The Outlaw's Bride (10 page)

He studied the pages—scrawled handwriting, blotches of ink, scribbles where he’d added ideas that had come to him. “No, it’s not near ready.”

“I shall cook breakfast,” Isobel announced. “You will read the story to me.”

Without giving him opportunity to protest, she shed her cloak, rolled up her sleeves and set to work. “Read, Noah!” she commanded.

He cleared his throat, settled into a chair and began to speak aloud words that once had been only in his mind.

Isobel smiled as she tapped a spoonful of grease into the black iron frying pan.

“Up on the ridge a coyote began to howl,” Noah read, “a sound that blended with the whine of the wind and the owls’ soft hoot.”

Isobel cracked six eggs, one by one, into the sizzling grease.

“O
pal stood between Travis and Buck. In her arms she carried the newborn babe.” Noah’s voice lowered as he read the words. “She looked into the eyes of the stranger who had come to kill her husband. ‘You’ll have to shoot me first, Buck Shafer,’ she said. ‘I won’t be parted from the man I love.’”

Isobel was absently stirring the third batch of scrambled eggs she had made that day. Eyes closed, she listened to the final pages of Noah’s story.

They had eaten eggs for breakfast, lunch and now supper, and she had burned them the first two times. But she could do nothing but listen as his words transported her into the tale.

“Travis gazed into the face of his wife,” Noah continued, “and at the sweet expression of his newborn son in her arms. ‘We’re all right,’ Opal whispered as they stared at the man who lay dead on the floor. Then Travis and his family stepped outside into the flaming orange sunset of Coyote Canyon.’”

Noah placed the last page upside down on the rest of his manuscript. “In my mind, it came out better. The
story flowed like water down a ravine. On paper it got jumpy.”

His words drifted off, and he sat staring at the table as though he felt sick. “Just a bunch of scrambled words,” he muttered, “like those eggs you’re cooking.”

From behind, Isobel slipped her arms around his neck. She pressed her damp cheek against his. “It is a good story, Noah.”

“You’re crying?” he whispered.

“If I read this story in Catalonia, I would know that canyon. I would see those people.”

“What about Opal? You probably think I should have let her blast Buck Shafer to kingdom come, like you would have done.”

Isobel came around Noah and knelt beside his chair. “Opal did what was right. She protected the baby.”

“Isobel, why did you come here?”

“My…my furniture, of course.”

He shook his head. “You’re in quite a tangle. You want to be bold, shoot-’em-up Isobel Matas. But somewhere inside there’s a Belle Buchanan who likes fixing up a house and cooking for her man. There’s a woman who cries when a story comes out right. And there’s a woman who can’t stay away from the man she loves. The man she needs.”

“You flatter yourself. I don’t need anyone.”

“You need me.” He touched her cheek with a finger when she started to shake her head. “Yes, you do.”

“No,” she said, but her eyes again filled with tears. “Oh, Noah.”

“There’ll be other men for you, Isobel. Men who’ll fit into your schemes better than I do.”

She knew he was wrong. Not only was she a spinster,
but in the days apart from him she had realized she wanted no one else.

“Isobel, you have to go back to Chisum’s,” he was saying. “I’ve got chores. And the cow—”

“The cow, the chores!” She pushed away from him and stepped to the stove. “Excuses. The truth for you is the same as for me. You love me.”

“But I never let my heart take control. If I’m angry, I give myself time to cool down. If I care for a woman who’s no good for me, I back away.”

“I’m no good for you?”

“You’re so good I can’t stand to be this close and not touch. But, Isobel, what could come of it?”

“Then we shall bring in my furniture,” she replied, striding to the door. “Stop gawking like a schoolboy and come along.”

As Noah dragged the last velvet-upholstered chair across the dirt floor of his house. He had never seen so much furniture in his life. A huge wooden bed sat in pieces to reassemble. A settee and three chairs were lined up by the fireplace. Rolled carpets lay stacked in the bedroom. Dishes and fine linens cluttered the floor. An enormous, gold-framed mirror almost filled one wall.

Heading out the door to check on his cow just before midnight, Noah could hear Isobel singing Spanish ditties as she filled cupboards with her brightly painted plates and cups. How had he gotten into such a mess? A hot-blooded
señorita
determined to gun down Snake Jackson. A head full of stories that wouldn’t hush until he wrote them down. A boss in jail, and a best friend
sitting on a keg of dynamite in Lincoln. And now a house full of frilly velvet furniture.

As he returned to the house he heard a strange sound—
clickety-click-click, clickety-click, ding, clickety-click.

What now? He shouldered into the front room. Isobel was bent over a small machine on his pine table. Her fingers darted around
clickety-clacking
on the machine as her eyes scanned his manuscript.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“It’s my Remington!” She swung around and laughed aloud. “It makes letters—like a printing press. I used my typewriter to keep records for our hacienda, but it came from America. See? E. Remington and Sons of Ilion, New York.”

Frowning at the contraption, Noah studied the springs, ratchets and levers jumbled among a pair of spools and an inked ribbon. “What do you aim to do with it?”

“I aim to put your story into type before we post it to New York. Look, the first page is finished.”

She held up a sheet of white paper with capital letters marching in a straight line across the top. SUNSET AT COYOTE CANYON BY NOAH BUCHANAN.

He whistled softly and sat down beside her as she began to touch the keys again. “Reads pretty good,” he murmured as his story began to appear at the top of the unrolling paper. “Well, how do you like that.”

“I like it,” she said. Her slender wrists moved back and forth in a graceful dance. “When we send it to New York, they’ll like it, too.”

A smile playing at her lips, she
clickety-clacked
until a second page rolled out of the Remington. Noah leaned one elbow on the table and watched. He felt off balance.
Hadn’t he planned to stow Isobel safely at Chisum’s house? Hadn’t he decided there was no future in wooing her? She didn’t want to be hooked up with a dusty cowboy for the rest of her life. He had never planned on a wife and family.

So why did her fancy Spanish furniture somehow feel just right in his adobe house? Why had it warmed his heart to walk in the front door and find her seated at his table?

He studied the gold ringlets that fell from the bun at the back of Isobel’s head. She was wearing the blue dress again. The one she and Susan Gates had made. Little ruffles clustered around her neck. Little cuffs clasped her slender wrists.

“This part about the coyote I like very much,” she said softly. “It makes me shiver.”

The scent of her skin drifted over Noah while she spoke. Unable to resist, he trailed kisses up her neck. The
clickety-click
faltered. When his lips met her ear, the typing stopped altogether.

She faced him, her face a mix of tenderness and frustration. “Noah, you said you didn’t…”

“But…I do.”

“I’ll type your story tonight and leave for Chisum’s in the morning. You’re tired. Go to bed.”

He took her shoulders and turned her toward him. “I know what we said about the marriage, Isobel. And I know we meant every word. But there’s no way I can be near you and not start thinking about what it’s like to kiss you. You feel it, too, Isobel. I know you do.”

“When you left, I sat alone in the big house of John Chisum and thought about my life, my future.” She lifted
her head and met his eyes. “Death runs close behind me. I feel its breath on my skin.”

“Isobel, I’m going to take care of you.”

“Listen to me, Noah. I have nothing to claim as my own. Nothing. My own death or the killing of a man—perhaps both—these are my only paths. My heart is desperate.”

“You’re making this worse than it is. Don’t you know God has a good plan for you?”

“God? The God who permitted my father’s murder? You put your faith in a tale no more true than this one.” She pointed to his manuscript. “My future is in no one’s hands but my own. Put yourself in my place, Noah. What would you do?”

He let out a breath. “I’d go after the man who stole my land. I’d track down Snake Jackson. But you don’t have to do that. You can go back to Spain.”

“Once I was a noblewoman. Betrothed to a don, I was a lady of high breeding and exquisite taste. Now, my heart has been turned upside down. I care nothing for that life.”

“It’s this land—New Mexico. The mountains and streams.”

“It’s you, Noah.” Before she could think clearly, she slipped her arms around him and kissed his lips.

“Mercy, Isobel,” he murmured. Taking her in his arms, he held her close. “Isobel, no matter what we said, I’m not ever going to let you go. I hope you know that.”

She shut her eyes and nestled against his shoulder. “Perhaps, Noah. Perhaps.”

They set up the new bed in the front room. Isobel slept alone, her dreams tangled and frightening. Noah
kept mostly to his room when he was in the house. For three days, no word of past or future was spoken between them. A gale of wind ushered in the first days of March. Snow quickly melted, dry leaves whisked away, shoots of green grass along the Pecos River pushed upward.

While Isobel continued unpacking and arranging her things, Noah went hunting. There was no scarcity of wild game along the river, and in no time flat he had bagged a brace of rabbits.

“Oh, Noah,” she cried, her eyes bright with unshed tears as he laid them out. “They’re bunnies!”

“They’re food, darlin’.”

He handed her a knife and taught her how to skin and dress the rabbits. With a kettle of simmering water, a handful of turnips and carrots from the root cellar and a dash of salt, he taught her to make stew.

As the aroma drifted through the
jacal,
Isobel lined the edges of Noah’s cabinets with ribbons of white lace she had brought from Spain to wear in her hair.

“Curtains,” she said aloud, musing on the glass windowpanes. “We must have curtains.”

Noah straightened from the bowl of cornbread batter he was stirring. “What for? Nobody’s around to look in.”

“A home must have curtains. They let in the light just so….”

Noah rubbed his chin where he’d shaved that morning. “You know, when Mrs. Allison passed away a few years ago—”

“She’s dead? Your Mrs. Allison?”

He nodded. “Some kind of a fever got her. Just like the one that got my mother.” He fell silent for a moment. “Mr. Allison sent me a trunk from Texas. Things Mrs.
Allison wanted me to have. I took one look inside and shut it quick.”

“But why?”

“Aw, it was just the kind of stuff Mrs. Allison loved. I think I saw some fancy curtains in there, pictures of pink roses, silver spoons. It made me sad to look at them, being as they were Mrs. Allison’s prized possessions.”

Isobel watched the flicker of pain that crossed his face and realized the childless Englishwoman had been the only mother Noah had known. “Please show me the trunk, Noah.”

Leaving the cornbread, he led her into a back room where he kept his stores. He raised the trunk’s domed lid, and Isobel caught her breath.

“Lace curtains from Nottingham in England.” She lifted the soft fabric and hugged it close. “Oh, they’re exquisite.”

A small grin tugged at Noah’s mouth. “Exquisite, huh?”

The trunk was filled with treasures—a silver tea set, porcelain cups and saucers, bone china candlesticks. The heavy linen napkins and tablecloths were evidence of the woman’s wealth, and her love for Noah.

Isobel lifted a heart-shaped pewter box and peeked inside. “Here’s a letter. It’s for you, Noah.”

“Me?” He took the envelope on which his name had been written in a fine hand.

“Dear little boy,” he read aloud. He cleared his throat as he glanced at Isobel. “Mrs. Allison always used to call me that—
dear little boy
.”

For a moment he couldn’t read. When he began again, his voice was low. “I pray for you each day as you ride the cattle trails for Mr. John Simpson Chisum. Do be
careful. These things I am sending will not fit well with your trail life, but they are all I have. Dear little boy, please remember our sunny afternoons reading books in the library. I have saved every letter you wrote me, one every…every week you have been gone. Dear little…”

Noah swallowed. He gazed at the letter, the muscles in his jaw working as he fought for control. “Dear little boy,” he whispered, “I love you so much. Mrs. Allison. Jane.”

He folded the letter and slipped it into his shirt pocket. Clearing his throat, he looked at Isobel. “I’d be pleased to hang those curtains for you now,” he said.

Sunday morning as Noah sat reading his Bible at the pine table, he couldn’t remember a time he’d felt so downright happy.

Not to say that Isobel wasn’t more than a mite stubborn and sassy. But he didn’t care a lick. In fact, he liked the way she took charge of the house. She unearthed the copy of
Beeton’s Book of Household Management
that Mrs. Allison had given him the day he set out for New Mexico. Before he knew it, the young
marquesa
was elbow deep in cleaning and cooking.

Studying the array of bottles and jars she had turned upside down to dry on the fence posts, Noah smiled. As she finished the dishes, she mentioned how nice it would be if he would plow a patch of ground outside the kitchen.

Did the highfalutin
señorita
really mean to plant a garden? The idea of her staying on at his place sat well with Noah. Especially if she could forget about the things that had driven her to New Mexico.

They had spent only three days together, but the words
that ran ragtag around inside his head were sounding better all the time. Mr. and Mrs. Buchanan. The Buchanan family. Well, well. Could you beat that?

Monday morning shaped up to be the prettiest day of the year thus far. The sun appeared over the hills, the wind died, buds began to unfold. Isobel had finished typing Noah’s manuscript, bound it in cloth and sewed the packet shut for mailing. She was laundering their clothes on the ribbed washboard and tub on Noah’s front porch. He had saddled the horses in preparation for a ride out on the range to show Isobel the land he intended to buy.

Her hair slicked back in a tight bun, Isobel had just bent over the washtub when a raucous holler rippled down the river valley. Chilled, she straightened. Noah came charging out of the barn, his six-shooter drawn.