Prairie Song (4 page)

As the room came into focus, she froze in fear. Exhaustion drained from her body like blood oozes from a shot man. Her fingers fumbled for her bag as her gaze concentrated on the end of a long rifle pointed directly at her heart.

“One more step and I drop ya!” a young voice yelled.

Margaret’s arm tightened around Cherish’s waist as she ordered, “Wait!”

The rifle barrel was shaking noticeably as a boy of not more than ten stepped into the light. “I got orders to kill anybody breakin’ into this house. Don’t remember bein’ told any different if it were women.”

“Put down that gun, boy,” Margaret directed. “We’re not breaking into the house. I’m Margaret Alexander and this is Cherish Wyatt. I own this place.”

The boy lowered the gun a few inches. “You be the Maggie and Cherish that old Tobin talked about?”

Cherish laughed with relief. “Yes. Who might you be?”

“I’m Barfield Jefferson Parker. Bar for short.” He lowered the gun to the table. “I live here with old Hattie. My ma was Miss Hattie’s housekeeper, but Ma died last year. I stayed on so there’d be a man around the house. Miss Hattie kind of comes with the house and I kind of come with her.”

Amid a round of thunder, Grayson’s massive bulk shadowed the doorway. Bar jumped for his gun, but Cherish blocked his path. She laid her hand on the boy’s shoulder, feeling the fear he wouldn’t allow to show in his face. Patting him reassuringly, she whispered, “He kind of comes with us.”

Bar straightened. His dark gypsy eyes looked up at Grayson. Only his bobbing Adam’s apple gave away his nervousness.

Grayson removed his wet hat and slapped it against his thigh. He gave a nod toward Bar, and Cherish thought she saw the hint of a wink.

The boy stood his ground like a little rooster having his territory questioned. Cherish allowed her hand to glide lightly along his shoulder and felt the bone beneath his clothes. “If you’ll take me to this Miss Hattie, I’d like to meet her. We’ve had a very hard day and would love to get into some dry clothes and perhaps eat supper, but we’ll need your help.”

“The boy can help you,” came a voice from the shadows, as cold as the wind outside, “but all we got to eat is a pot of beans and some sweet-milk corn bread.”

Everyone in the room turned toward the hallway as a woman entered. She was dark and ageless with bright scarves of red and gold tied around her hair and waist. “I’m Azile, the housekeeper. I’ll tell Miss Hattie you’re here, then bring food up to your rooms.” Where the boy’s complexion hinted of gypsy blood, Azile’s left no doubt of it with her dark skin and eyes as black and shiny as sable. “I was Bar’s mother’s cousin so I came to help with the housework.”

Cherish could feel the boy’s shoulders tighten and decided either Azile was lying, or the boy wanted no part of being her relative.

Azile looked both of the women up and down and sighed as though she found neither of any interest. “We cleaned up the two-bedroom suite with a sitting room in the middle when we heard about old Tobin’s will.” She nodded toward the boy, silently commanding him to show them the way.

“That would be nice …,” Margaret began.

“Weren’t expecting no man.” Azile looked up at Grayson as though he’d just been left on the doorstep. “I ain’t got a room ready for him. And I don’t plan on doing no cleaning this time of night. He’ll have to sleep in the barn.”

Margaret straightened slightly. “He’ll sleep in the sitting room. Bar, can you find him dry bedding?”

Bar watched Azile for a moment before nodding. No one missed the smile that spread across his face when Azile whirled her full skirt and disappeared as silently as she’d appeared.

Cherish felt a chill all the way to her bones as they moved down a mahogany-paneled hallway toward the front rooms. “This is a beautiful house,” she whispered more to herself than to anyone else. She noticed several blank walls and empty spots where furniture should have been. Even run-down and dusty, this was one of the finest homes she’d ever been inside. Most houses in Texas were small-little more than dugouts—but this one was as grand as some she’d seen in New Orleans and Austin.

Bar carried the lantern before her. “I was born here. I know this place like a mole knows his hole. There’re more rooms than you’d guess.”

They passed one room after another filled with draped furniture. “Miss Hattie stays downstairs ‘cause she’s too sick to be moved much.” He pointed to a closed door. “That’s her room.”

As he spoke, Azile stepped through the door. Unsmiling, she whispered, “Miss Hattie is already asleep. You’ll have to talk to her tomorrow.”

Cherish sighed. The dream of a hot bath was the only thing that kept her from curling up in the hall and falling asleep.

Bar turned toward the stairs. “Your rooms are up here where it’s quiet.”

Margaret opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but Azile spoke first. “We all hear things—ghosts screaming, spirits walking. This house has seen a great deal of evil and sometimes at night the walls cry in mourning.”

Margaret huffed and motioned Bar forward. “I don’t believe in ghosts. If folks could come back from the dead, I’m sure my Westley would have returned to me. He died in the war. Shot down in his youth by a damned Yankee bullet.”

Cherish agreed with her aunt about the ghosts, but still caught herself turning her head to listen as they climbed the stairs.

An hour later all thoughts of ghosts were forgotten as she slid into the hot tub. She smiled as she heard Maggie talking to Grayson a doorway away in the sitting room. Her aunt was yelling as though the huge man were deaf to the language and not simply foreign to it.

“Take off those wet clothes!” Margaret shouted.

Grayson stood his ground, staring at her as if he had no idea what she was talking about even though his coat was dripping wet from his trips back and forth to the barn.

Margaret tightened the belt of her wool wrapper. “You need dry clothes. Take off those wet ones and I’ll hang them by the fire.”

Grayson fought back a smile and continued to stare. Only moments before, he’d thought he was too tired and cold to feel anything, but that was before Margaret walked through the door all fresh and blushing from her hot bath.

Margaret huffed impatiently and moved closer. “I don’t understand how you sometimes read my mind and now can’t seem to hear a word I’m saying.” She touched the top button of his coat and loosened it as she spoke. “You’ll catch your death if you don’t get dry.” Her fingers moved nervously yet with determination to the next button.

Fighting to control his breathing, Grayson let her continue. He could feel the hesitancy in her fingers as she slid her hand along the wall of his chest, opening his coat. For days he’d been near her, watching her move, listening to the softness in her voice when she talked with Cherish, feeling her every touch like a whip to the raw flesh of his memory. And even now, with his muscles too tired to ache, he still wanted to be near her. It had been so long, so very long, since he’d been around a lady. This strong, tall woman standing so close to him was driving him mad with her touch. He could almost feel the steam rising from his wet clothes as she pulled his coat away from his shoulders.

“I swear, Grayson. How can you just stand there dripping?” Her hand slid over his chambray shirt. “Even your shirt is wet.”

Grayson stood like an oak against the storm of his need to touch her in return. Sam McMiller, back in Bryan, wouldn’t have called her a cold crow if he could see her now in her royal blue dressing gown with her mass of hair damp and tumbling down her back like a midnight black waterfall. There was nothing hard or petrified about her once she’d removed her tight stays and laces, for Grayson had trouble keeping his eyes off her long, slender curves. The fire her nearness was stoking was almost consuming him as her fingers moved along to the last button of his shirt. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to crush her against him or turn and run.

“We’ll hang your things by the fire.” Margaret draped his coat over a ladder-back chair. “Grayson, you’re acting like I’m trying to steal your clothes. I wish you could understand more of what I’m saying.” She moved closer, tugging at his shirttail as though he were a child. “We have to get these off you.”

Grayson’s huge hand covered hers, stopping her progress. He imprisoned her fingers between his own and the muscle over his heart.

For the first time, she raised her eyes and looked into his stormy gaze. She could talk all she wanted to about him catching cold; she could even treat him like a child. Yet in that moment Grayson saw a hunger in her indigo blue depths, a hunger she wouldn’t have admitted to him or to herself. A need basic to all men and women. A need she’d deny to her dying breath. But he saw it in her eyes for one long moment and her hidden desire touched his soul.

She looked away as if frightened, not by him, but by her own thoughts. “I asked Bar to bring a cot in here but I don’t see one. You may have to sleep on the couch.”

As she pulled her hand free from his grasp, he felt a gaping hole in his chest as though she’d pulled his heart out with her slender fingers. He closed his eyes and reminded himself that he was a Union officer with a job to do, not some lovesick cowhand who’s been on the trail for three months. If this lady was involved with the Knights, he was obligated to see her behind bars and not anticipate her in his bed.

She moved near the fire, unaware of his longing. “There’s no sense heating up the entire house.” She pulled her robe together as though the fire gave her no warmth. “You can sleep here. I put no stake in ghost stories, but I’ll sleep better knowing we’re all close enough to hear one another.”

Grayson watched her walk away, thinking he’d have to move his cot to the Oklahoma Territory to be able to sleep.

“Good night.” Her whisper and the door’s closing sounded in harmony.

Grayson stared at the closed door that barred him from the first woman he’d wanted since his wife died.
How many doors
? he thought.
How many doors in both our pasts will I have to break down to get to her
?

He yanked off his wet clothes and twisted inside the blanket Margaret had left on the long couch. “Get a grip on yourself,” he whispered. “This woman is as hard as they come. Any man would be crazy to try and woo a widow away from her memory of the perfect husband. A husband killed, not by just a bullet, but a damned Yankee bullet.”

It’d been ten years since he’d done more than hand over money to get a woman in his bed. He had a job to do and that job might just mean having to arrest Margaret and her niece. If they were connected to this house, they had to be somehow connected with the ring of outlaws who went by the noble name of Knights of the Golden Circle. Even if there was some argument among Grayson’s superiors to let the Knights die away, Grayson wasn’t ready to give up the fight. The war couldn’t just end for him; it was all that had kept him alive. It couldn’t be over—not yet.

But, by God, he’d seen her eyes and in them a need that matched his own. Yet he couldn’t even tell her who he was or she’d hate him for the fool he’d played her. However, remaining silent was going to be as hard as standing still had been while she’d removed his shirt.

Cherish awoke with a start. The candle beside her bed flickered in a pool of wax and the tub’s water was icy. A low creaking echoed through the high-ceilinged rooms as though the house were groaning in its sleep. She quickly dried off and slipped into her cotton nightgown. She had no idea how late it was, for the storm kept any hint of stars or moon from sight.

Crawling beneath the sheets, Cherish tried to get warm enough to sleep, but lightning jabbed at the blackness outside her window, making rest almost impossible. The constant roll of thunder reminded her of that night on the train. In the stillness of her room she could almost feel the stranger’s presence. Any moment, he would fall on her with the smell of dust and blood and danger surrounding him. She closed her eyes and remembered how he’d kissed her with a hunger deeper than she’d ever known.

Cherish slammed her fist into the pillow beside her. “Forget him!” she whispered to the silent room. “Forget him and all the feelings.”

Frustrated, Cherish climbed from her still cold bed. “I have no time for foolish dreams,” she said to the silence, trying to convince herself. “No time at all.” Lighting the lamp, she wished she could push away the chill as readily as she banned darkness into the corners of the room. She pulled a blanket from the bed, curled up beside the tiny fireplace, and rested her head on her knees. Firelight had always fascinated her, calming her troubled thoughts with its bright dance and warm breath. Her mind wandered to her family’s farm. She thought of her childhood, when love filled her home to overflowing. The vision of her mother, angry and stoic as she waved good-bye the day Cherish and Maggie had left, played across her mind. How many times in the past four years had she wished she’d heeded her mother’s advice and stayed home? Cherish tried to visualize one of the local boys kissing her the way the stranger had. But the vision wouldn’t come. She would always love her parents, and visit them when possible, but she didn’t think she could ever go home again.

Time passed slowly as her mind wandered, barely listening to the sounds around her … the storm, the crackle of the fire, the creaking of a door long unused.

Cherish stiffened. The sound came again: a door slowly opening, its hinges crying from age and neglect. Afraid to breathe, she turned her head from one entrance in her room to the other. The one leading to the hallway was locked, and the door opening into the sitting room was closed with the bolt still in its nest.

Her ears strained. Listening for the sound to come again, Cherish debated whether she wanted it to be real or whether it might be less frightening to question her sanity. What had the strange housekeeper, Azile, said? The dead walked the house and the walls cried. But Azile’s eyes had the wild vacantness of someone who drifted from reality on the white smoke of opium.

The creaking came once more, an eerie noise of creeping terror. Waiting like an animal ready to spring for safety, she heard soft footsteps approaching her door. Cherish moved slowly across the room and, pulling her gun from her bag, she melted into the shadows between the bedpost and the wardrobe. She was not some frightened child to be caught unaware. The years of working in army camps near the front lines had taught her to prepare for the worst, even if praying for the best.

She watched as the doorknob on the hallway door turned. There was a long pause, then a knife’s blade darted out like a snake’s tongue between the door and the frame. With one jerk, the lock snapped back and the door moved inward.

Slowly, with deliberate pressure, the door opened wide. Cherish strained to see into the darkened hallway, but there seemed to be nothing but blackness.

“Who’s there?” She made her voice calm, yet her hand trembled slightly as her finger caressed the trigger.

“You’re awake?” a low voice whispered.

“And armed.” She moved closer, trying to see into the hall, trying to place the voice in her memory.

A shadow moved, raising lean arms as if in surrender. “I mean you no harm, Miss Wyatt.”

“Who are you?”

A thin man stepped from the blackness into the lamplight. “Father Daniel. We met on the train. I’m sorry to have frightened you, but I need your help.”

Cherish almost collapsed with relief. The devils she’d imagined vanished from her mind. “But why break into my room? Why not just knock at the door?”

“This house has a few entrances other than the front door. I’ve known about them since I was a child. I need your help, and no one, not even the woman with you, must know.”

“What kind of priest are you? You help murderers and use a knife like a key.” Suddenly Cherish was not sure she should lower her weapon. She was not fool enough to think that only robes were needed to make a priest.

Father Daniel laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m as real a priest as this town has known. It’s just that sometimes the Lord and I must walk a little to the left side of the law.”

Cherish remembered how he’d saved the man from hanging and knew somehow she owed this mysterious man a favor. “What can I do?”

The priest disappeared and returned a moment later, half-carrying, half-dragging the body of a man. “I thought I could help him, but we’ve ridden hard for two days. We’ve been out in the storm all night. When we finally got to town I couldn’t just take him to the mission to die, and the town’s doctor is seldom sober enough to be of any help.” Father Daniel looked at her with helpless gray eyes, liquid with his plea. “He’s lost a lot of blood and I’m afraid his wound is infected.”

Turning up the lantern, Cherish watched the priest lower the wounded man onto her bed. He was covered with mud and blood, but she knew without asking that he was the same man who had almost been hanged that night on the water tower outside the train. “How did you find him?”

Father Daniel collapsed in the chair by her bed, his words barely a whisper. “He slept in my berth until we reached Bryan. Then I purchased two horses and met him outside town. He seemed to be fine the first few miles, but his bleeding made our traveling slow. We had to keep off the roads for fear of being spotted. Then the rain started and Brant grew weaker.” As the clergyman talked, his words slowed and his body melted into the chair’s comfort. “I thought he was going to die before I could get him here. There was nowhere else to turn. Hattie used to always have room to hide men who didn’t want to be found and you’ll nurse …” Without finishing, the priest fell asleep, his legs stretched out and his head against the back of the chair. He had laid his trouble at her door and now could rest.

“Hattie?” Cherish whispered, remembering the old invalid downstairs who had once been the owner of this house and now just seemed to go with it like furnishings passed from one person to another.

Placing a blanket over the priest, Cherish wondered if he’d slept at all in the past three nights. What drove this man of God to risk his life for a murderer? Didn’t he know what he was doing was wrong? Or maybe he didn’t care, for his reason was right. There had to be a bond between these two men, a bond linked somehow by the identical scars on their wrists.

Moving the lamp near the bed, she turned the wounded man’s face toward the light. His skin was ghost-pale but warm to her touch, telling her that he was still alive and that the wound probably was infected. His jawline was hard and straight, his dark hair a touch too long, and his mouth pulled tight in pain.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to see when she finally looked at the bandit, but even beneath the mud, his good looks shocked her. Why had she thought his face would be scarred, his nose broken, his mouth twisted in a permanent sneer? But here was the face of a young man with a long Roman nose and chestnut brown hair. She might need a shovel to remove all the mud from him, but Cherish aimed to see just what this man, who had dared kiss her as no other had, looked like.

Even now, as she touched him, she felt her heart race. For the first time in her life she wanted to touch him as a woman touches a man and not just as a nurse touches a patient. This outlaw covered with blood and mud was somehow the key to unlocking feelings she’d never allowed out.

Cherish slipped into her wrapper without taking her eyes off the man in her bed. She’d need hot water and bandages if she was to do him any good. Somehow she had to find help, but who? Grayson was the most logical choice. He’d hauled water for their baths and firewood. Maybe she could get him to bring up a few more loads. He’d be the least likely to talk because he hadn’t more than nodded since she’d met him. Plus, if Maggie trusted him so completely, he must be worthy of trust.

Tiptoeing into the sitting room, Cherish stumbled over Grayson’s discarded clothes. She could hear his heavy breathing coming from the couch and knew it would be no easy task to wake a man who had worked as hard as he had since before dawn.

With her usual passion for neatness, she straightened his damp clothes and folded them over a chair by the fire. A crumpled telegram fell from his pants pocket and curiosity made her take a moment to glance at it.

Cherish couldn’t believe what she saw. She moved closer to the fire and read the message again. It was addressed to a Captain Grayson Kirkland and the short message left no doubt that he’d been assigned to a new job.

She read the last sentence three times. “More details with Friday train arrival.” She’d been on the Friday train as had the priest and the wanted man. Since Grayson couldn’t have possibly wanted her, he must be hunting one of the two men. Yet, why was he playing this game of not understanding English? He obviously read it. Was he playing Maggie and her for fools, or was Maggie a part of this and, in her usual overprotective way, hiding the truth from Cherish?

Folding the paper, she replaced it in the pants pocket, then walked soundlessly out of the room. When she was safely back in her bedroom she bolted the door and whispered, “Wonderful. Some rest I’m going to get. I know two facts for certain. Grayson is a Union officer probably looking for one of two men, and they’re both less than ten feet away from him in my bedroom.”