Autumn Sage

by Genevieve Turner

  Once he was free of this doctor and his elixirs, hopefully by tomorrow, he would hunt down the fugitive.

  First, he would send word to Isabel he was perfectly fine.

  The mold fuzzing his brain bloomed, choking out any last bit of rational thought, and he was lost to sensation again.

  It was the worst two weeks of Isabel’s life.

  The frantic need to know what had happened to Sebastian, the frustration at the lack of news—it was worse than the aftermath of her attack.

  They’d locked her in her room after Franny had dragged her away, her screams and pounding at the door bringing no mercy.

  When her mother unlocked the door the next morning, Isabel was dry-eyed. And threatened to claw the eyes out of anyone who kept her from riding to the sanatorium.

  When she arrived, Joaquin’s cold-eyed nurse informed her the doctor had taken Sebastian back to Los Angeles. She said he was expected to live—but expected was no reassurance.

  Isabel had to see him for herself, touch him and know that life still quickened within him. Nothing less would soothe her heart.

  She returned home to write letter after letter, to Señora Vasquez, to her cousins, to Don Enrique—to anyone who could tell her how he was. Her fingers ached, were stained with ink to her knuckles, and still she kept writing.

  Her family tiptoed around her wishes, but they did not outright forbid any of it. Not that she would have listened.

  No doubt her cousins were spreading the story far and wide, whispering it in every parlor in Los Angeles—how dear cousin Isabel was scandalously losing her head over the thrillingly frightening Marshal Spencer. The trial, the papers, the shooting; it would all be too much for them to resist.

  Isabel found herself beyond caring. All she could do was wait.

  Agony, that wait. A piercing misery. She begged the Los Angeles papers off anyone she could, but there was no mention of a dead marshal within them.

  Finally, after a week, a letter arrived from Pilar. Isabel nearly tore it in half in her haste to open it—but it said only that Pilar had heard he was in the university hospital. More than that, no one knew.

  From his mother she heard nothing, although she sent two letters a day: one to her and one to Sebastian.

  When she could take no more of the waiting, she threatened to ride down to the valley and send a telegram to everyone she knew in Los Angeles and stay as long as necessary for a reply. Before her parents could forbid it, Mr. Merrill offered to go instead. He promised to wire his father, who ought to know everything. Or, at the very least, could find out.

  She’d never imagined she could be so grateful to her brother-in-law.

  While she waited for him to bring news, she thought on her future.

  McCade was loose; where, no one knew. The sheriff claimed the fugitive was bound for Mexico, but whether that was true—or simply his excuse for calling off his search—was unclear.

  If the outlaw intended to return and finish her off—she didn’t care.

  She felt no fear on her own account. The only fear she felt was for Sebastian. She prayed ceaselessly for him, bargaining with God, even though she knew it was wrong.

  So she sat and waited, prayed and bargained, and watched for Mr. Merrill’s return.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Three days after Mr. Merrill had left for the valley to send the telegrams, Catarina came to sit with Isabel in the afternoon.

  Her sister was looking less green and a little rounder these days. Isabel waited for some sensation to rise within her at her sister’s appearance—gratitude, relief, irritation—but it never did.

  There was nothing left in her but worry for Sebastian.

  They sat for several minutes in companionable silence, Catarina’s hands busy with her mending, while Isabel’s own hands were still as she watched out the window. Autumn was creeping upon them, the air silver with chill instead of the golden light of summer.

  She watched now not for McCade.

  She watched for Sebastian.

  “Oh, dear.” Isabel caught sight of a familiar pony cart coming up the drive, heart racing as she rose from her chair.

  Catarina was over in a flash.

  “Oh, no.” She shoved Isabel back down into the chair. “I’ll take care of them; you stay here.”

  She waited in the chair, one ear cocked to decipher the voices coming from the hallway. Most of it was indistinct, but she did catch, “not leaving” and “she has to explain herself” in feminine tones she recognized all too well.

  Catarina’s strident responses carried clearly. “No! Teresa, Ines, she’s not well!”

  The skritch and thump of a scuffle came next, and then Joaquin’s sisters were dashing into the parlor, huffing and red faced. Catarina followed close behind, her face screwed up in distress.

  Isabel rose and held up a hand to her sister. “It’s all right. They’re entitled to this. And I deserve it.” She gestured to the sofa. “Please, Teresa, Ines, sit.”

  “No,” Teresa said, her body so rigid with tension, even her hair seemed to stand on end. “We won’t remain long. Why did you do it? Why would you stop them? That man crippled our brother, and you let him go free!”

  Isabel wasn’t quite sure where to start in all that. “The trial was fixed from the very beginning—” she tried.

  “So why didn’t you let the mob deal with him?” That was tossed out by Ines.

  They were beginning to suspect the truth of that night. Her cheeks and throat went clammy—her lies were being found out.

  “How was I supposed to stop a posse?” she asked. Perhaps she could brazen her way through this.

  Teresa shook her head. “No one knows anything about a posse. No one except for you and Joaquin.”

  Isabel’s heart thumped as she waved a falsely careless hand. “Did you ask Joaquin about this? Likely not.”

  Both sisters began to blink hard, their eyes reddening. “Infection set in again,” Ines said, “thanks to his leaving his bed that night. He’s out of his mind with fever.”

  Isabel gasped, setting her hand against her breast. “Why wasn’t I told?”

  “Because you’re not his fiancée any longer,” Ines spat. “No, now you make up lies about sheriff’s posses and flaunt yourself for that marshal.”

  The blood drained right to her toes. “I haven’t—”

  “Isabel has never flaunted herself for any man,” Catarina broke in, her cheeks bright as coals. “I know a thing or two about flaunting—as do you, Teresa—and we all know Isabel’s never done any such thing.”

  “Then why is she writing everyone in Los Angeles for news of him? Oh yes,” Teresa sneered at Isabel’s shocked expression, “you’re not the only ones with cousins there.”

  “Because he took a bullet for her, you silly twit!”

  Never had Isabel loved her sister more than in that moment.

  “Joaquin took a bullet for you, as well,” Ines hissed. “Where is your concern for him? You abandoned him just when he needed you the most!”

  You abandoned me too, she wanted to cry.

  Catarina looked ready to spit more harsh words, but Isabel held up a hand to stop her, even as her stomach rolled at the accusation.

  “What happened between Joaquin and me is no one’s business but our own,” she stated with pretended calm. “If he hasn’t seen fit to tell you the details, then I won’t either. Believe me, he agreed it was best no blood was shed over this outlaw.”

  Teresa’s expression wavered as if passing through rippling water. “This outlaw is loose once again. My brother couldn’t have wanted that.”

  “I assure you, he didn’t.” Isabel felt her voice begin to slip from under her control. “McCade will be apprehended again.”

  “By who? Your precious marshal?” Ines’s face twisted. “Will he hold a gun on our men again? And thwart the only justice Joaquin could have ever known? Besides, he’s laid up in Los Angeles. Which is no more than he deserves.”

 
A wave of hope and anxiety swelled in Isabel, forcing her toward the sisters. “You have news of him? What have you heard? Please, tell me anything you can.”

  They stepped back, their expressions going flat and white as new-fallen snow.

  She’d betrayed herself most terribly—but if they had any word of him…

  “Ines,” Teresa said in clipped tones, “we’re leaving. Now.”

  The two left without a backward glance, Isabel staring after them as they went, searching for something, anything to say to them.

  Nothing came.

  “Well,” Catarina said, “now that you’re not marrying Joaquin, I’m certainly glad I’ll never be related to those two.” She sank back into her chair and picked up her sewing. “Put them out of your mind. They always were spiteful harpies.”

  Easy for Catarina to say. She’d never liked the Obregon sisters. Isabel sighed, her heart slowing, though her limbs and her stomach held on to her jitters.

  “They’re correct,” she admitted. “I did prevent that mob from meting out a kind of justice. And the marshal… I am…”

  She could not name her feelings for Sebastian, so she ceased trying.

  “Oh, I knew there wasn’t any posse,” Catarina said to her sewing. “You did the right thing. Juan doesn’t need to be hanging a man, no matter what he’s done. People around here will realize that. You simply have to give them some time.”

  Shame smoldered under her cheeks at her sister’s kindly tone. “Catarina, after the attack… I was not as charitable toward you as I should have been.”

  Her sister set her mending in her lap. “I won’t pretend that it didn’t sting, but you were hurting. That was always your way when you were hurting.”

  “Even so…”

  Catarina went back to her sewing. “There’s no doubt you and I are different enough to rub wrongly sometimes. You don’t have to apologize to me for your essential nature.”

  Isabel didn’t answer. What words would suffice in the face of such generosity of spirit? None of hers, that was certain. So she simply turned back to the window, watching and waiting once more.

  Somewhere out there was Sebastian, in a hospital bed, wounded, perhaps even dead. Joaquin, too, was trapped in a bed, perhaps even now burning with fever.

  Here she was, trapped in a sitting room. Of the three of them, she was the only one who could move forward. But dared she?

  She’d gone all the way to Los Angeles to testify against her attacker. She’d held off a mob who’d wanted to kill that same man.

  She’d fallen in love with Sebastian.

  None of those things had been in the grand life plan she’d assembled with Joaquin—but all of those were so much more daring than she’d ever dreamed she could be.

  “I can’t remain here,” she announced suddenly.

  “Of course not,” her sister said, flipping the shirt in her hands to check the seams on the other side. “So where will you go?”

  That was the question she’d been asking herself. Even if Sebastian had survived and was healing, she couldn’t go to him in Los Angeles. McCade might be lurking in the city and even if he weren’t, her reputation there was ruinous.

  She couldn’t remain in Cabrillo—the Obregon sisters wouldn’t be the only ones angry that the mob had been stopped.

  There was always the valley… But she wanted someplace bigger.

  “Do you remember Aunt Esperanza?” Isabel asked. “In San Francisco?”

  Her sister frowned. “Papa’s sister? I remember she didn’t like us children very much. Well,” she amended, “except for you. She liked you because you were well behaved. I believe she wanted to drown the rest of us in the bay.”

  “Do you think she would allow me to stay with her? For a time?”

  Catarina gave her a measured look. “She would be more than happy to have you. You always were her favorite.”

  The favorite child of a woman who had none herself and disliked them. What did that say of her?

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said.

  “Of course I am,” her sister replied. “Everyone knows you weren’t meant for Cabrillo. But San Francisco? That city was made for you. I’d wager it’s even more exciting, more challenging than Los Angeles.”

  Isabel thought on it for a moment. It sounded exciting—enticing.

  But so far away. From both Cabrillo and Los Angeles.

  Perhaps. Just perhaps…

  “We would miss you,” Catarina was saying, “but you would be much happier there, no?”

  Isabel released a sigh. “Perhaps.”

  The clock ticked off many more seconds, how many she did not know, as she stared out the window and Catarina continued on with her mending.

  How much longer to wait? If only she knew how he was…

  Mr. Merrill came through the door without warning.

  Her heart stopped at the sight, trying to read his expression for any news of Sebastian, but it was maddeningly unreadable. He clutched some papers in his fist.

  A telegram. Or perhaps a letter.

  His wife rose to greet him. He tossed her a smile so fond it hurt Isabel’s heart. The smile dissolved as he looked to her.

  “He’s fine,” Mr. Merrill finally said.

  Isabel collapsed against the back of the chair. Undignified, but all she could do under the relief drowning her.

  “The wound wasn’t anywhere vital,” Mr. Merrill said. “Wound fever did set in”—she gasped—“but he’s past that now. He was released from the hospital two days ago.”

  “My goodness,” Catarina breathed, “you must have sent a fortune in telegrams.”

  Mr. Merrill simply shrugged. He lifted the papers in his fist. “I brought the telegrams for you. And there was a letter.”

  A letter? She took the sheaf from him. There, written in the hand she’d come to know so well when she’d read those notebooks, was her name.

  Isabel.

  She rubbed a thumb across the ink, her face heating as she realized Mr. Merrill must have seen this, must know she and Sebastian used their Christian names. Which was silly, given her frantic need for reassurance that he’d survived. Mr. Merrill—all of them—must have suspected something long before this.

  “We’ll leave you to read it in private,” her sister said as she drew her husband away.

  As the parlor door clicked shut, Isabel tore open the letter and began to read.

  After two weeks of being strapped to a hospital bed, the wind across Sebastian’s face seemed odd, out of place.

  He blinked against the autumn sunlight, cursing the weakness in his limbs. He’d need every bit of his strength for what he had to do.

  His mother hovered at his elbow. This past fortnight had been agonizing for her, sitting by his bedside as he fought the fever. And he was about to hurt her yet again.

  The last time. It would be the last time.

  “Sebastian.” He turned to her, puzzled by the hesitancy in her voice. “Now that you’re well, I have something to give you.” She lifted a stack of letters. “Señorita Moreno sent them. I kept them from you, which was perhaps wrong—but I didn’t want them to distress you.”

  He took them, consternation tightening his jaw. “Did no one tell her I was all right? I distinctly remember requesting such when I was lucid.” Which had not been often.

  “Her cousins might have,” she offered.

  He closed his eyes against that. She had been hysterical.

  No time. There was no time. He would deal with it later.

  “Mother,” he said gently. “You go home. I have to meet with Judge Bannister.”

  She frowned but went on without protest.

  When he entered the courthouse, he took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the protests of his shoulder. He’d no time for weakness.

  He barreled past the gaping clerk manning the desk outside Bannister’s office, wrenching the door open without knocking.

  To say Bannister was surprised to see him would have
been an understatement.

  “Where is he?” Sebastian demanded as soon as he opened the door.

  The judge didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I have word he’s in Mexico.”

  Mexico. Sebastian smiled at that. He doubted McCade had enough Spanish to get very far there.

  “I’m going to bring him back, unharmed and untouched.” He pointed to the judge. “You are going to gather the evidence to try him for attempted murder. The victim being me, of course. You’re going to see to it a competent prosecutor is put on the case.”

  “I can’t interfere with that.”

  Sebastian leveled a look at him. “You’re going to ensure he’s convicted this time. I assume a US Marshal is a reliable enough witness for even a Los Angeles jury.”

  Bannister’s answering smile was sardonic. “I would imagine so, yes.”

  “She is not to testify. Do you understand? She’s been through enough.”

  The judge nodded. “Believe me, I have no intention of putting that girl on the witness stand again. But you can’t be leaving now? You only just got out of the hospital.”

  Sebastian’s shoulder ached at the reminder, but he ignored it. “I’m perfectly fine. I’ll stop at home first and then I’m bound for Mexico.”

  He’d have to play the marshal for a while longer. And then…

  And then…

  Sometime later, he walked into his own home. He had only a few hours before the train left. Best to get right to it if he wanted to finish it all.

  The first thing he saw was Junius, in the hallway. The dog thumped his tail once, regarding Sebastian consideringly.

  “We are going to get someone to gentle you.” Sebastian wagged a finger at him. “No more random attacks. If you’re no longer a good guard dog, so be it.”

  Junius only wagged his tail.

  Sebastian went to the library, taking a seat at his desk. He slit open the first letter from her. Ink-scrawled, tear-stained—her frantic sorrow bled through the paper. It pained him to look upon it. All the letters were like that, sobbing, begging missives asking for any news of him.

  As if he were worthy of such an outpouring, deserving of her deepest feelings.