An Unlikely Lady (29 page)

Jesse stared at her with incredulity. Honesty? One of the long lost heiresses to the most profitable shipping company in the United States?

“You really are something. Rose was right about one thing—you do belong on the stage.”

“Listen to me, Jesse. When Robert caught us in the alley, my father told me that if we should become separated, to run as far away as I could, that I would know all there was to know soon enough. And later, the day he died, he told me to go back to where we began, that the truth is hidden in the flowing stones. I've been looking for it ever since. Don't you understand? This is what I've been searching for, what he wanted me to find! He
wanted
me to know!”

“Did you just see this as an opportunity, and take it? Or did you and McGuire concoct this from this beginning?”

“Look, I know it sounds crazy, but think about it. My fath—Deuce—never talked about my mother. He was always on the run, never stayed in any one place for long. And what about the people who have been after him all these years?”

He folded his arms across his chest. “You've
got this all worked out in that scheming little brain of yours, don't you?”

“You can't ignore the facts, Jesse.”

“Except for one small detail; those little girls are dead.”

“You're certain of that? Isn't it possible that people only
believe
they're dead? Don't you owe it to their family to consider the possibility?”

“Fine; we'll let them decide.”

“No, Jesse, not yet. The girls have been gone for sixteen years. If I'm wrong, all it would do is reopen old wounds. But if I'm right, it would be best to have proof. And I think that as soon as I find the flowing stones, I'll have it.”

Jesse stared at her long and hard. She looked so damn convincing. And she made so much sense it was frightening.

Hell, after all the lies she'd told, he wouldn't put it past her to grasp at any straw that might save her skin. No doubt McGuire was still alive somewhere and she was trying to lead him on a wild-goose chase to throw him off the scent.

The easiest way to verify her story about McGuire being dead was to make quick tracks to Salida and find the old hermit.

But if there was a single chance that she was telling the truth, the only way he'd ever know was to find this “proof” she sought.

“Help me, Jesse,” she implored, seeming to sense his weakening. “Help me find whatever
my father wanted me to find. If he did this terrible deed, then I must know. If he didn't, then neither of us have lost anything except time.”

Despite every rebelling instinct the prospect of the search had his blood humming in a way it hadn't in years. “All right, we'll go to the flowing stones. But if you pull one more stunt, if you flee from me one more time, if I find out you've been trying to pull one more con on me, you will regret the day you ever double-crossed me.”

The days passed in a blur of windswept prairie and stony silence. After taking a small detour back to Sage Flat to turn the unconscious Roscoe and Robert Treat over to the marshal, and for Jesse to send a wire to his superintendent updating him on the current development, they headed southeast.

They stopped at every point on Honesty's map, questioning every person they ran into, searching every rock formation and creek bed they came across. Jesse spoke to her rarely, and then his words were terse and forbidding. On the occasion when she did try to carry on a conversation with Jesse, he cut off her attempts to bridge the chasm between them with a stare so sharp she felt its sting. It seemed impossible to believe that the man who rode beside her was the same man who had brought her to the
highest bliss only days before. Honesty couldn't even think about those moments in his arms without regret piercing her heart.

Maybe she'd gotten what she deserved, going weak in the knees and dim in the head over a handsome face. How could she have been such a fool as to trust him?

From the moment she'd seen him riding up the empty street of a forgotten town, she'd known he posed a greater danger to her well-being than the most ruthless thief. Yet she'd let herself believe that he might be different. That he might be the one person in the world whom she could depend on and trust. Whom she could belong to, body and soul.

Look where her silly notions had gotten her.

On the third morning of the second week of their search it began to rain, but even the soggy weather didn't deter Jesse. He seemed driven by some invisible demon, and she almost felt sorry for those he'd pursued in the past.

The mud and rain finally forced them to make camp late that afternoon, and as they huddled beneath a crudely constructed lean-to, listening to the wind and the rain and the thunder, Honesty could bear his silence no longer.

“How long do you intend on punishing me?” she asked, watching him nurse a cup of coffee.

“Now, why would I want to punish you?”

“For telling you about my father. You've been
hounding me for weeks to tell you the truth, yet when I do, you act as if I've committed a mortal sin.”

“Because it isn't the truth. Every word, every gesture from you, has been a lie from the start.”

She thought about the way she'd responded to his touch, the way he made her heart sing and her soul soar. “Not everything.” Even now, she ached for Jesse to take her in his arms and hold her. Except this was not the gentle or passionate man she'd given herself to. This was a man who could destroy her.

“No, only every word you've uttered from the moment I set eyes on you back at the Scarlet Rose,” he scoffed.

“What?” Honesty went still, the shift in direction throwing her off-balance.

“I saw the proof of what happened that night in Last Hope. You remember: the night you made me believe you obliged men for a living and rooked me out of three dollars?”

“You want your money back?” she snapped.

“No, I want to know why the hell you never told me you were a virgin.”

There was a note of pain beneath his anger, and Honesty felt shame stir in her belly. She averted her face and fixed her sight on a patch of weeds near her feet. “You wouldn't understand.”

“Try me.”

“I needed traveling money.”

“So you drugged me and made me believe I'd bedded you.”

Honesty hesitated, then nodded. “Most men would be pleased to find their wives untouched.”

“Most men don't expect their
wife
to already be deflowered.”

“Are you saying you'd rather I had been a sporting girl?”

He set his jaw, but didn't answer.

“You are such a hypocrite. What makes your lies any different than mine?”

“I never lied to you.”

“No, but you didn't tell me the truth, either, and that's just as bad. You could have told me at any point that you were a detective, yet you didn't.”

“Because it had nothing to do with you before.”

“So you portrayed yourself as a drifter with no past, no future.”

“I've only been doing my job.”

“And I've only been protecting my life! That may not mean much to you, but it's all I've got!”

As she flopped onto her bedroll and curled into a ball beneath the saddle blanket, Jesse found himself gripping his cup in a white-knuckled fist. He stared at the curve of her back
and thought how alone she looked lying there. How could she think her life meant nothing to him? Did she think he'd put the most important case of his career on hold for the joy of it? Or that he'd chased after her time and time again because he had nothing better to do? Or that he'd put up with more nonsense from her than from any other woman for his health?

If she had any idea just how deeply she'd burrowed under his skin—

Muttering a profanity under his breath, Jesse emptied his cup into the struggling fire and watched it sizzle. He could have walked away a long time ago if he hadn't cared what happened to her. But he admired her tenacity as much as he cursed it; he respected her loyalty as much as he loathed it. And despite his own judgment to the contrary, he'd spend his last breath keeping her safe.

He jerked to his feet and strode out of the shelter of the oilskin to the fringe of the campsite. Drizzling rain sprayed against his face but didn't dampen the turmoil inside him. He'd spent more lonely nights on the prairie than he could count, but never had he felt so alone. They needed to find the stones pretty damn soon, or he might just start forgetting that Honesty embodied everything he'd come to detest in his life.

His father had shattered his illusions.
Miranda had bruised his ego. But Honesty . . . if he let down his guard for an instant, she could do the most damage of all. She could break his heart.

She had the dream again, stronger this time, and more vivid than at any other time. Blues and greens and golds and rusts. The colors blended together, colliding, separating.

Ho-ne-sty
. . .

She tossed her head from side to side.

Come out, come out, wherever you are
. . .

The girlish voice beckoned, yet something held her back.

Ho-ne-sty
. . .

“Honesty, wake up!”

Her eyes snapped open, and a man's face came into focus. Whiskered jaw, piercing blue-green eyes, golden hair flowing past his shoulders. “Jesse?”

“Expecting someone else?”

Ignoring the cynical slant to a phrase she'd come to find comforting, she sat up and pressed her fingers to her brow. “I dreamt someone was calling my name.”

“I'm not surprised; I've been trying to get you up for ten minutes.” He rose from where he knelt on one knee by her side and strode toward the horses. The packs on their backs and the odor of charred oak told her that Jesse had been
up for some time. “We've got a lot of miles to cover today, so don't dawdle.”

Despite his impatience, Honesty couldn't bring herself to hurry. A heaviness invaded her limbs and her heart, and it was hard to find the energy to face another day that would no doubt end in disappointment.

As Honesty rolled off her woolen pallet, she had to face the fact that she might never find Deuce's hiding place. They were running out of stars on the map. What would happen if she didn't find the stones?

Fighting discouragement, she donned her ankle-high shoes and rolled up her bedding, then joined Jesse by the horses. “Jesse, tell me about them,” she said, strapping her bedroll behind the saddle.

“Who?”

“The people who hired you.” The question had been haunting her since she'd first learned of the little girls' abduction. What her parents must have gone through, the grief they must have suffered . . . “What are they like?”

“I wouldn't know; I never met them. My orders were to find McGuire.”

“But you must know something.” She stepped into his cupped hands and let him boost her into the saddle. “Their names, where they're from, if they have other children.”

“Hoping I'll feed your story?”

“If it's my family, I deserve to know something about them.”

“
If
it's your family, I'll tell you what I know.”

Well, there was her answer. If she couldn't prove her identity, she could look forward to spending the next ten years behind bars. Jesse would see to that.

The rain had left shimmering rainbows in the grass as she and Jesse set out across the rolling land. She blanked her mind of everything save the motion of her mare, unable to find the strength to deal with Jesse's bitter anger or the discouragement of trying to find a legacy that might or might not have been left by a man who might or might not have been her father. That numb, mindless state got her through the morning and part of the afternoon.

Then a strange tingling crept up the base of her neck, drawing Honesty's head up to the undulating land before her.

Ho-ne-sty
. . .

Was it the echo of a dream?

Or the shadow of a memory?

Honesty's heartbeat slowly quickened as, in her mind, she saw herself as a very young girl, traveling across the grasslands with a much younger Deuce. “It's here,” she whispered, reining in her horse. “Jesse, this is it—the place of the flowing stones; I know it is.”

“Here? There's nothing but trees.”

“This is it. Don't ask me how I know, I just do.”

Kicked into action by the knowledge that filled her, Honesty swung herself out of the saddle and gazed at the terrain. Mile upon mile of grassland spread before her, with patches of live-oak woods here and there, and litters of rock. Her mind flashed back to an image of herself running across the grass, laughing so hard as her father chased her that she stumbled and landed in a pile of petticoats. But when she picked herself up and looked over her shoulder, Deuce was nowhere to be seen. There was just an echo of her name, coming from the ground.

Her heart picked up a faster rate; her skin tingled from her toes to her fingertips. “He fell. I remember thinking the ground ate him.”

Jesse scanned the ground. “Honesty, we could spend days searching this area.”

“Then we'll spend days searching the area. Jesse, I'm telling you, this is the place. There's a hole in the ground—I think it's near some rocks, but I can't be sure . . .”

“A hole like this?”

She spun around. Jesse was hunkered near a weather-eroded ravine banked by craggy red stone. Honesty hastened to his side and braced her hand against his shoulder. A spark shot up her arm at the contact and Jesse stilled, as if
he'd felt it, too. “What's down there?” she asked, her breath catching.

“It's too dark. I can't see a damn thing.” He rose quickly, refusing to meet her eyes. “Fetch me one of your petticoats and I'll fetch the tinderbox.”

Elation rushed through her bloodstream as she hurried to her packs, whether from Jesse's discovery of the hole or her own discovery that he wasn't as immune to her as he wanted to believe, she didn't know. Perhaps a combination of both.