Into the Light (11 page)

T
REY WENT AFTER
her this time. Not quickly enough to catch her, of course. He might even have been unable to pick her out of the crowd inside the hall if she hadn’t darted and dodged the way she did. Slim, hair so dark it looked black in this light, average height, agile as a doe.

Unwilling to push through the crowd, Trey moved along the wall beside the door, keeping her in sight. If she never turned, and he never saw her face, he’d have to find her later by her dress. Dark yellow? Brownish yellow? He saw nothing to distinguish it. The music started. Dancers whirled in a polka, letting him catch sight of her again as she stopped by two men.

A blow to the head could not have stunned him more. He’d thought her reaction to the slip that had given him away extreme, but as Jamie often pointed out, the Van Cleve family was not popular in some quarters of Hubbell.

Oh, hell. This was worse than a lack of popularity. That was Cal Sutton staring hard-eyed through the dancers, and Jason Sutton leaning in toward — toward Green Dress Sutton.

His mystery woman was the most beautiful of the Sutton girls, and if she told her uncle about three meetings alone in the dark with Trey Van Cleve, especially about the Fourth of July....

He watched Cal Sutton turn back. She talked. The Suttons listened. Cal took her by the arm and led her toward the women near the punch bowl, and he didn’t have to weave through the crowd. They parted for him the way the Red Sea had parted for Moses.

Trey sank back against the wall. She couldn’t have told them the truth, or he’d be explaining himself to Suttons right now. Except why exactly should he have to explain anything? It was a mistake, that’s all, as much her mistake as his. Calling him a liar was a bit of female hysteria worthy of Alice.

He pushed off the wall and headed back outside, not giving way to laughter until the door closed behind him. Poor middle-aged spinster. Green Dress Sutton. The more he thought about it, the harder he laughed.

J
AMIE SAW THE
humor in the whole thing when Trey told him about it the next morning, but Trey didn’t much like Jamie’s advice.

“So she’s the niece of your father’s best enemy. Just forget it ever happened. You can bet she will. You made her feel foolish. So first she’ll convince herself you did it on purpose, and then she’ll do her best to forget all about it. If she sees you on the street, she’ll stick her nose in the air and pretend she can’t see you.”

“You’re cynical from letting too many women toy with you.”

“I’m wise from studying many women who thought they were toying with me while I toyed with them.”

“Nobody was toying. We met by accident and liked each other. At least she liked me until she realized who I am. She’s probably been raised from the cradle to hate any Van Cleve. Well, not quite from the cradle. She and Alice were probably about the same age back then. You can’t blame her for being upset. I feel like I owe her an apology.”

“Upset is one thing. Calling you a liar is something else, and apologizing is the same as saying she’s right — you knew and did it on purpose. You’re thinking of excuses to see her again. Think about the uncle who kills men the way you and I swat flies and stay far away from her and her whole family.”

“Cousin. He’s her cousin. These are different times. He’s been a farmer raising a family and minding his own business ever since he and my father made peace.”

“Men like that don’t change. The world is full of pretty women who don’t hate you.”

“She’s more than pretty. She’s extraordinary. I knew that from the beginning. Now — she’s also beautiful. What more could a man want?”

Jamie gave an exaggerated sigh. “How about a woman who doesn’t sneak and lie and then call you the liar when she finds out who you are? I’m not wasting more breath on you. You’re going to go and make trouble for yourself. I can tell. When they find your body, I’ll tell the police who did it, but that won’t dry your mother’s tears, will it?”

“My mother doesn’t cry,” Trey said.

Not only that, but if Cal Sutton decided to kill a man, he wouldn’t do anything so subtle as cut reins. Sutton would use a gun.

F
INDING OUT ABOUT
the Suttons wasn’t hard. Trey spent the next few days in one Hubbell saloon or another, hanging around the stables, the general store, and the gunsmith’s. He sought out Hubbell old timers and drifted into casual conversation. When they inevitably wanted to talk about the Fourth of July shooting contest, instead of changing the subject as had been his wont, he encouraged them to talk, about Cal Sutton, about all the Suttons.

Trey already knew that Jason and his brother Eli farmed a full section of land bordering the V Bar C to the north. He knew Cal Sutton’s land bordered the ranch farther south.

Now he learned that his mystery woman, Green Dress, was Deborah Sutton, the oldest of the three girls who had come to live with Jason and Emma Sutton years ago. The childless couple treated the girls like daughters.

The spoon-waver, Judith, and Pink Dress, Miriam, had married townsmen. In fact Judith’s husband, William Dalton, was the manager of the flour mill Jamie referred to as a fair man.

Talking about Judith always brought a smile to the speaker’s face. As far as Trey could see, the whole town liked Judith, and Trey finally conceded his initial impression of her had to be wrong. After all, most women eyed Jamie as if they’d like to do more than wave spoons at him.

Trey put together the bits and pieces he learned. The wedding celebration Deborah had talked about escaping from the night they first met was her youngest sister’s. Odd that she’d disappear from something like that for hours. Of course that was the problem with the little he learned about Deborah.

“Different,” said Lawson at the general store. “If she had a penny for candy, she’d give it to her sister and take half what it bought rather than come up to the counter and buy for herself. At first I thought she was shy, but after a while — different. It happens sometimes, you know.”

“Strange,” a farmer he met at the café said. “Emma Sutton took them little girls in and treated them like her own, but that girl is a strange one. My wife had ladies over for a quilting bee one time, and I saw that girl shove Emma away and say, ‘Leave me alone. Don’t touch me. I told you, don’t touch me.’ All Emma did was reach out to brush a speck of dirt off her dress.”

“Odd.” Trey flinched at the sound of his own word coming from the mouth of a faro dealer in one of Hubbell’s saloons.

“Judith’s a sweetheart. They spoiled Miriam to where she thinks too much of herself, but now she’s married, maybe she’ll get over it. Something just went wrong with Deborah, I guess. If any of the Suttons heard me say it, they’d beat me to a pulp, but they know it’s true. They all know it, and they protect her as best they can.”

Not very well, they didn’t. After all, she was out in the night meeting strangers, and she had walked alone through town on the Fourth of July, but then she’d all but admitted to sneaking away on the Fourth.

Learning that Miriam’s husband was Hubbell’s newest lawyer reminded Trey of his earlier hope that a lawyer could help him with Alice and her fears. A visit with Joseph Timmerman proved a disappointment on all fronts.

Trey arrived at the lawyer’s office mid-morning, expecting to schedule an appointment. A rosy-cheeked clerk who didn’t look old enough to be out of Hubbell’s grammar school, much less working in an office, greeted Trey cheerily, disappeared through a door behind his desk for a moment, and returned to escort Trey straight in to see Timmerman.

Papers piled high on the desk and on the seat of one of the red leather chairs in front of it hinted at a growing practice, or a sloppy filing system, although file cabinets along one wall proved intent.

Nothing about Timmerman himself looked sloppy. His pinstriped suit had been tailored to fit those square shoulders by someone better than the local man. Every dark hair was pomaded into place, and the reserve in his expression hinted at a cautious nature.

The only sign of recognition of the Van Cleve name Trey discerned was a momentary flicker in sharp blue eyes. Other than that, Timmerman treated Trey as a valuable new client, had no interest in discussing anything except Trey’s problem, and no satisfactory solutions.

“You can’t assign property you don’t own to someone else. You can promise to do so in the future after you inherit, but a court would probably let you squirm out of such a promise if enough time passes.”

“That won’t do then,” Trey admitted. Alice was bound to check anything he did with her own lawyer, and an opinion like Timmerman’s would simply seal her belief that her brother was a conniving rat.

“You have the same problem if you disclaim it now,” Timmerman said. “In theory it would work, but in practice, if the inheritance comes in ten or twenty years, you could go to court and claim you didn’t understand what you were signing or temporary alienation from your father that was resolved, and I’d give good odds even if you didn’t get everything, you’d probably get at least half.”

Trey slumped in his chair. “So if my father is stubborn about leaving it all to me, the only way to stop him is to die before he does?”

“That’s the surest way,” Timmerman said, a smile lighting his narrow face. “Of course, once it’s yours, you can do what you want with it. You can give it to anyone you please or, for that matter, to a charity.”

Standing on the walk outside the office, Trey stared at the shops across the street without seeing them. Once Alice had her child, she’d stop this insane feud, and Jamie was right. No matter how beautiful, no matter that she was the first woman to quicken his interest or his body for more than a year, Deborah Sutton was trouble.

Why continue a futile search to find out more about her? Did he expect to stumble across some explanation for her behavior? She was not a woman who would throw her arms around him and kiss him, happy for his success. She had run from him twice; she was odd; she was trouble.

His energy needed to go toward finding out who had sabotaged his buggy and making sure it never happened again. His own arguments were so convincing, by the time he reached the V Bar C the next afternoon, Trey had conceived of a plan. A plan to see Deborah Sutton again.

D
EBORAH SLIPPED OUT
of the pew and the church and took a seat at one of the rough hewn tables in the field between the church and the Grange Hall. The October sun shone warm from a sky so blue staring at it evoked an ache in her throat. Then again, pretty much everything made some part of her ache these days.

A friendship hidden in the dark had never had a chance of surviving light. She had always known that, but if she hadn’t reacted so terribly, so unforgivably, she and the Third could have said a few regretful words about their families’ enduring enmity and parted friends. She would at least have the memories without what she’d done at the end spoiling it all.

A covered buggy pulled by a chestnut horse came into sight on the road. No one would come to the service this late, but where could the man be going? The road only continued for another mile and ended at the Hazlett place, and the Hazletts were inside the church, not at home. The driver didn’t try to find a hitching place among the wagons, buggies, and saddle horses tied all along the road in front of the church. He turned his rig around in the church driveway, left his horse standing there, and walked toward her.

Even at the distance she knew him. Without the cane, she would know him. Deborah sprang to her feet and looked around, ready to run, but where? Into the church where all those faces would turn and stare? Across the fields until she ran out of breath?

He stopped at a respectful distance. Even so he was closer than ever before, and he looked more handsome than at the ice cream parlor, slim and elegant in a way the men she had grown up with never could be, not quite so tall as the over-six-foot Sutton men, but close. She had been unable to see the color of his eyes before. Green. His eyes were gray-green, framed by lashes several shades darker than his hair. His face showed nothing but pleasure at the sight of her, as if she had never called him names and disappeared.

Too late to run. She’d have to hear him out, apologize, and see him on his way before the service ended.

“Good morning,” he said. “I hoped this was your church and that I’d find you outside. I’d like to talk to you.”

His voice was more real in daylight somehow, but familiar, giving the same illusion of safety and comfort it always had. She wanted to talk to him. She wanted.... “How did you know it was me?” she said, hearing the belligerence in her own voice.

“I followed you. I saw you go to your uncle and cousin.”

“And now that you know, you don’t have enough sense to stay away? Everyone will be outside soon. They’ll see you and want to know why you’re here. Go away.”

“Your preacher must be a quick one. I heard the services start at ten.” He made a show of pulling a gold watch from his pocket and checking the time. “It’s only quarter after ten right now.”

“I’m not the only one who ever comes outside. Someone will come out and see you.” What was the matter with her? She didn’t want to argue. She wanted to apologize for what she’d said to him, but those words stuck in her throat, and the ones tumbling out were all wrong.

“If you’re worried about your uncle and cousin thumping me with my own cane, let’s ride down the road a little way. We can talk without worrying about who will see me, and if I leave Irene standing by herself much longer, she may get it in her head to go back to the ranch without me.”

In spite of herself, Deborah reacted to his nonsense and his gesture toward the buggy. “No one would beat you. They’d just make you go away,” she said as she started walking. “And what kind of name is Irene for a horse. No one names a horse Irene.”

“Really? I think she looks like an Irene. She’s stuck with it now.”