Payton's Woman (35 page)

“Yes, sir, I believe she
did. Black dress and dark cloak.” The man wrinkled his forehead as though
picturing her in his mind. “A handsome young lady. And her eyes...”

“Yes,” he prompted.

“Her eyes looked like
she’d cried enough to fill the entire bay.”

“Do you know where she
is?”

“She didn’t get a cabin.
You might try the upper deck.”

Payton dashed up the
stairs. Frantically, he looked for her. As he moved to the fore on the
starboard side, he saw her standing by the rail, her back to him, as she stared
out across the horizon.

In the twilight, the
dark blue cloak she wore gave the illusion her body blended in with the coming
night. At first glance she appeared to be a shadowy figure not of this world,
nor even the next.

His mind grasped for
words of comfort, but nothing seemed adequate for the agony he knew she suffered.
He approached her slowly, his footsteps barely audible on the wooden deck.

She couldn’t have heard
him, but perhaps she sensed him. Her head turned, but she didn’t look directly
at him.

“How did you find me?”

He stopped walking. “It
wasn’t easy. After I searched everywhere else, I decided you had to be in the
one place I’d never expect.”

She glanced at the water.
“That’s because I didn’t want you to find me.”

“The officer on deck
said a beautiful woman who looked like she’d cried enough to fill the ocean had
gotten on the ship, but she didn’t request a room.”

“I’m through crying.”

“I can see that.”

He studied her profile.
No emotion showed on her face. No anguish, no misery. Her lack of expression
worried him; she seemed too quiet, too calm.

“Why didn’t you get a
room?” He took a step toward her. “Aren’t you afraid of getting seasick out
here where everyone can see you?”

“I don’t need one.”

The feel of a jagged
knife twisted in his gut. “Why is that?” he asked, but he already had a
suspicion. Cautiously, he took another step.

“Go away, Payton.”

“It seems you’re always
telling me to go away, but I never do. I’m not leaving you this time either. At
least not until we talk.”

“There’s nothing to say.”

“Yes, there is. I should’ve
told you earlier today when I realized who your brother was.” He closed his
eyes as he recalled the painful discovery. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it
because I worried about how it would affect you.”

“You thought I’d hate
you.”

That invisible knife
sliced through his heart. “Not just me, your brother. I didn’t want you hating
him.”

“Oh, God.” She put the
back of her hand to her mouth to muffle her sob.

“Julia—”

“Stay away from me.”

When he took another
step, she turned away from him and gripped the guardrail. Her upper body
hovered over the edge.

“No!” He ran to her and
grabbed her around the waist. He pried at her fingers that clenched the rail. “Let
go, Julia. I don’t want to hurt you.”

She quit struggling and
relaxed her grip. “You’ve already hurt me more than I can bear.”

“I know you’re in pain,
but I won’t let you kill yourself.”

“What?” She glanced at
him over her shoulder. “You thought I was going to kill myself?”

“I didn’t know.” He
turned her in his arms. “You came aboard without any luggage, and you didn’t
get a cabin. When you grabbed the rail, it looked like you were going to climb
over the edge.”

She twisted out of his
arms. “I didn’t have money for a cabin. And the reason I grabbed the rail is
because I didn’t want you dragging me off the ship just so we could talk.” Her
voice crackled with emotion. “I don’t want to talk. I need to think.”

Other passengers
gathered around them in the commotion, but he waved them away. He led her to a
bench and made her sit.

She slumped over in the
seat, buried her face in her hands, and cried in wretched sobs. He laid his
handkerchief in her lap and stood in front of her without speaking until her
weeping subsided.

When her tears slowed,
he sat beside her. He braced his elbows on the top of his thighs and clasped
his hands together in front of his knees. His head bowed low.

She placed the crumbled
handkerchief on the bench between them. Her voice was barely audible when she
spoke. “Now that you know I’m not going to jump into the bay and drown myself,
you can leave.”

He glanced at her face.
The pain he saw tore him apart. Blotches of red marred her cheeks. Her eyelids
were puffy, her lips twisted shut. “Is that what you really want? You want me
to leave you alone?”

She didn’t answer. That
gave him a spark of hope. “I know you must hate me.”

“Hate?” She shook her
head. “I don’t know if that’s the word I’d use.”

“It doesn’t matter what
word—”

“That’s why you were
sending me away,” she said across his words. “It wasn’t about lack of money, or
the added responsibility of a wife and baby. You didn’t want me to learn the
truth.”

“You’re right. I didn’t
want you to know.”

“Did you ever intend to
tell me?”

“Probably not.” He
looked away from her scrutinizing gaze. “It was my feeble way of trying to
protect you.”

“Me?” she questioned. “It
seems you were trying to protect yourself.”

He shook his head. “However
you feel about me, I didn’t want you feeling that way about your brother.”

“I never knew him.” She
covered her face with her hands. “Everything about him, his whole life, was a
lie.”

The urge to wrap his
arms around her grew strong, but he resisted. He feared she hated him and
wouldn’t tolerate his touch. “Your brother loved you. That wasn’t a lie.”

She pulled her hands
from her face. “I know he did, but everything else…I thought he was kind and
gentle. Now I find he was nothing like that.”

“He was all those
things. You just saw the side of him he wanted you to see.”

Her fingers skimmed over
her arms as if searching for inked images of wild animals lurking beneath the
sleeves of her gown. “He kept himself hidden from me just like he hid the
tattoos that covered his body.”

“He couldn’t very well
tell his little sister about all the things he’d done while at sea.”

For the first time, she
looked at his face, and it appeared she searched for an answer there. “So he
just lied about who he was?”

“He didn’t lie. He was
everything you believed him to be, but more. He was generous and kind. And he
was brave. He saved my life and the lives of many others. When the seas were
rough, he was the first to volunteer for watch. He gave the other men courage.
In times of peril, he led them in prayer.”

“Then why did he throw
in with the likes of Dunbar?”

He shrugged. “I can’t
answer that.”

“You mean, you won’t.
You’re just trying to protect me again.” She wiped at her tears. “After my
father died, Mother and I were strapped for money. We got jobs as housekeeper
and maid. Reggie came home and found us working. He was livid.

“I’d just turned
seventeen and should’ve noticed then the depth of his personality. He demanded
we quit working. Mother refused. They argued for hours. I’d never heard him
raise his voice to her before, but she stood up to him. Perhaps she knew him
far better than I.

“Finally, she relented.
We quit our jobs. A short time later he left for the sea, but he swore he’d
send us money quickly. And he did.

“The funny thing is,
Mother put his money away for him, and the two of us went back to work cleaning
other people’s houses.”

They sat quietly for a
long while. The crewmen pulled up the gangplank, black smoke billowed out of
the stack, and the steamer drifted away from the dock.

She leaned back against
the bench. “I guess we should have gotten off when we had the chance.”

He glanced at her face.
She appeared calm, her tears had dried, and the red streaks marring her face had
faded. He looked down at her hands that lay casually in her lap. Her fingers
were unfurled, her hands no longer clenched into fists.

The ship began its
voyage up the river. Payton wondered how long before her seasickness would
begin. “How are you feeling?”

“Better.” She let out a
long sigh. “I think I can accept Reggie for the way he was with all his faults
and forgive him for the things he did.”

His jaw went slack. He
stared at her in stunned silence. She’d found it in her heart to forgive her brother,
but he dared not ask her to do the same for him. He lowered his head and fixed
his gaze on his boots.

“I’ve been trying to
figure out why Reggie wrote in his letter that Dunbar was responsible for his
death.” She paused to take a deep breath. “The only answer I came up with was
he didn’t want Mother or me blaming you. Perhaps if I’d read the rest of his
letter, I would’ve understood more. The only conclusion I can make of all this
is he didn’t hold you responsible for what happened.”

The touch of her hand on
his forearm quickened his heart. He glanced at her, but she peered straight
ahead, her gaze directed at some object in the distance. He couldn’t bring
himself to look at her when he admitted his culpability. Instead, he stared at
the horizon. “It doesn’t matter. I’m the one who pulled the trigger.”

“Did he say anything to
you after you—” The words caught in her throat. She couldn’t speak of the
atrocity he’d committed. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Did he speak
with you about what happened?”

His mind went over those
last few moments as Eddy slipped away. His final words were for his mother and
sister. But just before that, he’d told Payton the shooting wasn’t his fault.

“He was a better man
than me. He didn’t blame me for what happened, but I can’t forget what I did.”
His eyes clouded over. He blinked to clear his vision. He brushed his hand over
his face as his agony grew. “I still blame myself.”

“Forgiving is easy,” she
said. “The hard part is forgetting.”

“I don’t know how long
it will take for you to forgive me, or to forget what I’ve done, but I’ll wait—the
rest of my life if necessary. As hard as it may be to live without you, I
couldn’t go on if I thought you’d hate me until the day I die.”

“I don’t hate you.” Her
fingers skimmed across the back of his hand.

His breath halted. Could
she actually find it in her heart to forgive him? He turned his hand over and
threaded his fingers with hers.

She leaned against his
shoulder. “I don’t want to live without you.”

“Neither do I.” He released
her hand and put his arm around her shoulders.

“Will you promise me
something?” She tilted her face to him.

He gazed into her
incredibly colored eyes. Her dark lashes glistened with moisture from her
tears. He saw her pain, but he also saw her love. “Anything,” he swore.

“Promise me you’ll never
send me away again.”

“I swear.” He hugged her
to him. “I love you, Julia.”

“I love you too.”

He put both arms around
her and squeezed her harder. His strong embrace made her groan.

“Will you promise me
something else?” she asked.

“Of course.”

She pushed against his
chest with one hand. Her other hand went to her mouth. “When the time comes,
you have to hold my hair back from my face so I can throw up over the side.”

“You’re getting sick?”
His forehead crinkled with concern. “Do you want me to help you to the
guardrail?”

“Not yet.” She removed
her hand from her mouth. Her lips curved in to a tender smile. “But kiss me
quick. We need to seal our bargain with a kiss.”

The End

****

Next Novel by

Marilyn Yarbrough

Take me to Paradise

Chapter One

Sacramento, California

June 1869

“Oh, blast,” Cassandra
Tyler said when she couldn’t unlock the door to her hotel room. Something
seemed stuck in the lock, and the key wouldn’t fit into the slot. With a
frustrated sigh, she gathered her skirt to one side and knelt down for a better
view.

Just as she peered into
the keyhole to determine the problem, a metal key rattled in the lock from the
other side. The knob twisted, and the door opened with a jerk. Startled that
someone lurked inside her room, Cassie tried to scramble to her feet, but she
stepped on the hem of her petticoat. Her heel caught, material ripped, and her
knee buckled. She landed on her backside in the middle of the hallway floor.

“Ow,” she mumbled while
rubbing at her bottom in an attempt to relieve the pain. She glanced up to see
who had flung open the door, but all she glimpsed was the barrel of a six-gun
pointed at her forehead.

Her breath caught in her
throat as fear replaced the pain. She grabbed at the little straw hat that had
slipped over her forehead and tugged it back onto her head. Her eyes widened at
the sight of the gunman towering over her. He stood completely naked from the
waist up.

“Are you hurt?” he asked
in a deep voice.

“What are you doing in
my room?” she blurted out, although her mind had already determined why a
half-naked man with a revolver hid inside her room.

The gunman shook his
head. “You came to the wrong door, miss. This is my room,” he said, a soft
drawl obvious in his voice.

His eyes focused on the
key dangling from her fingers that still clutched her hat. With the revolver,
he pointed over his shoulder to the door behind him. “See that number. Yours is
the next one over.”

Her gaze darted to the
door. A sigh of relief gushed from her lips when she read the numbers. She
slumped onto her elbows as her body relaxed.

The click of the
revolver brought her attention back to the gunman. With the weapon titled
upward, he released the cocked hammer into a resting position before shoving it
into the waistband of his trousers. When the cool metal of the revolver touched
his bare skin, the muscles in his belly tightened. That motion, along with the
weight of the weapon, caused his trousers to ride lower on his hips.
Dangerously lower.