His Wicked Dream (Velvet Lies, Book 2) (5 page)

Claudia stepped briskly to intercept the woman. "Bonnie Harragan, a boy's got better things to do than sit on a wagon, waiting for his mother to make up her mind over some silly new gewgaw."

"But—"

"Boys get dirty. That's the difference between boys and dolls. If you don't like mud on Jamie's fancy pants, buy him dungarees."

Eden bit her lip, fully expecting the younger woman to knock Aunt Claudia on her impudent rear end. Instead, Bonnie halted, drawing a ragged breath. Something canny and disquietingly artificial flickered in her eyes. She bowed her head.

"Why, you're right, of course," she demurred. "It's just that Jamie can be so willful at times, and he really has to start learning his social graces if he's ever to follow in the footsteps of our beloved Mr. Lincoln and become the next Kentucky-born president."

Claudia muttered something about the apple not falling far from the tree.

"Hello, Mr. McGee," Bonnie called sweetly to Angus.

"Miss Bonnie," he grunted, tipping his dusty slouch hat.

Her cool gray eyes next turned to Eden. Eden felt her face heat as Bonnie's appraising stare swept from her fraying straw hat, past her modest, yellow muslin, to her scuffed and muddy traveling boots. Bonnie's lip curled faintly.

"Aunt Claudia," she cooed, dismissing Eden with a shoulder, "whatever are you doing out here in all this lightning? Getting spooked by thunder can't be good for your heart." She linked her arm through Claudia's. "Jamie, we can't allow Auntie to strain her heart, now can we?"

"I ain't plannin' on kickin' the bucket today," Claudia snapped, "so you can stop panderin' fer the fortune yer uncle left me. Eden, this here's Bonnie."

Bonnie turned fire-engine red.

"Pleased to know you," Eden said mildly.

Bonnie gave her a stiff nod, recovering her dignity and her chilly demeanor. "So you're Eden, Aunt Claudia's great-niece. Really, my dear, you've been the talk
of the town. No one even knew you existed until you
wired Aunt Claudia out of the blue. Strange how you should show up
now,
of all times."

Claudia snorted. Eden darted her aunt an uneasy glance. What had Bonnie meant by that last dig? Was Claudia's heart condition worse than she pretended?

Meanwhile, thunder rumbled, making the ground tremble. Eden hugged her fluttering hat tighter. The elm's canopy was lashing back and forth so crazily that leaves were starting to rip free. Anastasia, bless her mutinous soul, clung as tenaciously to her limb as a flea does to a dog.

"Jamie, come along," Bonnie ordered, holding out her hand.

The boy glanced anxiously over his shoulder, and Bonnie's eyes narrowed.

"What's that you're hiding behind your back?"

"Nothing," Jamie lied.

Clearly suspicious, Bonnie started forward when another clap of thunder made them all jump. Jamie dropped his toad. Bonnie spied the tumbling creature and emitted a strangled gasp.

"Warts!" Alarmed, she grabbed Jamie's wrists and turned over his hands. "Jamie Harragan, you are going to have—"

Her words broke off in midsentence, and she made a tiny mew. Her gaze was no longer fastened on Jamie. Instead, it was riveted behind the boy's head, on the yard beside the depot. A tall man in a well-tailored suitcoat was leading a black gelding out of the farrier's shop.

The blacksmith himself trailed in the gentleman's wake, but Bonnie hardly seemed to notice the stout and soiled smith. Instead, she stared at the gentleman, whose lean waist and narrow hips were accentuated by the dark fabric of his impeccable suit. When the gentleman stooped, running his hands over his horse's rear legs, Bonnie's eyes slitted, and her features took on a predatory expression, one much like Stazzie wore when she was anticipating the epicurean delights of a mouse.

Suddenly, Jamie was free. He collided with Eden, chirped an apology, then sprinted after his toad, which had made a beeline for the rhododendron bushes near Stazzie's tree.

Claudia chuckled, a low, throaty sound that hinted as much at mischief as amusement. "That there's Michael," she said, giving Eden a wink.

Her curiosity piqued, Eden glanced back toward the farrier's yard. Michael had stripped off his coat and now stood rolling up his sleeves. Eden had a moment to notice that the cut and color of the outer garment had been deceiving: the stark contrast of his white shirt against the silky black of his vest proved he was much broader across his chest and shoulders than she'd first imagined. Then he turned his back. When he squatted, exposing taut buttocks to examine his gelding's hocks, Bonnie breathed a dreamy little sigh.

The sound Eden made was more exasperated.

She supposed the man was attractive enough, with his form-fitting breeches and Olympian shoulders, but really. Her cat was about to be electrocuted!

"Aunt Claudia?"

No answer.

"Aunt Claudia,"
she insisted again, raising her voice above the rattle of an oncoming wagon. "Do you know where I can get a saucer of milk? I want to try to lure Stazzie down."

Claudia didn't answer. Apparently she was too busy oogling at Michael.

Before Eden could repeat her question, lightning spat, arching earthward in an eerie blue display. It struck the grounding rod on the roof of Claudia's general store. A premonition scuttled down Eden's spine. She watched the horse spook in its harness. The wagon veered off course.

Suddenly Jamie dashed out from the bushes in pursuit of his toad.

Dear God.

It all happened so quickly. The driver cursed; the horse reared; Bonnie screamed a warning. Flailing hooves cleaved the air, and Jamie, his eyes almost as wide as his mouth, staggered backward. But it was too late. The wagon overturned; flour spewed, and apples bounced around the cowering child beneath the wheels.

Eden was running before Jamie loosed his first howl. She didn't stop to consider how conspicuous she was being; she didn't consider her own danger. Her heart was in command, and she threw her weight on the leads. Just as she had dozens of times, when Valentine had spooked in his own harness, she dragged the horse back to earth before it could pull the vehicle over Jamie's legs.

The crisis was over as soon as it had begun. The cursing, hillKit driver gained control, the horse wheezed into stillness, and Eden ducked under the reins. Miraculously, a wooden crate had kept the wagon from crushing Jamie's head.

"Jamie, honey," she panted, wading past splintered barrels, dripping egg yolks, and seeping pickle juice. "Jamie, are you hurt?"

"Charlie!" he wailed, scrambling beneath his would-be tomb. She heard a frantic scratching as he dug through the wreckage.

"Move aside, young woman," a gruff voice commanded, "I'm a doctor."

Eden gasped as two strong hands grabbed her beneath the arms and deposited her in a heap beside a box of nightcrawlers. Michael didn't seem to notice her exposed unmentionables. Like a man possessed, he braced his shoulder against the wagon. Hands as wide as her face grasped the bed, and he grunted, hiking the wood an incredible foot in the air.

"Jamie," he panted, "can you crawl free?"

"No! I won't leave Charlie..."

At this point, a crowd was gathering. Angus rushed to Michael's aid. He heaved his bulk under the wagon's other end. The hillKit driver, working frantically, unbuckled his horse from its twisted harness, all the while barking threats at the spectators not to steal his grub.

Jamie, meanwhile, sobbed brokenly beside a bloody patch of bone.

"Oh, Jamie," Eden murmured, "Charlie's in heaven now. You have to let him go."

With the help of a few more spectators, Michael and Angus managed to right the wagon. Eden, knowing firsthand the ravages of grief, didn't think twice about crawling beneath the wagonbed to comfort Jamie. To her surprise, neither did Blue Thunder's well-tailored doctor. His neck nearly disappeared into his shoulders as he squeezed his mountain-sized frame between the wheels.

"It's all right, son." Michael didn't seem to notice or care that his linen sleeve had been shredded on a nail. "Are you hurt?"

The boy shook his head. "Charlie," he whimpered again.

Michael frowned, glancing toward the scarlet smear that had once been Jamie's pet.

"His toad," Eden explained quietly.

Midnight blue eyes delved into hers. Intense and strangely haunted, they struck a chord so deep within her that she was nearly bowled over by the intimacy. She'd seen those eyes before. Somewhere along the road, in the endless parade of seekers who'd begged miracles from Talking Raven's herbs, she'd met this Michael Jones. Her brow furrowed as she tried to remember.

"Come here, son." A curious blend of mountain growl and southern drawl, Michael's voice mimicked the storm's lowest rumble of thunder. It wasn't the sort of thing that inspired comfort in a patient, and yet Jamie, consumed with misery, crawled into Michael's arms. Eden's throat constricted as she watched the man embrace the child.

"It's not fair, I know," Michael murmured, "but sometimes we lose the ones we love."

His hands, surprisingly gentle for their size, probed Jamie's limbs and picked splinters out of tousled curls. When the boy buried his face in that paternal shoulder, Eden's own grief welled uncomfortably close to the surface.

"Dad blast it," snapped a voice beyond their haven. "I said make way. Give the boy some air, fer cryin' out loud."

A gnomelike face bobbed behind an army of elbows. Eden blinked rapidly, becoming aware of a legion of legs and skirts circling the wagon. They parted reluctantly as Claudia used her coonskin cap to beat a path to the wagon.

She ducked her head into view, wisps of her gun metal-gray hair sticking straight out with static. "Jamie? You okay, boy?"

"I'll need to examine him more closely," Michael said. "He's too upset to talk."

Claudia harrumphed. "Seems to me he's got just cause." She spun around, planting a gnarled fist on her hips. "Berthold Gunther," she hollered at the grousing hillKit, "will you shut up about your dang canned peaches already? I got a whole store full; ain't nobody gonna steal your paltry fifty cents' worth. Show a little blamed compassion for the boy. You could've killed him."

"Ain't my fault the brat ran out under my Barney's nose," Gunther flung back. He was a grizzled, unkempt, stork of a man with little left in the way of hair or teeth. "And I paid you a sight more'n fifty cents fer those peaches, Claudia Ann Collier. You ain't running no charity in that store of your'n, and neither am I!"

The crowd's rumble of disapproval was all but drowned out by Claudia's expletives. As she waded back into the fray, yelling at the bystanders to be about their business, Eden chanced a glance at Michael, who rested his chin on Jamie's curls. He rocked the boy, crooning soft assurances, but Eden caught those inky-blue eyes sweeping down her traveling outfit.

Suddenly she wished she were a bit less egg-splattered and a great deal more fashionable. Michael didn't dismiss her with the disdain that Bonnie had, though. Indeed, as his gaze lingered on the unruly red tendrils the wind had liberated from her chignon, her insides heated, as if a match had been struck at her core. She was just deciding whether she liked the sensation, when something dusky, like remorse, clouded his features. Ducking his head, he focused on Jamie. She felt unaccountably deflated.

Fortunately, Claudia returned to distract them. "Either of you two got smelling salts? Much as I hate the idea of the earache it'll cause, I reckon someone's gotta bring Bonnie out of her swoon."

"Oh. Um... yes," Eden stammered, still disconcerted by her disappointment. Did Michael remember her, too? If he'd been part of the crowd during one of Papa's medicine shows, chances were he
would
recall her more clearly than she recalled him.
Of all the rotten luck.
She'd never set foot in Blue Thunder Valley in all her twenty-five years. Where had Michael seen her? And in what context?

Somehow she managed to regain the use of her wits and her cramped legs. Stumbling back through the wreckage, she grabbed a satchel from her luggage and fell on her knees beside Bonnie. Thanking God when she found a steady pulse and no head injuries, Eden screwed open the bottle of salts, only to have steely fingers snatch it out of her hand.

Michael grimaced at the odor.

"Spirits of Hartshorn," she assured him hastily. "Mixed with lavender. I didn't find any bruises, but she could have a concussion—"

"Move aside. Please."

Eden winced. The platitude had done little to soften the iron in his tone. Much like her father, Michael considered himself the medical authority. Swallowing the little pride her succession of failures had left her, she pulled her skirts out of his way. She had to remind herself she'd given up the medicine-show life and moved to Blue Thunder to put her past behind her.

She noticed Jamie, standing fretfully in the circle of Aunt Claudia's arms, her coonskin askew on his head.

"Is Mama dead?" he whispered, a tear rolling to his chin.

"No, honey," Eden said quickly. "Your mama fainted, that's all. She was frightened when she saw you fall under the wagon. Look."

Bonnie was already groaning.

"Your mama's going to be just fine."