Give My Love to Rose (40 page)

“
Ten days!” Marston
exclaimed and then he winced at the pain in his parched throat.
“I’ve been here that long?” he whispered.

Snelly shuffled across the floor of her tiny
shack and began ladling soup from a pot over the stove into a small
bowl. “Yes sir. Ten long days Old Snelly has been cleaning your
wounds and pouring broth down your throat to keep you alive. I
wasn’t about to let you die. No sirree. You’ve always been too
handsome and I couldn’t have stood it if you’d stopped
breathing.”

Marston shivered. He wasn’t sure what
bothered him more. Learning that he’d been out for ten days,
knowing that her crooked fingers had been touching him all that
time or hearing that she thought him handsome.

“
What happened?” Marston
asked as he struggled to sit up. His body felt sluggish and weak. A
roar burst from his mouth when he put pressure on his right hand
and felt the lightning bolt of pain.

Snelly’s gnarled hand shot out and fell
across the back of his head. “Stop that!” she scolded. “You lay
there and I’ll feed ya.”

“
Don’t boss me. I’m a
grown damn man,” Marston grumbled, but he was too tired and sore to
put up much of a fight. His back pulsed, his hand hurt, his head
ached and whenever he moved his neck the pain was nearly
unbearable.

Snelly wagged her nearly invisible eyebrows.
“Trust me when I say that Old Snelly noticed you’re a grown
man.”

Marston gagged and glanced around the tiny
one room shack. “Open up,” Snelly snapped and Marston turned back
to her to discover a wooden spoon full of soup an inch from his
face.

Marston wanted to tell the woman to go to
hell and insist that he could feed himself but he was too weak to
fight and Snelly was a stubborn old bat. “What the hell happened to
me?” Marston asked, the events of the day of his hanging were hazy
in his mind and he couldn’t quite remember them.

Snelly pressed the spoon to his lips and
Marston allowed her to pour them in. He chewed on the chunk of meat
and carrots and was surprised by how good it tasted. Then again, he
had been a while without a decent meal so he was sure that just
about anything would have tasted gourmet.

“
You were in jail,” Duke’s
deep voice rumbled as the man entered the shack.

Marston’s eyes narrowed. Duke? Memories
flooded Marston. The hanging. The faulty knot. The stampede. Duke
cutting him down...

Forgetting all about pain and weakness,
Marston sat up quickly, overwhelmed with panic—which was a fairly
new emotion for him. “Rose!” he exclaimed. “Duke, you helped me
escape and now they’ll go after Rose and the kids!”

Marston hissed in pain when the wooden spoon
Snelly had been using to feed Marston, fell sharply across the back
of his head. “Lie down!” she hissed impatiently. “You’ve made your
back bleed again!”

“
I don’t have time to
worry about that,” Marston insisted.

Duke stepped forward. “Marston don’t worry
about Rose and the children. They’re with Jeremiah on a trip to the
Dakotas and I’d say they’re more than halfway there by now.”

Snelly gently pushed Marston back down onto
his side as he felt blood seep through his loose shirt. “Why is
Jeremiah taking my family to the Dakotas?” Marston asked just
before Snelly shoved another spoonful of soup into his mouth. The
spoon connected sharply with his teeth and a shockwave of pain went
racing through his aching head. Marston glared at him, but she only
offered a toothless grin in response.

“
Because you have a lot of
enemies, my friend, and because Jeremiah has a place up
there.”

Marston remembered the deed he’d won in the
poker game, but he was still confused. “But even Jeremiah can’t
hide them from the law, Duke. Every crooked lawman around will come
for them now that I escaped Marshall Montgomery.”

Duke shook his head and perched himself on
the rickety table. “I told you I took care of that. Marston Jacobs
is a dead man.”

“
In order to fall for that
they would have needed a body, Duke, and mine is right here in one
piece… more or less.”

“
In one piece thanks to
me. You would do well to mind what I say from now on,” Snelly
grumbled.

Marston rolled his eyes and accepted another
spoonful of stew. “I took care of the body, Marston,” Duke assured
him. “When they cleaned that mess they found a seven-foot tall tree
of a man with a rope around his neck, whip marks on his back and a
big beard on his face. I don’t think they’ll look any closer than
that—after all they believe you had a gallows collapse on top of
you and a hundred head of cattle trample you to death.”

Marston stared at Duke without blinking for
several long moments. “Who the hell did you kill?”

Duke shrugged as he pulled a coin from his
pocket and rolled it between his fingers. “I don’t know. I needed
someone to pass off as you and there he was.”

Marston wanted to feel guilty. He should
feel guilty. But all he could think was that he was alive and free
to return to his wife and children.

“
But how did you do it?”
he asked.

“
Rose told Jeremiah and I,
you were in Millerton. I rode into town the night before your
hanging and I heard you talking to that deputy about why you
couldn’t escape. At first I was just going to write you off as a
lost cause but then I thought about Rose and the baby she was
carrying and knew I couldn’t do that. So I had to think of a way to
kill you without killing you.”

Marston took a moment to let that sink in.
“I suppose I owe you one hell of a thank you then.”

Duke snorted. “You know I hate those
words.”

Marston smiled broadly. His first real smile
in weeks—then the smile disappeared. “But if you aren’t hiding Rose
and the children from the law then what enemies were you talking
about?”

Duke sighed and shoved the coin back in his
pocket. “You got sloppy when you killed Gilliam. Vincent was still
alive when someone showed up the next morning.”

Marston growled. “But I shot that bastard in
the chest!”

“
Well, you should have
shot him twice. He got to town, got patched up and was more than
happy to tell the law all about you—he left out any part of his own
wrong doings. Branded you a kidnapper and murderer and helped put
your face on a brand new poster. Jeremiah and I heard that that
crazy brother of his, Frank, was assembling a gang to hunt you
down. That’s why we rode like hell to get to your cabin and
realized you were gone.”

Marston clenched his fists. “I guess I’ll
just have to hunt the bastards down and kill them.”

“
I don’t think you will,”
Duke countered sharply.

“
I wish folks would quit
telling me what to do,” Marston snapped. “I’m a grown
man.”

Marston nearly choked on the next mouthful
of stew Snelly shoved roughly into his mouth as Duke stepped
forward and stuck his finger under his nose. “Yeah and I just
risked my neck and went to a hell of a lot of trouble so you could
go back to your wife and kids. But go ahead, go ride after a whole
blood thirsty gang and get yourself shot to death. Who cares about
Rose, Langley, Kaitlyn and that unborn babe? Certainly not you.
You’re Marston Jacobs and you don’t care about anyone but
yourself.”

Marston puffed up, fully prepared to give
the man a piece of his mind, but he felt himself deflate when he
realized Duke was right. It would be suicide to go riding after
that gang alone and Marston had too much to live for to go
committing suicide.

Duke seemed to notice the quiet calm of
acceptance in Marston’s demeanor and he nodded. “Now that you’re
thinking a little more clearly let me say that the odds of Vincent
or his brother finding you and the family up in the Dakotas are
slim to none. I happen to know that they never leave Texas,
Louisiana, and New Mexico and they’d never think to look for you
that far north.”

Marston nodded but said nothing. Duke
smiled. Marston always had hated to have anyone tell him he was
wrong.

Snelly batted her eyelids. “I won’t tell a
soul I know where you went.”

“
Maybe I’ll kill you just
to be sure,” Marston grumbled.

“
No you won’t,” Snelly
countered, waving her finger. “Who would patch you up the next time
you get yourself strung up by a rope?”

Marston ignored her and focused on Duke. “I
want to leave in the morning.”

Snelly shook her head. “Nope.”

Marston glared. “What do you mean nope? I’m
ready to see my family.”

Snelly simply shrugged, unbothered by his
grouchiness. “It will be several weeks before you’re fit to travel.
That back is in bad shape and your hand is broken.”

Marston’s gaze went up to the ceiling. “And
here I thought I was in perfect health,” he muttered.

Duke’s low chuckle rumbled throughout the
shack. “You have to do what the woman says, Marston. Stay down a
few weeks. Hell, you can’t even get out of that bed and on a horse
on your own yet. If you tried to ride hard for three weeks to reach
the Dakotas in the shape you’re in now, you’d die before you got
there.”

Marston hated Duke. He hated him because he
was right. Marston didn’t have the strength to make it out the
front door; getting to the Dakotas was out of the question.

“
How long?” Marston
snapped, turning his gaze to Snelly.

She tapped a crooked finger against her
wrinkled chin. “Three weeks,” she said, setting down his bowl and
grabbing up a stack of bandages from the table. “Three weeks should
give this back time to heal and allow you to build up some
strength.”

Marston growled. He knew he was a terrible
patient but he didn’t do sick or weak well and, dammit, he wanted
to go home to his family. He supposed though that if anyone could
handle his grouchiness it was the grizzled old lady currently
tearing his old bandages off his back with a vengeance.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Rose snuggled deeper into her blankets and
stretched her arms over her head. She was lying directly in the
middle of the vastest bed she had ever slept in. She’d chosen the
middle so there wouldn’t be so much empty space and perhaps she
wouldn’t feel the ache of loneliness so sharply in her chest—it
hadn’t worked.

Rose had been quite shocked when they’d
arrived at this massive home two days ago. It was two stories tall,
painted white with black shutters and a wraparound porch. It was
fully furnished with heavy gleaming furniture that was sturdy and
made to last—no more rickety, scratched up kitchen tables for her
family.

There were two large barns, spacious corrals
and vast fields for farming to the west of the house. The land in
all directions as far as a person could see belonged to her
family.

And they didn’t need to worry about bumping
elbows inside. The home had six bedrooms, a vast kitchen with stone
countertops and gleaming copper pots and pans, a sitting room, a
game room with a billiard and poker table, a small den complete
with sewing table and a desk behind the kitchen, two water closets
and an attic.

Jeremiah had laughed after they’d done some
exploring and said that rich men shouldn’t play poker. Rose thought
the house was nice, but it wasn’t home…. There was no Marston.

Rose rolled onto her side and stared at the
bright yellow curtains over her glass bedroom window—Rose had never
before lived in a home with glass windows. She thought about the
time that had passed since they’d lost Marston.

Langley and Kaitlyn were adjusting well
thanks to the resilience of children. When Marston was mentioned or
something reminded them of him, they would experience a few ad
moments but as a whole they were moving on with their lives rather
quickly.

Jeremiah was clearly getting tired of being
cooped up and tied down, but the man was staying true to his word
and had been with them, keeping an eye out for danger without
fail.

They were all doing okay—all of them except
Rose. She put on a brave face for Jeremiah and the children but
when she was alone, as she was right now, she could never stop the
tears from pouring from her eyes.

Marston was gone.

Rose knew he was gone. Her mind knew he
wasn’t coming back to her. But she couldn’t seem to convince her
heart. Every night she dreamed that he would come riding across the
plains and wrap her tight in strong arms. He would whisper gruffly
against her ear and tell her how much he loved her. She would find
herself lifted into his arms and cradled against his broad chest
with her head against his heart. He would carry her up to this
giant bed, lay her down and love her body until they were both far
too tired to move.

Rose sniffed and wiped desperately at her
tears. Rose imagined she could hear Marston’s heartbeat beneath her
ear—as if the pillow were his chest—and it made her smile.

“
Hey Rose?” Jeremiah’s
voice came from the other side of her closed door.

Rose pulled the blankets up higher and dried
her face with the sleeves of her gown. “Come in.”

Jeremiah opened the door and poked his head
inside. “I’m going into town. Langley wants to come with me. Is
that okay with you?”

Rose hated the annoyance the saw on his face
when he caught her in tears. She squared her shoulders and glared
back. Sometimes she hated having the man around. He was nice enough
to them all but he was cold and not the least bit comforting and
what she hated most about having him around was his eyes—his golden
eyes that reminded her so much of his brothers.

It was hard enough to live without Marston
knowing that she had a piece of him growing inside of her—to have
to look into his eyes shining at her from the face of another man
was torture.