Explaining Herself (25 page)

Her brother paused, sulkily buttering a slice of Mrs. Sawyer's good, thick bread. "Now I'm worried."

"Do you remember an immigrant family named Lauranovic?"

She saw from the flare of his eyes that he did remember. Right away. For a moment she wondered,
What if Ross was right?
But with all the headlines about the lynchings, the trial, and the suicide, why
wouldn't
Thaddeas remember them?

He put down his cold-meat sandwich and met her gaze, solemn. Worried, even. "Yes, I do. Why?"

"Do you remember
Julie
Lauranovic?"

When she asked that, he relaxed a little. Whatever worried him, it wasn't guilt over Julie. 'You mean the poor girl who killed herself?"

She nodded.

"Again I ask,
Why?"

Well, she guessed he
was
a lawyer. Though she hoped he didn't practice law with his mouth full. "Tell me what you remember about her first," she insisted. "Please?"

He looked suspicious
—but he was also a pushover when it came to his sisters. "Really, Vic, I don't remember very much. I left for college at about the time the Laurences arrived."

"The Laurences?"

"It was only after the trouble that people started calling them by their European name. Julie was a tall kid with long black braids, and we never talked." He shrugged.

Victoria felt certain that if he had ever loved her
— loved her enough to get her with child, enough to leave roses by her grave years after her death—he would not be able to shrug. Now all she needed was to figure out who
had
loved her ... or at least pretended to. "Do you remember if she had a sweetheart?"

"She was a child when I knew her!"

"Later, after the Die-Up. She would have been about Audra's age then. Did she have a sweetheart before she died?"

Thaddeas opened his mouth, then decided against whatever he'd meant to say and shook his head. "No."

"No, she didn't? Or no, you don't remember?"

"No, I don't remember. I'm not always watching and noticing things the way you do, Vic."

"What about at her funeral?"

"Nobody went to her funeral. It was a big scandal."

"She was with child," Victoria agreed, since Thad was too proper to mention that. Assuming he'd known. "So she must have had a sweetheart."

The alternative, that the girl had been attacked, was too awful to imagine.

Thad frowned, wearing his lawyer look. "Why are you asking all this? And don't say you're writing a story; that's not all."

"And I'm helping a friend," she admitted, and made a face at his expression. "Someone who's interested in the Lauranovic family, and don't ask more, because I promised this friend to be discreet. I just want to find out who
Julie
Lauranovic's sweetheart was before her suicide, that's all."

"Victoria," demanded Thaddeas, "this wouldn't have anything to do with Pa's new range detective, would it?"

His question took her so by surprise that she hesitated, just a beat, before she managed to say, "Mr. Laramie? Why would it have anything to do with him?"

It was a beat too long.

'You've been talking to Laramie," accused Thaddeas, pushing his chair abrup
tl
y back. "I can't believe it. No, I
can
believe it, and that's what worries me."

Her brother's reaction was what worried
her.
She talked to almost everyone in town; Thad couldn't know about the kissing, or the secrets. "What if I have? He escorted me back to the ranch the day Kitty was attacked, remember?"

She was pleased by that feint, until Thad asked, "And you talked about Julie Lauranovic?"

He stood and started to clear their food. Victoria suspected he just wanted an excuse to pace. She wouldn't mind pacing herself. "Why would you think
Mr. Laramie is interested in Julie Lauranovic?" Did he know something she didn't?

"Is he?" Thad asked. "Just how good a friend is he?"

"Thad, he works for Papa. He saved Kitty's life, and he talked to me when I was upset. Why does that bother you?"

"So it's for him that you're asking about Julie Laurence." Thaddeas rolled his eyes at his own foolishness. "Of
course."

"Of course what?"

But Thaddeas said, "Listen to me, Vic. You aren't to have anything more to do with Mr. Laramie."

What?
"Why aren't I?"

He folded his arms. "Because I said so. And because Pa will say the same thing, as soon as we tell him."

"Tell him
what?"
Thaddeas and Papa knew something about Ross, and they weren't telling her, and she hated it. Bad enough that he had secrets
—she knew that much. But that her father and brother knew more about them than she did . . .

"Leave it alone," warned Thaddeas, heading for the sitting room. As if he could escape her questions that easily.

She followed. "I won't leave it alone. I want to know why you don't like Ross Laramie!"

Thaddeas slowly turned back to her, his eyes wide.
"Ross?
Trust me, Victoria. Don't get involved with Ross Laramie."

"Why
not?"
she demanded.

"I'm not telling you."

A knock on the front door kept her from protesting.
It's him,
thought Vic, relieved. Ross had relented from his stubbornness and would confront Thad with his foolish accusations, and everything would be set straight.

"I'll get it," warned Thad. "It's nighttime."

She sighed, but let him. When he opened the d
oor
to a rain-swept porch, it wasn't Ross. It was a drenched Evangeline.

"Miss
Taylor?"
greeted Thaddeas, and looked at the clock. It was past eight. Only then did he take a look at her dripping clothes and say, "Please, come inside!"

She did, her gaze sliding desperately to Victoria. Clearly she had news. Rain had slicked her long, pale hair to her scalp. Her thin, wet dress clung to the slim curves of her body.

"Come back to the kitchen," offered Victoria quickly, putting an arm around her. "We'll make you some tea."

But Evangeline only shook her head, then spun, startled, when Thaddeas draped a blanket from the sofa over her shoulders. At least, she looked startled until she saw it was him.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, ducking her head.

"Not at all," said Thad
—but of course, he would say that to anybody. "Is something wrong, Miss Taylor?"

Under the drape of the blanket, Evangeline's damp hand
—slim but strong—found Victoria's.

"It's Mr. Laramie," she said. "He's in jail."

Chapter Eighteen

"Who are you?" demanded Bram Ward.

Laramie sat in the cell and said nothing. That the sheriff didn't recognize him was maybe the only thing that had gone right in the last hour.

Not killing the bastard in the saloon, when he had the chance, was just one of the many things that had gone wrong.

He stared at Ward and thought, /
could have taken you.
He'd wanted to. The gun had been in his hand! And yet he'd stood there in the saloon, the smell of blood and metal and gun smoke sharp in his nostrils, and somehow he'd known better.

Ward was a sheriff, no matter how corrupt. If Laramie were to twist around, like his body wanted to, or to shoot, like his hand itched to, it would be neither self-defense nor forgivable. There'd be no return.

So he'd set his Colt down on the bar with a gentle thud. He'd let Bram Ward drag his hands behind his
back and secure his wrists with handcuffs. Then he'd been dragged back to the jail from this afternoon
— sitting on the wrong horse.

Now, his shoulders aching from his still-cuffed hands, Laramie stared at the sheriff's increasing impatience and thought
—there'd be no return to
what"?

He should have shot the bastard.

"You hear me, sonny boy?" The sheriff picked up a billy club, rattled it across the bars. "Who the hell are you, anyhow?"

Laramie would prefer not to be persuaded. "I'm Ross Laramie," he said yet again. "I ride for Jacob Garrison as
—"

"What's your
real
name?" interrupted Ward.

Good question. He'd lost Ross Laurence somewhere amid the original violence. He wasn't Drazen Lauranovic anymore. The alias came from folks thinking he'd done time in the Wyoming State Penitentiary; it had been his for years. "Laramie."

Ward shook his head. "I know you from somewhere. Where the hell do I know you from?"

From me killing your pa, after you killed mine.

Bad answer. Laramie let nothing show on his face.

"You one of them train robbers we're hunting?"

Not yet.
"I shot in self-defense."

Ward, backing away from the bars, twisted his lips in an ugly smile. "Broke firearms laws, too. Shame you did it on a Friday night. We might have to spend a few days together, afore all this gets cleared up, and you'd best not be any trouble." His eyes glittered hopefully. "Like that damned rustler you brought in."

Bastard.

Harry Smith wouldn't have escaped alone. Harry Smith would have run away if he had
—not tried to do murder. And now Harry Smith's blood was on Ross's cuffed hands, his dark freckles in Ross's memory....

So as not to se
em challenging, Laramie lay awk
wardly down on one shoulder, on the cot, and tried thinking of something other than how long it would take Ward to recognize him.

He thought about Victoria.

It was more than he'd had the last time he'd been here.

"I'm going with you," announced Victoria as Thaddeas slung on his mackinaw against the rain.

"No, you're not," said Thaddeas. 'You're staying here with Miss Taylor."

The three of them stood in Mama's kitchen, where Vic had put water on for tea while Thad grabbed his coat. Evangeline, still holding the blanket tightly around her, like a hug, stood back and watched them through wary, pale eyes. Her feet were muddy. Victoria
did
want to make sure her friend was all right.

But she wanted to make sure Ross was all right even more. Two men had tried to kill him, and the sheriff was calling it murder. And he was in jail, and she wanted him to be all right.

"Evangeline can stay here on her own."

Evangeline shook her head, eyes wide.

Thaddeas looked at Victoria and asked, "Why?"

She blinked, startled. "Because he's my friend."

Thad didn't accept that. He took her shoulders, his grip tight. "Your friend? I don't think so, Victoria. I think you know this man better than you ought to, and it ends here. Do you understand me?"

She understood, but she certainly didn't agree. 'You have no say in the matter. I'm going with you."

"Oh?" He folded his arms, set his shoulders. "Here's your choice. Either you agree not to come with me, or I don't go."

She stared.
He wouldn 't!

Thaddeas didn't even blink.

"But he needs a lawyer!" she protested. 'You know
as well as I do that Sheriff Ward can't be trusted."

"If I have to choose between my sister's safety or my law practice, I'm choosing my sister. So you just choose."

"That's not fair!" If she hadn't been born female ...

But he meaningfully began to unbutton his
mackinaw
.

Victoria wanted to hit him. Never in her life had she felt such fury toward another human being, much less her brother. But she loved Ross more. "Fine," she spat. "You win. Now go get him."

His hands paused on his buttons. "Swear it."

"I swear it."

Thad leaned nearer.
"The whole thing.
"

"I swear not to go with you tonight."

"And you'll stay here and make Miss Taylor comfortable until I come back," he added.

"And I'll make Evangeline comfortable. Now go help him!"

Even now, Thaddeas hesitated.

"Please?" Her voice broke on the word.

Her brother closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them. 'You don't know how much I hate it that I can't trust you."

If you would ever trust me long enough to stop telling me what to do, maybe you could.
But that was asking a lot.