An Unlikely Lady (20 page)

“Or what, you'll gag me as well?”

“Don't tempt me.”

“Jesse, Jesse . . . I'd have thought a man as bright as you could come up with more creative ways to quiet a woman.”

The little minx. He turned his attention to the open paper but couldn't make heads nor tails of the articles, and it was her fault. She consumed his every thought. It was more than her beauty,
more than her sensuality—it was the damned mystery of her. A puzzle he couldn't solve by seduction or coercion.

Was she in trouble? Running from someone? No, she'd not have stayed so long in Last Hope if that were the case. Running
to
someone? That made more sense. Her brother? There was something off-kilter there. She had a map, a name. But maybe Mallory didn't exist. No, he'd heard the name before. Maybe Mallory wasn't a brother, but a lover . . .

Why couldn't she just trust him? If she would just tell him, he could help her. He had friends. Sources.

Damn, but he wished he could get his mind off the whole mess. It reminded him too much of the old days he wanted to leave behind: that zeal for answers, that unquenchable thirst for solving riddles. The game itself. The more he learned, the more he wanted to know.

And it was driving him insane.

With a frustrated sigh, Jesse folded the paper and let his head fall back against the seat. With luck he'd learn something when they got to New Mexico. He'd sent the report to McParland, along with an inquiry into George Mallory. Then he could get this cursed curiosity out of his system.

The clack of the tracks had a lulling effect, and soon Jesse's eyes drifted shut. The darkness
behind his lids slowly became illuminated by the mellow glow of crystal chandeliers. A lovely woman with golden hair and changeling eyes materialized, pacing a room with marbled floors and statuettes. “Something's wrong, Jesse,” his mother said. “He's never been away this long.”

“No letter yet?”

“Not a one. No one has heard a whisper from him since he left. Jesse, where could he be?”

At seventeen, Jesse thought he had all the answers, but he didn't have an answer for this one. His father often disappeared for months on end on business, but this time even
he
had begun to worry. It just wasn't like Elliot Randolph to disappear for almost a year without a word. “Let me ask around, Mother. Someone must know something.”

It had started with an innocent inquiry at the bank where Elliot Randolph kept an account. Jesse didn't want anyone knowing they hadn't heard from his father, for it left his mother vulnerable to scandal. So he'd pretended to withdraw a portion of funds at his father's request.

And discovered that money had been transferred from one account to another on a regular basis for the last six months. Fearing his father had met with foul play, Jesse embarked on a search that took him from their elegant Chicago home to war-torn Tennessee.

Four months later, he found himself standing at the gates of a magnificent plantation home outside Memphis. He could hardly believe the rumors that Elliot Randolph owned the slave-tilled fields and ten-columned antebellum house, for his father vigorously protested against slavery and all it stood for. Had, in fact, campaigned to free them.

That day, Jesse learned the true meaning of deception.

“I'm here to see Elliot Randolph,” he told the butler who answered the door.

“Massah Randolph is away on business, suh.”

“Who's at the doh-ah, Samuel?” came a sweet inquiry from inside.

“A gen'lman to see the massah, Missus Randolph,” the butler answered, stepping aside to make way for a woman in her late thirties, with flame-red hair and vivid green eyes.

“May I help you, young man?”

The instant he looked at her face, he knew what his father had done, and the knowledge made him sick to his stomach.

Jesse swallowed the knot of dread in throat. “I need to speak to Elliot Randolph.”

“As Samuel told you, he is away on business. Perhaps I can be of some assistance?”

He is away on business.
It was the same line he'd been selling to his mother for almost twenty years.

It took only a moment for Jesse to recover enough from the shock to realize that he could not confront his father with his suspicions; he needed to arm himself with facts. “Yes, ma'am, I believe you can. I'm a reporter for the
Chronicle
and I'm doing an article on Mr. Randolph, and I'd like to ask you a few questions . . .”

He'd returned to Chicago after that “interview” to find Elliot Randolph sitting at the breakfast table as if the world hadn't just crumbled. Jesse remembered doubling up his fist and punching his father, then walking away, leaving the man he'd loved and respected more than anyone to explain to his Northern wife how he could have spent the last twenty years also married to her Southern sister.

“Jesse? Jesse, wake up.”

He came awake with a start and found Honesty staring at him with concern. For a moment he struggled with an insane urge to throw himself against her, to lose himself in those soft brown eyes and comforting arms, to forget the memory of his father's betrayal and the launching of his sleuthing career.

“Are you all right?”

He straightened abruptly. “Of course I am.” He glanced past her shoulder, out the soot-blackened window and realized the train no longer clacked down the rails. “Why are we stopped?”

“We're at the station.”

“It's about damned time.” He got to his feet and grabbed their bags from the compartment above their heads. “Let's see if we can find this brother of yours, shall we?”

He performed at a mission church?

Jesse studied the adobe buildings set on the dry plateau near the Apache Indian Reservation. Chickens pecked the ground near a stone well, a wagon with half its moorings shredded and a busted axle leaned precariously against an empty paddock, and two closed shutters on the steepled chapel were missing slats.

“The place looks deserted. Are you sure your brother was heading here?”

“I think so. I remember seeing it on the map.”

“Let me see that thing again.”

She reached into her pack and pulled the folded paper from the mason jar. Sure enough, there was a star pencilled in near the Texas border with the words “Sisters of Charity” Mission pencilled in below.

Still, this whole scenario had Jesse's nose itching something fierce.

“Maybe everyone is at Mass,” Honesty suggested.

At ten o'clock on a weekday morning? “Maybe. Stay close.” Jesse absently tucked the map into his vest pocket and gave Gemini a
nudge with his heels. Honesty did as ordered, following behind on the roan gelding they'd picked up in Trinidad.

They reached the chapel and Jesse strained to hear voices that would tell him where everyone had gone to, but not a sound came from within. He drew his Colt and dismounted. “Wait here,” he told Honesty, then sidestepped to the double doors, scattering a few hens. Obviously someone had been feeding them, for grain was strewn on the ground.

The chapel turned out empty, as did the commissary and the mess hall. But there was bread dough rising in the kitchen, so someone had been here recently. Figuring the occupants had probably gone to preach to the savages, Jesse returned to where he'd left Honesty, only to find her horse standing riderless near the dilapidated wagon and the door to the chapel ajar.

Sighing, Jesse entered the building. Hadn't anyone ever taught that girl caution? His temper started to climb when a search of the chapel didn't turn her up. Not in or under any of the hard wooden pews, not behind the black curtain of the confessional, or on the platform where the pulpit reined. A flash of her racing away from Last Hope with the Treat brothers in hot pursuit, then another of her stuck in the middle of a frigid creek, had his pulse picking
up and the coppery taste of fear growing on his tongue.

Just as he turned to head out and begin a search of the grounds, he caught sight of a white granite statue near a side doorway, and the unmistakable curve of a calico clad bottom stuck high in the air. “Honesty?”

She jumped a foot in the air and smacked her head against the under edge of the statue. “Good Lord, Jesse, don't sneak up on me like that!”

“Let that be a lesson to you. What if I'd been one of the Treat brothers?”

“Point taken,” she said, rubbing her head. “Did you find anyone?”

“No, but I expect they'll be back soon. What are you doing down there?”

“Down here?” She looked at the floor, then at the statue. “I was uhm . . . admiring the craftsmanship. The detail is amazing, don't you think? The stones seem to flow all the way down the base!”

Jesse's brows dipped into a scowl. He didn't see anything remarkable about the craftsmanship of a chipped-granite Jesus standing on a mountain with his hands raised to the heavens. In fact, the whole thing reeked of an amateur.

“I saw a tub in the pantry,” he said. “If you want to take a bath, you might as well do it
now, because you won't get another chance for a while.”

“No, you go ahead,” she said, picking herself up off the floor. “I think I'll go to the kitchen and see what I can scrounge up to eat.”

“Again? We just ate a couple hours ago.”

“Tell that to my stomach.”

He watched her warily. Honesty did nothing without an ulterior motive; what was she up to now? Did he dare leave her alone?

As if sensing his suspicion, she rolled her eyes and declared, “Go take your bath, Jesse. I'm not going anywhere. I'll be right there when you get finished.”

Yeah, right.
But other than following her around like a puppy, he could think of no earthly reason why they had to spend every waking minute together. They weren't in any apparent danger, nor would anyone think to look for either of them here.

Besides, what kind of trouble could she possibly get into at a mission?

H
e should have been more worried about himself.

Thirty minutes after their conversation, with a rolled cigarette clamped between his teeth, a bar of soap clasped in his hand, and his clothes piled neatly beside the well, Jesse climbed into the wooden barrel he'd set up in the middle of the grounds. He knew he was leaving himself vulnerable by bathing out in the open, but his revolver was nearby and at least no one could catch him unawares.

He recoiled at the first contact of cold water against his skin and gave himself a moment to adjust before allowing the shallow tub to swallow his frame. As he slid the soap up his arm, his thoughts turned back to another tub, an
other bath. For a moment he wished Honesty were here. He sure could use a bit of her “obliging” about now. Between the bone-jarring train ride and a few days of steady travel on horseback, his muscles were knotted so tight that he'd need a year to unwind.

But if Honesty remained true to nature, he had about ten minutes before he'd have to go searching for her again.

He shook his head with mild exasperation. What was he going to do with the contrary bit of baggage? Although he had to admit, she did add a certain spice to his humdrum days, a spark to dreary nights . . .

“You stay in there much longer, your skin will fall off.”

He twisted his head and peered at the woman strolling toward him, holding what looked a like a chicken leg. “I see you found something to gnaw on.”

“A whole basket of fried chicken in the ice box.” She propped herself against the well, crossed her feet at the ankles, and pulled a piece of meat from the bone with her fingers.

Jesse closed his eyes, knowing he couldn't endure the sight of her putting the meat into her mouth without his imagination running rampant.

“How long will it take us to get to Texas from here?”

“In a hurry to get rid of me?”

Honesty wasn't sure how to answer that. Part of her was still so furious for the way he'd treated her in La Veta that she could spit; another part, relished the fact that he'd cared enough to keep her close—in his own barbaric way. That part also remembered his kinder moments of concern and tenderness, and the thought of continuing her search without him left a hollow, achy sensation in her heart. “I just assumed you would be eager to return to whatever it is you do.”

He lifted his arm and the sight of water streaming from the bronzed skin made her pause with the food midway to her mouth. Again she was struck by the sheer perfection of him. Well, except for the scars: one near his shoulder blade, one on his chest, and if she remembered correctly, one high on his thigh—which was, regretfully, now hidden beneath the water. It relieved her that he was as flawed and vulnerable as the rest of the human race.

Leaning forward, she couldn't resist tracing the puckered pink scar on his chest. “How did you get this?”

At her touch, his skin tightened, his muscles bunched, and the nipple below her finger pebbled. “I told you—”

“I know. You got in a fight with a Winchester and lost.” She searched his eyes, which had
turned from light aqua to deep green. “But who was at the stock end of it?”

His Adam's apple slid down his throat and he seemed unnecessarily engrossed in scrubbing his arm. “A friend.”

“Remind me to steer clear of your friends.”

“He saved my life. I'd have died if he hadn't given the impression of killing me.”

“How on earth did you get into a situation that called for you to take such a foolhardy risk?”

“If you must know, I trusted a woman with something very valuable and she betrayed me.”

Honesty would have traded her last pair of bloomers to know who the woman was and what was so valuable that it had almost gotten Jesse killed, but she didn't dare ask. Jesse might start demanding answers of his own.

“Now it's your turn.”

“My turn?”