Two Brothers (14 page)

Mr. Kyle must have struck the counter with his fist, or even the butt of his pistol, for there came a sharp and sudden sound that made Aislinn jump and catch her breath. She pressed a much-coveted leather-bound copy of
The Lady of the Lake
to her heart, as if to keep that organ from bursting through her ribs in fright.

“Do you know what he’s done, that brother of yours?”

Cornelia gave a sniff. “He’s no relation of mine.”

Afraid to breathe, let alone move, Aislinn was nonetheless possessed of such a sense of urgency that she took the risk of peering around one of the barrels. Mr. Kyle was leaning halfway over the counter, and he looked as though he might grab Cornelia by the hair.

“Shamus took him in, gave him a name, raised him as a son. As far as the law’s concerned, he’s as much your brother as if he’d been born into the family. If you know what’s good for you, Miss McQuillan, you’ll have a change of heart where young Shay is concerned. You’ll press him to your bosom, forgive him for who he is and for every wayward action he’s ever taken in his miserable life, and then you’ll make him see reason and let Billy go before there’s more killing than you can even imagine!”

Aislinn bit her lower lip and sat tight, waiting. She didn’t know Shay well—there hadn’t been time for that—but she would have wagered her small savings and all her prospects, such as they were, that nobody, least of
all Cornelia, could turn the marshal from the course he’d set.

“He’s not stupid,” Cornelia admitted, in a grudging whisper. “He knows I have no use for him, and he’d see right through any attempt I made to mend fences at this late date!”

Kyle cupped Cornelia’s chin in one hand, but the gesture was anything but tender. “Be persuasive,” he said, with a softness that made Aislinn shiver. Then he released Cornelia with an angry flick of his powerful wrist, turned and walked away, leaving her staring mutely after him. Fear, fury and helpless frustration played in her face.

Aislinn ducked behind the barrels just in time to see Dorrie through the window, hurrying along with a bundle in her arms. Aislinn closed her eyes for a moment, offering a silent prayer that her friend would not reveal her presence by speaking to her or bringing up the subject of her hiring with Cornelia.

She did not fully understand the exchange between Cornelia and Mr. Kyle, but she was well aware that it was important. As soon as she was finished with her day’s work, she would find Shay and tell him what had been said; it was up to him to decide what to do with the information, if anything.

Dorrie paused in front of the window, looked straight into Aislinn’s eyes and winked. Then she waggled an envelope—a letter from the imprisoned Leander, no doubt—in one hand and went on by.

Aislinn held her breath again, awaiting discovery, but apparently Cornelia had not seen the exchange. Probably ten minutes had passed before Aislinn got up the courage to look around the nail barrel again, and when she did, she saw that the object of her dread was nowhere in sight.

Hastily, Aislinn got to her feet and took herself outside, where she stood on the wooden sidewalk, wondering what to do. She saw Shay come out of his office, sporting
a gunbelt and an expression so grim that even the distance and the brim of his hat didn’t hide it, and knew instantly that the time wasn’t right for reporting that Mr. Kyle had practically ordered Cornelia to find a way into his good graces and talk him into letting Billy out of jail. She wasn’t afraid of him—she knew he’d never hurt her, at least not physically—but he was obviously not in a receptive mood.

He stopped a man passing by, and they talked, though she was too far away to hear what was said. The man listened intently, then nodded and went inside the marshal’s office, leaving the door open behind him. Shay looked up and down the street, then headed toward the livery stable. Aislinn was still standing in exactly the same spot, as undecided as ever, when he came out again, leading his horse.

If Shay had seen her, he’d given no indication. He swung up into the saddle and reined the gelding around. In the next moment, it seemed, he was beside her, looking down into her face.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked.

It was an improper question, but Aislinn had already let him kiss her in the dark, thrown away a perfectly good job, worn a prostitute’s dress in public, marched into the Yellow Garter Saloon and spent a good part of the night in jail. Her reputation was beyond mending, so there was no sense in fussing over a point of etiquette. “Did you?” she countered, shading her eyes with one hand as she gazed up at him.

The semblance of a grin touched his mouth. “No, ma’am,” he said.

She wanted in the worst way to ask where he was going—speaking of improper questions—but she managed to hold her tongue. She could admit to herself, if not to him, that he was one of the reasons she didn’t want to leave Prominence.

He leaned forward slightly, resting one arm across the
pommel of his saddle. His eyes might have been windows on the sky itself, they were so blue. “How have you taken to storekeeping?”

The memory of Mr. Kyle’s disturbing visit struck her with a visceral impact. “I’m sure I’ll be very good at it in a day or so,” she answered, because if there was one thing in the world she was sure of, it was her own ability to master almost any job. It was in the midst of that thought that she saw the marshal’s gaze move back over her shoulder and fix on someone standing behind her.

After the briefest hesitation, he tugged at the brim of his hat. “Cornelia,” he said, by way of a greeting.

“Shamus,” Cornelia affirmed, in slightly brittle tones. “You and I must try to find common ground. Mama and Papa would be sorely grieved by our estrangement. Perhaps you might come to supper this evening?”

Shay’s eyes narrowed for a moment; his surprise and suspicion were clearly visible. Then, bright as lightning on a dark day, and just as deadly, the grin flashed. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” he answered.

Chapter 7

S
HAY AND TRISTAN SAT FACING EACH OTHER
, their horses dancing skittishly, in the midst of a copse of birch trees, a hundred yards off the road. They would be visible to any passerby who took the trouble to look, but Shay didn’t reckon that his brother cared about that any more than he did.

“It was Billy Kyle who robbed and killed those people,” Shay said, bending to pat the gelding’s neck.

Tristan leaned forward to rest one arm across the pommel of his saddle. His hat was pulled down low to protect his eyes from the glare of the midday sun in the same way as Shay’s, and their clothes, while not exactly alike, were similar enough that they might have purchased them together. “That rancher’s kid?”

Shay didn’t bother to answer or even nod. The question, he knew, had been rhetorical.

“Well, it makes sense, I suppose. But why would a rich man’s son take a chance like that? He’ll hang for sure if he’s convicted, and it’s a rare jury that will countenance the murder of women.”

Shay resettled his hat, but it still ended up at precisely the same angle as Tristan’s. No need of mirrors; he could probably shave without cutting himself just by looking at
his brother’s face, and come out dapper as any dude. “If he admits what he did, or I find solid proof, I might not wait for a jury.”

Tristan controlled his agitated horse with an expert, barely perceptible motion of the reins, which lay lightly in his left hand. “That wouldn’t be the right thing to do,” he said. “Still, it would be easy to forgive. All the same, you’re not taking justice into your own hands if I have anything to say about it.”

“You don’t.”

“I figure different,” Tristan said calmly. “That was my stagecoach, my money.” Maybe he’d intended to let that information slip, and maybe it had gotten past him in an unguarded moment. Either way, it was one hell of an announcement.

Shay gave a low whistle, and both horses pricked up their ears, did some sidestepping, then settled down again. “Why, brother, I believe you lied to me. You said you worked for the man who owned the line.”

Tristan’s grin was mildly cocky. “I do. I’ve always worked harder for myself than for anybody else, except maybe my pa, when I was still at home on the ranch.” The sparkle faded from his eyes and his mouth took on a somber shape. Therein lay a tale begging to be told, Shay surmised, but it wasn’t the time to dig for it. Tristan would talk about his adoptive family when and if he felt the need to do so.

As if in afterthought, he turned, opened one of his saddlebags, pulled out a small book bound in a tattered cloth cover and held it out to Shay. “Here. This will tell you a little something about our folks, the Killigrews. I’ve read it through a hundred times, so you can keep it if you want.”

Looking down at that little, dog-eared volume, lying where Tristan had placed it on the palm of his hand, Shay dealt with separate and violently conflicting urges. He wanted to devour it, page by page, word by word, but he
knew its contents, framed in careful feminine handwriting, had the power to change his most basic conceptions about himself and his life. His desire to fling the book into the brush or shove it back at Tristan was equally strong.

“A man needs to know who he is,” Tristan said quietly, and Shay realized how much he’d given away, sitting there staring at that cheap remembrance book as though it had teeth sharp enough to sunder sinew from bone.

“I know who I am,” Shay replied, but he wasn’t so sure that was the truth. Not the whole truth, in any case. In retrospect, he’d often felt an odd, disjointed loneliness, throughout his life, as if some vital part of himself had gone, leaving him bereft. Perhaps his deeper mind had held on to some primitive, wordless impression of Tristan’s presence, there in their young mother’s womb, and had remembered him after he was gone.

Tristan let his gaze wander, giving Shay a chance to catch hold of his dignity. “You ought to take Aislinn for a wife, settle down, raise up some kids. It’s time you had a place to lay your head, little brother. You might have passed most of your life right there in Prominence, but I do believe your spirit’s been roaming the earth for a long while, looking for a home.”

Shay cleared his throat, tucked his mother’s journal into his own saddlebag. He didn’t find the idea of setting up house with Aislinn all that hard to accept, as a matter of fact, but he had things to take care of first. “What are you, some kind of philosopher?”

Tristan chuckled. “No,” he answered. “I’m the other side of the same coin, though, and like I’ve said before, I know about you because I know about myself.”

That was more than Shay could claim, but then he hadn’t had the advantage of being aware that he had a twin brother somewhere. He needed time to think matters through, where Tristan was concerned, and there was a lot of sorting and assimilating yet to be done. “You got a woman tucked away someplace?” he asked, wanting to
know just how closely Tristan’s inclinations resembled his own, with regard to Aislinn anyway.

Tristan smiled coolly, and the moving shadows of the birch leaves dappled his face and frame. “No, and to answer the question you haven’t put to me, if you’re fool enough to spurn Miss Aislinn’s obvious affections, you can bet I’ll be courting her quicker than you can draw that forty-five of yours.”

Shay set his jaw. “That mean you plan to stay around here after we get Billy and the old man? What about your stagecoach line?”

“I like it here. In fact, I have my eye on a small spread south of the Kyle ranch—I was out there this morning, just before I ran into you. Good place to raise cattle, fine horseflesh and kids.” He let that pronouncement sink in for a few moments before adding, “I’ve got the line sold, for all practical intents and purposes, but the deal is contingent on my getting to the bottom of that robbery and murder. The new owners aren’t keen on taking over a business that can’t be insured.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The families of those murdered people had to be compensated,” Tristan explained, surveying the white, peeling trunks of the birches that stood around them like whispering sentries. “The insurance outfit settled with them and repaid the stolen money, but they won’t renew the company policies, for me or for the new owners, without some proof that justice has been done.”

Shay frowned. “Can they do that?”

Tristan reined his horse toward the road. “They’re doing it,” he replied, and there was a shrug in his voice. “We’re talking about a small fortune here, Shay. Insurance companies take a loss like that very seriously.”

Shay followed his brother, left with little choice since Tristan had started out first. “How many stagecoaches have you got, anyhow?” They weren’t so alike as some
folks might think, Shay reflected; Tristan had a company, while he’d never made more than thirty-five dollars a month wearing a badge.

“Seven,” Tristan answered, as lightly as if he were laying claim to so many matchsticks. “Not counting the one Kyle wrecked, that is.”

The scene of the disaster came back to Shay in instant and vivid detail, like some kind of mental flash flood, as it always did when somebody mentioned what had happened. Except this time there was a new and very troubling element: he couldn’t remember Grace’s face. “Did you inherit money or something?” he asked, to distract himself. “A man needs a serious stake to start up a business like yours.”