Willow: A Novel (No Series) (23 page)

“Yes,” she said, with a small nod.

He took the water bucket from her hands and carried it inside, into the quiet, spotless kitchen. “You’ve seen Steven, haven’t you?” he asked, injured by the space she kept between them.

“He was here,” she said, with a slight tilt of her obstinate little chin. “How do you like that, Marshal Marshall? While you and your posse were scouring the hills, Steven was here under your very own roof.”

The words were intended to nettle him, he knew, but he felt nothing beyond the faintest sting; he was numb. It would have been better, he thought, if Willow had flung herself at him in a screaming rage. “And now he’s gone again, like any good outlaw,” he guessed calmly.

“Long gone,” said Willow. “And Steven didn’t rob your damnable train, either, Gideon Marshall.”

Gideon’s shoulders ached as he reached for the bright new coffeepot that sat on the back of the stove. “What makes you so sure of that?” he asked evenly.

“He was wounded in a fight with an Indian. If you talk to the Shoshone, you’ll find that Steven was in their camp when the train was stopped.”

Gideon froze. “Wounded? Steven is wounded?”

Willow’s eyes were shooting topaz fire now. “Do you imagine that that will make him easier to find? Don’t delude yourself on that score.”

“How was he hurt?” Gideon insisted, hoping that the pain her words and bearing caused him didn’t show.

“Steven was gambling with Red Eagle. He won the warrior’s horse and woman.”

“Naturally,” rasped Gideon, annoyed.

“The Indian came after him, they fought, and Steven was the loser.”

“That’s novel,” said Gideon wryly. “What transpired then, pray tell?”

“Red Eagle struck Steven with his hatchet and left him to die.”

Gideon turned a chair around and sat astraddle it, his weary arms braced across its back. Thoughtfully, he sipped his coffee. “A fact that no doubt dooms a certain ill-guided redskin to the wrath of the close-knit Gallagher family.”

“We look after our own,” she said, again with that provocative lift of her chin.

The statement excluded Gideon; he knew that and was hurt, though he hid his inward reaction. “I suppose it would be foolhardy of me to ask you to heat water for a bath?”

“Heat your own water, Gideon Marshall. Fix your own breakfast, too.”

Philosophically, Gideon finished his coffee and strode outside to the well. When he returned with the first bucketful of water, he found that the washtub had been set in the middle of the kitchen floor. Willow was in some other part of the house, probably feeding the fires of a never-to-be-forgotten sulk.

Almost forty-five minutes later, the tub was full of hot water; Gideon stripped off his clothes and sank into it. Damnit, it was almost funny—he’d been riding all over the foothills for three days and all the time the object of his search had been right here in his own house. The irony of it brought a grim smile to his lips.

Presently, Willow swept in, her full lips drawn into a tight line. Her expression said all too clearly that she hadn’t forgiven him, but what she did next shocked Gideon anyway.

She strode to the side of the tub, which was much too small for anyone over the age of three to bathe in, pulled off the simple wedding band Gideon had given her the day he’d brought her to this house, and dropped it into the water.

“Good-bye, Gideon Marshall,” she said, and then she turned on her heel to march out of the kitchen.

With one straining grab, Gideon caught her skirts in his hand. “Wait a minute!” he barked, holding on as if for dear life. “What the hell do you mean, ‘good-bye’?”

“It’s a simple word, Gideon,” she answered, too damned stubborn to turn around. “It means I’m leaving you. Now, if you’ll just let go of my dress . . .”

A thousand courses of action whirled through Gideon’s
mind, but none of them was workable. If Willow wanted to go he couldn’t keep her; that was the dismal fact of the matter. He opened his hand and her skirts fell into place, stained by soapy water. “Where will you go?” he asked, summoning up every shred of dignity he possessed.

“To my father’s house,” she snapped back. “Where else?”

“Hell, how would I know? Devoted sister that you are, you might have been planning to join your brother in a life of crime and become the next Belle Starr.”

She stepped out of reach and turned to face him, her arms folded, her face flushed. “I was a fool to come here with you, when I knew that you wanted to be Daphne’s husband and not mine. I was even more the fool to think there could ever be any sort of peace between you and Steven.”

“Willow—”

“Don’t say anything more, Gideon. You’re free now. You can court your Daphne, though I must say that I don’t think you’ll have much luck. And you can hunt Steven till your hair turns gray. But know this, Gideon Marshall: it won’t be an easy task, because they don’t call him the Mountain Fox for nothing. Furthermore, I will do anything in my power to stop you.”

Gideon was outraged, but there was no point in arguing that he didn’t care a whit about Daphne Roberts or any other woman besides Willow herself. Even if they’d managed to settle that, which would be a miracle in itself, it appeared there was still the matter of Steven.

“I’ll find your brother,” he said icily, regretting his tone even as he spoke, “and when I do, I’ll see him hang.”

“Good luck,” she replied, with brisk contempt. And then she was gone.

When Gideon heard the front door slam behind her, he fished the wedding band out of the bathwater and flung it across the room with a bellowed curse. Then he sat back in the cramped tub and squeezed his eyes shut tight.

The sorrow got through anyway.

*   *   *

Maria met Willow at the front door of Judge Gallagher’s house, casting a quietly disapproving look at the valises she carried, one in each hand. “I will make your room ready,” she said, with a sigh.

“Thank you,” replied Willow, in a steady voice. “Is Papa at home?”

Maria took one of the valises and started wearily up the stairs. “No, señora. He is hearing a case today.”

Willow maintained her composure as she followed the housekeeper up to the second floor and into the room that had been hers before Gideon Marshall, damn his hide, changed everything. “I could sleep for a thousand years,” she confided, sitting down on the edge of her bed.

“Sleeping will solve nothing. When you awaken,
chiquita
, all your problems will be waiting.”

Willow unpinned her modest, wifely hat and flung it across the room. From now on, she would wear low-cut dresses and fancy millinery, the way Dove Triskadden did. Maybe, just to annoy Gideon, she would become someone’s mistress.

“I will bring tea,” said Maria, pursing her lips just as if she’d heard Willow’s scandalous thoughts.

“I would rather have sherry,” parried Willow. If she was going to change her image, she might as well start by putting aside temperance.

“That is too bad,” retorted Maria. “You will have tea.”

“I said I wanted sherry!”

“I don’t care what you said,” came the brisk reply. “And I would advise the señora to remember that a lady respects her elders.”

Willow blushed and bit her lower lip, but when Maria brought the tea, she drank it without protest. Following that, she stripped to her chemise and waited for the solace of sleep to enclose her.

When it did, it was fitful, and when Willow awakened again, all her troubles were there waiting for her, just as Maria had warned. She cried as she put her dress back on.

She spent the day alone, reading in her room, but her books did not provide their usual solace. Her mind kept straying back to Gideon.

She rested.

She paced.

She finally went downstairs to help Maria do housework.

That evening, there were guests for dinner: Dove Triskadden, Daphne and her cousin Hilda—and Gideon.

Willow would have turned and fled the dining room if her father hadn’t caught her elbow in his hand and muttered, out of the side of his mouth, “Oh, no you don’t, sugarplum. Running away is no solution.”

Gideon looked up from his wineglass, which had seemed to intrigue him deeply until that moment, and his eyes were unreadable as they swept the length of Willow and came back to her face. Almost as an afterthought, he rose halfheartedly from his chair and then sat down again, turning his attention to Daphne, who had been seated beside him.

Daphne sparkled in her pale lilac dress, and there were little amethyst ribbons tied among her dark curls. She smiled at Willow and then turned graciously back to Gideon, relating some story about a mutual friend in animated tones.

Willow forced herself to sit down.

Daphne and Gideon continued to chat, seemingly absorbed in each other.

Willow, thinking her own dismal thoughts, soon lost track of their conversation.

“You may keep your cursed railroads, darling,” Daphne was saying. “I think they’re absolutely dreadful.”

“Darling!” muttered Willow, under her breath, and it wasn’t until her knuckles began to throb that she realized she was gripping the sides of her chair with all her strength. She darted one outraged look at Daphne.

“We all have our personal opinions,” Gideon replied, smiling into Daphne’s beguiling face like a besotted idiot. “But surely the train has some redeeming features.”

“I can’t think what they would be,” Daphne answered blithely. “I declare, the thought of journeying all the way back to San Francisco in one of those cramped seats inclines me toward staying right here in Virginia City for the rest of my life!”

Willow choked on her asparagus, but it was Hilda who spoke in protest.

“You promised that we’d leave tomorrow!” she wailed, fixing a piteous gaze on Daphne.

Daphne shrugged and turned a winning smile on Gideon. “Promises are made to be broken—aren’t they, Gideon dear?”

Gideon merely smiled, flattered by Daphne’s attention; Willow had to grip her chair seat again, even harder this time, to keep from flinging a wineglass at his head.

“I have wronged you sorely,” he said to Daphne. “Perhaps I can redeem myself.”

There was a silence, during which all eyes except Gideon’s and Daphne’s swung to Willow. She forced herself to sit still, though inside she was in a screaming rage.

“However would you do that?” trilled Daphne, bending so that Gideon might avail himself of a glimpse of her full and shapely bosom, displayed to considerable advantage by the fashionably low neckline of her lovely dress. The garment was the palest purple, nearly the same color as her eyes.

Gideon’s answer would have led any sensible person to believe that he and Daphne were alone. “There is a supper dance tomorrow night. Will you let me escort you?”

Daphne flushed prettily, looking for all the world as though she had never even pretended to be Willow’s friend. “Would that be proper?” she countered, lowering her eyes and fluttering her thick lashes. “I mean, you are a married man.”

Gideon’s gaze sliced, menacing, to Willow’s bloodless face. “You couldn’t prove that by me,” he said evenly.

At this point, the judge cleared his throat and diplomatically swung the conversation in another direction. Despite his efforts, the remainder of the evening was the purest misery for Willow. At the first opportunity, which came when Gideon and her father retired to the parlor for an after-dinner brandy, she sprang out of her chair and fled up the stairs, her skirts wadded in her hands, to hide behind the heavy door of her bedroom.

The knock that came a few minutes later was too subdued and refined to be Gideon’s, so Willow opened the door.

“Good Lord,” said Dove briskly. “Splash some cold water on your face before that rounder downstairs gets a look at you.”

Willow went to the pitcher and basin immediately, for she would have died before letting Gideon know that she had been crying over him. When she had flung a few handfuls of water over her aching face and dried it with a towel, she turned to look at her father’s mistress.

“Did Gideon leave yet?”

“No. He’s closeted away with your father, in Devlin’s study, and I must say that I hope Devlin puts that young scoundrel in his place, once and for all.”

There seemed to be no strength at all in Willow’s knees, so she sat down in her rocking chair. She had spent many hours in that chair, reading or just dreaming, but it seemed foreign to her now, just as the rest of the house did.

As familiar as it was, the place wasn’t home anymore.

“If he didn’t say anything during dinner, I doubt that Papa will come to my defense now,” she mourned.

Dove sighed and folded her slender, snow-white arms across the bodice of her striking black dress. The neckline was trimmed with real pearls, and they shimmered like milky prisms as she paced back and forth in front of the small fireplace. “Men,” she exclaimed, in happy agreement. “They do tend to side with each other more often than not, and that’s a fact, I’m sorry to say.”

Willow drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, heedless of the way she was crumpling her very best gown. “I thought Daphne was my friend,” she whispered, in mourning. In some ways, the end of that illusion was as crushing as the demise of her marriage.

“You’re like me in that way, I think,” Dove commented pensively. “I’ve never had any female friends—not before you, that is. I know why women don’t like me, Willow, but that doesn’t explain why they don’t take to you.”

Willow shrugged. Even in San Francisco, where she had diligently followed Evadne’s instructions on manners and spoken to the few people who bothered to speak to her, she’d never had an actual friend.

It was one of the great sorrows of her life.

“Having an outlaw for a brother doesn’t help,” she mused, “and everyone has always known about Mother, too. She left Papa and created an awful scandal. She took up with Jay Forbes . . .” Willow paused and shivered at the shadowy recollection of a man she couldn’t completely remember.

“But you were born,” prodded Dove gently. Her smile was soft, and it made Willow feel a little better.

“Yes, I guess Papa and Mama met somewhere and I
was the result. Evadne hated me for that and everybody else just sort of fell into line and hated me, too.”