Outlaw’s Bride (10 page)

They were both sorry when the dishes were done, because they had enjoyed the time together. Patch lifted her arms over her head and stretched, unaware of how much Ethan was enjoying the view. She caught him staring and dropped her arms, realizing she had been caught in unladylike behavior.

However, Ethan didn’t seem to mind. His green
eyes were warm with approval. “Where do you plan to sleep?”

“I’ve made a place for myself in Leah’s room. We’re going to share a bed.”

Ethan’s lips pursed ruefully. “Does Leah know about your plans?”

Patch smiled, remembering a time when her stepmother, Molly, had suggested that Patch share her room with her brand-new six-year-old stepsister. Patch had fled to Ethan’s cabin and spent the night wrapped up in a buffalo skin in front of his fireplace. “I spoke with Leah earlier in the day. She was agreeable … after your mother had a talk with her.”

“Then I guess we’d better say good night.”

“Oh, my Lord, I forgot all about him!”

“Him? Who?” Ethan demanded, his neck hairs rising at the thought of Patch so concerned about another man.

Patch ignored Ethan and headed for the kitchen door, which, once again, was stuck fast.

Ethan held his hand over hers to keep her from opening the door. “Who is it you’re going out to meet at this hour of the night?”

Patch looked at him over her shoulder and smiled coyly. “Max!”

Ethan wasn’t amused. “Who’s Max?”

“My mouse.”

Ethan felt like an idiot. “Let me help you.” He leaned across her and pried the door loose. For a moment he didn’t move. He was conscious of the scent of some kind of flower in her hair, and he
could feel the heat of her all down his front. “Do you need a light?”

“It would help if you’d get a lantern so I can see what I’m doing.”

Ethan fetched the lantern from the table and held it aloft while Patch retrieved Max, who had remained safe and sound in the gardening tool box all evening.

“Why don’t you just let him go?”

“That calico cat would make dinner of him for sure!” Patch responded tartly. She crossed past Ethan back into the house and only waited for him to come inside and drag the door closed before she said, “Good night, Ethan.”

Patch resisted the urge to look back at him as she headed for Leah’s bedroom.

Ethan stood where he was without moving, because if he took one step, he was going to have her in his arms. And that was not—absolutely not—part of his plans for Patch Kendrick.

He would have to make some time soon to sneak through the back alleys into town and talk with Careless Lachlan. Once Patch realized there was no hope of clearing his name, she would be on her way back to Montana. And his body would stop responding like he was some teenage kid in the throes of calf love. Because he was not—absolutely not—going to make love to any lady with marriage on her mind, especially Seth Kendrick’s daughter.

When a week had come and gone in which Ethan had made no move to start his investigation, Patch decided to get things rolling on her own. She told Ethan she needed to take a wagon into town to pick up her trunks from the hotel, which was true, of course. What she failed to mention was that she also planned to have a talk with the sheriff while she was there. It occurred to her that this might also be an opportunity to finagle an introduction to her grandfather.

She decided to do her pleasant business first. Since small towns were notorious for gossip, she thought news of her presence might already have reached her grandfather. Apparently he lived like a hermit, because he was both disbelieving and disgruntled when he opened the door to his room at Pearlie Mae’s Boardinghouse and found her standing there.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

Patch revised her expectation that this was going to be a pleasant visit. She realized she was nervous, and her pulse fluttered erratically as she
announced, “I’m Patricia Kendrick. Your granddaughter.”

She saw a brief spark of acknowledgment in his eyes. Then he scowled. “What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Well, you’ve talked to me.”

If Patch hadn’t put her foot in the door, she would have found herself standing in the hall with the door slammed in her face. “How do you think my mother, Annarose, would feel if she knew you were treating me like this?”

His eyes flickered to a framed picture on the dry sink, then back to her. “All right. You can come in. But if you once mention your father’s name, I swear I’ll throw you out on your fanny so fast the wind’ll whistle.”

Once she had bullied her way inside by invoking Annarose’s name, Patch closed the door behind her and stood toe to toe with her grandfather, matching him glare for glare. Which gave her a good chance to look him over.

Corwin Marshall had aged as lean as she suspected he must have been as a young man. He stood tall and proud and obstinate before her, dressed in a plaid shirt and store-bought trousers held up by bright red suspenders. His full head of white hair needed a trim. His lips were thin, his nose prominent, his eyebrows as bushy white as his hair. His eyes reminded her of her own. They were a startlingly vivid blue. His face was lined, craggy almost, and his jowls sagged a bit. Otherwise, he looked as hard as she suspected his life had been.

Patch had worn her rose red traveling outfit, complete with gloves and feathered hat and iron rod down her spine, because she had wanted to impress her grandfather with how well she had turned out. She had never dared to ask her father how her mother had died, because any mention of Annarose always made him so sad. But she intended to find out the details from her grandfather. And she wanted very much to see that picture the old man had glanced at before he let her in.

“You are my grandfather, aren’t you?” Patch asked when it seemed the old man had no intention of speaking.

He searched her face, looking for familiar features. “I suppose I must be.”

“May I sit down?”

There was a small, square table by the window with a chair on either side of it. Her grandfather gestured her toward it. “Be my guest.”

He seated her and took the chair on the other side of the table for himself. He began packing a pipe with tobacco from a small pouch. He didn’t seem in any hurry to talk.

A checkerboard and checkers sat on the table, along with a deck of cards. A quick survey of the room revealed that her grandfather lived a neat, if Spartan, life. His bed was made, a pair of Sunday boots stood against the wall, and his clothes hung on pegs on the back of the door. A kerosene lamp stood on the table beside the bed, which also held a book. Patch tried to make out the title, but it was turned the wrong way.

On the other side of the room stood a dry sink with his shaving equipment and a pitcher and bowl. A framed photograph of a woman was angled toward the bed. Patch hoped it was her mother, Annarose. Nell had said her grandfather had a picture he could show her. She resisted the urge to get up and go over and look at it and purposely turned her head to gaze out the window. She didn’t want her grandfather to think that seeing a picture of her mother was the only reason she had come.

Sunlight streamed through faded gingham curtains that Patch supposed had been put there by the landlady. The window was open, and she could hear sounds from the street a floor below her—a bawling bullock, the creak and rattle of a wagon, the stomp of boots echoing on the boardwalk. The smell of fresh manure swept in on the breeze. She peered down and saw a hitching rail to the left of the window with a bay gelding canted on three legs. The swish of its tail kept a swarm of flies from enjoying the manure without constant interruption.

She could feel the loneliness in this room. It was almost a presence. How sad that Corwin Marshall was living the last years of his life in this solitary way. She wondered why her father had never mentioned her grandfather’s existence. And whether the old man would even want to know her now.

When she turned her attention back to her grandfather, she caught him staring at her. Unfortunately,
she had no idea whether he liked what he saw. “Well,” she said. “Where shall we begin?”

“You look like your mother.”

Patch forced a smile. “Nell said the same thing.”

Her grandfather’s brow furrowed. “Nell who?”

“I’m sorry. I thought you two knew each other. Nell Hawk. I’m staying at the Double Diamond, keeping house for Mrs. Hawk until she’s feeling better.”

“That’s not a fit place for you to be.”

Patch’s neck hairs bristled. “Why not? Nell is a perfectly respectable—”

“It ain’t Nell Hawk I’m concerned about, it’s that no-good, gunslinging outlaw son of hers.”

Patch leapt from her chair, ready to do battle on Ethan’s behalf. “You take that back!” she shouted. “Ethan is as fine a man—” Patch cut herself off. She had risen to Ethan’s defense just as she had to her pa’s when she was twelve and the whole town had believed Seth Kendrick was a coward. But she wasn’t twelve anymore. And her grandfather had a point. Ethan Hawk was a man fresh from prison with a years-old crime still hanging over his head.

She slumped back down into her chair. “I’m sorry for flaring up at you like that. Only, you see, I love Ethan Hawk. I’m convinced he’s innocent of everything he was accused of doing. And I’m going to do my best to see that his name is cleared before I marry him. Even if it isn’t, I’m going to marry him anyway,” she said defiantly.

Patch was breathless by the time she had finished.
Her grandfather said nothing, simply struck a match and puffed at his pipe until it was lit. He shook the match out and laid it on the table in a spot that she could see had been blackened by the practice.

“How is Nell Hawk? I didn’t know she was sick.”

Patch was disconcerted by the change of subject but answered, “She says it’s just an upset stomach.” Patch leaned forward to confide in her grandfather. “But I think it’s something much worse. She doesn’t look good, and she’s been ill for almost two months without getting better.”

Corwin Marshall grunted. And changed the subject again. “How’d you find out about me? When he left town, your father swore I’d never see hide nor hair of you again. Did he have a change of heart?”

Patch fiddled with the strings of her velvet reticule. “Well, no, he didn’t.” She could almost feel the old man stiffen on the other side of the table. “He probably knew you didn’t want to see me,” Patch ventured.

“Not want to see you? When Annarose died, I begged him to let me have you. He was no fit—”

Patch had already started to rise from her chair again when her grandfather stopped himself. She sank back down. “I don’t know what went on between you and my father,” she began, “but don’t you think it’s time you settled things between you?”

“Your pa murdered my girl. I’ll never forgive him for that!”

Patch was appalled at the fury and vindictiveness of the old man’s voice. Her grandfather seemed so sure of what he was saying, yet she knew it had to be impossible. She rose immediately to her father’s defense. “My father loved Annarose Marshall so much that when he finally married again, he did so with the understanding that his heart was already taken. Are you telling me he
murdered
the one person he loved above anything else in this world? I don’t believe it!”

“He never told you, did he?”

“Told me what?”

“Your father shot Annarose and killed her,” he said flatly.

Patch gasped. “If he did, it must have been an accident, he—”

“Oh, he claimed it was an accident, all right. I suppose he didn’t see her in the dark,” the old man conceded grudgingly.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“Your pa was a Texas Ranger, and some Mexican bandidos he’d been chasing ambushed him here in town. Your ma was supposed to be safe at home. But you’d gotten sick, and she’d come into town hunting the doctor. Your pa was standing on the boardwalk in front of Doc Carter’s office when he heard something behind him and thought it was one of the bandidos. To keep from being back-shot, he turned and fired into the dark.

“When the Mexicans fled on horseback, your pa discovered that when he’d fired into the dark, the person he’d hit was your mother. She’d been shot twice in the chest. My daughter was still breathing
when your father found her, but it didn’t take her long to die.”

“Oh, my God. How horrible for him!”

“For him! What about me?” Corwin said in a ragged voice. “I lost my girl, and then he took you away, all because I threatened …”

Patch waited for him to finish. When he didn’t, she prompted, “Threatened what?”

“To take you away from him. After Annarose died, he was never without a bottle. He left you alone, sometimes all day. Come to find out later he was hiding Ethan Hawk at that place of his, letting that murdering rapist take care of you!”

“Ethan is not—”

“Be that as it may,” her grandfather interrupted, “your pa disappeared without a trace. Where did he take you?”

“We moved around for a while, especially during the war. We ended up in Fort Benton, Montana. It’s as far north as the Missouri River runs, practically to Canada. Pa’s a doctor now. He’s remarried and has two stepchildren and a seven-year-old son by his wife, Molly.