Judith E French (11 page)

“But your father was well liked by both the English and the Irish. He was a wealthy man in his own right.”

“Not wealthy, never wealthy, Shane.”

He scoffed. “My father kept his pigs in the single room of our cabin, before he sold them all to buy whiskey. You come from money, Caity, Protestant quality. You’ve never known what it was to go to bed with your backbone grinding against your empty belly.”

“It’s more of that old argument,” she flung back. “I am the lady of the manor and you’re naught but a poor laborer.”

He flashed a hint of a wolfish grin. “You forgot unlettered papist. I can write my own name, Caity, nothin’ more. And I can’t even read the words on my own land deed.”

“Horsefeathers. If you’re ignorant of learning, then it’s up to you to set that right. You’ll get no pity from me. How many acres did you boast of owning? Six hundred? You may have come from a dirt-floored cottage, but you’re a great landowner now. You are the rich one, Shane, while I have nothing but the clothes on my back and the contents of my trunks.”

“You’re a lady, and that’s not something that can be learned or bought with a few acres of Missouri land.”

“What do you want of me, Shane McKenna?”

“What’s right for us and the children.”

“What’s right is our living like true husband and wife.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I’d like to think that.”

“You loved me once.” The words came softly, drifting up from a secret place where she’d treasured and protected them.

“That I did, but that was a long time ago. I’d like to think I could feel that way again, but I can’t lie to you. I just don’t know.”

Her chest felt so tight that she could hardly draw breath, hardly speak. “Since you’ve said it, so shall I. I’m as confused as you, but did we not agree to try to make this work?”

His features hardened. “I sent for you, didn’t I?”

“Is that all you can say?”

He shrugged. “I’ve no pretty words. We can try, but the odds are against us.”

“If I’d thought about that before I left home, I’d have
stayed in County Clare. Sometimes a man or a woman has to take risks.”

Shane seemed to mull that over for a while. Then he nodded. “All right. I’m no stranger to risks. Finish what you started. Shave off the rest of this beard.”

Caitlin couldn’t contain a sound of amusement. “You sound like a convicted felon going to his hanging. Do you think I’ll cut your throat?”

“You might,” he grumbled.

“I used to shave Papa. He found it relaxing.”

“Don’t push your luck. Just shave the damned whiskers.”

She reached for the straight razor. “My pleasure, sir. When you ask so sweetly, how can I refuse?”

He turned his face so that she could soap his other cheek. “I’d do it myself, but my hand’s none too steady.”

Neither was hers. For all her bravado, she was nervous. Shaving Shane was nothing like performing the service for her father; this was strangely intimate. She kept remembering the feeling of his arms around her and how safe she had felt.

Shane was infuriating, insulting, and she was certain that he’d betrayed her with Cerise. Yet something drew her to him. In spite of everything, she wanted him to hold her again.

“Hold still.” Her fingers were trembling slightly, and she didn’t want to cut him.

“What are you doin’?”

She jerked back. “Stop yelling at me. You told me to shave—”

“Use the scissors first, woman. Cut the whiskers off close to my skin, then shave them.”

“All right.” He was impossible. What had made her think she could ever make her peace with such a demanding,
egotistical man? She dropped the razor into the bowl and looked around for the scissors.

Soapsuds dripped down Shane’s neck onto his shirt, or rather what was left of his shirt.

“Could you take that off?” she asked, pointing to his ruined garment.

Groaning, he stripped the torn shirt off. She winced as she saw the purple bruising along his ribs.

“Satisfied?”

Taking a deep breath, she tried to ignore the wide expanse of heavily muscled male chest and began to clip away his chin whiskers. She worked cautiously, trying not to jump every time Shane complained.

“Aren’t you done yet?”

“If you’d sit still, maybe I could finish.” Caitlin gritted her teeth and rinsed off the razor. She finished the last of the shaving just as the sound of hoofbeats drifted through the open window. Caitlin went to look out with Shane not a step behind her.

“Look.” She counted no less than five men riding toward the house. “We’ve visitors.” She laid the scissors on the windowsill.

“Visitors, hell! That’s Earl Thompson, our nearest neighbor.” He started for the door. “Keep the colleen inside. There may be trouble.”

“But, Shane, you’re hurt. You shouldn’t—”

“Damn it! For once, Caity, do as I say!”

“Gentlemen, welcome to Kilronan.” Caitlin stepped out the front door and smiled at the men on horseback. She’d miscounted from the window. There were six strangers, all carrying weapons strapped to their saddles, and all scowling like Satan’s imps at Shane and Gabriel and Justice.

Her men stood shoulder to shoulder; Shane cradled his rifle casually in the crook of his arm.

“I am Caitlin McKenna, Shane’s wife,” she said graciously. “I’m happy to meet you, Mr. Thompson.”

She didn’t need Shane to point out which man was Earl Thompson. He was the stocky, no-neck figure on the tall gray horse. Thompson’s hair was white, and his face weathered by wind and sun, but he was still in his prime. Caitlin decided that he was a force to be reckoned with.

“Mrs. McKenna.” Thompson touched two gnarled fingers to his broad-brimmed hat. “I thought McKenna’s wife was in Ireland.”

“So she was, sir,” Caitlin answered, “but now she is here.”

“What happened to you, McKenna?” Earl Thompson asked. “You look like you’ve been trampled by a herd of buffalo.”

“I had a difference of opinion with my bull,” Shane said.

A slighter figure chuckled, and Caitlin glanced at him. The young man was clean shaven and wore a hat that obscured most of his face. His hands were small and dirty, and he wore a leather vest over a baggy shirt.

“McKenna’s wife, are you? More’s the pity.” He reined his bay closer to Thompson, and Caitlin noticed a leather whip coiled over his saddle horn. “You’ll not last long out here.”

Caitlin flushed as she realized the person wasn’t a young man, but a female wearing men’s trousers. She seemed a few years younger than Caitlin, but it was hard to tell with her dusty face partially hidden and her hair jammed under the worn felt hat.

Caitlin refused to let this bold upstart get the better of her. “Welcome to you, too, Miss …” She glanced at Earl Thompson and sensed his amusement. “Miss Thompson, is it? Or is it Mrs. Thompson?”

The woman spat a wad of chewed tobacco on the ground near Caitlin’s feet. “Rachel’s good enough. Rachel Thompson.” She tilted her chin toward the older man. “Big Earl’s daughter.” She shifted in the saddle and pointed to a sullen-faced man with small eyes and a sparse mustache. “This here’s my brother, Beau.”

“Enough socializin’.” Earl Thompson turned his attention to Shane. “Heard you had a mare foal last night.”

“What if we did?” Shane replied.

“Mind if we take a look at it?”

Shane’s eyes narrowed. “Make your point, Earl.”

“If it’s black with a white star, we aim to claim it,” Rachel Thompson said.

Justice balled his fists and stepped forward. “The hell you will.”

Gabriel laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“My mare, my filly,” Shane said quietly. “You got a problem, I’d take it kindly if we’d settle it man to man.”

“What?” Rachel demanded. “You don’t want her to know that you bred your mare to our stud without paying the stud fee?”

“Shut up, girl,” Earl Thompson snapped. “This is between McKenna and me.”

“Don’t want your woman to know you’re a thief as well as a murderer?” Beau taunted Shane.

“Not my woman, my wife.” Shane glanced at Caitlin. “Go inside, Caity. Now.”

Gooseflesh rose on her arms. Twice before she’d heard that soft tone, once just before Shane had attacked the drunk in the City of Jefferson and again before he leaped a six-foot fence and confronted Goliath. She suspected that it wouldn’t take much for Shane to lose his temper and drag Beau Thompson off his horse and pound him into the dirt.

Shane was in no condition to fight. She didn’t know how he was staying on his feet.

Caitlin could see that Thompson and his minions carried rifles. Maybe they were the ones who’d shot at Shane, and now they’d come here to finish him off.

“In the house, Caity,” Shane repeated quietly.

“She don’t look much like a wife to me,” Beau crowed. “Sure she ain’t another fancy woman like—”

Shane slammed his rifle into Justice’s hands and lunged at Beau.

“No!” Caitlin tried to grab Shane’s arm, but he was too fast for her.

At the same instant Shane charged Beau, Earl snatched the bull whip off Rachel’s saddle and spurred his big gray horse between the two men. Earl slammed the coiled whip against the side of Beau’s head, and the younger Thompson toppled off his horse onto the ground.

“Haven’t I taught you better manners, boy?” Earl roared amid the stamping and snorting of the spooked horses. “Are you too damned stupid to tell a lady from a whore?”

One of Thompson’s cowboys swore as his horse reared. Another yanked his mount’s head up hard and reined the animal back away from Beau’s gelding. Rachel sat straight-backed in her saddle and stared stone-faced at Gabriel.

Caitlin bit her lower lip and tried to keep from saying words that no lady should ever think—let alone speak.
They were all mad as May butter, the lot of them!

Why had she ever come to this wild place where honest men were shot at in ambush and women dressed like common cowhands?

Too angry to be frightened, Caitlin slipped her arm
under Shane’s. “There’s no need for violence. My husband is no thief, Mr. Thompson. If you believe otherwise, you’re greatly mistaken.”

Shane shook off her hand and glared up at Earl. “I don’t need your help to defend my wife’s honor.”

Shane’s voice was low and deliberate, but Caitlin felt the air around them vibrate with imminent danger.

“Don’t tell me how to raise my son,” Earl answered gruffly. “But your wife has my apologies. It ain’t the Thompson way to insult ladies.” Earl’s eyes were hard as river stones in his grizzled face as he touched the brim of his hat and nodded to Caitlin. “Ma’am.”

“I accept,” Caitlin answered.

The older man’s harsh gaze flicked back to Shane. “If Beau forgets his manners to your missus again, that’ll be the last filth out of his mouth. You have my word on it.”

Beau picked himself up off the ground and climbed groggily back into the saddle. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and a purple welt rose from the outer corner of his left eye to his chin.

Rachel’s lips curved in a faint smile of mockery as she watched her brother wipe the blood off his face with his shirtsleeve. Her father tossed her back the whip, and she wrapped it around the saddle horn again.

Caitlin fought to retain her composure. “I am Mr. McKenna’s lawful wife,” she said to Earl in a strained voice. “What your son thinks or says to me is irrelevant. I have never concerned myself with the opinions of the ignorant.”

Earl nodded solemnly. “I never doubted you were who you claimed to be, ma’am, a lady and a wife.”

Beau hunched down in the saddle and scowled at his father as the other cowhands edged their horses away
from him. Only one man, a sour-faced cowboy with an unshaven face and a drooping eyelid, remained at Beau’s side.

“Since you’re here,” Shane said, “you’ve saved me a trip. Somebody tried to kill me the other night. The shot came from Thompson land.”

“You accusin’ me?” Big Earl demanded.

“My fences are bein’ pulled down, calves slaughtered. Whoever’s behind it comes from your direction.”

“It ain’t me,” Earl answered.

“Glad to know it,” Shane said. “Because when I catch them, I mean to put a bullet through them.”

Big Earl nodded. “Same as I would do. But I can tell you, we’ve been hit, too. A blooded brood mare is missin’. And we’ve lost near a hundred head of cattle since Christmas.”

“Did we come here to argue over a few stray cows?” Beau asked. “Or did we come to fetch home our rightful property?”

“I’d like to take a look at that foal,” Big Earl said.

“My foal,” Shane warned. “Try to take it off Kilronan and that makes you a horse thief. The man who touches my horseflesh won’t live long enough to hang.”

A cold chill raised the hair on the back of Caitlin’s neck. What kind of man had Shane become, that he could threaten to kill another over a foal?

“Does that go for me?” Rachel pushed up the brim of her sweat-stained hat. “I don’t think you’ll shoot me, McKenna. I don’t think you’ve got the sand to try.”

“Nobody’s stealin’ our filly!” Justice shouted.

Caitlin turned to see the boy level Shane’s rifle at Earl Thompson. “Get your crew off Kilronan before I blow you to hell.”

“Put that gun down!” Shane ordered.

Gabriel snatched the rifle away from Justice.

“That was a fool’s trick,” Shane admonished. Then he looked back at Earl. “It seems both our sons lack common sense.”

“Son, hell. That ain’t your son,” the rancher replied. “That’s nothin’ but a snot-nosed Indian bastard. Your uncle would be turnin’ over in his grave if he knew that you were pinnin’ the McKenna name on a half-breed.”

Caitlin saw the muscles tense along Shane’s jawline. “Now it is you who are forgetting your manners, Mr. Thompson,” she said frostily. “Justice is our son, as legally a McKenna as I am.”

“That don’t settle our problem over the filly,” Rachel said. “Our prize stallion, Natchez, marks ever one of his foals. Black hide, white star. If your filly fits that description, it’s ours by right.”

“Come on, boys,” Earl said. “We’ll just take a look in McKenna’s barn.”

“Your stallion may well have fathered that foal,” Shane said. “But I didn’t tear down the fence between our land. And I doubt if a rustler would take the trouble.”