"What honour would that be? Big Bill, if you want to busy yourself hunting out the pieces of my honour, look under boot heels and behind angry whispers. Meanwhile I'll get on with just getting on."
She rode back to her house in the desert in solitary silence. Maybe she'd given Big Bill something to think about. More likely he just went off in a sulk somewhere.
The dog was lying in the porch's shade when she returned. It raised one ear at her approach but otherwise did not start as she unloaded the mule. In Molly's judgment it was the finest company she'd kept all day.
#
Molly made the coat in seven days.
Colonel Tempest made it clear she didn't want to see it until it was ready for the final fitting. The celebratory ball was scheduled for Gallowsbreath Eve, an occasion marking the year's turn into autumn and, according to tradition, an auspicious moment for signing business contracts and peace accords. The date was still a week off when Molly sent word back with the brothers that the Colonel should visit. She arrived that afternoon.
"You're still wearing your uniform, Colonel?"
"I don't plan to remove it until the cotillion, when I'll tender my papers to Stonechurch himself. Until I resign my commission formally, I'm still a serving officer." Officer or not, she swept her hat onto a hook and loosened her necktie.
"I need to make a few final adjustments," said Molly as she showed the Colonel through the door. The Colonel gave no sign she'd heard as she circled the display mannequin, which Molly had positioned to catch the best of the afternoon light.
"Oh my."
The coat was indisputably magnificent. Its deep rich blue seemed to drag in the light around it and reflect it in a violet aura. Hints of bottle greens and cherry reds rippled in reflected light, only to vanish like pond fish before the eye could fix them. Its brass buttons were polished to a red-blushed gold. The same rich glare trimmed the cuffs and hem. The collar was high and rigid enough to stand on. The shoulders and hips flared at angles that would have given an insane architect pause. It gave an impression of hard and soft layers, as if it could stop a bullet or swaddle an infant. The thought might have occurred to the Colonel, who reached out two fingers and then pulled them back as if suddenly singed.
"Do you want to try it on?" asked Molly when she judged the silence had stretched out long enough.
The Colonel shrugged out of her soldiering coat and let it fall without taking her eyes from the coat. When Molly lifted it from the mannequin, the Colonel found it difficult to turn away.
Molly settled it in place and stepped back with a critical eye. "I thought I might have to take in the right cuff. And it's riding a little high in the rear, but that's easily mended. How does it sit with you, Colonel?"
The Colonel looked from one outstretched arm to the other, gazed over her shoulder and turned like a dog chasing its tail. Her mouth was a line but the rest of her face seemed to have caught a serious case of delight.
"It sits mighty fine, Molly Bright. It's most satisfactory."
Molly allowed the corner of her mouth to rise.
"I believe I got your shape just so."
"You've got a rare talent, woman. This outfit flatters a figure I don't even have. When he sees me dressed like this, that old coot's going to have a stroke before I can get him to the altar, if I don't watch myself."
Molly circled the Colonel with a mirror-glass. She noted an eyebrow twitch that confirmed her opinion on the garment's rear end, but knew she'd exceeded expectations. "It won't take but a night to make these adjustments, Colonel. Will you return in the morning or shall I have it delivered?"
Colonel Tempest made a sad sound as she removed the coat and surrendered it to Molly's care, but her following words had a flat demand to them. "Neither one. You'll bring them yourself to my quarters on the evening of the cotillion. I'll have my man prepare a supper and we'll dress together."
Molly's back stiffened. "What do you mean?"
"I'm damned if I'm attending a commemorative gathering in my own dismal company when I could have a fetching companion stride in on my arm." The Colonel looked her up and down. "Not in these dusty rags though. I trust you've left yourself sufficient time to fashion something suitable?"
"What? But I can't accompany you, Colonel." Molly heard the stain of fear in her words but could do nothing to scrub them clean. "I can't -"
"Can and will, Miss Bright." She didn't add "That's an order" but Molly heard the words all the same. "You want to worm your way back into the good graces of Mirror Springs? Then you'll do what I say."
Colonel Tempest unknotted her necktie with a tug and tossed it at Molly with a playful smile. Molly's quick hands caught the cloth faster than she caught the intention. The Colonel smirked as understanding registered. This was the Colonel's favour, and Molly her favourite.
"But you're courting Mister Stonechurch," she protested. She was still too surprised to drop the scarf or throw it as far away as possible.
"So I recall." The Colonel's fingers plucked open the button at her throat, then the button below it for good measure.
And just like that, Big Bill was back, lurking in the shadowed corner. "That don't matter to her none," he observed bitterly. "She's a vixen in heat. Ain't never out of it, truth to say. When we was out riding the range, there was a fresh new rabbit wrapped in her bedroll every night. It didn't matter who, neither - enlisted girls, trail cooks, even the banner boy, and he was about the ugliest kid I ever seen. She slept with every one of her captains, one after another." Bill spat, raising a sizzling sound from the floorboards. His eyes glowed a mean shade of green.
Molly gasped. "Is that true?"
"What's that, little dressmaker?" Another button popped, showing a deep canyon of sun-browned skin.
"I - er, did you lie abed with my brother William? Ma'am?"
The plucking fingers paused over their next button. The Colonel's mouth quirked into a bemused line but ardour alone didn't account for the new colour on her cheeks. "What a curious enquiry, Molly Bright. What makes you ask that?"
"It's true, isn't it? My brother was your lover."
The Colonel stepped close. Molly didn't dare retreat, though the smell of horse sweat, waxed leather and fresh soap threatened to overpower her. "I didn't figure he was the type for dutiful correspondence with the folks back home. Much less a letter recounting intimacies. I guess even a man like that can surprise you."
She leaned in until they were almost touching and whispered into Molly's ear, "Yes, dear, I bedded him. Once, twice and again. He had some steel between his legs, did your brother, and I certainly appreciated his command of the mechanics. But come now - how should that come between the two of us?"
"How should-? She hanged me dead, Moll!" exploded Big Bill, all the more infuriated for being ignored.
Molly ignored him. "We had an agreement Colonel. This strikes me as a sweeping change in its conditions." She glanced down when the Colonel's fingers resumed their downward progress and quickly looked up again. She was running low on fixed buttons.
"Nothing's changed. I'm just now expanding on the details, that's all. You took me at my word I would kindle some goodwill out of the ashes, and so I shall. You didn't enquire about my methods, so let me correct that oversight. No letter of commendation will scrub that black from your name, Miss Bright. My word might be good enough to get you served at that Sunjali flea market, and maybe nobody would throw a rock in your direction, but that's the limit of it. Every minute you set foot in Mirror Springs, it'll be one small cut after another. Harsh words. Sniggering. Maybe some spittin' from those with no better upbringing. And you'll never sit by a window again whereupon it won't get broken."
The fingers finished their work and took up stations on the Colonel's belt.
"You paint a dismal picture of my future, Colonel, but I'm well familiar with its contents. How will you deliver me from it?"
"Stonechurch is going to accept my proposal." Her confidence struck Molly as military. "And wh
y not? He gets a good looking hero to swing a whip over his business dealings, charm his dinner guests and slap a little spine into his dung-eating son. Once in a while I'll give him a frisky night to keep him lively. But it'll be on my terms, you see?"
"I'm not sure that I do," said Molly, but her sinking heart told her otherwise.
"He gets a legal wife. He doesn't get a say in my affairs. It's my business alone if I take a concubine."
"Me?"
"Think about it, dear. If you're the kept woman of the most powerful woman in the province, who's going to say a word against you? All you've got to do is whisper a name in our bed and they'd be out of a job, run out of town or just beaten to a carcass on my word. Once it's known you're my personal girl, you become untouchable. No more uncivil words or threats against your person. You could even set yourself back in business."
"And all I would need to do is whatever you command?"
"I'll keep you safe, Molly Bright. On my word. And it won't be so bad as you think. It's not only men I know how to satisfy."
Molly flushed and hated herself for it. The only way she could think to suppress the heat billowing through her was to let it out. "Like you satisfied my brother, Colonel?"
She'd intended it as a barb, a signal of her displeasure. The Colonel smiled warmly and slowly drew her shirt to one side. Molly couldn't help but look.
Past the swell of her breast with its hard dark nipple, the skin of the Colonel's side and stomach was a blackberry thicket of scars, burns and unidentifiable lumps. She grabbed Molly's hand and drew her fingers down, down, down, until they rested on a hollow nook surrounded by scar tissue and tiny perfect beads of sweat. "You feel that, Molly?"
Not trusting her voice to come out right through a closed-over throat, Molly nodded.
"That there is where your brother shot me."
"That was an accident!" Bill declared.
"He swore himself blue that it was an accident," the Colonel said. "He was just cleaning it, so he claimed, and it went off in his hand."
The rim of the cratered skin was calloused. Molly's fingers traced its circumference of their own accord; they were as distant to her as friends and safety. "That's why you ended the relationship?"
"Hell's hot winds, no! Our coupling was done and buried in the cold earth a week before that. I concluded I didn't care for his character and told him to get back to his own bedroll. I never trusted that sidewinding smirk of his."
"So you think he deliberately shot you out of jealousy?"
The Colonel's hand closed over Molly's and held it against the skin of her belly. "I think William Bright was a charming smile laid across a pit full of spite. He meant it all right. If he hadn't fled that night, he'd have faced a court of his fellow officers."
"A guilty verdict would have brought a death sentence?"
The Colonel nodded. "None of us ever expected to see him again, knowing a rope awaited him. But none of us reckoned on the depth of his spite, because a week later he led a pack of bushwhackers into my camp. Before we put them down, they killed five good men and women, including our patron's only brother. So yes, Miss Molly Bright, I certainly believe he intended my death and worked hard to earn his own."
Molly's feet finally found their will and she retreated from the Colonel and the roar inside her own head. Her rear bumped the foot of her camp cot bed; she held her footing. The Colonel's grin didn't fade one bit.
Bill said, "Do it, Little Moll. You fall back on that cot. That's all the invitation she'll need. You need hardly do nothing to keep her occupied but grab her hair and make whatever noises come out. She'll do the rest. And when she wears herself out and falls asleep, I'll choke her dead like I shoulda done our first night." He rubbed his hands on his dusty thighs as if he could raise sparks with the friction.
Swallowing hard, Molly said "I'm very sorry for my brother's conduct, Colonel. I believe you must have known him at his worst. I can only imagine how you must have felt when he betrayed you. I wish I could take it back on his behalf. But this proposition of yours has come as a shock to me and I'm not altogether sure how to take it."
The Colonel closed the gap between them again. Molly was pressed from both sides. "What's to consider? You want your life back, don't you?"
"That's what troubles me, Colonel. It wouldn't quite be my old life, would it?" Molly's hands found their way to the Colonel's lean hips and applied a firm pressure to them. "I'll need to think on your offer whilst I finish my commission. I believe my thoughts will be clearer if I'm left alone with them, if you take my meaning."
The Colonel raised her hands in mock surrender and let Molly have her breathing space back. "If that's how you want it, Molly Bright, then so be it. I never bedded a soul, man or woman, who didn't want to be there." She rebuttoned the shirt, one insolent snap of her fingers at a time. "But my terms are my terms. You get me? I want you at that dance looking like a princess' dream. I can wait on your answer as to the rest. Stay in this dusty snake pit the rest of your days if you like, darning lucky socks and honouring your unworthy dead. Or take your place back in Mirror Springs as a respectable woman of business with a lover who'll see to your needs. Are you that bull-stubborn you'd throw away your chance at comfort for a shred of dignity you don't have in hand?"
She finished restoring her uniform to order. "Six days to the cotillion, Miss Bright. I'll see you with my coat and your doll-gown at noon and I'll have your answer before midnight."
She closed the cabin door behind her with a firm thump. Molly stood still until the sound of hoof beats receded into the night. Then she removed the scissors stashed beneath her pillow and slumped, exhausted, on the bed.
"Should have let me kill her, Little Moll." Bill's teeth ground with every word, like he was holding his jaw closed to keep from bellowing in fury. "That woman gets her hooks in you, only two ways it can go. Either she gets bored of you and pokes her beau Stonechurch into a jealousy to finish what he started, or she takes a real shine and you never get a say in your own affairs again. It's poison she's offering. Comes down to how you want it to taste."
As much as she didn't want to hear from Bill's ghost, she couldn't see how he was wrong. Even now the memory of the Colonel's skin felt like a fading burn across her fingers and palm. Molly hadn't touched anyone that way since before her father died. The Colonel's offer was all temptations, from the restoration of her establishment to the civility, however forced, of Mirror Springs, to the rest of that tanned, hard-worn skin.
She could have what she had, or close to it. Close enough? She didn't know yet. She hadn't lied about that.
"Bill, how is it you had so much hate you tried to kill her, and those others too?"
Bill leaned low over her bed, like he planned to kiss her or smother her with her own pillow. She wasn't sure his feet were touching the floorboards. "She can't be satisfied," he growled, oblivious to her discomfort. "She'd have eaten up the whole regiment and never filled that gap."
"Why?"
"Because she don't think she's got an equal." Bill reached out to stroke her hair. To her tremendous relief, she felt nothing but a small static shock. He pulled his hand back into a fist.
"You didn't answer my question, Bill. What got into your head?"
Bill laughed, a throaty, unkind noise.
"Is that why you think I came back? To furnish you with explanations and settle your conscience? It ain't."
Molly grimaced as she met his eye. The realisation struck her that her fear of Bill had rooted her for a long while. Now all she could feel was a numb shame. "Then I'll have to guess."
"Suit yourself."
"You didn't care to be answerable to a woman, did you? Not in the field of battle and definitely not in your bed. I don't know how long you bit your tongue for, but I'll bet it wasn't long, and I bet when it came out, it came out harsh. You said something disrespectful or impertinent, and she put you in your place, didn't she? I bet that sat just as well as a ninety gallon hat."
Bill
stared at her like she'd found a way to reach out and slap his ghost face. "Moll, don't you going dishonouring me. You think I'm gonna stand here and have you say them things about me?"
"I haven't said anything yet, but I'll say more. Did you play it rough? Did you take liberties without permission and afterwards tell her you thought that's what she wanted?"
"Hey, now, you shut up." Bill rose up above Molly's head, face twisting like a sack in the wind.
"She cast you out of her sight because you were a short-tempered mongrel dog who was quick with his teeth. And you showed her she was right by trying to shoot her dead. When that didn't work, you took up the company of obliging killers to finish the job."
Bill howled, "It ain't like that!" But the gun was in his hand. A glint of moonlight made a silver ring around the end of the barrel. Molly blinked as the gun erupted like the summer storm, brighter and louder than anything. The pillow alongside her ear coughed up scorched goose down and the floorboards cracked.
A little trail of grey smoke trailed up around her face in the silence that followed. Bill turned the gun over and back as if shocked it had fired. Molly waited impassively for him to meet her eye; somehow the pistol held greater fascination.
At last he said, "Don't test me none, Molly. Don't question my judgment. I've earned my revenge, else why would I be delivered the means to enact it? That woman deserves my wrath. You'd best not try to prevent me from visiting it upon her flesh."
Molly said, "Yes, Bill. I see you won't be deterred from your course." A tear fell from her eye, and in his expression she saw satisfaction. Never mind the tear arose from the irritating pillow smoke, it suited Molly just fine for him to believe she repented her harsh words.
She rose from the bed and washed her face in the basin.
"I'm going now," announced Bill, returning to a more natural elevation. The pistol hung by his side, no holster to stow it in. Though it had appeared in his hand from nowhere, he did not seem to know the trick of returning it. "I'll go check on the trail. Make sure she really left."
Mnemo's Memory Page 12
