"Jesus." He cupped her face and dragged his thumb across her cheek. "I'm sorry, Desiree." He let her go and raked his fingers through his too-long hair. "I need a drink."
After a moment, Desiree sighed heavily and nodded. "What are you drinking?" She stepped toward the cluster of crystal decanters on her dresser. The stopper of the bottle rattled in its nest.
He was tempted to request cyanide, but he said, "Whiskey will do." He slumped heavily onto the comfortable tufted settee near the fireplace.
He let out a long breath that drew Desiree's glance from the decanter in her hand. She steadied the tremble in it and released a sigh of her own. She'd seen trouble on Creed Devereaux's face before. Often. Trouble followed him like a shadow.
Or, perhaps he went looking for it.
It didn't matter. Trouble was always what brought him to her. And she had decided long ago she'd take Creed Devereaux any way she could get him.
But tonight was different. He was different. The trouble in his eyes was not the kind she'd seen before. It was woman trouble. He hadn't been kissing her. She'd known it from the moment their lips touched. She'd been in the business too long not to recognize it, but not so long that the loss of a man like Creed Devereaux didn't hurt.
She handed him the cut-crystal glass and sat down opposite him in the velvet upholstered slipper chair. Sipping her bourbon, she endured the ache inside and waited for him to speak.
Creed swallowed the drink in one gulp and grimaced as it went down. He sat forward, bracing his forearms on his knees. His head hung between his arms. His temples throbbed, his chest ached, and his hand burned. But none of it mattered. When he spoke, he spoke in French. "I shouldn't have come here tonight, Desiree. I'm drunk."
"I've seen you drunk before."
"I'm very drunk."
"This I know, too, cheri." She sipped her bourbon, watching him carefully. "What happened to your hand?"
He glanced at his bloody knuckles and smiled. "It ran into an idiot's face."
Desiree's mouth curved upward. "You don't sound contrite, love."
"It felt good to hit something."
"Yes." She set her drink down on the marble-topped teakwood table and went for a clean cloth. Dipping the edge in the bourbon, she went to sit beside Creed. "Let me see."
He gave her his hand and she dabbed the cloth against the bloody cut. He winced, but kept his eyes trained on her beautiful white hands.
"So, cheri," she said, trailing a gentle finger down the side of his face. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"I don't know. I don't even know why I'm here." He shrugged helplessly. "I had nowhere else to go."
Another woman might have been insulted by such a comment, but Desiree wasn't. She no longer whored for a living. Her girls did that for her. She'd become a successful madam first in Salt Lake, then in Virginia. Her relationships with men were absolutely her choice now and there were few who interested her.
Of those few, only Creed owned her heart. If, tomorrow, he asked her to marry him, she'd leave this life behind in a second. Lock, stock, and velvet cushion. But fantasy was never her strong suit, so she'd given the possibility little serious consideration. A man like Creed didn't come to a woman like her for a lifetime commitment. The most she could hope for was friendship, and that's what she offered him now.
Lifting her arms, she pulled the tortoiseshell pins from her hair, one by one. In a cascade of flame, her burnished tresses uncoiled to her waist. Creed's gaze followed every movement. She reached for the embossed silver hairbrush on the table behind the settee and handed it to him.
"Here. Perhaps we'll both think better if you brush my hair." When he hesitated, she asked, "You like it, no? It soothes you, no?"
One corner of his mouth curved in answer. Lifting her hair off her neck, his fingers brushed against her skin. She allowed the shiver his touch never failed to produce, and she inhaled deeply. The boar bristles sank into her hair at the crown and he drew the brush down in long, gentle strokes. She closed her eyes and sighed. The piano music from below drifted up through the floor.
"You have beautiful hair, Desiree. But you know that, don't you?"
"I've been told. Yet, I think... not as beautiful as hers."
The brush paused mid-stroke. "Hers?"
"There is a woman, no? Is that not what I see in your eyes? What I tasted just now in your kiss?"
The brush moved through her hair again. "Yes."
"And she troubles you, cheri?"
"Yes." She heard him sigh slowly as if relieved of a great burden.
She wound her fingers together in her lap, inhaling his nearness, the masculine scent of him she always found such a powerful aphrodisiac. "So, who is she?" The brush massaged her back as he drew it downward.
"She's... not mine. She belongs to Seth."
"Ahh... Seth." A sigh lifted her chest. "Tell me, does she still?"
"Still what?"
"Belong to Seth." Her eyes caught and held his. His bleak expression told her what she wanted to know. She turned around again. "So... you're in love with her, ma beau."
"It doesn't matter."
"Is that what you think?" Desiree laughed softly, tipping her head back languorously with the pressure of the brush. "It is the only thing that does matter, cheri."
He stroked the hair back away from her face, silent. From outside her door came the sounds of a couple fumbling with a doorknob down the hallway, laughing.
"Does it surprise you that a whore would speak of love?" she asked, ignoring the intrusion.
"I've never thought of you that way, Desiree."
"I know. But that's what I am," she replied without apology. "It hasn't always been so. I was once young and in love." She glanced up. "I can remember what it's like."
"Was it with your best friend's fiancé?" he asked bitterly, stroking unintentionally harder.
She stopped his hand with hers. "No. He was married."
Creed stared and she smiled. "Are you shocked?"
"Did you know?" he asked. "Did he tell you?"
With a shrug, she answered, "Of course. His marriage had been arranged—it was a matter of money. They had nothing in common, least of all love. They even lived separately, because together, they fought constantly. They had been married eight years when he met me. We fell madly in love and before I knew it, his child grew inside me."
Creed's jaw tightened at the thought of what she must have gone through... a woman alone. "What happened?"
She hugged her arms to her chest. "It was... months before he could get his wife to agree to grant him a divorce. Then, at last he did. But before he could make it final, he was... he was killed in a riding accident." After all these years, her voice still trembled at the memory. "He'd been on his way to me."
Creed's hands brushed her shoulders. "I'm sorry."
She got up and crossed the room, staring into the flames as if she couldn't bear to be comforted. "There was nothing for us. His wife made certain of that. My family was shamed by what I'd done. They turned their backs on me completely. Which is how I ended up... doing this."
The fire crackled in the silence as Creed turned over what she'd told him in his mind. "You had his child?"
Pride eased the sadness on her face. "Joel's fifteen now. He lives in a boarding school back East. He knows all about me, of course, but it wouldn't do for his friends to know." Her chin rose a fraction and she smoothed the wrinkles from her red silk skirt. "Someday, he'll attend a university. He's a brilliant student. He wants to be a physician."
Creed's gaze roamed over her face. "That's why you do this?" He gestured broadly around him. "For him?"
Her mouth curved upward and she faced him. "If you think I regret the life I've built, Creed, you'd be wrong. I don't regret a minute. I did what I had to do. I survived. And I've turned a pretty profit in the process.
"If you ask me if I'd change anything today—if I'd go back and pick another man, a safer man—the answer would still be no." She took a deep breath, her
eyes fierce and bright. "I loved him and I would do it all again,"—she snapped her fingers—"like that. My only regret is that I haven't had him all these years. If I could change one thing, it would be that."
Slowly, she walked over to the settee and sat down beside him. She didn't touch him, except with her gaze.
"What you must ask yourself, mon chou, is if you can imagine your life without her. Tomorrow? A year from now? Ten? What will you regret then?"
Creed stared at the drink in his hand, rubbing his thumb around the rim until a keening note sounded, then he tipped the glass and slugged down the remaining whiskey. It burned through him like the lingering heat of a banked fire and spread lethargy through his limbs. He slumped against the tufted sofa back, staring at the fire. "It's not as simple as that, Desiree. Seth loves her, too."
With a knowing smile she smoothed a hand through his dark hair. "She is a woman to love, yes?"
"Yes," Creed stood and swallowed down the desperation rising in his gut. "She is. I told her to marry him."
She shook her head. "Did you? Men can be so stupid."
He glared at her, pressing a hand to his throbbing head. "I'm right about this, Desiree. We're as far apart as Montana is from Chicago. She's a lady, I'm—"
"You're what?"
"Nothing." He lurched around the sofa, wrenching his hat off the bedstand and his coat from the floor. "I'm nothing except for the dishonorable fool I've become. It was a mistake to think I could have someone like her even for a minute."
Desiree didn't get up. She only watched him try, unsuccessfully, to shove his arms in his coat. "Is that what she says?"
He shot her a twisted smile. "They asked me to be the best man at their wedding." He let out a bark of laughter as he shoved his hat on and gave up on the coat. "Best man. Me. Isn't that a hoot?"
"Did you say yes?"
He shot a disgusted look at his muddy boots. "I didn't say no." He wrenched the door open, bracing his hand on the frame to steady himself. With his back to her he said, "I'm sorry for coming here tonight, Desiree. I'm sorry, I... oh, hell, I'm just sorry." Without turning around, he disappeared out the door.
She shook her head, listening to the fading sound of his footsteps. "Men can be so stupid."
Chapter 19
"What makes you so sure it was LaRousse?"
Creed squinted through the brilliant morning sun at Sheriff Jim Fox. They were nearly the same height, Fox an imposing forty pounds heavier than Creed, with a gut that hung over his belt. The Sheriff stood ankle deep in the fetid mud outside his office, glaring at Creed as the hammers pounded in a nearby structure and the morning traffic rumbled by on the street behind him with a dull roar.
Creed rubbed his throbbing head, trying to keep it from exploding. "I told you. He was following me. He had to go though the stage station to track me. He probably tortured the information out of Mrs. Lochrie before he murdered her. That's how the bastard works."
Fox placed three dirty-nailed fingers near his mouth and nodded. "I have a WANTED dodger on him, as I reckon you'd know, fer another killin', up Deer Lodge way. But I got no evidence he was anywhere near the Lochries when this happened. Just your sayso, an' you weren't there neither. No witnesses left alive, apparently. You say you winged him a few days later?"
"Miss Parsons did." Creed squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "I found blood on his trail, but there's no way to know how serious it was."
Fox grunted and patted his stomach. "Too bad you didn't follow him."
Creed sent the man a killing look. "I told you, if I could have, I would have."
Fox's inky eyes narrowed. "Don't get testy on me, Devereaux. I'm just commentin'."
Creed counted to ten. Slowly. "So, are you going to do anything about it?"
"Hell..." He scratched his chest and sent a wad of tobacco juice flying into the mud. "I got five killin's a day right here in Virginia to deal with. Claim jumpers, back-stabbers, just plain mean sons of bitches too drunk to hold their tempers."
He started walking toward Dillard's Cafe and Creed followed. "But based on your suspicions, I'll see that Professor Dimmesdale inks up another dodger on that printin' press of his and sends it out to Nevada City and the surrounding camps. And... I'll up the bounty on him by seventy-five dollars. That enough incentive to get you off my back, Bounty?"
Blindly, Creed grabbed the man's shirtfront and slammed him against the nearest log wall with a heavy thud. "This isn't about money, you imbecile!" The hammer of Fox's Colt clicked next to Creed's abdomen. He felt the cold nudge of steel.
"You're this close to a jail cell, boy. Or a bullet in the gut. Unhand me now."
It took Creed five full seconds to swallow his fury and release Fox. He cursed his lack of control and the pounding hangover that had frayed his patience to a thread.
The sheriff shook his worn flannel shirt back into place, holstered his gun, and yanked at the sleeves of his union suit. "Now... I'll tell you what I ain't gonna do. I ain't sendin' a posse out on a blind goose chase on yer say-so, Devereaux, after a half-breed who's as elusive as a goddamned ghost. You got that?"
Creed ground his teeth. "I've got it."
"And the next time you call me an imbecile,"—he poked a finger into Creed's chest—"you'd better be prepared for Judge Colt to argue the point with you."
Creed was just angry enough to consider tempting fate, but a shout from behind them stopped him.
"Sheriff!"
A squat man in a bowler hat and window-pane plaid wool pants hurried up the street just ahead of a gathering mob.
"Sheriff, you better come. There's been a killin'."
Fox's heated expression darkened further. "Dangit, Edward, I ain't had my coffee yet," he growled. "Take the body over to MacGrudy's and tell him I'll be over later."
"It weren't the usual sort of killing, Sheriff," Edward told him, wide-eyed. "This feller were lynched and that ain't all."
Fox cursed. Pushing away from the wall, he sent Creed a final warning look and hurried toward the men. Creed followed.
The crowd parted for them, revealing a two-wheeled, mule-drawn cart. Inside was a blanket-covered body.
"Anybody know who it is?" Fox demanded, pulling back the blanket. He grimaced and replaced the covering, but not before Creed had gotten a look.
"Lydell Kraylor."
Fox looked up as Creed spoke. "You know him?"
"I had the misfortune, oui. I saw him last at Fort Benton, taking the credit for killing Étienne La-Rousse."
The crowd murmured loudly around them. Fox held up his hand. "Who found him?"
A stooped-over miner with scruffy hair and beard stepped forward. "It were me. Name's Karl Brown," he announced loud enough for everyone to hear. "I found him." His weathered face creased with pride. "Swingin' from that Cottonwood branch up in Stinkin' Water Valley with his neck stretched fer him. Then looks like they used him fer target practice. Stole ever, scrap of money and valuables off 'n him, too."
Fox and Creed exchanged looks. "You see any sign of the scoundrels that did it?" Fox asked.
"They was long gone by the time I got there, but..." Brown fished a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to the Sheriff. "He had this note a'pinned to his chest with his knife. I cain't read so I don't rightly know what it says. But I figgered it might be important."
Fox took the bloody note, inspecting the knife hole at the top of it. He read it briefly, glanced at Creed and folded it up again.
"Wal, what'd it say, Sheriff?" one man asked.
"Yeah," another chimed in.
"Ain't you gonna tell us?" a third man queried. "We got a right to know. We could all be in danger from this thievin' scallawag."
Again, the crowd swelled with noise.
"Boys, boys—" cautioned Fox, pushing his hands down against the air in a calming gesture. "Don't get yerselves all het up over nothin'. Ain't nothin' in it pertainin' to none of you. This here note is evidence in a murder. As su
ch, I aim to keep it under wraps until the villain or villains are caught. Edward, Brown—you two take the body over to the undertaker's shop. Tell him I'll be along directly. The rest of you boys, break up and get to work. The day's a wastin'."
Reluctantly, the crowd broke up, scattering like so many wind-blown seeds toward the staked banks of Alder Creek. Fox turned on his heel and almost ran into Creed.
"Well?" Fox demanded, stepping around him and continuing on toward his office.
"What did the note say?"
"Why should I tell you?"
"Because it pertains to me," Creed said through clenched teeth. "Doesn't it? It was LaRousse, wasn't it?"
"I never said." Fox kept on, slogging through the stinking mud.
"Sheriff!"
Fox skidded to a halt and turned around. "What?"
"You looked up at me when you read it. Me. No one else. What did it say, dammit?"
Fox scowled, adding deep lines to his forehead. He handed Creed the note. "I reckon it could be about you, and it might be from LaRousse, but it ain't specific."
Creed unfolded the crimson-smeared note and read:
"Kraylor's first. The woman is next. You're last."
Creed struggled for air and crumpled the note in his fist and swore. It was too much to hope LaRousse had died. It made perfect twisted sense. Kraylor had taken a piece of Étienne back at Fort Benton. Whoever had told Pierre about Creed had told him about Kraylor, too.
Damn, damn, damn!
Now he was after Mariah.
Creed looked up to find Fox watching him. "Well, now what do you say? It's not just me. It's Mariah Parsons, too."
"You got no grounds to prove—"
"The hell I don't! Can you read, Sheriff?" He shoved the note under Fox's nose. "He all but signed his name."
Fox's jaw tightened and he grabbed the note out of Creed's hand. "I can read just fine, Devereaux. How's yer hearing? I said I'll do what I can. If you're so all fired set on seein' justice done, why don't you mount up and go a'lookin' yerself?"
Creed shook his head with disbelief. "And what about Miss Parsons? Are you going to protect her?"
Fox hawked a wad of juice into the street. "I'll tell Travers about the note, warn them to be wary—"
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