Only My Love (42 page)

"Were you one in those days?"

"Connell thought so. It helped that he thought I saved his life."

"Did you?"

Ethan shrugged. "I killed the rebel sniper that was aiming for Connell's jar of nitro. It was my life, too. Connell never cared about that and he never forgot." Ethan's fingers absently stroked Michael's hair. "When the war was over he told me he wanted to pay for my schooling. It seems Connell had his own ideas about the truth. He hadn't found a gold vein, but a silver one. He'd never told another soul about it because he'd known there'd be another rush west for riches if he did. He figured his claim was perfectly safe as long as he kept his secret. Only another determined Cornishman would have been able to track the black- coated silver ore, or even know what it was. I stayed in the east after the war and Connell went back to the Rockies. Six months, almost to the day he left, I received the first of many money drafts in my name. The amount stunned me. I could have attended the university twenty times over with the money he gave me and kept on giving me."

"You never thought about taking the money and doing something else with it?"

"No. I wanted to go to school. Law school. I thought that would please Connell." Ethan chuckled. "I aspired to the bench naturally. I imagined that Connell would like the idea of having a judge in his pocket."

Michael straightened and pulled away from Ethan. She peered at him in the darkness, frustrated that she couldn't see his face or that he couldn't see hers. Her voice was sharp. "Are you telling me that you have a law degree?" she demanded.

"Well, yes," he said. "I went to school. I graduated. Four and one half years ago as a matter of fact. 1871. I went to New York afterwards. I thought about setting up a practice there."

"That's the time you told the others we were supposed to have met."

"Yes. I told you I was in New York then."

"You told me you were working in a bank. Houston told me you were robbing them. Who in the
hell
are you, Ethan Stone?"

He sighed. "You would have liked this better if we had remained strangers. You're glaring at me, aren't you?"

She smiled sweetly, gritting her teeth. "You know me so well."

Ethan found her hand again, thankful that she let him take it. "I
was
a lawyer. I still am, though I don't practice."

"That's understandable given the company you keep."

He ignored her comment. "I was only in New York a few months when I received word that Connell had died. Murdered, actually. Killed because of dispute over his claim. And I decided then that I didn't want to be a lawyer or a judge. I wanted to be the man who made the difference at the lowest rung on the ladder. I went west again and got myself elected sheriff in the mining town where Connell lived. I made it my first order of business to find his killer. As it turned out, there were two, and finding them was the easy part. Gathering enough evidence to bring them in took another year. During that time they were stripping the claim as quickly as they could, thinking I would never be able to do anything about it. They never knew there was any connection between Connell Penwyn and me."

Ethan's voice was distant, thoughtful. "The day they were sentenced to hang they still thought it was about the money."

"I don't understand."

"Connell left the Silver Slipper Mine to me. It was in his will and my connection to him all came out at the trial. There was a bias on my part that their lawyers naturally tried to exploit. They contended I'd manufactured the evidence to end the dispute and take back the claim. It was never about that, not for a moment, and luckily the jury believed me. I would have happily given up the Silver Slipper to have Connell back."

"You vindicated Connell's belief in justice."

"Perhaps."

"Then why," she began imploringly, "why did you throw in with Houston and the others?"

"It's not what you think, Michael. I know how it's looked to you, how I
wanted
it to look, but I've never really been one of them. There's been a number of times that I've wondered if I'd gone too far, helped them too much, but it seemed there were no other choices." He could almost feel her confusion and even without being able to see her he knew her head was tilted to one side, her brows drawn together, and her serious, questioning expression had flattened the beautiful shape of her mouth.

"You made a natural mistake," he said, "on the occasion of our first meeting."

"On the train?"

"No, at the
Chronicle,
when your publisher's secretary told you I was a marshal."

Michael tried to think what error she could have made. "I don't think—"

"You assumed I was a relative of Logan's. A very natural assumption if you didn't know my job, and you didn't. Michael, I've been a U.S. Marshal since right after the Silver Slipper affair was settled. I threw in with Houston, as you called it, because in order to beat him I had to join him."

"Marshall," she said softly.
"Marshal."

Ethan had no idea how she managed it in the complete blackness of their surroundings, but the flat of her free hand found his cheek with the accuracy of an eagle swooping down on its prey. She tore the hand he had claimed away and stood. When her voice came to him it was from several feet away.

"How could you?" she demanded, her voice and body shaking with rage. "How could you let me think, no, how could you
want
me to think every horrible thing about you?"

"I admitted I didn't kill Drew." He rubbed the side of his face. It was no lady-like slap she had delivered, but a real blow. His cheek tingled as blood rushed to the area and suffused it with heat and color.

"You admitted it
after
I confronted you. Long after. And you went out of your way to make certain I thought the worst of you. You abducted me. You took me away from that train when—"

Ethan stood himself now. "When Obie would have killed you," he said. "Have you forgotten what you were about to blurt out? Do you think I wanted you tagging along, getting in my way, giving me something else to worry about? Do you think I would be trapped in this goddamn mine right now if it weren't for you?"

The words spilled out and he was helpless to call them back. In their wake the silence was as absolute as the darkness surrounding them.

Ethan took a step toward where he thought she might be. Stones scraped beneath his boot. "I didn't mean—"

"Shut up," she said quietly. "And don't come near me." If it had been daylight Michael's tears would have blinded her. Now they had no effect. She stumbled, groping her way in the dark to put more distance between her and Ethan. Disoriented quickly, she simply dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around her, rocking slightly, comforting herself as if she were mother to her own child.

Her crying was painful to hear, wild and wounded, and the more she tried to hold it back the more it made Ethan ache. In the end it didn't matter that she didn't want him near her, there wasn't anybody else. Her sobs guided him toward her and covered the sound of his approach. He knelt beside her and when she fought him he just held on more tightly, gentling her with his voice and his hands, and letting her feel his strength as something solid but not overpowering.

"Michael." He said her name softly, over and over, a litany of penance to ease his soul. "I didn't mean it. Do you hear me, Michael? It's not your fault. None of it. Not what happened the night of the robbery, not that we're here now. It's mine. I should have thought of something besides taking you away from the train. I should have figured out a way to get you out of Madison. But I didn't want to quit without finding out who was helping Houston with the robberies. I let that rule my common sense and jeopardize your safety." His voice was husky beside her ear and though she was stiff and unyielding in his arms, she was quiet. "And I didn't really want to let you go... I love you, Mary Michael."

Michael slumped against him. His hold relaxed when he knew she wasn't going to fight him any longer. How could she? she thought. She loved him.

Ethan accepted the words she said, not really believing them. It was the danger, he thought, the threat of death, the need to give all that had come before and all that still awaited them some sense of rightness. She believed that she loved him and it was enough for Ethan. It was more than he thought he had any right to expect.

"I love you," he said again. She couldn't have been any closer to his heart in that moment if she had crawled under his skin.

Chapter 12

It was a mutual decision, made without a word passing between them. Darkness cloaked them. They were insensible to the color that touched their features. They felt the heat. He couldn't see her parting lips but he heard her sigh. She was blind to the mouth that hovered over hers. She tasted it instead.

It was frantic, reckless lovemaking, desperate and urgent. She fumbled with the buttons on his fly, he raised the skirt of her gown and pulled at her drawers. The press of his mouth was insistent. Her lips ground against his, eager and wanting.

She said, "Come into me."

"Take me," he said.

She did, straddling him as he lay back. A single thrust joined them. Michael's hands slid under his shirt and stroked his warm skin. He pulled at the neckline of her gown, rending it. Neither of them cared. He bared her breasts, cupped them, caressed. She leaned forward. His mouth was hot and damp on her skin and the suck of it tugged at the very center of her womb.

His fingers pressed into her buttocks, guiding her, encouraging her movements, forcing her pleasure. She shimmered with her release, crying out his name. The tension that was in every line of his body, in the hard thrusts that filled her, exploded. He held her tightly, kissed her harder, felt the sense of urgency fade, and still could not let go of her or stop wanting to love her.

She eased herself down beside him, sensing that he needed to know her strength now. Her fingers flitted across his cheek, his forehead. She brushed aside the strands that laid across his brow. "I'm not so afraid now," she said. "Really, I'm not. There are thousands of places I'd rather be but not without you. I mean that, Ethan."

And she would die meaning it, Ethan thought, if he didn't get her out of the mine. But once she was out, once she had time to think about it, she would realize it was as she had said once before. They really had no future together. It didn't matter if he was a thief or a marshal. She was Jay Mac's daughter. When she saw things more clearly she wouldn't have him as a gift, or be allowed to.

"I never said anything to anyone about the robbery," she said. "I wanted you to know that."

"I know it. You heard more at the door than you admitted though."

"That's true. But it wasn't planned. I caught a few words and then I couldn't help myself. I really never learned enough to tell anyone, and whatever Dee gave left me without any strength. I could hardly lift my head for four days."

"I wish we hadn't had to do that. My purpose was to protect you while I was gone. I knew you wouldn't be able to get away. It's too bad Dee didn't have the dosage right at the outset. You wouldn't have wandered off and she couldn't have accused you of turning us in. No one would listen when I tried to tell them it was Cooper all along."

"You're not listening to me," Michael said. "I could hardly lift my head. I
never
wandered anywhere. Dee's lying about that."

"To what purpose?"

"To exactly this purpose. She got rid of me. It was her aim all along."

Ethan thought about that. It had been Detra who sent to New York for the back issues of the
Chronicle.
Dee, who had suggested the sleeping powders as a way to keep Michael compliant and silent during the robbery. Dee, who had been jealous of Houston's interest in Michael from the very beginning. "Houston could have been killed," he said. "Obie was."

"I think she was willing to take that risk."

"Why didn't you say anything when Houston confronted you?"

"I tried to defend myself," she reminded him. "Even to my own ears I sounded pathetic. Who would have believed me anyway? You're not certain yourself." The flat of Michael's hand stroked Ethan's side. "It's not important now. It will never be important unless we find a way out of here. What can be done, Ethan? Is it so very hopeless?"