The Scoundrel's Bride (32 page)

He could kill the Reverend J. P. Harrison in the blink of an eye. He was well prepared, both physically and mentally, to do just that.

In fact, he could hardly wait.

MORALITY MAINTAINED a stiff smile as she climbed into the buggy Zach had purchased from Daniel Gallagher. She held it through the good-byes to her new friends at Gallagher’s Tavern and Traveler’s Inn, but as soon as the carriage cleared the yard with Joshua Marston’s stolen horse trailing behind, she traded the smile for a heartfelt glower she believed might well be permanent.

She seethed all the way to Red Mineral Springs, then fumed her way to Tennyson’s Ferry. But beneath her anger lay a hurt so painful, so wrenching in its scope, that she ended each day with her spirit at an ebb even lower than the night before.

And she dreamed. Stirring dreams, disturbing dreams. Dreams whose effects lingered long into the morning, revived by every accidental glance or incidental touch shared by her and her lying, scheming husband.

When she managed to banish the memory of his sins against her from her mind, thoughts of his notorious plan slipped in to take their place. Zach Burkett intended to ruin his own blood family. He was out to destroy a town. Eulalie Peabody, Doc Trilby, and Mr. Nichols. Robert and Ginnie Drake. And why?

Revenge. Such a wicked, wrongful path to travel.

For days Morality refused to speak to Zach in more than single-word replies—most often to answer no to his tersely asked questions. They slept with the fire between them when they camped. They occupied separate haystacks in barns. Not once did he attempt to heal the breach between them.

This was a different man than the one she’d known before. This Zach Burkett was hard as Texas red granite and cold as the ashes of the Alamo. How did one react to such a man? How could she possibly live with him, do what he asked her to do? She pondered the problem every day and prayed about it every night. But Morality found no answers. This Zach Burkett aimed to force her into sin. He intended to extort her into betraying her deepest convictions, and she could think of no way to prevent it.

As the days passed and her hurt shrank to a cold lump of misery in her chest, she was able to study the situation with a bit more objectivity. She realized, then, that her husband was as shrewd as Solomon.

He had played her perfectly. Had he threatened her with murder that miserable night, she wouldn’t have believed him. Had he promised to beat her black and blue, she’d have denounced it as a lie, certain in her convictions. But the slimy-smart character that Zach Burkett had proved to be had chosen the single threat she couldn’t disavow or ignore.

If she failed to cooperate—even if she condemned him before the entire town—Zach
would
find a way to fulfill his wicked promise. She read the truth of it in his eyes. He would teach Patrick those awful things he’d threatened and feel not a glimmer of remorse. How could she have been so wrong about the man?

How could she still be in love with him?

Morality nearly fell out of the wagon at that thought. It was true. She loved him. It scared her half to death and made her response to his blackmail all that more important.

She argued with herself all the way up Trammel’s Trace toward Cottonwood Creek. She’d seen so much good in him—gentleness and understanding, caring and support. What about the righteousness he’d displayed when he accused Reverend Uncle of drugging his congregation? Although Zach had wrongly judged her uncle, he’d appeared so sincere in his concern. How could he have faked it all?

Because he is the world’s greatest actor and more the fool you for falling for his performance.

For seven days she maintained her silence, considered her problem, and treated her husband to the same cold shoulder he showed her. Then, the day before they were due to reach Cottonwood Creek, Morality had a revelation.

The day dawned warm without a breath of wind. They ate a breakfast of cornbread and bacon at the farmhouse where they’d spent the night and hitched up the horses for another full day of travel.

By mid-morning they’d entered a stretch of forest where dogwoods in bloom sprinkled the land with snowy flowers. A tree with pink blossoms caught Morality’s attention and she twisted in her seat, studying it as they passed.

Noticing her interest, Zach pulled the buggy to a stop. He nodded at the tree and remarked, “It’s a dogwood, too.” Then he thumbed his hat back on his head and a twinkle reminiscent of the old Zach Burkett kindled in his eyes. Showing his dimples for the first time that week, he drawled, “You can always tell by its bark.”

Before she remembered she wasn’t speaking to him, Morality replied with a groan. “That joke is as old as black pepper.”

“Older than dirt,” he shot back.

A grin tugged at her lips. “Old as the hills.”

“Older than sin.”

That last word hung on the air between them as her smile slowly died. “Why are you doing this, Zach?”

Like a lightning bolt here then gone, anguish flashed in the depths of his eyes. When he spoke, she had the feeling his words were the most honest he’d ever spoken to her. “Because I promised I would.”

“You promised?” Morality thought a moment, then asked, “Your mother?”

“Yes, right before she died.” An ugly, evil look darkened his face and Morality shrank away from him. He muttered a curse, then flicked the reins, grumbling, “We’re wasting daylight.”

Morality gave him a sidelong, speculative glance. He’d promised his mother what? To avenge her death? To destroy the people who’d hurt her? She considered the questions as they rode, lapsing into the silence they’d shared since that fateful night over a week ago.

Zach Burkett was the most complicated man she’d ever encountered. He’d rob a train and save an endangered puppy at the same time. He’d tell outrageous, harmful lies to keep a promise and threaten an innocent boy…with what? Vice. Corruption.
To be as bad as me
, he’d said.

Her gaze flew to her husband, and her eyes widened with shock. “To be as bad as me,” she repeated softly. Why, that man was an even bigger fraud than he let on. Only, he fooled himself right along with everyone else.

Zach Burkett simply wasn’t as bad as he liked to think.

Her thoughts were in a whirl as he stopped the buggy along the bank of a clear-water creek and allowed the horses a drink. Zach’s jaw was set and his eyes were diamond-hard. As he untied Mr. Marston’s horse from the back of the buggy and led the mare to the creek bank, he was clearly not in the frame of mind to answer her questions.

She asked him anyway. “Zach, were you telling me that your
mother
asked you to do these evil deeds?”

He turned on her. “Dammit, Morality, shut up. Isn’t that just like a woman? You don’t speak for a week, and then, when you open your trap, it’s to give a man hell. Frankly, I like you better the other way.” Turning away, he whipped his reins around a tree and jerked them in a knot.

“Zach, I—”

“If you say one word about my cussin’ I swear I’ll—” He snapped his mouth shut before finishing his thought and stalked off through the trees.

Oh, Zach
. Morality stared after him, feeling his pain. He needed help. He must be shown the error of his ways before it was too late. He needed to experience the healing force of forgiveness. He needed a personal demonstration of the almighty power of love.

Zach needed a miracle, too.

After securing the horses, Morality knelt beside the creek and bent over, intending to quench her own thirst. It was as she saw her reflection on the water’s surface that it happened.

Morality experienced an epiphany.

Truth exploded in her mind with a blinding light. Everyone was put on this earth for a purpose. For years she’d believed she’d been put here to preach the message of her miracle. But it had never felt genuine. In her heart, she’d never heard the calling.

She heard the calling now.

She
could be Zach Burkett’s miracle.

A sense of rightness wrapped her like a cozy warm blanket. It was as if her entire life had prepared her for this moment, this singular task. Like Zach, she had lost her parents, and because of it, she could better understand the depths of his pain and of the anger that drove him.

But her fate had been kinder than Zach’s. She’d had Reverend Uncle to teach her and show her the way to the Lord. And she’d been given her miracle—a firsthand display of the reality of God’s unbounded love. Now it was time to share that reality with someone else.

She loved Zach Burkett, the real Zach Burkett. The man who believed himself to be the most wicked of God’s children and who lived with one foot in darkness, the other in light.

With her love, she would turn him from his path of destruction. With her love, she would show him the beauty of the light. Together they would walk the road toward salvation.

Morality dipped her hands into the water. Reverend Uncle would be so proud of her.

ZACH TWIRLED a bluebonnet between his finger and thumb. Damn the woman, she’d managed to pick the worst time and the absolute worst place to start running her mouth again. What was it about women? How did they know when to let loose the kick that would catch a fellow at his most vulnerable?

He stared across the field. Bluebonnets and buttercups painted the landscape this day instead of the winecups and firewheels of all those years ago. Morality couldn’t have known they were in spitting distance of the place his mother had died. Her question had rubbed salt on an eternally aching wound.

A few hours after Sarah Burkett died, a cotton farmer and his wife had stopped at the scene of the carnage. Over Zach’s protests to leave the Lovelace brothers for the scavengers, Mr. Jones had buried the bodies where they lay. When Zach had refused to allow his mother to rest anywhere near her killers, the farmer had loaded Sarah’s body into the back of his wagon and driven to the top of a nearby bluff. Mrs. Jones had tended to Zach’s shoulder while her husband dug the grave.

Zach hadn’t shed a single tear when the farmer covered his mother with dirt, quoting Scripture and other religious nonsense. Then, the Joneses had insisted he accompany them back to their home. He’d stayed for a bit while his body healed, but the farm was too close to Cottonwood Creek. Too close to the Marstons. So eventually Zach had left, hitching up with a colporteur—a peddler of religious books. He’d begun the life of a thimblerigger.

The memories were like a hot knife to the heart. Zach threw down the flower and began to walk. Emotion churned inside him, and his walk quickened into a lope. Then, he was running. Across the field toward no place. Away from nothing and away from everything.

Until he saw his wife standing at the edge of the trees.

Zach stopped a few short yards away from her. “Go away, Morality. You don’t want to be here right now.”

“Why?” came her soft-spoken reply.

Zach’s blood hummed. “Because I’m in a fever. I’m thinking of death and I’m thinking of life. Life. Yes, that’s it.” He took a step toward her, intending to frighten her away. “I need a woman.”

Morality smiled. “That’s right, Zach. You need me.”

God, she was so beautiful standing there. The prettiest flower in the field. Gruffly, he said, “You miss my point. I
need
a
woman
. I need sex, Morality. Sex.”

She stepped toward him, her fingers going to the buttons of her bodice. “No, Zach, you need love. And I’m here to see that you receive it.”

And so, in the field where years before blood had spilled and soaked into the soft East Texas soil, Morality took her husband to her body and began to heal his soul.

“JUST CALL me Rip,” Zach muttered to himself. As in Van Winkle. He must have fallen asleep and awakened in a different world. Either that or his butter had slid right off his cornbread.

Morality kept telling him she loved him.

For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what had happened. One minute she wasn’t speaking to him, and the next she was laying him on the ground like a picnic blanket. And what a feast they had shared.

By mid-afternoon, as they lay in a field of wildflowers on the covers he’d fetched from the buggy, with Morality sleeping quietly beside him, Zach was feeling rested and replete and comfortable as hell. And maybe a bit sunburned on his backside. And definitely muddled.

The woman hadn’t muttered a single word, simply stared at him reproachfully when he’d taken her and she’d experienced no pain—despite the time elapsed since their last lovemaking. She had to have known he’d lied about that, too. Why hadn’t she raised her normal fuss? What had happened between breakfast, when she’d looked at him with contempt, and noon when she’d gazed at him with desire in her eyes?

He had a feeling in his gut that he’d best find out. He nudged her shoulder. “Morality?”

“Hmm…?” she sighed sleepily.

“Morality, what’s happened?”

“What do you mean?” She nuzzled his chest.

“What’s changed? How come you’re not angry anymore?”

“Do you mean about your lies?” Her hand stroked lightly over his shoulder.

Zach began to doubt the wisdom of bringing up the issue. “Yes…” he groaned as her teeth nipped his round male nipples.

She rolled on top of him and lifted her head, gazing down into his eyes in a way that made him feel as if he were drowning. “I am angry about your lies, Zach. But my being angry with you doesn’t affect my love for you. I do love you, and I trust that in time you’ll come to see the error of your ways.”

Love
. Oh, hell. Zach stiffened, above the waist this time. “What do you mean by that?”

Her smile was as sweet as a field of cane sugar. “I’ve had a revelation, Zach.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“Exactly.”

He shut his eyes. “What fool idea has wormed its way into that head of yours?”

She pressed little kisses along his jawline. “It’s no idea, it’s a certainty. You and I will work together to turn those lies of yours into truth.”

He cocked open one eye. “Just which of my lies are you referring to?”