Two Brothers (20 page)

It was in that instant of her greatest despair that she heard the blessed sound of shattering glass, heard her name shouted. Shay. The voice belonged to Shay.

“Here!” she cried out, and the word seemed to scrape her throat raw, like the rusty bristles of a steel brush. “Over here!”

He was a figure, a shape and nothing more, moving through the shifting smoke; she saw his hair, saw that he wore a bandanna over his nose and mouth, bandit-style. He took Dorrie’s arm in one hand and Aislinn’s in the other, and headed back through the fire. Aislinn felt herself being lifted, was aware of hands grasping her from outside the window casing. Gloried in the cool, soothing sanction of fresh air.

Someone—Eugenie, she realized after a moment—wrapped her in a blanket; she had not known her clothes
were smoldering until then. “Shay—” she gasped, raising her head, looking for him. All she could see was legs and boots and tall grass.

“There’s Miss Dorrie out safe,” Eugenie said. Then she smiled. “And here’s Shamus. He’s a mite singed, but pretty as ever.”

He was beside Aislinn in a moment, Shay was, bending over her, sooty as a chimney sweep. His blue eyes stood out vividly in his blackened face, still bruised and swollen from his ride behind that cowboy’s horse. “Are you all right?” he rasped, and from his bearing and his tone and the look of him, her answer was the most important thing in the world to him.

She nodded. It was hard to breathe, and she’d suffered a few minor burns, but she was going to be fine. She coughed and tried to sit up; he grinned and pressed her gently back down.

“Hold it,” he said. “Now you get to be the patient, and I’ll be giving the orders. You just lie there a minute, until you catch your breath.”

Tears smarted in her eyes, happy ones. She was alive, and so were all her dreams. “How did you know?”

“One of my deputies went over to the store to get a bag of tobacco and found it locked up tight, right in the middle of the day. When he told me that, I knew something had to be wrong, because Cornelia won’t miss a chance to make a nickel if she can help it. So I came over here, and found smoke billowing out from under the porch.”

“But you knew Dorrie and I were downstairs.”

“That was a guess. Cornelia was sitting on the front porch, rocking in Mama’s old chair and smiling like she’d misplaced her wits. I left her for Tristan to tend to and ran inside, yelling and looking in every room in the house. By that time, there was smoke coming up between the floorboards, and the paint was blistering on the walls. When I got to the kitchen, I saw that the cellar door was
bolted, and that was all I needed to know. I tried to get to you that way, but the stairs were gone, so I went outside and broke out that window.”

She closed her eyes, absorbing all those images, reveling in the blessed rhythm of her own heartbeat and the rising and falling of her chest as she drew in breath after delicious breath. Then, when she could delay it no longer, she told him what Dorrie had shown her.

“The stagecoach money is in there,” she said slowly. “Cornelia put Billy up to the robbery and the killing. She was afraid you would want the house and the store, since you were going to be married.”

Shay thrust a hand through his hair and swore. Only then did Aislinn become aware of the commotion all around them, of the townspeople battling the fire.

“I’m sorry,” Aislinn said. She found his other hand, clasped it tightly in her own.

He leaned down, kissed her lightly. “You’re here,” he said. “I’m here. That’s enough. I love you, Aislinn. I want to marry you.”

She laughed.

“That’s funny?” He tried to look injured, but his blue eyes were dancing.

“No,” she said. “I’m just happy, that’s all. I thought I was going to have to propose to you, and you would never have let me hear the end of it.”

His grin was bright and broad. “Well? Is that a ‘yes’?”

Aislinn nodded. “It is indeed,” she answered.

He frowned. “I’m not going to turn in my badge,” he warned. “That’s got to be understood, right up front.”

“I understand,” Aislinn said, with a little sigh. She was ready to sit up then, and that time he didn’t try to stop her. The house fire seemed to be out, and she immediately caught sight of Dorrie, blackened and singed like Shay, but sitting under a tree, calmly sipping water from a ladle held by Liza Sue. The rest of Eugenie’s girls were there, too, helping out in various ways.

Shay curved a finger under her chin and brought her back to face him. “I have things to do,” he said. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

She wished they were alone, so she could put her arms around his neck and kiss him. Then she decided the circumstances were special, given that both of them had nearly died, and kissed him anyway. He tarried until Tristan came along and reminded him that there were prisoners at the jail and the judge’s killers were still out there somewhere, waiting to be caught.

Cornelia was taken to the doctor’s office, being in some kind of trancelike state. Eugenie took charge of both Dorrie and Aislinn, squiring them over to the hotel and installing them each in a room of their own. Dorrie was overwrought, Liza Sue reported later on, and had been given a sedative and put to bed. Aislinn, having come so near to death, felt exuberantly, exultantly alive, full of hunger and happiness.

She took a bath in tepid water, soaking away the smell of smoke, and shampooed her hair with lavender soap. She ate ravenously from the tray of cold chicken, bread and spiced pears Cook sent up from the kitchen, chattering while Liza Sue towel-dried and then combed her hair. Liza Sue smiled as she listened and wound the still-damp tresses into the customary plait.

A black skirt and pristine white shirtwaist were brought from the general store, a spontaneous gift from Tristan, and they were a perfect fit. Aislinn was standing in front of the mirror, imagining herself as a bride, when the blast came, rattling the window, shaking the walls, causing the very floor to tremble beneath her feet.

Chapter 10

T
HE EXPLOSION SPLINTERED THE WHOLE FAÇADE
of the jailhouse, bellying the windows outward, like the sails of a ship, before they shattered, sending the deputies posted by the door hurtling into the road in a shower of clapboard and glass. Horses from one end of Main Street to the other pranced and whinnied and pulled at their tethers, eyes rolling, while a cloud of smoke rose against an otherwise placid blue sky.

Shay saw the whole thing from the window of the hotel dining room, where he and Tristan were seated across from each other, eating the early lunch Eugenie had insisted they accept.

“Shit,” Shay cursed, knocking his chair over backward in his haste to leave the table.

“I hope you’ve got the back door covered,” Tristan put in, rising with a little more grace and somehow managing to get to the sidewalk before Shay did.

The deputies were just picking themselves up, with a little help from cautious bystanders, as Shay ran past them. One had a splinter the size of an ax handle embedded in his shoulder, but they were standing upright and breathing. For the moment, that was all that concerned him.

From behind the jail, he heard the sounds of retreating horses. He yelled for someone to fetch his gelding from the livery stable and picked his way into the ruined building, moving carefully through the wreckage toward the cell at the rear. He’d expected the prisoners to be gone, and was startled to find the rancher kneeling among the debris, his bandaged head bent, clasping Billy’s limp body in his arms. They were both covered in mortar dust, which gave them a peculiar aspect, like ghosts, or statues come partway to life.

“He’s gone,” Kyle said, disbelieving.

Shay knew at a glance that the rancher was right; his son had perished in the blast that was probably intended to set them both free. “I’m sorry about that,” he said, and he meant it.

Kyle was silent for a long time. Then, as Shay stepped over the fallen bars of the cell and began tossing aside beams and boards, he spoke again. “He would have hanged.”

“Yes,” Shay agreed quietly. “Did you order that circuit judge killed?”

The rancher stroked the boy’s head, which lay back over his arm at an angle that suggested a broken neck. “No,” he said, and Shay believed him. People didn’t usually lie in circumstances like these. “I reckon the boys thought that’s what I’d want, though.” Somberly, he surveyed the damage around them, then lowered his gaze to Billy’s face. “They meant to help. All the same, I’ll cut their fool livers out if I ever catch up to them.”

Tristan was making his way toward the center of destruction, pistol drawn, as were several other men, the doctor among them. Reluctantly, the aging rancher surrendered his son’s body to them, let Shay help him to his feet after they walked away.

“Why?” Shay asked quietly.

Kyle didn’t pretend not to understand what he was asking. He stood proudly, a shorn Samson in the ruins of
the temple, his big, meaty hands loose at his sides, his head encircled in a dirty bandage. “I didn’t know about the stagecoach until after it was all over,” he said. “Then I wanted to protect Billy.”

“And Cornelia?” He knew the truth, had learned it from Aislinn, but he wanted Kyle to confirm the tale of his own accord.

The rancher smiled humorlessly. “She put him up to it, looking to drive you away from Prominence once and for all. You didn’t think Billy had the imagination to come up with a scheme like that on his own, did you?”

Shay shook his head. He would form a posse and ride after the Powder Creek men, of course, but essentially the case was settled. He felt no triumph, just an overwhelming sense of sadness and loss and, yes, pity. Pity for Billy, who’d done what he had out of stupidity, mostly, and a need to impress the world with his manhood; for the old man, whose actions, though undeniably wrong, were also understandable. He even felt a little sorry for Cornelia, whose reasons were the cruelest, coldest and most pointless of all—selfishness, jealousy, fear.

Tristan laid a hand to his shoulder. “You all right?” he asked quietly, as two members of the town council took William Kyle into custody. The rancher would be locked up in a storeroom at the livery stable until they could figure out what to do with him.

Shay nodded and raised his eyes to see Aislinn standing at the edge of all those fragments of boards and bricks, her hands clasped in front of her, her face anxious. He moved toward her.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Billy’s dead, though. And from the looks of Kyle, he won’t last long enough to stand trial.” He glanced back over one shoulder, saw Tristan helping some of the other men clear away the heaviest beams. “It’s been a hell of a day, hasn’t it?”

She slipped her arm through his. “What now?”

“I’ll wire every marshal and sheriff I can think of to look out for O’Sullivan and the others, but by now they’ve scattered in every direction.”

Aislinn’s face was translucent with hope. “You aren’t going after them?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I imagine the mayor and the town council will have an opinion on that. Right now, I’ve got to find out what kind of shape Cornelia’s in, and Dorrie, too.”

“Eugenie said the house wasn’t too badly damaged,” she told him, still holding his arm as he started in the direction of the doctor’s office, which was down near the Yellow Garter. He recalled the bucket brigade that had formed while he was getting Aislinn and Dorrie out of the cellar. “Tristan recovered his money, too. It was just a little scorched.”

Shay managed a crooked smile. “He didn’t mention that. But, then, things have been a little wild around here this morning.”

Entering the doctor’s office, they were met with a disconcerting sight. Billy Kyle’s body lay uncovered on a table, the glazed and lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling, while Cornelia occupied a chair next to the wall. Her fists were clasped in her lap and she rocked back and forth, as though filled with energy she could not contain, but when her gaze rose to meet Shay’s, he knew she was as sane as anybody.

She’d known full well what she was doing when she arranged Grace’s death, the deaths of the others aboard that stagecoach. And when she’d tried to kill Dorrie and Aislinn, too.

“I didn’t want your goddamned money,” he said. “Or your house or your general store.”

Cornelia averted her head, but there was no remorse in her, he knew that. She regretted being caught, that was all. If it served her, she’d do all the same things over again, right down to shutting two human beings, one of
them her own sister, up in a burning cellar. Fearing the emotions that rose up in him, Shay turned blindly away and went outside, where he gasped for fresh air.

“What will happen to her, Shay?” Aislinn asked, when he’d had some time to collect himself. “What will happen to Dorrie?”

“I don’t know about Cornelia,” he answered presently, without meeting her gaze. “Dorrie will probably stay on in the house and run the store. At least, I hope she will. She’s really got nowhere else to go.”

He touched Aislinn’s face with the back of his hand. “You haven’t changed your mind, have you? About marrying me, I mean?”