Tumbleweed Letters (3 page)

Chapter Four

Sophie had never met a more determined urchin. Granted, during her years of teaching she’d tamed and taught a few obstinate students, but this child was out of control. Her work skirt needed major repair. Not that she hadn’t ruined the hem by tearing off strips to tie her notes to tumbleweeds. Still, for where she worked and for what she did, the raggedy frock served its purpose.

The child’s father stood before her, clearly uncomfortable. His long dark hair was clean, which was more than could be said for most men in this town. Blue eyes bore a trace of shock in his serious face. She wondered what a smile would do to his austere features.
What a fool you are for such fanciful thoughts
.

She folded the torn gathers into a bunch and held the material to cover her exposed petticoats. “Does your son always behave in this manner? Tearing clothes off people?”

“No. Although, truth be told, he rarely sees anyone but me.”

What about the child’s mother?
Her gaze swept to the nosy, pinched-faced woman who clearly wanted to hear every word of their exchange. Well she’d not give Mrs. Dunlap the satisfaction. She turned to leave. Madam Dora would have to buy her own stockings.

Fingers touched her arm. “My name is Cam McBride, ma’am. I’ll gladly buy you a new dress or pay for a bolt of calico.” His deep voice raised gooseflesh on her arms.

She could not, would not, look up at him. He was so tall and broad shouldered, he was downright intimidating. “That really won’t be necessary, Mr. McBride. Good day.”

“Will you at least accept my apology?”

Sophie nodded and made a beeline for the door. For some reason, she wanted to get away from this man. He was too handsome, by far. Handsome and overpowering.

“Ma’am?” Footsteps echoed behind her. “Your name?” His hand wrapped around her wrist, feather light yet firm.

Her stomach fluttered and her mouth went dry.

The child leaned forward in his father’s arms and grabbed her collar. “Mine.”

Saints preserve me, this child will tear apart my clothes yet.
“Sophie…Sophie Flannigan.”

“Won’t you look at me when you talk?”

She shook her head and tried to move away. If she gazed into those blue eyes again, she’d be lost in all his maleness—and he was
very
male.

“Where do you live?” His grasp on her tightened.

Goodness, but his voice was spellbinding. Something about it made her body react in strange ways that disturbed her. “I live where I work. Madam Dora’s brothel.”

His hand fell away, and she hurried out.

Behind her, the child wailed, “Mine. Mine, Daddy…mine.”

Jethro Rhinehardt was leaning against the pillar when she stepped out onto the porch. Although she couldn’t see the man’s face, she recognized his build and mud-splattered canvas duster. If she hurried, she might sneak past without his noticing her. She’d have made it, too, if a nail poking out of the porch hadn’t snagged the twine on the bottom of one of her shoes and ripped it, causing her to stumble.

“Well, well, little Miss Scrub Lady.” He turned and sidestepped, blocking her path. For a heavy man, he slithered quickly, just like the snake he was.

Sophie tried going around him, and he stepped to the side, stopping her again. “Can’t you say good morning? Or are you too high and mighty?” He spit tobacco juice on the porch, and it splattered against her skirt.

“Good morning, Jethro. Now please let me by. I have errands to run for Dora. I can’t afford to lose my job.” She stepped to her right this time.

Once more he slid in front of her. To her surprise, he grabbed her around the waist and lifted her so they were eyeball to eyeball. Tobacco juice stained his scruffy beard that reeked of something foul. Her stomach lurched and she fought to swallow the bile. She still clutched the folds of material over her petticoat, determined this man would not see her undergarments.

“How’s about a kiss for ol’ Jethro? Or do I have to pay first?”

Her slap cracked in the morning air. “I’ll not be spoken to like that.”

Jethro’s eyes darkened and his jaw clenched. The bear of a man shook her and then he had the audacity to slide his paw over her rump.

In response, she fought like a barn cat—hissing, kicking, and scratching. She scratched his eye and tore a pocket off his shirt. “Get your filthy hands off me, you heathen.”

Men—miscreants, really—circled them. They called out obscene suggestions for Jethro. There were hoots and hollers. A few men laughed and pounded Jethro on the back.

She fisted her hand and punched him in the nose. Blood splattered onto her bodice.

“How about you unhand the lady and put her down before she kills you?” A male’s command hung in the air like icicles on a roof’s edge.

Jethro shook her again.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said put the lady down.”

Sophie’s head whipped around to locate the man who’d spoken in her defense not once but twice. Cam’s face was a dark mask of fury. He slowly set his son on the porch and laid his purchases at the child’s feet, his gaze never once leaving Jethro’s face. When he straightened and stepped toward the dirty man, her captor set her down.

“Since when did you become her protector?”

“No gentleman enjoys seeing a lady mistreated.”

Jethro snorted and wiped at the blood trickling from his nose with the back of his hand. “That hellcat ain’t no lady.”

She drew a fist again. “I’m tired of your mealy-mouthed insults, you yellow-livered fool.”

A muscled arm in a blue shirt banded around her waist, pulling her away from Jethro. “Would you mind taking care of my son while Jethro and I discuss this?” His voice, deep and sensual, sent ripples of awareness through her.

She’d forgotten about her torn skirts and glanced down to where his hand rested against her petticoats. His hand splayed wide as if he had the right to touch her undergarments.
Maybe I punched the wrong man.

Someone tugged on her skirt. When she glanced down, the little boy—Eli, his father had called him—held up his arms in a silent request for her to pick him up. When she did, he burrowed his head in the crook of her neck and fingered the collar of her dress.

“Mine.”

She ran a hand up his narrow back and enjoyed the feel of the child in her embrace. Sensing the child’s father and Jethro were about to come to blows, she stepped back into the mercantile to shield him from the violence. “We’ll shop for a spell, Eli.” She hurried to the counter and asked Mr. Thatcher for Dora’s stockings. She set Eli on the counter while she withdrew her boss’s money from her reticule.

She tried her best to ignore the loud cursing outside. The sound of flesh smacking flesh made her jump. “I abhor violence.”

The store owner eyed her torn clothes, her blood-splattered bodice and swollen knuckles. His face reddened. Sophie gave him her schoolteacher glare, and he turned to wrap her purchase in brown paper.

Cam’s presence made itself known before he spoke. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Heat stampeded through her body while chills raised gooseflesh on her arms. A warm hand went to the small of her back, and she inhaled a gasp. Her gaze swept to his reddened, swollen eye and split lip. “Oh, Mr. McBride, all because of me? That was so unnecessary.” She tsked and pulled a handkerchief from her reticule to dab blood from his lip.

“Mine,” Eli stated to his father.

“Yes, she is.”

Her eyes widened as her gaze rose from his split lip to his blue eyes and determined expression. Her ears buzzed and her world tilted.

Chapter Five

She’d lost her mind.

Why else would she be in this unthinkable predicament?

Sophie cast a look out of the corner of her eye to the man sitting beside her on the buckboard jostling over the rutted roads. Correction: Make that her husband. He’d barely spoken a word to her since he’d choked out “I do” to the parson. Her stomach pitched and rolled along with the wagon.
Saints preserve me, I’ve married a complete stranger.

The child on her lap kept fingering the material of her discarded skirt and, from time to time, repeated the same word: “Mine.”

I’ve married a complete stranger with an imbecile for a child.
She kissed the boy’s blond curls and rubbed her cheek across the softness of his tresses. Maternal protectiveness sparked a gentle warmth within her heart.
My child, now.

By the shocked expression on Cam’s face, she wasn’t the only one astonished by their sudden union. Yet hadn’t he stated his case for the marriage quite well over a meal at the Pinewood Cafe? He would have someone to raise his boy and take care of the house. His son would have a mother. And she would have a home and a man to protect her. It all seemed so simple at the time.
I lost my mind. One look into those earnest blue eyes of his, and I lost my mind.

Her husband—she rolled her eyes heavenward at the thought—had talked to Madam Dora, explaining why he was taking away her scrub lady on such short notice. After which he hurried off to arrange the impromptu wedding with the parson.

For the first time since Sophie arrived in Deadwood, someone drew a bath for
her
. Prostitutes’ hands soaped and scrubbed her skin and hair while she blushed so hotly she was afraid her cheeks would burst into flames. She wasn’t used to being touched in such an intimate way.

Soiled doves braided her wet hair and pinned it into a chignon at the nape of her neck. She put on a linsey-woolsey dark blue skirt and matching shirtwaist, a plain outfit she’d worn to teach school several months ago. Dora gave her new stockings and red garters to hold them up, laughing and claiming Cam would go wild at the sight.

Her gaze slid toward her new husband, and her eyes narrowed. And just how did Dora know about her husband’s preferences? In fact, thinking back, Cam seemed very familiar with both Madam Dora and Calamity Jane. Annoyance bubbled. Was he a regular customer at Dora’s house of sin? Had she married another man with loose principles? It didn’t bear thinking about.

The ceremony held in the church was, no doubt, one of a kind, even for this lawless part of the country. Madam Dora stood up for her and Calamity Jane stood up for Cam.
God help me, I got married with a madam for a maid of honor and a woman dressed like a gent for a best man, while a chorus of soiled doves cried in the background. ’Twas a wonder God didn’t strike us all dead.

Her fingers rubbed over the smooth gold band on her ring finger. She hadn’t expected such an extravagance from her new husband. Nor had she expected the power of his kiss. When the parson told Cam he could kiss his bride, she hadn’t expected soft firm lips to caress hers in such a slow exploration. Something hot coiled low in her belly, making her knees turn to mush, and she grasped his shirt so she wouldn’t crumple on the floor.
I knew him all of three hours before I joined him in holy matrimony. What in the name of heaven was I thinking?
Her fingers clasped so tightly on her lap they pained her.

Cam gazed at her in the waning light. “Relax. I’ll be a good husband. There’s no need to look as if you’re about to be hung.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry. It just all happened so fast. There was no period of courtship for us to become acquainted at all.”

“I rarely come to town, so having a traditional courtship was out of the question. I’m a God-fearing man, Sophie Catherine. I’ll never strike you. I’ll do my best to take care of you.”

She had to admit he’d been generous at the stores they visited after the ceremony. First thing he did was take her to Bailey and Sons, where he bought her two pairs of shoes. Without so much as a blush, he told the dressmaker at another store to provide his wife with intimate garments and night clothes.

He slid a hand down her ramrod straight back. “I promise you, no one like Jasper Rhinehardt will ever disrespect you again. If anyone does, they will rue the day they went against Cam McBride’s wife.”

“Why?” She shifted on the hard seat to regard him. “Why did you marry me? You…you don’t know anything about me.”

“Wanna bet?” His solemn face turned toward her. “I knew you were twenty-six, a year older than me. I knew you used to teach school back in Pennsylvania and that you married a man named Tommy, who did something wrong. I knew you were alone in the world and hankering for your freedom.”

“How?” Had she married a wizard who could read minds or look into the past?

“What I didn’t know was your name—Sophie Catherine Flannigan.”

How did he know so much about her? Granted, she had to give her full name to the preacher for the ceremony. The white-haired man had also asked about any previous marriages, and both stated their first spouses died. But how did he know her age, that she’d taught school in Pennsylvania, and the rest of her sordid tale?

“I know something else about you, too.”

Her stomach tensed. Did he know she was on the run? “What?”

“You write letters to the four winds and tie them to tumbleweeds.”

Oh no.
She couldn’t believe it. He’d found her letters. She was mortified. “Those scribbled feelings weren’t meant for human eyes.” They were merely her way of voicing her loneliness and fears. She had no one to listen to her many worries. No one who cared.

“I gave Eli the strips of cloth to play with, which is why he laid claim to the dress you wore earlier. In his little mind, he thought the material belonged to him.”

Well that explained the child’s absurd behavior. Still, this man had no right. “You shouldn’t have read my letters. They weren’t for you.” The boy turned in her lap and snuggled as if he needed a gentle touch.

Deepening shadows played across her husband’s stern features. “Those tumbleweeds blew onto my land. That made them mine.”

When his leg rested against hers, she ignored the feelings his touch set off in her belly. She huffed out a breath and straightened her shoulders. “Well, they weren’t addressed to you. I still say you had no business reading them. And just how did you know I was in Deadwood, then?”