Fair Is the Rose (30 page)

Her words crackled with fury. "I sell dances.
Nothing else."

"Fine.
You won't be sleeping with anyone else anyway. Faulty will keep his eye on you. By now he knows I like you."

"How could he possibly know that?"

He released a dark laugh. "What do you think he thinks we're doin' up here? Talkin'?" He tipped his head back and laughed some more.

She wanted to strike him. In a low, harsh whisper she said, "I don't know why you came here, but I promise you, you will rue the day. If I don't get out of here for months, I swear my only purpose will be to make your life miserable."

He grasped her chin and forced her to look at him. "Go ahead. Make my life miserable. But don't think I can't return the misery. I'm not a stupid man. I noticed it wasn't until I put on a marshal's badge that you decided you couldn't stand me. When I was a damned criminal, you didn't seem to care near as much. There are a lot of ways to be a whore, girl."

Before she could stop herself, she cracked her hand across his cheek. The violence horrified her. It should have brought relief, but it didn't. It was no panacea at all, not for the anger or the agony. Unbidden, tears sprang again to her eyes, perhaps because he'd found her, or perhaps because she still felt the same despair she'd felt when she'd gotten into Mr. Glassie's coach at dawn and left him behind.

He rubbed his cheek, anger glittering in his eyes. "Christal, just you tell me why you left me last August and I'll leave this shithole town right now."

"I'm not going to tell you anything," she whispered, staring at the six-pointed tin star on his chest, desperation nearly choking her.

He nodded, still rubbing his cheek. "Then I'll be here until you do."

"You'll be here till hell freezes over, then."

He looked to the window. It was snowing again; a pattern of fractured ice clung to the panes. A strange desire flickered in the depths of his chilly gaze when he looked at her.
"Well, darlin', if this ain't hell freezin' over, then I don't know what it is."

Cain departed her room without another word. Christal could barely pull herself together to return to the customers in the saloon. Though she didn't want to admit that he'd gotten to her, it took almost fifteen minutes for her to stop trembling.

Morosely, she picked up her seven gold coins and the black gown that had fallen to the floor. Her heart sank every time she pictured Macaulay. She wanted to trust him. It meant something that he had come for her. Perhaps it was only to ease the unresolved questions in his mind. Still, it meant something.

But she couldn't trust him.

She stepped to the window, clutching the black gown to her bosom, her thoughts dwelling darkly on the past. She could tell Macaulay the truth, place her very soul into his hands and beg for mercy. But she knew she'd never do that. And she knew the reasons why.

Against her will her mind played out an imaginary conversation.

"Christal, trust me, girl, and I'll help you." Cain stared at her, silently demanding she answer.

"My uncle killed them. He gave me the blame, but he killed them," she sobbed.

"I believe you. I'll find a way to absolve you. You know I will, girl. If you're tellin me the truth, I'll move heaven and earth to see you're free."

"Macaulay ..."

"Yes, darlin?
Is there something more?"

"I didn't go to jail for his crimes."

"What did they do with you, then?"

"I've been in an asylum.
An asylum for the insane."

Christal shut out the picture of Cain's reaction. She closed her eyes and hugged the weeds, but that didn't ward it off. The picture of his face haunted her. She could bear almost any reaction but not the sudden doubt she would find in his eyes.
And the revulsion that would follow.
The revulsion that he'd almost trusted someone whom society had labeled utterly untrustworthy. Someone locked away from society not just because of her wrongdoing, but because of her inability to understand her wrongdoing.
Someone who had never learned the boundaries between right and wrong.
Between truth and lies.

Her mouth formed a grim line. She could plead she had had no memory of the crime and therefore no memory to defend herself. But memory was ephemeral.
With a will of its own.
Unimportant details can be recalled with diamond sharpness, but the name and face of a man who destroyed lives could remain in a fog for years. Memory had damned her at one point in her life, freed her in another. Macaulay would always wonder: Did she escape the asylum because her memory came back . . . or had her memory never left her? Was it memory that was elusive, or just her ability to understand what she had truly done?

She laid the dress on the bed and smoothed the wrinkles in the jet-colored silk. She would never tell him. Whether or not he was the law, whether or not she loved him, she couldn't tell him. He could chase her all over the world, but he was never going to get his answers.

Because she was never going to watch him turn away.

She spent the rest of the evening gaily dancing with
whomever
had the nickel to pay for it, her only distraction the stormy brooding expression on the new sheriff's face as he stood by the bar and watched her.

By the time Faulty closed down the saloon, her feet hurt, her ribs were sore from too much manhandling, and she was exhausted. Cain went to his rooms, silent and oddly sober for all his shots of whiskey. She watched him go, as silent and sober as he. Then she went straight up to bed without even helping Ivy with the dirty glasses.

But rest eluded her. Three times during the night Christal rose from her bed and walked to the window, clutching her shawl to keep away the bitterly cold drafts.
Three times she saw Cain's silhouette in his room above the new jail, sitting by the lantern, drinking.
Taking long, pensive pulls on his whiskey glass.
Like something was driving him slowly mad.

Finally, when the night melted into dawn, she was able to relinquish some of the shock and horror at his finding her and accept her situation. Leaving Noble in the dead of winter was useless. The weather made it impossible, dangerous, even with the best of conveyance. And she had none. For now, she would have to stay. But she didn't have to talk. Until he knew the truth, he would never hear it from her.

The sun rose and sleep embraced her in long, dark shadows. But she dreamed of being the new sheriff's bride, dressed in white satin and tulle. Behind them Baldwin Didier hung from a scaffold, his stately form limp in the breeze. She married the man she loved. And never again did she wear black.

"Can't you come down on the price just a bit?"
Christal asked Jan while admiring a bolt of sky-blue wool.
It was the next day, and she had defied her fear of the new sheriff and gone to the mercantile. Now she pulled her shawl closer and licked her chapped, cold lips, all the while coveting the beautiful fabric. A gown fashioned out of the wool would be becoming. Better than that, though, it would be
warm.

Jan wrinkled his forehead and looked down at the ledger in front of him to see what he'd paid for the cloth. During the pause, Christal glanced around the store, nervous at the thought of running into the sheriff. Peterson's was crowded with cowhands out of work because of the snow and lonely old miners with nowhere else to go but the stools near the black potbelly stove. Nowhere did she see Macaulay. She gave a small prayer of thanks.

"I just don't know, Christal," Jan said, shaking his blond-gray head. His lined Scandinavian features clouded with doubt. "It cost me almost ten dollars for the whole bolt. If you want half of it for five dollars, I just can't see how—"

"If you must have six, then what if I pay you three dollars now and three in a few weeks?" She looked at him hopefully.

"Don't you mean a few months? The last time I gave one of you
girls
credit, I never did get all the money."

She ran her hand along the soft wool, a melancholy wistfulness on her face. She couldn't spend her gold pieces on luxuries. That was her savings. She would need those seven gold coins in the future to find Didier.
To run from Macaulay.
But the bolt of wool would cost too many dances.

Too many.
Always too many.

There was always an easier way. Dixiana and Ivy Rose had many nice dresses.

Slowly, she drew back her hand.
"All right.
I'll bring you the money as soon as I have it." Her words possessed a hope that she knew was a lie. There would be no warm new gown for her this winter.

"I'm sorry, Christal. I'll try to save it for you."

"Thank you." She sighed, put on her gloves, and turned around. Her gaze collided with that of the new sheriff of Noble.

"Good day to you, ma'am," he said quietly, tipping his black felt Stetson. The ice in his eyes left her breathless.

"Good day, Sheriff." She made haste to walk away but he followed. Bitterly, she wondered why she even tried. His threats last night had made it clear she was never going to depart Noble without him knowing all about her. Until she could shake his interest, he was going to be like a ghost at her side. There, even when he wasn't.

"I need you to come to the jail with me, ma'am. There's something I want you to see."

A
poster with Christabel Van Alen's face on it.
The thought ran over her like a full-steam locomotive. Forgetting herself for a moment, she stared up at him as if he'd just pulled his six-shooter.

"Darlin', you don't look too well."

She calmed herself and tried to think rationally. He wasn't going to show her the wanted poster. He didn't know anything about it.
Because if he did, he'd have ridden into town and arrested her last night.
Besides, even he admitted that the only reason he'd even taken the sheriffing job was to find out about her. He knew nothing; she meant to keep it that way.

"I really can't go with you. Faulty needs me to—"

"It's just next door." He took her by the elbow.

She looked around the general store, but there was no one who could intervene. Macaulay was the sheriff. They'd bow to his desires every time. She wasn't the only one in Noble with something to hide.