Walking on Air (11 page)

Hating himself, he said, “Yep. She could. So before you get on your high horse, you’d best remember that.”

•   •   •

Despite the fine food on the table—pan-fried salt pork, mashed potatoes and gravy, and corn Nan had preserved at the end of summer—supper was a dismal affair. Gabe sat at one end of the table, Nan at the other, with Laney in the chair to Nan’s immediate right. No one spoke. They just ate. The silence was so loud it almost hurt Gabe’s ears. He discovered during the meal that his jaw popped when he chewed—just a soft click that he normally didn’t notice in public dining areas, where people actually engaged in conversation.

Apparently Nan had given up on pretending she was happy about their marriage, or the prospect of sleeping with him that night had her in such a dither, she’d forgotten about putting on a good face for Laney. She sat so straight that Gabe could have ruled paper with her spine, and she picked at her food, taking a tiny bite of one serving and chewing while she pushed another around on her plate. Laney kept sending Gabe long, unnerving stares. At one point, he thought she might be trying to convey something to him, but then he decided she was just glaring. The girl was way too big for her britches—well, in her case, bloomers—and needed a sterner disciplinarian than Nan apparently was to take her down to size. Gabe had no inclination to volunteer for the job, and even if he had, he doubted he could accomplish much in only thirty days.

The countdown started tomorrow morning right before dawn, he realized gloomily, and he was starting to have serious reservations about this business of trying to save a lost soul. It was a lot harder than the angels thought, if not downright impossible. Nan Sullivan—no,
Hoffman
—didn’t want to be saved. In fact, if she hadn’t had a murder charge hanging over her head and was stronger of arm, he’d be kicked out of here in two seconds flat.

After the meal, Nan told Laney to sit at the back side of the table to study or complete her assignments while Nan tidied up. Gabe had little experience in a kitchen. Out on the trail, he’d washed his eating tins plenty of times, but he hadn’t stood at a sink since the widow Harper died. Nevertheless, he was willing—no,
determined
—to help clean away the mess, partly because it wasn’t his way to sit while someone else worked, but mainly because he knew Nan needed to learn that it wasn’t an indication of weakness to accept a man’s assistance. When it came to doing for herself, she was downright stubborn.

Under less sober circumstances, Gabe would have laughed at Nan’s efforts to keep her distance from him as they put the leftovers away. If his shirtsleeve so much as grazed her arm, she jerked back, and in the relatively small space, they brushed against each other often as they emptied serving bowls, scraped plates, and moved the meat from the platter onto a smaller dish. The icebox was crowded. Nan had to shift containers around to make more room, and with the cooling chest so low to the floor, it was a task that required her to bend over. Even concealed by an overabundance of gathers and the bustle of her skirt, her nicely rounded posterior drew his gaze like metal to a magnet.
Damn.
When Gabe imagined how enticing she’d look in a nightgown with her hair down, he felt a film of sweat on his brow and started to think that sleeping on the settee might be easier all around.

Once the kitchen was clean, Nan began adding wood to the cookstove’s burning chamber, so Gabe, hoping to lighten her load, went to build a fire in the sitting room for her. He was kneeling in front of the hearth, blowing softly on the ignited kindling to encourage a flame, when Laney startled him half out of his wits by tapping him on the shoulder. He went for his gun, caught himself in the nick of time, and in the process nearly lost his balance and pitched headfirst onto the wood grate.

“Jesus H. Christ. Give a man some warning, why don’t you?”

“Shhh!” Laney angled a finger over his lips. “Mama mustn’t know I’m talking to you. She thinks I went to use the water closet.”

Gabe regained his balance, turned still in a crouch to peer up at her, and asked, “Well, what’s such a secret? Or is there a general rule around here against talking like normal people?”

“I believe you,” she whispered. “About dying and talking to angels. I believe it happened, all of it.”

That caught Gabe by surprise, and not trusting Laney to be above trickery, he said, “Really? That’s a quick change of heart. Now the tables are turned, because I’m not sure I believe you.”

“You have to!” she whispered in urgent appeal. “He talked to me! Right before supper when I went to my room to change out of my school dress. I couldn’t see him, but I heard him, clear as a bell.”

Gabe sent a cautious glance toward the kitchen. “You heard
who
?”

“Gabriel. At least, that’s who he said he was, Gabriel the messenger.” Laney leaned over at the waist, getting almost nose-to-nose with Gabe. “If you’ve ever read scripture—”

“I haven’t.”

“Well, it makes complete sense if you have. Gabriel is referred to as the messenger. I remember reading that in the Old Testament, I think, but maybe in the New as well. Wasn’t he the one who appeared to people to foretell the births of Jesus and John the Baptist, or something like that?”

“Don’t ask me. I’ve done a lot of reading, but I steered clear of the Good Book. I’ve met too many people who seem half-crazed because they read passages from scripture every day. Too much of a good thing, I reckon, because they act like practically everything is a sin. No playing poker, no drinking, no— Well, never you mind. If I started thinking that way, I’d never have any fun.”

Laney grasped his shoulder. “He came to me; I’m
telling
you. When I first heard his voice, it scared me half-witless! He told me it all really happened, that it wasn’t a dream and you aren’t confused. He said I shouldn’t breathe a word of what you told me to Nan, and he said I should help you instead of trying to hinder you.”

The fire had finally caught without Gabe’s help, so he pushed to his feet. “Like I said before, this is a mighty fast turnaround, Laney, and after the things you said out back, I’m not too sure I can trust you. You haven’t said one thing that you couldn’t be making up.”

“He was afraid you might not believe me,” Laney whispered, “so he told me to remind you of the last thing he said to you before you made him go away.”

“And what was that?” Gabe asked, wondering how Laney knew he’d asked Gabriel to back off. He caught movement from the corner of his eye and realized Nan was walking toward the sitting room. “Make it quick. Here comes your sister.”

“Listen to your heart!” Laney wheeled away toward the short hallway. “That’s what he told me to tell you.”

As the child vanished around the corner, Gabe stared into the feeble lick of the flames, mesmerized by the spurts of blue as tiny beads of pitch ignited.
Listen to your heart.
There was absolutely no way Laney could know about that—unless the angel Gabriel actually
had
visited her.

A smile moved slowly over Gabe’s mouth. That golden-haired son of a gun truly had been created by God and never been a man. Otherwise, he would have known better than to drop in on a young girl when she was pulling off one dress to don another.
Poor Laney.
Little wonder the angel had scared her half out of her wits. Gabe knew the feeling. It was eerie to have someone speak in your ear when you least expected it and couldn’t see him.

He felt rather than saw Nan come to stand in the archway.

“What were you and Laney talking about?” she asked, a ring of suspicion edging her voice.

“Nothing much. Just about some passages in scripture about an angel named Gabriel. Laney seems to think he is referred to in the Good Book somewhere as the messenger. Do you know if that’s accurate?”

Gabe turned to face his nervous bride, feeling more confident than he had all evening. Maybe this business of saving a lost soul wouldn’t be so hard, after all. Not with a very determined archangel guarding his back.

“
You
are familiar with scripture?” Nan moved over to a table at the end of the settee, where a decorative lantern sat. As Laney had told him, Nan averted her face slightly to one side after striking the match and held her breath as she put flame to wick. After waving her wrist to put out the match, she added, “You don’t strike me as the kind of man who’s spent much time reading the Bible.”

Gabe moved slowly toward her. She stiffened, clearly apprehensive. When all he did was relieve her of the match and walk back to the hearth to toss it on the fire, he heard her sigh with relief.

“You’ve got me pegged,” he admitted. “I don’t poke my nose in a Bible often. But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in God.”

“Really?” She slipped her slender arms around her equally slender waist. “Does that mean you’re a churchgoing man, Mr. Valance?”

“Gabriel is my name. I’ll settle for being called Gabe. As for church attendance, I guess you might say I haven’t gone often, but I’ll gladly do so if that will make you happy.”

“What would make me happy, Mr. Valance, is if you’d disappear from my life.”

A
fter Laney had gone to bed, casting a significant look over her shoulder as she departed, Nan informed Gabe that it was her habit to work late into the evening, either on special orders or on her own designs, which she displayed for sale downstairs. The glimpses he’d been given of her life bore out her statement, and because theirs was no ordinary wedding night, he saw no reason to upset her usual routine. He wasn’t entirely certain he didn’t feel slightly relieved.

“Okay,” he said agreeably. “Anything I can help with?”

She flung a startled look at him and firmed her lips, giving him a tantalizing peek at a dimple in her right cheek. He wondered how it would look if she smiled. “You, help with tedious work? Not with those gigantic hands. I swear, they’re the size of dessert plates.”

Gabe flashed her a grin. “You’re addressing a man so fast with a gun that some folks swear they can’t see me draw. I’m pretty nimble-fingered, and I’ll be happy to lend you some assistance.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I shan’t be taking you up on it.”

As she made her way along the hall to her small workroom, Gabe strode directly behind her, noting as he did that shortening his steps was totally unnecessary, because she was in such a hurry to get away from him. When he followed her through the doorway, she swung around, effectively bringing him to a halt, and planted her hands on her hips. Whatever idiot had said that gray eyes were seas of tranquillity had never seen the sparks of lightning shooting from Nan’s. Now he understood where Laney got her spunk. Nan hid it well, but beneath that facade of rigid control, she had a temper. You had only to get her riled in order to glimpse it. And he was more than glimpsing it.

“I said I don’t
want
your help,” she bit out.

Gabe glanced at the small table behind her. “I see two chairs. Laney must help sometimes.”

“Laney doesn’t have paws instead of hands.”

Gabe took a half step forward. Given the choice of having him collide with her or retreating, Nan took a step backward. He circled her and sat down gingerly on a chair that looked designed for a medium-size lady, not a six-foot man. He’d chosen the less cluttered side of the table, and he smiled at her with a nonchalance that he was far from feeling. “Give me something simple to do, then.”

She huffed in exasperation. “You’ll interfere with my concentration. This is my
livelihood
, sir. Without my income, Laney and I will be in the streets.”

“No, you won’t. You’ve got a husband to support you now.”

Her expression said that her faith in that statement was about as strong as her faith in Santa Claus, and a good deal less benign. “So far as I can tell, Mr. Valance, you are not gainfully employed.”

Gabe arched a brow at her. He was on firmer ground now. “I told you that my father was wealthy and that he finally recognized me as his son when he died. I don’t need to be gainfully employed to support you. I’ll just walk over to the bank, the clerk will wire Kansas City, and as soon as my account balances are verified, I’ll have an advance on the soon-to-be transferred funds in my pocket.”

“So you don’t bother with toil?” Her voice rang with censure.

Gabe allowed himself a smile. “Make up your mind, lady. First I’m in trouble because I’m not ‘gainfully employed,’ as you put it. Then you get upset when you find out that I have enough money to support you. As for toil, I bother with it when I’m of a mind, which happens often enough to keep my back strong. It’s not in my nature to sit around twiddling my thumbs. So put me to work. Before you know it, you’ll forget I’m even here.”

Her eyes narrowed. She sat down across from him, but there was about as much repose in her posture as if she’d sat down on a giant pinecone. Gabe suspected he was about to be assigned the most boring task imaginable. He didn’t care. He could entertain himself with the view. With a woman as lovely as Nan, no single man this side of the grave would ever get tired of looking. A lot of married ones wouldn’t, either.

“If you insist on being here, then you may as well be useful.” She pushed a wooden box toward him. “Sort beads.”

Gabe peered over the side of the large, rectangular container. It was filled with a loose assortment of tiny rainbow-colored beads, among which were nestled rows of small, sturdy glass cups without handles that already held beads sorted by size and shape. Hmm. He knew Nan expected him to fumble the job. What she didn’t know was that he relished doing intricate work with his fingers to keep his knuckles well oiled. He removed the cups from the box and lined them up like soldiers at muster. Then, after grabbing a handful of beads, he started dropping them, one by one, into containers holding matching pieces. Some were barely bigger than the tip of a pencil’s lead, others were large, and there were varying sizes in between.

“There aren’t enough cups,” he observed as he returned a partial handful of driblets to the box.

“I have only so many sorting cups. Just search for beads to match what’s already in the ones there.”

Now Gabe saw her aim: to make him go blind from eyestrain. He went to work, knowing she believed that he’d find it difficult, if not impossible, to grasp some of the more minute spheres. That wasn’t going to happen.

They worked in frigid silence for several minutes. Occasionally Gabe paused to watch her fuss over a hat she was decorating. Her frown told him that she found something not quite right about the arrangement of flowers on one side of the crown, which she’d temporarily attached to the felt with straight pins.

“What’s the problem?” he asked when she sighed and jerked the arrangement off a third time.

“It’s missing something, and with you in here, I’m so distracted I can’t figure out what.”

“You could always plop a poor, dead bird in the middle of it.”

She glanced up, visibly struggling not to smile. “Isn’t that hat the most
awful
mess you’ve ever seen?”

“Everything on it is pretty,” he observed. “It’s only that there’s so much pretty that it’s . . . well, gaudy, I guess is the word.”

“Or tasteless,” she said. “Geneva is one of those people who fails to understand that sometimes less is more.”

“Do you hate working under her direction?”

“I hate working under anyone’s direction.” She glanced up from a rose she was pinning back on the hat, her expression conveying that she’d spoken before she thought. “What I mean is—”

“You don’t have to explain. You’re an artist, and when you work, you’re trying to create a vision in your mind. It must be frustrating when you have to follow someone else’s dictates and design something that you think looks terrible.”

“An artist?” She didn’t roll those gray eyes toward the ceiling, but he had a strong hunch she wanted to. “Hardly that. I make hats, pretty little hats, yes, but they aren’t works of art.”

Gabe dropped a fake seed pearl into a cup. “Spoken like a true artist, ever humble. I looked at your stuff today—not only the hats, which are great, but at some of the dresses, too. You’re very talented. That deep brown hat, the one with the brownish white blossoms on it?”

“Silk dogwood blossoms.”

“Ah, I thought they looked familiar. I’ve come across a lot of dogwood in bloom along the trail over the years. Anyway, your choice of colors and eye for contrast—well, that is one nice hat. Some lady is drooling over it, and when she’s saved enough money, she’ll be in to buy it, unless someone else beats her to it. You can bet your bloomers on it.”

Color surged to her cheeks. Gabe wasn’t sure if she was blushing with pleasure at the compliment or embarrassment at his tactless language.

“That was
polite
for me,” he hurriedly explained. “My
gentlemanly
way of saying you can bet your ass on it.” As soon as the words were out, he realized he’d just made things worse. “I mean—uh, sorry, ma’am. Nan.”

A shimmery look entered her eyes, making them sparkle like morning sunlight on fresh-fallen snow. He saw a cheek muscle twitch. Was she appalled beyond measure or trying not to laugh? “You, Mr. Valance, have an earthy way with words.”

“Gabe,” he corrected. “And you’ve got a grand way with hats.” He went back to sorting. “As for my words, I’m trying to watch what I say. It’s just . . . well, this isn’t the world I’m used to. Being with a lady like you . . . it’s new to me. I may slip sometimes and say things that shock you.”

She shifted the rose, angling it one way, then another. “Just don’t say shocking things around Laney, please. I’ve tried very hard to give her a proper upbringing, and I will not be pleased if you fill her head with language a young lady shouldn’t hear, let alone say.”

“I’ll try my best.” He glanced up. “The thing is, I may say some things that I think are fine, and you’ll disapprove. Maybe you can keep track of my slips and tell me later.”

Her fingers stilled on the flower, and her gaze sought his. “Are you asking me to critique your speech?”

“Critique? Now, there’s a word.”

“It means—”

“I know what it means. I’m just not used to hearing it spoken. And, yes, that’s what I’m asking, I reckon.”

She still studied him. “You won’t grow angry if I correct you?”

It was Gabe’s turn to pause in his work. The sudden cessation of beads plopping into containers created a taut silence between them as she waited for his reply. He sensed that there was a heap of anxiety behind her question. “Not if you’re halfway nice about it. Why do you ask?”

“Because most men don’t like it when a woman finds fault with—”

“I’m not most men. I’m Gabriel Valance.” He winked at her. “We men aren’t like your beads, Nan. Don’t try to sort us into cups by size and color. All of us have imperfections, but no two of us are the same.”

He noticed she took time to glance pointedly at the cup of matched beads he was holding before she answered.
Point taken, lady. You don’t believe me.
“Yes, well, not growing perturbed if I criticize you may be easier said than done. My father grew furious if my mother or I even hinted that—”

Irritation stabbed Gabe low in his middle. “I’m
nothing
like your father, and I’d venture a bet that ninety percent of the men in Random aren’t, either.”

“You know nothing about my father!” she cried.

“I know that he was at home and allowed your fiancé to assault you in your own sitting room.”

The bright flags of color on her cheeks turned ashen, and Gabe realized, a second too late, that there was no way in hell he could have come by that information—unless he’d been talking to angels.

“How did—” The words snagged in her throat. She swallowed and tried again. “How can you possibly know if my father was home when it happened?”

Thinking fast, he said, “Because in the highfalutin society you come from, no proper young lady would entertain a gentleman if she were at home without a chaperone. Talk about a scandal. If word got out of such goings-on, a girl’s reputation would be destroyed.”

The crease between her brows deepened. “How do you know my chaperone wasn’t an older female relative?”

“An older female relative would have been stuck to your side like a tick to a hound’s back, and
she
would have skewered that bastard Barclay with the knitting needle.” Recalling the attack he’d witnessed through the parted clouds, Gabe felt anger roiling in the pit of his stomach. And then, before he could stifle himself, words he knew he shouldn’t say began shooting from his mouth. “Nope, your father was in the house. He deliberately left you alone with Barclay, knowing full well what would occur in his absence.” Gabe leaned forward, his gaze locked with hers. “He heard your cries for help. But he didn’t intervene, did he?”

At that, all the color, even the hints of gray, drained from Nan’s face. She shook her head. “Only a horrible excuse for a father would do something so reprehensible.”

“You said it. You had a horrible excuse for a father.” Gabe dropped a blue bead into a cup. As glass struck glass, the resultant report seemed as loud as a rifle shot. “Don’t pretend with me, Nan. You were aware then, just as you are now, that your father knew what Barclay was going to do, and he was okay with it. Otherwise, Barclay wouldn’t have
dared
. Men have died for doing far less.
That’s
why you hate men, why you distrust all of us and never wanted to be married—because the one male in this world who should have loved and protected you was a sorry, good-for-nothing, rotten son of a bitch.”

Nan released an anguished cry and, without pushing back her chair, lunged to her feet, catching the table’s edge with her hip. The bead box tipped and slid toward Gabe, along with all the sorting cups, and fast though he was with his hands, he could stop only the large container from falling, not the cups or the hundreds of beads that cascaded over the box edge to bounce and roll to all corners of the room. One got him straight in the eye. Right then, the stinging sensation was the least of his worries.

Nan whirled to leave the room. Her high-heeled boots found a carpet of tiny orbs, and her feet started shooting out from under her. For an instant she fought for balance, wheeling her arms like someone who’d stepped onto wet ice. Then down she went.

When Gabe leaped up to make sure she hadn’t hurt herself, his own boots found no purchase. His right leg shot sideways, his left skidded forward, and the next thing he knew, he fell on top of her, barely managing to catch the brunt of his weight with his hands to avoid squashing her. He ended up sprawled across her legs with his head nearly level with hers.

“You okay?” he demanded. She’d gone down hard, and she was made so delicately that he feared the impact might have broken one of her bones. His hands smarted like hell from catching himself with his palms and connecting with beads instead of planks. Needlelike pain shot to his shoulders. “Nan? Are you hurt? Talk to me.”

Her eyes met his, but he had the feeling she wasn’t seeing him at all. She looked right through him and then cupped her hands over her face. A dry, shrill cry tore up her throat, a prelude to body-wrenching sobs. Against her palms, she keened, “Oh, God, oh, God, oh,
God
. He kn-
knew
! How c-could he d-do that to m-me? To his own d-
daughter
!”