Claiming Their Mail-Order Bride: A Cowboy Ménage Romance (Montana Ménage Book 2)

by Lily Reynard

  They entered through the back door, as usual, and Larkin instantly realized that something was wrong.

  Instead of being greeted by warmth and the mouthwatering smells of Sarah’s cooking, they found the kitchen silent and dark. The table hadn’t been set, and the big cast-iron stove stood cold and unlit against the wall. Sarah nowhere to be seen.

  Larkin’s gut clenched. The house felt empty. Lonely.

  He traded concerned looks with Walt.

  “Sarah?” Walt called. “Where are you?”

  No reply.

  “Dammit,” Larkin muttered. “I think she left.”

  Walt’s eyes widened in alarm. “Where would she go? We’re miles from town…” He frowned. “Maybe she just overslept. Because of her headache.”

  Larkin doubted that she’d been telling the truth about having a headache, but last night, she’d looked downcast and sick enough that he hadn’t had the heart to say anything.

  For Walt’s sake, he hoped that he was wrong and that Sarah was lying safely in bed upstairs, sleep-tousled, her sweet curves unbound under her long nightgown…

  With an effort, Larkin pushed down the memories of sharing that bed with her.

  Walt poked his head out into the hallway and called her name again. Still no reply.

  Then he headed upstairs. Larkin followed him.

  His heart sank as Walt came to a halt just inside the bedroom doorway. Larkin came up behind him and looked around.

  No Sarah.

  The bed had been neatly made. Her big trunk still stood against the wall next to the chest of drawers. But the armoire door stood open, and Larkin noticed immediately that half her clothes were gone, along with her fancy hat and her cloak.

  Walt stood there, looking utterly devastated.

  Larkin swore viciously. The last time he’d seen a look like that on Walt’s face was last year, right after the cholera took his parents.

  “Walt?” he asked, putting a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You okay?”

  Walt shook his head slowly. He still looked stunned with disbelief. “She—she can’t have gotten far. Not without a horse.”

  And they’d accounted for all the horses just now. Larkin blew out a breath. “Why the hell would she just leave like that? Without even trying to explain?”

  Walt shook his head. “We need to find her before she runs into a bear…or in case Fergus Donovan’s gang are still in the area.”

  “Dammit,” Larkin said again.

  He hated how devastated Walt looked right now, and the sight of it made rage seep through his veins, burning like acid.

  “We have to go and look for her,” rasped Walt.

  She’s gone, whispered the voice of the red demon. That’s the same as confessing that she’s guilty, right? So just let her go. Whatever happens to her will be her own fault.

  As soon as those thoughts presented themselves, he squashed them like bugs. Because as angry as he was at her right now, Larkin didn’t want to leave her to the tender mercies of that gang of no-account claim jumpers.

  “Yeah,” he said. “She’s probably headed for town, but just in case she decided to head the other direction, we should split up.”

  Walt nodded slowly, his gaze still on the bed. Larkin’s chest ached for his friend’s pain…or maybe the pain was his own. He’d finally allowed himself to fall for a woman.

  Larkin reached into the pocket of his jeans and drew out a quarter. “Heads, you ride towards town, tails, you ride towards the mine.”

  Walt nodded.

  Larkin tossed the coin and caught it deftly, then slapped it against the back of his hand. He revealed a worn eagle. “Tails. I’ll saddle up Cincinnati and head for town. You might want to stop in at the bunkhouse on your way to the mine and ask whether any of the ranch hands saw her go by.”

  Walt nodded again, then turned to head back down the stairs.

  * * *

  As Walt had surmised, Sarah hadn’t gotten far. She was just out of sight of the house when Larkin spotted her. A bulging carpetbag dangled from her hand, thumping her legs with every step as she trudged in the direction of town.

  “Sarah! Stop!”

  She flinched, and he realized that she was probably terrified. So he added, “Please.”

  Her shoulders slumped, but she stopped walking and dropped her bag onto the grassy verge.

  As he rode up, he was struck by how sad and defeated she looked.

  He’d been expecting some kind of defiance, maybe even a tall tale or two to explain why she’d decided to skedaddle rather than talk to Walt and him about what the sheriff had said last night.

  He halted Cincinnati. Her head was bowed, and she didn’t look up as Larkin slid from the saddle to face her.

  “Why did you just leave?" he demanded. "Without saying anything to Walt and me!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said dully, studying his boots with an intent gaze. “But it’s best if I depart.”

  “And go where?” Larkin demanded. He didn’t give her a chance to answer as questions boiled up in his throat. “You mean that Sheriff Plummer was right, and you’re not really Elizabeth Hunter?”

  “I—I’m so very sorry.” She was actually shaking now, and it was all he could do not to take her in his arms and comfort her. Her face was pale, and she looked as if she expected him to murder her on the spot. “And yes, I’m actually Sarah Franklin.”

  “Why?” Larkin demanded. “Why would you pretend to be Elizabeth Hunter?”

  Sarah just shook her head. “I’m sorry for lying to you. I—I didn’t think…well, I just didn’t think. I’m sorry,” she repeated. She stooped and picked up the carpetbag again. “I have to go. I have to get away from here—leave Twin Forks before Father or anyone else from Boston finds me.”

  Larkin blinked at her. Wait. You mean I’m not the one scaring the living daylights out of her right now?

  “Sarah, what in tarnation is going on? Why are you so scared of your Da? Why did you run away from home?”

  She remained silent.

  “C’mon, Angel,” he growled. “You owe us at least that much after trying to fool us like that.”

  She nodded. “I suppose so.” Her voice was flat. “Remember how I told you about Father wanting to give me away to an awful man?"

  Larkin nodded slowly.

  "I wasn't lying about that. It just happened in Boston, not at Liza's family farm." She looked away, her gaze on the cattle grazing in the pasture next to the track. "After my mother died a few years ago, Father took to drink and cards. He—he neglected his importing business and lost a lot of money to a man named Clyde Burgess, who is the boss of a notorious criminal gang in the city. When Father couldn’t repay the money he’d lost in a card game, Mr. Burgess told him that he’d be willing to take me instead.”

  She shuddered. Larkin felt a sick jolt run through him at her words. He stared at her in disbelief. This was even worse that the details she'd revealed earlier.

  “Your Da actually agreed to sell you to a criminal? Why would he do something like that?”

  “Because anyone who crosses Mr. Burgess just disappears. You remember what I said about his wives who disappeared?"

  "Yeah." Maybe Sarah was a liar, but he recognized genuine terror when he saw it. She appeared to be scared sick right now, and not just because her lies had been discovered.

  "Sometimes people turn up floating in the harbor. Mr. Burgess is rumored to have bribed judges and policemen, so nothing ever happens to him, no matter how many laws he breaks. Thinking about it now, I guess Father didn’t feel he could refuse Mr. Burgess, not without something terrible happening to him.”

  She finally met his eyes. He saw pain and bleakness there. It made his heart hurt.

  Your Da was willing to let something terrible happen to you, just to save his own hide.

  “I’m not a bad person,” she said quietly. “But I was so scared when I met Liza on the train. Then, when she proposed that we switch places, it sounded like
the perfect solution. I—I thought that maybe I could escape from Father and Mr. Burgess for good. I never thought that it might hurt Walt, or you.”

  “What were you planning to do? Walk to town?” he demanded harshly. “And then what?”

  “I thought maybe I’d continue on to Butte, like I originally planned.”

  She seemed to be telling the truth now. She certainly looked about as terrified and contrite as he’d expect, given the circumstances.

  But what if she’s lying again? What if she’s telling another whopper because she just didn’t want to marry the man her Da chose for her? Can I really believe her?

  He didn’t have answers to those questions, but he did know that he wasn’t ready to let her walk away.

  “That’s a dang fool idea,” he told her. “Butte’s no place for a woman on her own. Hell, neither is Twin Forks.”

  The distant rumble of thunder caught his attention, as did a sudden gust, cold and heavy with moisture. He glanced in the direction of the wind and saw a line of dark clouds blowing in rapidly.

  “Storm’s coming. We need to get back to the house,” he told her, reaching for Cincinnati’s reins.

  She shook her head. “I won’t blame you for telling the sheriff who I really am, but I can’t go back to Boston. I’d rather die than return there. But I’m so very sorry that I didn’t tell you who I really was. I was so scared, and I didn’t have any money left or anywhere else to go.”

  “We need to go back to the house,” he repeated, “before we both get soaked to the skin. We’re gonna eat breakfast together and talk this over.”

  “But—” she began to protest.

  She had a damned stubborn streak. It was exactly what you needed to survive on the frontier, but he was just as stubborn. And he was done arguing with her.

  Larkin picked up her carpetbag and started walking away.

  Cincinnati, who had lowered his head to crop at the fresh grass growing on the verge, gave him a mildly resentful look when Larkin tugged at his reins, then fell into step behind him.

  “Larkin!”

  He ignored Sarah and kept walking. After a moment, she began following him, but kept a cautious distance.

  Now what? He asked himself. Maybe I should just offer her a ride to town and turn her over to Sheriff Plummer. Let him deal with her. It might be less trouble and easier on Walt that way.

  She might have lied about her identity, but her terror at the prospect of returning to Boston had felt very real. Larkin knew because he’d spent a considerable portion of his boyhood dealing with that same kind of dread.

  He knew he shouldn’t feel sorry for her…or so happy and relieved that she was returning to the house with him.

  Goddammit, Larkin Williams, he thought angrily. Am I really soft-headed enough that I’ve fallen in love with a liar and a fake?

  He wanted to hate her for the whoppers she'd told and how she’d led Walt and him on.

  But he couldn’t. At the moment, he just felt sorry for her.

  Once they got back to the house, he’d do his damnedest to find out if she was actually telling the truth now.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  If she had left on foot, Sarah couldn’t have gone far.

  Walt rode past the ranch foreman's cabin and the stables that had belonged to Larkin’s father, which he and Larkin had rebuilt and expanded into a bunkhouse for the ranch hands, complete with its own kitchen, well, and outhouses.

  But he knew that if Sarah had headed towards the mine rather than town, he would already have caught up with her. And the land around the houses had been cleared for grazing, so there were no patches of forest where she might be hiding.

  Hiding from us. The thought made him sick. Does she think we would hurt her?

  That question led him back to the endless chain of misery-fueled speculation that had kept him awake last night.

  If Sarah was really an imposter, then how did she get the information that allowed her to pretend that she was Elizabeth Hunter? And why would she want to impersonate Elizabeth in the first place?

  And if she’s not Elizabeth, then where is Elizabeth?

  Was there ever an Elizabeth, or was I corresponding with Sarah all along?

  He couldn't come up with any answers that made any sense.

  Why did she run away rather than try to talk to us?

  Walt rode a little further up the road, just to make sure he didn’t miss her. He hoped Larkin had had better luck. And that if he had found Sarah, he’d managed to convince her to return to the house.

  That raised a new worry. Larkin had looked and acted pretty angry last night and this morning. Walt didn’t think his friend would ever hurt a woman, but Larkin was always so worried about turning into his father…

  The sun disappeared behind clouds, and the wind picked up. Walt looked up and saw a curtain of rain bearing down on him from the other end of the valley. Lightning flashed from a dark gray belly of thunderheads, and a deafening rumble of thunder followed almost immediately.

  He turned Toledo around and urged him to a gallop, hoping to reach the barn and stables before the storm reached them.

  Luckily, he got home just as the skies opened up. A hard downpour drummed against the barn’s tin roof as he unsaddled Toledo and led him into his stall.

  Then Walt hurried through the downpour and entered the back door of the house.

  To his astonishment, he saw Sarah standing at the stove, cooking a late breakfast. She turned when Walt stepped into the kitchen, and he noticed the dark circles under her eyes. Apparently, she hadn’t gotten much more sleep last night than he had.

  “Sarah,” he greeted her, deliberately using the same soft voice that he used on skittish horses. “I’m happy to see you.”

  He didn’t miss the guilty expression that crossed her face.

  Larkin was in the kitchen, too, pacing like the caged tiger at a traveling circus that Walt remembered from his boyhood.

  “We talked,” he announced. “And she’s got quite the story to tell you.”

  “I see.” From the expression on Larkin’s face, Walt knew he wasn’t going to like it. He sure as hell didn't want to hear it on an empty stomach. “Let’s discuss it over breakfast.”

  He went into the laundry room and washed his hands and face at the sink there. When he emerged, Larkin was pouring coffee into the cups set on the table, and Sarah was dishing up pancakes and scrambled eggs with slices of fried ham.

  At first, no one spoke. Walt was starving, having been awake and working for a couple of hours, and he dug in with gusto. Opposite him, Larkin did the same.

  Whatever was going on with Sarah, it hadn’t affected the quality of her cooking. Walt devoutly hoped that whatever she had to say to them, it wasn’t going to end with her departure from the ranch.

  Sarah took a mouthful of egg, washed it down with a swallow of coffee, and proceeded to poke at the remaining food on her plate, pushing it around without actually eating any more of it.

  When Walt and Larkin’s plates had been cleared of everything but a few fragments of egg, Sarah put down her fork.

  “Walt,” she began. She took another sip of coffee, and Walt noticed that her hand was shaking as she lifted the cup to her lips. “I, ah, wanted to tell you—”

  She stopped speaking and shot a nervous look at Larkin.

  His expression thunderous, he sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Why don’t you start with your real name, Angel?” he prompted.

  Aw, hell. Walt had been hoping against hope that the sheriff had made some kind of horrible mistake last night and that Sarah’s subsequent actions had had some other reasonable explanation.

  “M—my name is Sarah Franklin, and I’m from Boston,” she began in a low voice. “And I’m the one the sheriff was looking for last night.”

  Dammit. Larkin was right.

  “—but please don’t tell him!” Sarah pleaded. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Walt’s brows sh
ot up at that.

  She stopped speaking, and color flooded her pale, drawn features. After a moment, she said, “I meant to say, I’m not a criminal. But I did run away from home, and this is why…”

  Walt listened as Sarah gave a halting explanation of why she had left Boston and why she had pretended to be Elizabeth Hunter.