Never Love a Lawman (21 page)

Wyatt stretched his long legs under the table as he leaned back in his chair. “Where did she go?”

“Back to her parents’ home. Her father’s a merchant who made his fortune supplying goods to the miners during the rush. Mr. Rice and Mr. Maddox were never competitors in any business venture, but neither were they partners. I think there was a time that Mr. Rice wanted to invest in the C & C, but Mr. Maddox wanted to keep it private. I don’t know any of the details.”

Rachel bent her head and returned to her stitching. “I do know that there was no love lost between the two men. Cordelia’s presence in the Maddox home formed a bridge of sorts between the two families, and Benson’s death changed that. I think Cordelia was strongly encouraged to return home, but that is only my opinion. Mr. Maddox certainly never said as much. In fact, he rarely mentioned Cordelia.”

“Did Mrs. Maddox try to keep Foster away from his grandfather?”

“I don’t know. I’m not certain that Mr. Maddox was very curious about Foster when he was young. I don’t think he knew what to make of children. It was his view that they were the responsibility of women until they were of school age; then they became the charges of tutors and teachers. He once said that Benson was not particularly interesting until the summer he took a laborer’s job on the railroad. I know he wished Foster had done something like that. He thought Foster dismissed certain types of work as being beneath him, and Mr. Maddox believed that a man who places himself above work—any work—has already lost his soul.”

“Do you believe that?” asked Wyatt.

Rachel did not answer immediately. Her fingers stilled as she considered her answer. “I must believe it,” she said finally. “Foster Maddox is the most soulless man I know.”

Wyatt watched her hands begin to move again. “You mentioned Cordelia’s father was a merchant. Was there ever a plan for Foster to be involved in the Rice family business?”

“Cordelia Maddox has two sisters and a brother. Two of her nephews were groomed to take over. Mrs. Maddox was firm that the railroad was Foster’s birthright and her father championed that.”

“Perhaps as a way of becoming a partner in the line?”

“That certainly occurred to Mr. Maddox,” Rachel said. “He didn’t want to see the industry of his life turned over to Charles Rice.”

“Is there a possibility that Foster will do that?”

“Not if Mr. Maddox addressed it properly in his will. He led me to believe that he had.” Her lips twisted in a humorless smile. “Foster Maddox is also extraordinarily selfish. It might be that the provisions in Mr. Maddox’s will were unnecessary.”

“When did Mr. Maddox start to include Foster in the rail operations?”

“Sometime after Foster finished his studies at William and Mary.”

“William and Mary? Really?”

“Mr. Rice came to California from Virginia. He paid for Foster’s education, not Mr. Maddox. It came to that when Foster didn’t go to Yale.”

“That damn war will never be over.”

Rachel’s eyes darted sideways and saw Wyatt’s gravely set features. “No,” she said quietly, “it won’t.”

Wyatt didn’t feel the need to say anything for a time. He contented himself watching Rachel, finding the repetitive movements of her hands vaguely hypnotic. “How do you fit in, Rachel?”

“Surely you already know. I thought you decided that I was Mr. Maddox’s mistress.”

“I did. You read the agreement. You know why I came to that conclusion. Maddox led me down that path.”

Rachel paused long enough to sweep back the thick plait of hair that had fallen over her shoulder. “I’m not sure what you’re saying.”

Wyatt reached over the corner of the table and lifted Rachel’s chin with his fingertips. She didn’t flinch, but her dark eyes mocked him. “I’m saying that I changed my mind a while back about you ever being Clinton Maddox’s mistress.”

“All right.” She tilted her chin away from him and sat back in her chair, putting herself just outside his easy reach.

“Is that it?” he asked. “You don’t want to say more?”

She shrugged. “I asked you once if it mattered around here that a woman was a man’s mistress. You told me it didn’t. I can’t imagine why you’re pursuing the question now. It has nothing at all to do with our partnership.”

It was a new experience for Wyatt Cooper to find himself cornered. He was very sure he didn’t like it. He had expected she would leap at the opportunity to tell him what a thickheaded idiot he’d been for believing she was Maddox’s mistress in the first place. Instead, she’d decided to simply allow him to think whatever he liked. Again.

“Don’t you ever defend yourself?” he asked.

The question raised a flickering smile. “How quickly you’ve forgotten the bucket I swung at your head.”

“You know what I mean.”

“If that answer doesn’t satisfy you, then clearly, I don’t.”

Wyatt’s glance darted sideways to where Rachel kept her small store of liquor. It was tempting to think she would make more sense to him if he was pouring a third or a fourth shot just now.

Rachel caught the direction of his wandering attention. “Would you like a drink?”

“God, no,” he said feelingly. “If you’re offering, it couldn’t possibly help.”

Choosing not to be offended, Rachel chuckled. “You have a suspicious nature, Sheriff, though perhaps it’s not a failing given the position you hold in this town. I imagine that everyone in Longabach’s today is very glad for your suspicions.”

Wyatt shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“You don’t want to discuss it?”

“You heard everything I had to say when you were eavesdropping.”

There wasn’t a direct response Rachel thought she could make that wouldn’t sound defensive. She said, “I’m grateful that you’re good at what you do.”

“Are you?”

“Of course.” She caught his skeptical look. “Perhaps I should be clearer. I’m grateful for what you do for the town. Your persistent suspicion is not at all comforting when I’m the subject of it.”

“Did Foster Maddox believe you were his grandfather’s mistress?”

Rachel sighed deeply. “Not at all comforting,” she said softly, addressing herself more than Wyatt. “Yes, that’s precisely what he believed. When Mr. Maddox had his stroke, Foster understood the nature of our relationship to be changed in certain fundamental ways, and he decided he wanted what his grandfather had.”

“You.”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t interested?”

She looked up. “Not in the least.”

Wyatt could not mistake the resolve in her expressive eyes. “Foster Maddox has a reputation for ruthlessness.”

“It’s not unfounded.”

“So I imagine he made your situation difficult.”

Rachel pushed her needle into a pincushion and removed her silver thimble. She carefully examined the lace she’d basted onto the nightgown’s neckline. When she was satisfied, she neatly folded the gown and placed it on the table, then turned to Wyatt and regarded him openly.

“Foster Maddox made my situation intolerable. Difficult was when he asked me to accompany him to the theater or the races or some other social event where a woman with my reputation was not only welcomed but desired, and the invitations continued in spite of every one of my firm refusals. It was difficult when he told lies about me to his grandfather, and his grandfather was still so crippled in his speech that all he could do was listen. Hearing him tell Clinton that I enjoyed the attentions of a man who knew what to do in bed was difficult. Standing accused of stealing heirloom jewelry and taking money from the household funds was difficult.”

Rachel resisted pressing a hand to her heart even though it was fluttering wildly against her breast. Her cheeks felt hot, and her mouth was dry. She could feel her throat constricting and an uncomfortable ache forming behind her eyes. Her insides twisted.

And still her gaze remained steady and stubborn.

“Arguments were difficult. Attempts to humiliate me were difficult. Avoiding him was difficult. I could not be alone anywhere in the house. If I was, he cornered me. No servants in the house dared to interfere for fear of losing their position. Clinton Maddox was the only one who could have stopped it, and for months he lay helpless in his bed. But even that, the groping, the insinuations, the suggestions that I whore for Foster’s friends, all of that was merely difficult.

“It was when he made threats against my mother, my sister and her family, and his own grandfather that my situation was made intolerable.” Rachel didn’t look away, but her voice fell to a husky whisper. “I’m not proud of this, but I began to think that killing Foster Maddox was the answer. Not idle thoughts, either. I considered all the reasons that justified it. I became the one who did the watching. I knew his schedule and the route he took between work, his home, and Mr. Maddox’s house. I thought about all the different ways he might die. Poison. Hanging. A fall. Gunshot. A blow to the head. An accident on the street. I wanted to—”

“Rachel.” Wyatt spoke her name quietly, firmly. “I understand. You don’t have to—”

“No,” she said sharply. “You wanted to know. That means you have to listen, no matter how uncomfortable it is to hear. You said I’m accountable to you, and this is my accounting.”

“I wasn’t trying to spare myself. I was trying to spare—” He stopped because it was a partial truth at best, at worst, a lie. If he had wanted to spare her, her eyes seemed to say, then he should never have pressed for answers. “Very well,” he said. “Say it all.”

“I wanted to kill him,” she said. “I dreamed about it. I imagined how I would do it. I thought about how I would live with myself if I were never caught, and I considered what it would be like to hear a judge pronounce my own death sentence. I decided I could accept either eventuality.”

Rachel set her hands on top of the table and folded them into a single fist. “Mr. Maddox’s recovery was slow, but everyone responsible for his care observed the changes. As he improved, he began to find ways to communicate. Blinking. Finger movements. Squeezing my hand. He was surprisingly talkative using these methods, and I came to realize that he knew what I was contemplating. During that time when he couldn’t find a way to say anything to us, he became an extraordinary observer and an even better listener.

“It shouldn’t surprise you that he began encouraging me to leave.”

“No,” Wyatt said carefully. “It doesn’t surprise.”

“There were a number of things to consider,” Rachel said. “Foster’s threats were predicated on the fact that I refused to share a bed with him, but at the same time, my presence in the house kept him from acting on his threats toward Mr. Maddox. I rarely left Mr. Maddox’s side, but that gave Foster the opportunity to direct threats toward my mother and sister.”

“He said he would hurt them?”

“His threats to do harm were mostly financial in nature. He would have made it impossible for my mother to find another position. My sister’s husband would have been dismissed from his job. These things would have happened at great cost to their pride. The same sort of accusations he’d leveled at me would have been turned on them. On those occasions when he talked about unfortunate accidents, his accounts were always about children. I have a niece and a nephew. Twins. Just six years old. It required no imagination on my part to know he was speaking about them.”

“Jesus,” Wyatt said under his breath.

“Besides killing Foster, there really was no other choice than to remove myself from Sacramento. I suppose that it can be argued that by encouraging me to go, Clinton Maddox was trying to save me from myself. For reasons that are entirely understandable, my mother and Sarah also wanted me to leave. I still felt certain that Mr. Maddox’s full recovery would be compromised if I left, making him supremely vulnerable to Foster. We talked about it. He knew and accepted the risk to himself. I was the one who kept balking.”

“What tipped the scales?”

Rachel closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. After a long moment, she let her hand fall to her lap and looked at Wyatt, her gaze weary now. “Foster came upon me in my sewing room. Until he walked in, I hadn’t known he was in the house. While no one on the staff stepped forward when Foster and I were arguing, it was typical that someone would warn me of his arrival. No matter where I was in the house, I usually managed to get to Mr. Maddox’s room first.

“There was no chance of that this time. The details of the argument are unimportant. There was little variation on the theme. We exchanged words, but there was no conversation. We each had lines and delivered them by rote. On this occasion, Foster was suffering with one of his migraines. He was all but lost to reason, and there was little hope that he’d recover it. He was louder, more forceful, and ultimately more physical. It was as if he’d decided that bombast would make his argument convincing.”

The memory caused Rachel to visibly draw into herself. “He knocked over a chair and caused a small table to skid across the floor in one of his clumsier efforts to reach me. I’d been forced to grapple with him before to defend myself from his blows, so I was prepared for something like that to happen again. Before he came within arm’s reach of me, I yanked up the hem of my gown so I could move quickly in any direction. Foster must have interpreted it as an indication that I’d changed my mind and was issuing an invitation. It’s the only reason I can imagine that he stopped in his tracks.”

Wyatt kept his own counsel, afraid that saying anything would damn him for being a man like Foster Maddox. The hard truth was that he was having a difficult time not letting his eyes stray to the slim ankles and calves that could stop any man cold. “And?” he asked.

“And I charged him. I’ve never seen a bull do it, but I think it must have been something like that. I put my head down and ran at him. I drove into his midsection and heard the breath leave his body.”

“I’ve seen a bull charge,” said Wyatt. “That sounds about right. What happened?”

“He stumbled backward, tripped over his own feet, and landed hard on his back. He didn’t get up. I thought he’d passed out, but when I collected myself enough to look more closely, I saw that he’d hit his head on the marble apron of the fireplace. There was blood, quite a bit of it, but he was still breathing. I stared at him for a long time, knowing that it would probably never be easier to kill him. And when I didn’t, when I realized that I never could, I knew the time had come for me to leave.”