her cheek. He had no right to say such crude things to her. He was twisting her character, he was twisting the truth. "You kiss me,
then
reprimand me for liking it—"

He took her jaw and forced her to meet his eyes. Nothing broke the pull of their gaze, not darkness, not the sound of the wind rustling the aspens overhead.

He growled, "I don't like that you won't talk to me."

"Get used to it," she answered icily; then she
rose
 
from
the blanket, refusing to miss the warmth of his body in the frigid night air.

They walked back to camp not saying a word. The rest of the gang was already asleep by the time they crawled inside the bedroll. Exhausted and depressed, she barely felt Cain's arms around her. Everything was confused, her emotions, her desires, her future. She fell asleep, never wanting to wake to the morning, never wanting to see the moment when the outlaw next to her would be shot down like a renegade wolf.

Her escape didn't last long. She was awakened in less than an hour by a hand clamped over her mouth. She wanted to scream, but Macaulay's words soothed her. "Don't make a sound."

She complied, and he released her only to take up her hands and draw a rope around her wrists. "Why are you doing this?" she whispered, further frightened when a gang member—Kineson, she thought—rolled over in his bedroll and began to snore.

"I've got some gold hidden up in the mountains near Cirque of the Towers. I don't want you or Kineson or anyone knowing where I put my stash." Grimacing because he was forced to use his wounded arm, he fastened the rope to an iron loop that held the tongs to the fireplace.

"But why are you going now? Can't it wait until tomorrow?" She was suddenly terrified. For the very first time, he was going to leave her alone.

"I gotta go tonight."

"But—" She pulled on the rope, wanting to be free. To her dismay, the rope held fast.

He shrugged in the darkness.
"Can't have you runnin' when I'm gone."

"Are you leaving, then?"
Forever
was the unspoken word.

He leaned down to her. Their eyes met. He touched her smooth cheek. "I'll be back. Don't say a word and they'll never know I was gone."

"Macaulay," she whispered, suddenly filled with grief that she would never see him again. It was obvious he was going to take his chance and run, and he was going to abandon her there with Kineson and his men. Fear shot through her heart, but she couldn't blame him. He was an outlaw. She knew his kind well. He would always save himself first.

"I promise I'll be back," he whispered, his words urgent and strange. Then, as if to comfort her, his lips swept over hers in a quick, reassuring kiss. "Not a word now, all right?"

She nodded, turning away so that he couldn't see the tears welling in her eyes. He stood and silently walked his waiting horse into the shadows. She heard the
Ap
toss its head. And then he was gone.

The rider angled the rocks where the granite face of Cirque of the Towers turned midnight blue beneath the moon, his
Ap
managing boulder fields by tracing the narrow, almost imperceptible white buffalo paths up the mountain. He broke the treeline of the mountains, where fir gave way to tundra that finally gave way to ice, and urged the horse into a gallop. The animal took the incline at a frantic pace, its powerful hindquarters glistening with sweat, but there was no time to pause. The lamp-lit silhouette of a group of riders appeared on a perch of rock overhead, and he was hell-bent to meet them.

"What you got?" The leader, a heavyset man with an enormous gray mustache, broke ranks.

"Shit is what I got." The rider reined in his horse.

"Still mad about that hanging, aren't you, Cain?" The man chuckled.

"Oughta get me a Yankee lawyer and sue you bluebelly bastards." The lone rider grunted. "I mean, has that telegram
ever
arrived? What a goddamned thing to screw up."

"Reb, you're still sore you lost the war, admit it. And was it our fault the telegraph operator in Washington, D.C., had to go out for a pork dinner at the crucial hour?"

"That's Federals for you," Cain spat out in disgust. "Rollins, you just take me to that telegraph operator and I'll show you Confederate justice." Shaking his head, he muttered, "I gotta get outta this business . . . it's killing me."

"You do this one last job and you don't ever have to do it again if you don't want to. Overland's got a nice settlement for you and you can have any job in Washington. That comes from the President himself."

Macaulay grunted again. "Sure.
Easy for them all to be so goddamned big.
What are the odds of me surviving this one—one in a hundred?"

Rollins roared with laughter. He slapped his cow pony. "C'mon son, it can't be that bad. When Kineson gets his money from Overland tomorrow, we'll be there to round 'em all up. Then you'll have done your last and most spectacular job. Terence Scott's grateful, Cain. Overland's got a million dollars riding on this one. You'll be a hero."

"A dead hero.
Scott couldn't get me at Sharpsburg, so he'll get me here."

"What's got you so ornery? Were you followed?" Rollins glanced at his partners. Both men were sitting stony-faced on their horses, repeating rifles under their arms, scanning the darkness.
A silent darkness.

"I know better than to be followed." Cain reined in the
Ap
that jogged precariously along the edge of the cliff. "There's a woman down there, came along with the other passengers. You told me there weren't going to be any women involved." His face turned hard. "I got shot yesterday by a boy who's crazy to protect that woman's honor. My arm's nearly useless.
Will be till this is long over."

"Kineson planned on kidnapping some Overland Express passengers. We had all the rosters. We didn't think there'd be a woman traveling alone. . . ." Rollins turned grim.

"This one's trouble.
It's all I can do to control those men when she's around." As if he was thinking of his required nightly sojourn into the woods, Cain shook his head. "I've been forced to do things you wouldn't believe."

Rollins might have smiled, made light of Cain's predicament, but they were professionals with a job to do. A woman's presence was something neither had counted on. It was an added danger.

Rollins rubbed both sides of his mustache, a nervous habit. "We'll be there tomorrow, Cain. Until then, you've got to handle it."

"Yeah, great.
What a job. Shit . . ." Macaulay said under his breath.

Rollins turned his horse on its hindquarters and motioned for his partners to depart. "We'll see you at the showdown," he said almost sorrowfully.

Cain
nodded,
a sarcastic, irreverent smile on his face. "Fine, but I shoulda been an outlaw. Tell them that back in Washington when I'm dead and gone. Put on my tombstone that I said there's gotta be something better than this."

Rollins let out a gust of laughter as he inched his pony down the incline. He said, "You
lie
, Cain. You love this job. You're the best there is and even the President knows it. Who'd ever believe that the most notorious outlaw in the West, Johnny Reb himself, is one of
us.
"