Linda Lael Miller Bundle (45 page)

Fingers trembling, Rue opened the envelope and pulled out a single, thin page. Stinging tears came instantly to her eyes. These words had been written a century before by a man she’d brazenly made love to only that morning.

Rue folded the letter carefully and tucked it back into the envelope, even though there was a wild fury of panic storming within her. She wanted to scream, to sob, to refuse to accept this fate, but she knew it would be useless.

Farley was going back; the letter was tangible proof of that. And he was dying from the wounds he’d received during the robbery. He hadn’t come right out and said that, but she had read the truth between the lines.

She pushed the envelope under the blotter on the desk. She wanted to confront Farley with what she’d discovered, but she couldn’t. For one thing, he hadn’t done anything wrong; it was his life, and if he wanted to go back to 1892 and throw it away in a gunfight with a pack of outlaws, that was his prerogative. No, Farley wasn’t the only one with integrity; Rue had it, too, and in those moments, the quality was her greatest curse.

Rue paced. She could warn him. Maybe if she did that, he would at least avoid stumbling into that bank at the wrong moment and getting himself killed.

Finally she remembered the registry at the graveyard in Pine River, got the number from information and put a call through. After half an hour and a string of hassles that heightened her frustration to new levels, a clerk in the church office finally unearthed an old record book and found Farley’s name in it.

“Yes, he’s listed here,” the woman said pleasantly. “His grave would be out in the old section, under the oak tree. I hope that helps. It might be hard to find otherwise. Not everyone had a stone, you know, and a wooden marker would be long gone.”

Rue squeezed her eyes shut, almost overwhelmed by the images that were filling her mind. “Does the record list a cause of death?” she asked, her voice thin.

“Gunshot wound to the chest,” the clerk replied after a pause. “He was attended by Dr. Jonathan Fortner, a man who played quite an important part in the history of Pine River—”

“Thank you,” Rue said, unable to bear another word, even though it meant cutting the woman off in the middle of a sentence. Her eyes were awash in tears when she hung up the receiver. Soldier came and leaned against her leg, whining in sympathy.

Rue knew it might be hours until Farley returned, and she couldn’t stand to stay in the house, so she went out to the woodshed and split enough firewood to last through a second ice age. When that was done, she started up the Land Rover, Soldier happily occupying the passenger seat, and headed out over roads of glaring ice.

It took an hour to reach the hospital in the next town over from Pigeon Ridge. Leaving the dog in the Land Rover, Rue went inside and bought a card in the small gift shop, then asked to see Wilbur.

He’d spent the night and most of the day in intensive care, a nurse told her, but she supposed one visit would be all right if Rue kept her stay brief.

She found him in Room 447, and although there were three other beds, they were all empty. Wilbur looked small and forlorn, with tubes running into his nose and the veins of both his wrists.

“Hello, Wilbur.” Rue set the card on his nightstand, then bent to kiss his forehead.

He looked surprised at his misfortune, and helpless.

Rue blinked back tears and patted his arm. “That’s all right, I know you can’t talk right now. I just wanted to stop by and to say hello and tell you not to worry about Soldier. I’m taking good care of him. In fact, he’s out in the car right now—it was as close as the nurses would let him get.”

Wilbur made a funny noise low in his throat that might have been a chuckle.

“I’d better go,” Rue said. “I know you need to rest and, besides, you won’t want me hanging around when all your girlfriends come in.” She touched his shoulder, then left the room. In a glance backward, she saw him reach awkwardly up to catch hold of the get-well card she’d brought.

For all her activity, Rue had not forgotten Farley’s letter for a moment. She circled the thought the way a she wolf might move around a campfire, fascinated but afraid to get too close.

The sun was out when Rue returned to the Land Rover, and the ice seemed to be thawing, but it still took forever to get home, because there were so many accidents along the way. When she and Soldier arrived, Farley and the other men were driving several hundred head of cattle into the big pasture west of the house, where a mountain of hay and troughs of fresh water awaited.

Rue started toward Farley, fully intending to tell him about the letter she’d found in the safe, but the closer she got, the more convinced she became that it would be impossible. She could barely think of being parted from him, let alone talk about it.

She stopped at the fence, listening to the bawling of the cattle, the yelling and swearing of the cowboys, the neighs and nickers of the horses. In those moments as she stood watching Farley work, she realized how simple the solution really was.

All she had to do was destroy the necklace. Once that was done, there would be no way for Farley to return to 1892 and get himself shot.

He rode over to look down at her, his face reddened by the cold and his mustache fringed with snow. His smile practically set her back on her heels.

“Where have you been?” he asked. He didn’t sound annoyed, just curious.

“I went in to see Wilbur at the hospital. He’s doing all right.” The words brought an image of a wounded Farley to mind, a man dying in another time and place, close enough to touch and yet so far away that even science couldn’t measure the distance.

Farley shook his head. “You’ve got no business driving on these roads.”

Rue wanted to weep, but she smiled instead. “Are you jealous, Farley?” she teased, stepping close to Lobo and running a finger down the inside of the marshal’s thigh. “Think I’m paying Wilbur too much attention?”

Farley shivered, but Rue knew it wasn’t from the cold. He’d loved the game they’d played that morning, and her attempt to remind him of it had been successful. He bent down and exclaimed in a low voice, “You little wanton. I ought to haul you off to the woodshed and blister your bustle!”

“Very kinky,” she said, her eyes twinkling even as tears burned at their edges. Then, before he could ask for the inevitable definition, she turned and walked toward the house.

That night, the power stayed on and the wind didn’t blow. Rue and Farley curled up together on the couch in the big parlor and watched television. At least, Farley watched—Rue alternated between thinking about the necklace and about the letter hidden beneath the desk blotter.

Although they didn’t make love, Farley seemed to know Rue would not be separated from him, and they shared the large bed in the master bedroom. He held her and for the time being that was enough.

Contrary to her expectations, she slept, and the next thing she knew, Farley was kissing her awake.

“Get up,” he said, his breath scented with toothpaste. “Today is our wedding day.”

Some words from the letter he didn’t know he’d written echoed in Rue’s heart. “I never meant to leave you forever, especially not on our wedding day.” Unless she did something and soon, she would become Farley’s wife and his widow without turning a single page of the calendar in between.

“I love you,” she said, because those were the only safe words.

He kissed her lightly and quoted a mouthwash commercial they’d seen the night before. One thing about television, it had an immediate impact.

Rue got out of bed, passed into the bathroom and brushed her teeth. When she came back, Farley was gone.

Panic seized her. With another man, she would only have thought he’d left the room, or maybe the house. Farley might have left the century.

Dressed in jeans and a warm woolen shirt, she raced into the hallway and down the stairs. “Farley!”

He was in the kitchen, calmly sipping coffee, and he smiled at Rue with his eyes as he took in her furious expression. “A body would almost think you’d been left at the altar, the way you carry on when I get out of sight.”

Looking up at him, Rue ached. Why did it all have to be so complicated? Other people had problems, sure, but not the kind that would have made an episode on
Tales from the Crypt.
“Farley, the necklace—”

“I know where it is,” he said calmly. “The safe, behind that painting of the fruit.”

Rue paled. “But you couldn’t have known the combination.”

He had noticed her terror by then, and he reached out with his free hand to caress her jaw. “I found it when I went through the ranch records, Rue,” he said quietly. “I checked the safe to see if there were any more reports to go over.”

Rue closed her eyes, swayed slightly and was steadied by Farley’s firm grip. “But the necklace is still there?” she asked evenly, reasonably. “You didn’t move it, did you?”

“No,” he answered. “But I want your promise that you won’t move it again, either. I need to know where it is, Rue. Now, for the moment, all I want you thinking about is becoming my wife.” He bent his head, bewitched her with a soft kiss. “I hope you’re planning to wear something pretty, though. I draw the line at a bride wearing trousers.”

R
ue struggled to maintain her composure; in all her travels as a reporter, she’d never faced a greater challenge than this one. “Farley,” she began reasonably, “you’ve got to listen. If you go back to 1892, you’ll die.”

He touched her face. “Everybody dies, darlin’,” he answered gently. “Considering that I was born in 1856, I’ve outlived a number of folks already.”

She stepped back, raised her fingertips to her temples. It sounded as if Farley knew what was going to happen to him if he went back to 1892 and that he’d resigned himself to that fate. “You found the letter, too.”

“By accident,” he said. “I spilled a cup of coffee on the desk, and when I moved the blotter, I came across an envelope with my own handwriting on it. I would have put it aside if it hadn’t been for that.”

Rue sagged into one of the kitchen chairs. “You’d go back, knowing you were going to be shot by a bank robber and die of the wounds?”

“I have to settle my affairs, Rue. I told you that. And I’m still the marshal of Pine River, as far as I know. God knows, it wasn’t a job the town council would be able to foist off on somebody else without a fight. If there’s a holdup, I’ll have to do whatever I can to intervene. Besides, I’ve been warned—I’ll just be more careful than usual.”

Rue felt sick. This was supposed to be one of the happiest days of her life. And she
was
happy, because she wanted the legal and spiritual bond with Farley no matter what lay ahead—or behind—but she was terrified, as well.

Apparently nothing would shake his determination to return to 1892. That left only one avenue open to his distraught bride-to-be.

“I’m going with you, then.”

“Rue—”

“I mean, it, Farley,” she interrupted, rising so fast that her chair toppled over backward behind her. She didn’t pick it up. “I’m not marrying you so we can be apart. We belong together.”

He looked at her for a long time, then sighed. “All right,” he agreed reluctantly. He kissed her, then left the house without breakfast.

Rue was still inwardly frantic, but fortunately for her, she had things to do. She called the hospital for a progress report on Wilbur, who was doing well, then wired her mother, who had no doubt moved on from the spa to one of several favorite ski resorts.

Giving the credit-card number to pay for the wire took longer than dictating the telegram itself, a fact that seemed ironic to Rue.

“Mother,” it read, “I’m marrying at last, so stop telling your friends I’m an old maid. His name is Farley Haynes, and I adore him. Love, Rue.”

The message to Rue’s father, who might have been anywhere in the world, but could be counted on to check with his answering service in New York on occasion, was even more succinct. “Dad. By the time you get this, I’ll be married. Rue.”

With those two tasks out of the way, Rue turned all her concentration to the upcoming wedding. She hadn’t brought anything suitable for the ceremony—in fact, she didn’t
own
anything suitable. But she remembered the line of trunks in the attic, filled with things from all phases of her grandmother’s life. When she was younger, she’d worn those lovely, antique garments to play solitary games of dress-up during long visits.

Naturally, the room at the top of the house was dusty, and the thin winter sunlight barely found its way through the dirty panes of glass in the only window. Rue flipped the light switch and the single bulb dangling in the middle of the ceiling flared to life.

This was a friendly place, though cold and a little musty smelling, and Rue smiled as she entered. If there were ghosts here, they were merry ones come to wish the bride well on her wedding day.

After a few moments of standing still, feeling a reverence for the old times and wondering if her grandmother might not be here after all, young and pretty and just beyond the reach of Rue’s senses, she approached the row of trunks.

The sturdy old chests had metal trim, tarnished to a dead-brass dullness by the passing of time, and the stickers plastered to their sides were peeling and colorless. Still, Rue could make out the names of a few places—Istanbul, Prague, Bora Bora.

She smiled. Grammie had been quite the traveler in her youth. What had it been like for such an adventurous woman to settle on a remote ranch in Montana?

Rue knelt in front of the first trunk and laid her palms on its dusty lid. She didn’t remember her grandmother, though Gramps and Rue’s own mother had spoken of her in only the most glowing terms.

She lifted the lid and right on top, wrapped tightly in yellowed tissue paper, was a beautiful pink satin dress. Rue took a few minutes to admire it, to hold the gown to her front and speculate as to whether or not it would fit, then carefully rewrapped it and returned it to the chest.

Time blew past like the wind flying low over the prairies, and Rue was barely aware of its passing. Going through the things her grandmother had so carefully packed away, she found a lovely calf-length dress of ecru lace, with a modest but enticing neckline, a pearl choker, pale satin slippers that were only slightly too small and a lovely, sweeping straw picture hat with a wide rose-colored ribbon for a band and a nosegay of pink and blue flowers for decoration.

Because the chests were lined with camphor, the fragile old clothes smelled only faintly musty. Totally charmed, the threat of Aunt Verity’s necklace held at bay for just a little while, Rue carried the treasures down from the attic and hung the dress on the screen porch to air.

Upstairs again, she gave herself a facial, washed her hair and then took a long, hot bath. She was back in the kitchen sipping from a cup of noodle soup, a towel wrapped around her head turban-fashion, when Farley came in.

“Are you hungry?” Rue asked, lowering her eyes. She’d said and done outrageous things in this man’s arms, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen her in considerably less than a bathrobe, but suddenly she felt shy.

“Yes,” he answered with a smile in his voice. “But I’m still planning to wait until after some preacher has said the words that make it all right.”

Rue blushed. “I was talking about food.”

“I wasn’t,” Farley replied. “Are we getting hitched here, or do we have to go into town?”

She felt another stream of color rush into her cheeks, but since the previous flood probably hadn’t subsided yet, it wouldn’t be so obvious. She hoped.

“I arranged for a justice of the peace to come out. It was the same day we got our license.”

“Where was I?” Farley hung up his hat and coat, then crossed to the refrigerator and opened the door. It was an ordinary thing, and yet Rue pressed the image into her mind like a cherished photograph. Just in case.

She smiled. “You were playing with the drinking fountain,” she said.

Farley took the milk carton out, opened it and started to raise it to his mouth. He went to the cupboard for a glass when he saw Rue’s warning glare. “I don’t have a ring,” he said worriedly, “or a fancy suit.”

“You’re still going to be the best-looking groom who ever said ‘I do,’” Rue retorted, taking the carton from his hand.

He squeezed her bottom through the thick terry cloth of her robe when she bent over to return the milk to the fridge. “And after I’ve said ‘I do,’” he teased huskily, “you can bet that I will.”

The justice of the peace, who ran a little bait shop at Ponderosa Lake in the summertime, arrived an hour later.

By then, Farley had showered and changed into clean clothes, and Rue had put on makeup, arranged her hair in a loose Gibson-girl style and donned the lovely, gauzy lace dress and the pearl choker.

A couple of the ranch hands came in to serve as witnesses, wearing shiny, ill-fitting suits that had probably been in and out of style several times. One of the old-timers, Charlie, brought along his relic of a camera, which had a flash attachment the size of a satellite dish, fully prepared to record the event.

Rue didn’t allow herself to think beyond the now; she wanted to cherish every second for its own sake.

Being a civil ceremony, the wedding itself was short. Even though Rue was trying to measure out the moments and make them last, the whole thing didn’t take more than five minutes. When Farley kissed her, the hat tumbled off her head and the flash of Charlie’s camera glowed red through her closed eyelids.

Rue would have been content to go right on kissing her husband, but, of course, they weren’t alone, so that was impossible. Hope overflowed her heart as she looked up into Farley’s tender eyes, and in those golden moments, she found it impossible to believe that time or trouble or even death could ever separate them.

The justice of the peace left as soon as he’d been paid, but the ranch hands stayed for refreshments, since festive occasions were such a rare treat. Sara Lee provided the wedding cake, which had to be thawed out in the microwave, and coffee and soda completed the menu.

When Charlie wasn’t eating, he was taking pictures.

Finally, however, one of the other hands elbowed him in the ribs, then cleared his throat pointedly and suggested that they get back to the bunkhouse and change into their working duds. Some of the cowboys started to protest, then caught on and pushed back their chairs, beaming.

Time was more precious now than ever, so Rue didn’t urge the hands to stay. Despite her insistence that Farley take her with him when he went back to 1892, she hadn’t forgotten that his letter said he’d gone alone—on their wedding day. She was glad when she and her new husband were finally by themselves.

She unbuttoned the top two buttons of Farley’s shirt. “No more virginal protests, Farley,” she said, sliding her hand under the soft chambray to find and caress a taut masculine nipple. “You’re my husband now, and I demand my rights as a wife.”

He chuckled, but the sound was raw with other emotions besides amusement. No doubt he, too, was wondering how much of their destiny could be changed, if any. He swept Rue up into his arms and mastered her with a thorough kiss, then carried her to the bedroom.

“You look so beautiful in that dress,” he said after setting her on her feet at the foot of the massive bed. “I almost hate to take it off you.”

For Rue time no longer stretched into the past and the future, forming a tapestry with no beginning and no end. Nothing and no one existed beyond the walls of that room, and their union would be eternal.

She didn’t speak, but simply began unfastening the pearl buttons at the front of her gown, her chin at a high, proud angle, her eyes locked with Farley’s, challenging him to resist her.

He couldn’t; sweet defeat was plain in his face, and the knowledge made her jubilant.

The dress fell over her hips, and Rue hung it over the back of a chair, then kicked off the tight slippers. She kept stripping until all that was left was the wide, pearl choker at her throat.

Farley’s throat worked visibly as he swallowed, looking at her as if he’d never seen a naked woman before. When Rue lifted her arms to unclasp the choker, Farley rasped, “No. Leave it,” and she obeyed him.

He began taking off his own clothes, starting with his boots, setting them aside with a neatness that made Rue impatient. She watched with brazen desire as he removed his shirt, unfastened his belt, stepped out of his jeans.

Finally, Farley stood before her wearing only his skin, and he was as incorrigibly, magnificently male as a wild stallion.

He held out a hand to Rue. “Come here, Mrs. Haynes,” he said.

It wasn’t the time to say she meant to hyphenate both surnames into one; in that bedroom, alone with her mate, no title suited her better than Mrs. Haynes. Rue yearned to give herself to Farley totally.

She went to him and he drew her upward into his kiss, a tall shaman working his treacherous magic. Rue trembled as she felt his hand cup her breast, and she moaned into his mouth as his fingers lightly shaped the nipple.

As Rue’s body was pleasured, so was her soul. There was a joy in the depths of her being that overruled all her fears and doubts and furies. She was, while Farley loved her, in step with a dancing universe.

He continued to worship her with words and kisses and caresses while she stood with her head back, lost in glorious surrender. When he knelt to pay the most intimate homage, she gave a soft, throaty sob and burrowed her fingers in his thick hair, holding him close, stroking the back of his head.

Their lovemaking was woven of silver linings plucked from dark clouds, golden ribbons of sunset and lengths of braided rainbow, formed at once of eternity itself and the most fleeting of moments. Farley’s and Rue’s souls became one spirit and did not exist apart from each other, and this joining sanctified their marriage in a way an official’s words could never have done.

There was no room in Rue for any emotions other than soaring happiness and the most intense pleasure, not while she and Farley were still celebrating their wedding. Finally, however, she dropped off to sleep, exhausted, perspiration cooling on her warm flesh.

Farley held Rue for a long time. He’d heard other men talk about love, but he’d never imagined it could be the way it was for him with this woman.

He kissed the top of her head, even though he knew she wasn’t awake to feel the touch of his lips, and his eyes stung. Returning to 1892 wasn’t really his choice, as he’d implied to Rue earlier, but it was his fate—he knew that in his bones. The letter, penned in his own handwriting, was irrefutable proof of that.

Farley grew restless. If he managed to circumvent destiny, somehow, and stay in the twentieth century with Rue, would the letter stop existing? Would his fate, or anyone’s, be altered?

The room was filling with gray twilight, and Farley felt a chill. He eased himself apart from Rue and went into the bathroom, where he took a shower. Then he put on the same clothes he’d worn earlier, because he’d been married in them and because they’d borne a vague hint of Rue’s scent. He stood beside the bed for a long time, memorizing the shape of her face, the meter of her breathing, knowing his heart was beating in rhythm with hers, even though he could hear neither.

“I love you,” he whispered raggedly. He knew he should wake her, since any parting could be a permanent one, but he turned away. If he looked into her eyes, he would see the reflection of his own despair, and the pain would be beyond bearing.