Wild Burn (13 page)

His scowl was fierce as he shouldered open the door to the jail and slammed it shut behind him. “Nelson!” he barked at the snoozing man behind the desk, planting his hands on his hips. He wanted the sheriff to know exactly how riled he was over yesterday’s debacle with Matthews, and how easy it would be for Del’s fingers to accidentally curl around the grip of his pistol.

The woman Matthews had called a whore—worse than a whore, actually—was a
nun
, for God’s sake. Somehow, that made it doubly vile.

Nelson blinked blearily at him from his seat, his booted feet propped lazily on the desktop. “Crawford?”

“We need to have a conversation.”

“About?”

“What Jacob Matthews said yesterday to Miss Tully.” He huffed out an impatient breath. “And what I found out from Walking Bear about the dog soldiers. You pick which you want to discuss first.”

Nelson made a grumbling noise low in his throat. “Nothing to say about what happened with Matthews. The man has every right to get cross over the state of his son’s education.”

“Every right?” Del repeated, incredulous. “You stood there and let him say all that to an innocent young woman, completely unprovoked. What kind of man are you?”

He thought he heard Nelson mutter “not that innocent” under his breath but couldn’t be sure. Instead, the sheriff cleared his throat, obviously fighting for calm. “I’ll admit, those are not the sort of words to be lobbed at a respectable woman”—and again, Del thought he heard a slight emphasis on
respectable
—“but you can see it wasn’t entirely unprovoked. She brought those children in.”

“An event which, I gather, she figured had your support.”

Nelson sighed. “I told you the situation I was in concerning the Cheyenne on your first day in Red Creek. Nothing’s changed. They’ll either be a part of our community or they won’t, but it’s better that I don’t get too involved.”

Del’s frustration grew, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “Then you owed her that explanation. When you backed off, you left her alone to face the wolves.” Something for which he was starting to think the sheriff had a talent. “And Matthews.”

“What about Matthews?”

“The bastard fancies himself a gentleman but lobs shit like it’s his job. Miss Tully was right to call him a bully.” And if Del came face-to-face with the man again, he was going to pound that flat, ugly nose of his into the back of his skull.

“You forget that Matthews is paying your wage here.”

Del shook his head. “No, I haven’t forgotten. Which is why I won’t be taking his money.” He would already receive funds from the government to handle the situation with Cloud Rider, but they weren’t paying him to kill senselessly. Del had a feeling senseless killing was precisely what the sheriff and Matthews were hoping for here, but Del didn’t perceive an actual threat. With no sign of Cloud Rider and the other dog soldiers, there wasn’t anything left in Red Creek for him to do.

The sheriff’s feet landed on the floor with a graceless
thunk
. “What?”

“I said, I won’t be taking Matthews’s money.” Truth be told, he kind of liked repeating the phrase, if only to see Nelson’s eyes go wide.

“But…but you can’t just leave. There’s still a threat.”

“Show me the threat.” Ready for this, Del relaxed his stance and used one knuckle to knock his hat a bit higher up on his forehead. “I’ve been over every inch of the town proper, the forests to the north and west. I’ve visited the Indians across the hill and camped out in the clearing. I don’t think there
is
a threat.”

“You’re wrong.” Nelson’s clenched fists on the desk’s barren surface belied his monotone words.

“Don’t think I am, actually. I can tell you, without a doubt, that those Cheyenne you were so eager for me to condemn—Walking Bear’s tribe—have nothing to do with the dog party you want me to hunt down.” He lifted a hand to tick off fingers. “No extra horses, no hidden weaponry, no more people than there were bedrolls. Absolutely no sign that Cloud Rider or his braves ever come calling.”

“You can’t trust what an Indian tells you.”

“Now, see, that’s the sort of attitude that’s gonna make your integration project real hard. Besides, I’m not asking you to trust Walking Bear. I’m asking you to trust me and what my eyes and my gut are telling me.”

Nelson’s lip curled. “Why should I?”

“Well, my eyes and gut are good enough for the U.S. Army. Not sure how you’re gonna get a better reason than that.”

The sheriff’s shoulders slumped as he leaned forward to prop his elbows on the desk, but his gaze remained wary and intent. “So you’re just going to leave, job unfinished. That’s not good for business, Crawford.”

“Whose business? Mine, or Matthews’s?” He had his suspicions. He’d learned after yesterday’s altercation who, exactly, ran this town, and a blind man could see the sheriff kowtowed to Jacob Matthews. Del had met his fair share of men, weak and strong, during the war. Hank Nelson was the former.

“Your business. Because you can bet your idiot Johnny-Reb ass that Matthews’ll make certain everyone—even the U.S. Army—knows you’re unreliable. A quitter.” He paused, and a sly look crossed his narrow features. “Maybe those rumors of desertion are true.”

Del willed himself not to pull his gun. Moira had teasingly accused him of relying too much on the weapon, and she was right. But every time he heard the word
deserter
used in tandem with his name, rage and shame collided within his chest, furious steam rising up the back of his throat to choke him until he felt as though his head would explode. He knew what he’d done. He also knew what he hadn’t done, and he had to live with most of the nation thinking him a turncoat and a deserter.

It was his penance.

Hell, maybe a trip to the chapel wasn’t so out of line after all.

“Think what you want, Nelson,” he growled as soon as he managed himself to breathe proper-like again. “All I know is that something ain’t right with what you asked me to do, and after yesterday, I sure as hell don’t wanna be taking money from a bastard who beats on women.”

“It’s not like he hit her.”

Del shook his head pityingly. “A man doesn’t need fists to bring low a woman.” Just like a plantation owner didn’t need whips and chains to control a negro man. Both thoughts made him sick. “I’ll head over to visit the tribe one last time today, but know that I will be leaving Red Creek in the morning. Been a nice detour before heading east again.” He turned on his heel and yanked open the door, not waiting to hear the sheriff’s forthcoming protests.

As soon as he was out in the afternoon sunlight, he tilted his face back to soak in the warmth of the rays. The knot in his chest wouldn’t loosen as he sucked in deep breaths of that refreshing, pine-scented air. Growing up near Savannah, where the air had been thick and humid and usually overwhelmingly warm, Del recognized this place for the foreign, exotic land it was. High above sea level, chill and pristine, Red Creek was magnificent. Not the buildings, of course, not the town itself—but nestled as it was in the foot of the mountains, there was a feast for his eyes in every direction. Silvery green and smoky gray and chocolate brown for the forest to the west. Royal purple, midnight blue and every possible degree of black and white made up the surrounding rocky faces of the mountains. There was dirt and dust and gravel beneath his boots, and flamboyant, lusty hawks flying overhead. And that sky, that amazing, bluebell sky, so pure right now in the sparkling autumn sun that was just beginning to soften as the days drove them toward winter… It made his heart race for a few breathless, tumultuous moments, only slowing again when he realized it would always be that beautiful and vast.

He hadn’t appreciated the sky on the plantation. Everything had seemed low and pressing down on him—it was merely the ceiling of his invisible jail cell, the fields its floor.

This sky, though, was the epitome of freedom, and never had a vista been more suited to such largesse. Del found himself smiling the longer he stared at the horizon, at the way the mountains cut stark triangles into the backdrop of pristine blue.

It was the exact blue of Moira’s eyes.

Without his permission, his legs began moving him in the direction of the schoolhouse. Her eyes yesterday, when he’d had her framed between his arms at the back of the building, had been wide and warm, and the closer he drew, the sultrier they’d seemed. Her eyelids had lowered, auburn lashes fanning out to cast faint shadows on the freckled skin of her cheekbones. Her pupils had dilated before he’d touched her, and God, touching her had been so good, so fucking good.

He would go to church soon, he promised himself. Maybe he’d delay his upcoming trip into Kansas to spend a day in Denver and go to service on Sunday morning.

The blue door to the schoolhouse was open to let in the warm September breeze, and as Del approached, he could see the rows of attentive children as they sat on their benches. He heard her lilting voice carry over the tops of their young heads, slipping through the doorway to wrap around him where he stopped, just to the side of the front step.

“…This hill though high I covent ascend; the difficulty will not me offend; for I perceive the way of life lies here,” she recited, her voice strong, her accent perfectly suited to shape the poetry of John Bunyan’s words. “Come, pluck up, heart; let’s neither faint nor fear.”

Del knew he had never been going to find the brunette in the blue corset that evening. His feet had led him here, his warring emotions had led him here—even the damn sky had led him here, to her. And he didn’t want to be anywhere else, especially now that he was about to leave Red Creek. Leave Moira.

He glanced to the mountains beyond the forest and the blue sky that framed it all. Maybe…maybe he didn’t have to leave this place just yet.

Red Creek’s Sunday service would do as well as Denver’s.

He brought his gaze back to the doorway and the quaint recitation scene happening inside the schoolhouse. His breath stuttered in his throat as his eyes locked with hers, and then stuttered again when he saw her wide, mobile mouth lift in a soft, reassuring smile. As though she were telling him his derailment after her confession yesterday was so much water under the bridge.

No, Del wasn’t going anywhere, not with that freckled former nun smiling at him while she read to her students from
The Pilgrim’s Progress
.

But he’d already known that, deep down, hadn’t he?

Chapter Fifteen

He’d come back. Delaney had come back, and her heart was pounding in her throat.

He stood outside the schoolhouse, a shadowed entity in the bright sunlight streaming through the open doorway, and she felt herself smiling uncontrollably as she continued to read. The children hadn’t noticed his presence, and she’d rather keep it that way. They were all atwitter over yesterday’s incident, especially when it had been noted that the Cheyenne children chose not to return this morning, and the last thing they needed was the exciting return of the growling gunslinger to distract them from the recitation.

So Moira continued to read, and Delaney continued to watch her read, unmoving and intense, until she started to feel unaccountably warm. Her skin tingled under his regard, and her breathing grew shallow. Her voice altered in timbre until the poetry came out husky and low and more seductive than she’d ever before heard herself sound.

She wished she were reading something far more daring than John Bunyan, and that the students had already left for the day. Then she could stand here in her classroom, perhaps instead reciting Keats’s “Ode to Psyche”—it was one of her favorites, and she could just imagine her own lips shaping the words:

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

In some untrodden region of my mind

Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind.

Not for the first time, Moira thought it was likely a good thing she was no longer a nun, because she wanted him to watch her while she gave him poetry, wanted him to chase after her, as he had when she’d gone to fetch water for the blackboard.

A flush heated the back of her neck.

Until this very moment, she had assumed she wouldn’t see him again. He would conduct his business with the sheriff and the Cheyenne, and then he would leave to wherever it was that next called his name. Yet here he stood despite his reaction to her untimely confessional, and he looked at her as though…as though…

As though he were hunting her, and she had just made the mistake of standing still when she should’ve been running.

A shame Moira had no intention of running. Not anymore.

She pulled her gaze from his. With a sigh, she closed the book and offered the children a small, wry smile. “That is all for the day. Gather your things, and you are dismissed.” Her heart begin to race as her students made a mad dash for the sunny street outside—none faster than a sullen Irwin Matthews—and she settled her clothbound copy of
The Pilgrim’s Progress
atop the pile of books on the corner of her desk.

Her back to the door, there was no reason she should know when he entered, but she did. The hair at her nape stood on end, and chill bumps rose on the exposed skin of her forearms. She’d rolled the sleeves of her pale blue blouse back during the noon break, not wanting to accidentally stain the pristine white lace of her cuffs with her jam treat, and had neglected to button them down again.

Without bothering to turn, she planted her palms on the desktop. “Hullo, Mr. Crawford.” She wondered if he could see that she was shaking ever so slightly.

“Miss Tully.” He rasped her name, his drawl curling around the last syllable in such a way as to make her knees lose their starch. “Liked your reading today.”

Her lips twitched into a slow smile as walked around the desk in an effort to keep some sort of barrier between them. For all that she desired his nearness, she was wary of it too. She’d scared herself yesterday with the strength of her desire for him and with the strange, guilty shame concerning her past clogging her throat. Her admission had been wrung from her in an attempt to cover up an even worse confession.