Straight For The Heart

by Marsha Canham

  When his fury waned and he could see and breathe again, he dragged himself upright and looked down at the golden body through a film of scalding tears. Tenderly he smoothed the web of yellow hair off her face, and gently he closed the accusing eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, Alisha, but it had to stop somewhere. The lies had to stop … the pain had to stop. And this way, at least, we’ll be together.”

  He straightened slowly and took a deep breath to steady himself He walked over to where he had left the pillowslip by the door and hesitated only a moment before pulling out the bloodstained green velvet gown that would identify Montana Rose. He draped the garments over the foot of the bed and, calmer now, poured himself a brimming tumbler of whiskey.

  As he downed it, he stared at his reflection in the mirror. He raked his hand through his hair and touched a few of the gouges on his cheek, smiling grimly at the blood that came away on his fingers.

  The heat of the whiskey blurred his vision and he set the empty glass aside. His shaving kit was on the washstand, and it took only a few seconds to reach inside, to find the straight razor, and test its sharpness on the pad of his thumb. Satisfied, he poured himself another whiskey—odd how his hands were not shaking anymore—and went back to the bed. He stretched out alongside Alisha, waited for the second wave of liquor to blot out any lingering sensations, then bared his wrist to the gleaming edge of the blade.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Amanda Tarrington was safely back at Rosalie when the news of Benjamin Turnbull’s murder began to scorch through Natchez like a brushfire. By midday the gory details were on everyone’s lips, expanded and sensationalized out of all proportion. The story spread from house to house, on foot, by horseback and buggy, across the fields and down the mighty Mississippi, missing nothing in its path.

  When Mercy carried the news into the family on the same tray she served lunch, Amanda promptly collapsed in a faint on the parlor floor. Sarah, remaining upright for once, sent for Dr. Dorset, who not only confirmed her daughter’s pregnancy, but gave additional details of the murder and the furor surrounding it. The authorities, he told them, were scouring the less palatable establishments of Natchez, searching for the whereabouts of the lady gambler, Montana Rose. The Mississippi Queen had been shut down and would remain so until further notice.

  Gruesome, he called it. Maniacal. The captain had been a big fellow and the severed jugular had spouted enough blood to fill a bathtub. If the woman they were searching for did it, he confided to William, she must have come away dripping like a ghoul.

  Ryan’s fury was awesome. He managed to contain it until the doctor departed, but then he locked Amanda in her bedroom and demanded the entire story, threatening his own brand of violence if she dared omit a single detail. He sat glowering and unresponsive throughout most of the recitation. His emotions ran the gamut from disgust and disillusionment to thundrous denouncements, to calm homicidal hatred for E. Forrest Wainright.

  Too calm.

  Amanda found him in the disused library a short while after he left her, cleaning and loading a brace of archaic flintlock dueling pistols.

  “May I ask what you are doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  She frowned down at the pistols, trying to remember when she had seen them last. They had belonged to her maternal great-grandfather, who had bought them in London from Henry Hadley, gunmaker to the Duke of Marlborough. They had gold inlaid barrels and intricate foliate work on the stocks; the escutcheon plates were gold as well, chiseled in relief with grotesques and floral scrolls. The pistols, in their carved mahogany case, had been buried in the garden for most of the war, one of the few precious heirlooms that had not found its way into the hands of Yankee looters.

  “Ryan, please … for my sake, don’t do anything foolish.”

  “It is precisely for your sake I’m going to rid the earth of that snake once and for all. And when I’m finished with Wainright, I intend to call out your husband.”

  Amanda watched helplessly as he took each elegantly long-barreled weapon from its velvet pocket and set it on the desktop.

  “Ryan.” She forced a calmness to match his own. “You don’t even know if those guns work. They were buried under a carrot patch for five years.”

  “I have had them cleaned and primed since Wainright reared his ugly head the first time. I couldn’t quite bring myself to go through with it then, but now, dammit …” He lifted one of the pistols and poured a measured amount of fine black powder down the long snout.

  “Now you intend to go after him and do what? Wave an outdated pistol in his face and demand satisfaction?” She stood in front of her brother and placed her hands on his forearms. “What do you expect him to do? Bow graciously and take ten paces before aiming and politely waiting his turn to fire? You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t simply shoot you point-blank on his doorstep.”

  “Then he’ll be arrested and hanged for murder,” Ryan said, and shook off her hands. When a felt patch was rammed securely against each charge of powder, he selected a lead ball from the pouch of weighted shot, wrapped it in a second small square of treated felt, and wadded it snugly into the barrel.

  “Ryan, I won’t let you kill yourself.”

  He set the first gun cautiously back into its velvet bed as he reached for its mate.

  Amanda tapped her fingers on the desktop. She slid her hand along the polished surface and waited until Ryan had lifted the second pistol and was squinting along its barrel.

  He heard a metallic snick and looked up to find himself staring down the nose of the fully cocked snaphaunce.

  “And just what do you propose to do with that?” he asked quietly.

  “I propose to shoot you here and now if you refuse to listen to reason.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “To save Wainright the trouble, I presume?”

  “I’m not going to kill you. Only wound you so that you put this insanely noble notion out of your mind.”

  “Wound me,” he mused. “In the arm?” he inquired as he extended a long, muscular appendage for her inspection. “Or would you prefer a leg? The leg is the easier target, but it could prove a bit messy if you hit the artery. Judging from the way your hand is shaking, you might not hit the arm at all, but if I promise to hold it steady—”

  “I’m not joking,” she warned coldly.

  “You’re not primed either,” he said gently, glancing pointedly at the powderless firing pan.

  Amanda sighed and lowered the gun. Ryan took it carefully out of her hand and uncocked it. “I’m sorry, but you just don’t have the makings of a desperado.”

  “You do, I suppose?”

  “Wainright is overdue. So is your husband.”

  “So is every other Yankee carpetbagger in Mississippi, but you can’t go out and challenge every one of them to a duel.”

  He glared at her and his jaw flexed into a solid ridge. “Do you honestly think Wainright will just fade away and never bother us again? He knows where to find Montana Rose, and once he finishes playing his little cat-and-mouse games, he’ll sell the information to the authorities quicker than you can shout foul.”

  “He can’t point a finger at me without implicating himself. If he tries, I’ll swear he set me up to do it. In fact, I’ll swear it now—I’ll confess to the murder and name him as my accomplice.”

  “What would that accomplish?” he asked in exasperation.

  “The same thing as you going off half-cocked. I may not be able to stop you with a bullet, but so help me, if you take one step in Wainright’s direction, I’ll drive myself straight to the sheriff’s office and confess everything.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Wouldn’t I? What would I have to lose? My reputation? My freedom? I’ve lost both already, so what does it matter?”

  “What about Verity, and the new baby? Does your lack of concern for your own future include condemning them to a life of jeering and
taunting about their mother the murderess?”

  “You’re too damn noble to let anything hurt Verity,” she retorted. “As for the baby, Michael’s name will protect him. If nothing else, he owes me that much.”

  Ryan stared into the clear blue eyes and saw the anger, the disillusionment, the stubborn determination, and he knew she was not bluffing.

  “If you’re not going to let me kill your husband,” he said sardonically, “will you at least let me beat the living crap out of him?”

  Amanda sighed and turned to the window. After a long moment of quiet contemplation, she shook her head slowly and bowed her chin almost to her chest. “I still can’t believe he was there last night. I can’t believe he lied to me about going after Ned Sims. I can’t even understand why he would have felt he had to lie to me. And for the life of me, I can’t believe he and Alisha …” Her voice faltered and died.

  Ryan glanced longingly at the guns again, then moved up behind Amanda and wrapped his arms protectively around her. She sighed again and leaned willingly into the comforting support, her eyes glazing over with the bright sting of tears.

  “I had the strangest feeling earlier this morning. In spite of everything that has happened, everything that will surely happen over the coming days, I felt as if an enormous, great weight was suddenly lifted off my shoulders. It was so odd. Like walking from a dark room into one full of sunlight. Who knows …” She laced her finger’s through Ryan’s and held him tightly “Maybe Alisha has done me a favor by bringing all of this out into the open.”

  “Maybe,” Ryan murmured. “But why do I have the distinct feeling all hell is about to break loose?”

  Amanda sat alone in the parlor, huddled before the warmth of the fire, a shawl pulled snugly around her shoulders. She had been staring into the flames for over an hour, but, as exhausted as she was, she could not stop her mind from spinning long enough to sleep.

  “He’s here.”

  She jumped slightly at the sound of Ryan’s voice as he walked into the room.

  “Your husband is here,” he repeated grimly. “Mercy has him blockaded at the front door.”

  Amanda’s earlier show of bravado drained away as quickly as the color from her face. “What shall I do?”

  “It’s your call: See him or send him away.”

  “I … don’t think I’m ready to see him just yet. M-maybe tomorrow. Or the day after.”

  They both heard shouting from out in the hall, Mercy’s voice first, trumpeting a threat against the hazard of crossing the imaginary line she had drawn, and Michael’s snarling an equally caustic rebuttal. Ryan turned instantly with the intent to join the fray, but Amanda caught his hand in hers and kept him anchored by her side.

  Angry bootsteps approached the parlor. A moment later, Michael loomed in the doorway, his broad shoulders all but filling the space, his expression blacker than the wide-brimmed hat that shadowed his eyes. He looked angry, angrier than Amanda had ever seen him, and she sat stiffly forward on the chair, her hand gripping Ryan’s so tightly, it burned.

  “Hello, Amanda.”

  “Michael,” she whispered.

  “My sister isn’t feeling very well.” Ryan scowled. “She doesn’t need you barging in here uninvited, upsetting her any further.”

  The cold gray eyes moved slowly from Amanda to Ryan. “Upset her? I have an overwhelming desire to do a great deal more than just upset her. For the time being, however, I will settle for a few moments of conversation with her … alone … if it’s all the same to you.”

  “I don’t think she has anything to say to you, alone or otherwise.”

  Michael’s gaze shifted back. “Is that your choice … or his?”

  “By Jesus—” Ryan surged forward again, but Amanda stopped him.

  “It’s all right. I’d as soon get it over with anyway.”

  Ryan expelled two heavy breaths, then nodded. “I’ll be just outside in the hallway if you need me.”

  He glared at Michael all the way across the room, the threat implied, the promise made. Amanda thought of the dueling pistols loaded and ready in the upstairs library, and she tried to send her brother a reassuring smile as he strode out of the room and pulled the door shut behind him.

  For one full, throbbing minute neither Amanda nor Michael moved. They assessed one another across the silence, each noting the signs of strain and sleeplessness on the other’s face.

  Michael moved first. He walked over to the fireplace and tossed his hat onto a nearby chair.

  “I would have been here sooner,” he said, cracking the silence as effectively as a gunshot, “if I had not been delayed by a parade of my own uninvited guests—not the least annoying of whom was your overblown, overwrought, and overly pompous brother-in-law.”

  “Karl? What did he want?”

  “He seems to think your sister has run away. He wanted to know if you had seen her or spoken to her recently.

  “Run away? Alisha?”

  “She didn’t answer any of her summonses and wasn’t in her room when he finally got around to checking. Hadn’t been there all night, from the look of it.”

  “Why would he think I knew where she went?” Amanda asked bitterly. “Are you certain he wasn’t there to see if she was with you?”

  He barely acknowledged her sarcasm with a frown before continuing. “At any rate, the baron no sooner rode off when a detachment of militia rode up to the front door.”

  What little color had flushed her cheeks drained noticeably away.

  “Are you not going to ask why?”

  “I’m sure you’re about to tell me whether I ask or not.”

  “They were full of questions too. Questions about the mysterious lady gambler who won an astonishing amount of money in a poker game last night and then simply melted into the night, leaving the body of a dead man in her wake. They wanted to know if I’d had any prior meetings with the elusive Montana Rose; if I might know where she could be found.”

  His scorn was a painful thing to bear, and she dug the points of her fingernails into her palms to keep from screaming. “What did you tell them?”

  “The truth, of course. I told them I had had the pleasure of her company once before, several months ago, and that I’d had no idea then how to find her. I also confirmed the fact that she had indeed won a considerable amount of money last night—a large percentage of it mine—but I could not, by any stretch of the imagination, imagine her capable of murdering Captain Turnbull. In that respect,” he added tersely, “I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

  There was absolutely no trace of warmth in his voice, no glimmer of compassion in his eyes. No indication at all he had come with the intent of listening to her side of the story and offering her his protection.

  Michael saw the shine building in her eyes and grimaced. “If you’re thinking of fluttering those big blue eyes at me and weeping out a convincingly coy plea of innocence, I should warn you my patience is worn pretty thin. I would just as soon haul you to the county courthouse and let someone else wring the truth out of you.”

  “You would turn me in?” she gasped.

  “I would not only turn you in, madam, I would take a front-row seat at the hanging if I thought you were guilty. Living with a card sharp is one thing, living with a murderess is quite another. Sit down!”

  Amanda had begun to rise, an indignant protest on her lips. She saw the blackness flash into his eyes again and wisely sank back down onto the settee.

  “You aren’t going anywhere until I get some answers,” he said evenly.

  “I might have a few questions of my own,” she countered tautly. “I might want to ask what you were doing there last night.”

  “You might. But I’m not the one who’s being accused of cold-blooded murder.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “You were seen running away from his cabin. You had blood on your hands and on your dress.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” she repeated raggedly.r />
  “But you were there, in his cabin.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “We had some business to discuss.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Private business, and none of yours.”

  A muscle shivered in his cheek and his expression became even more thunderous.

  “We"ll put that aside for a minute,” he hissed between his teeth. “So you went to his cabin. What happened then?”

  “I knocked on the door, but no one answered. I thought he was still topside and I didn’t want to be seen lingering in the corridor, so … I went inside.”

  “And?”

  “And … he was there.”

  “Dead?”

  “If he’d been sitting up chatting with me,” she snapped, “I wouldn’t be in this predicament, would I?”

  The gray eyes flickered ominously.

  “Well, I’m sick and tired of everyone asking the same question. Of course he was dead. He was on the floor, and … and there was all this blood. It was everywhere … on the floor, on the walls.”

  “His throat was slashed, and not very cleanly; either by an amateur who had to try several times for the veins, or by someone who thoroughly enjoys his work.” He saw Amanda blanch and his tone softened for the first time. “Go on. What did you do then?”

  “I panicked. I ran.”

  “Straight into the arms of a Mr. Charles Fry and his companion.”

  “The couple on deck? I don’t remember anything about them. Their faces, everything, is a blur.”

  “Well, they remember you. Right down to the color of the rosettes on your skirt. Where is it, by the way?”

  “The dress? Burned … I think.”

  “You think? You don’t know for sure?”

  “I was told it would be burned.”

  “By who … Ryan?”

  She moistened her lips. “No. Ryan knew absolutely nothing about it; he wasn’t involved at all. In fact, when he found out about it this morning … he was almost as angry as you.”