by Bella Bowen
“Devlin?” Fallon looked at Toller. Toller got to his feet and started edging around, like Devlin was some strange critter caught in a trap and he didn’t want to approach it, but had no choice.
Caught in a trap...
Dev gulped more air and choked on it. The thought washed into his head like a river overrunning its banks.
Gen had been watching. She’d been waiting for him to be just vulnerable enough.
She couldn’t possibly be the Gen he once knew.
But what ultimately turned his belly out into the spittoon was the probability that sweet Mrs. Carnegie had become an accomplished actress. She had convinced the sheriff of Sage River, and Devlin’s own friend, that she was the victim—that she was heartbroken over the loss of the Diamond Springs arch—when she was the one who had burned it down.
CHAPTER NINE
Gen made her way to her second story bedroom smiling stiffly at the women she passed, seeing no faces, nodding at the condolences they offered over the loss of three, albeit massive, pieces of firewood.
The master bedroom was on the main floor, of course. Her trunks had been unpacked there. Her clothes were there. But that had been David’s room, not hers, though she wasn’t about to explain. That was the beauty of having a hand-picked staff who had no knowledge of her previous life at Diamond Springs. They knew nothing of her previous shame.
But the second story room was all hers. There was no lingering smell of cigar smoke. No musky smell of David. There would be no trace of Devlin, who had been so bold as to move into David’s room. She’d smelled him there, rummaged through the few things of his own he kept there. But she wasn’t about to sleep in a room with his scent lingering. It was similar to David’s in a way that confused her memories. And she couldn’t allow her reminiscences to get fuzzy now.
The second room held its own memories. Just a few.
The feeling of David standing at the door, watching her sleep. A wonderful memory of the night he could take no more, and came to her like the husband he was. It was her favorite memory of those early years. She’d felt desired, thrilled by the knowledge that she could make David lose that famous control.
Even the next morning, when he’d apologized for whatever might have happened. He’d claimed to be drunk, but she knew he’d not taken so much of a sip that night. Did he think she wouldn’t be able to tell? He’d kissed her enough, though barely enough, to know there had been no taste of liquor on his tongue. That night, he’d only tasted of David.
She took a deep breath, trying to remember, after ten long years, what he’d tasted like. She pulled in the familiar flavors of pine and grass and dust. Those were always present. Then she begged her memory to give her one clear taste of her first husband. But when her tongue watered, it was over a taste…of Devlin!
Gen pushed the image away and turned to secure the door.
All emotion she displayed in public was a very careful, studied act she’d learned at the side of a politician. She refused to shed a real tear, to even allow herself to feel so much as the weather, unless she was alone behind a closed and locked door. And even then, she vented that emotion into a pillow to keep even the housekeepers from knowing just what it was, if anything at all, that the stoic Mrs. Genevieve Carnegie felt.
Living at Diamond Springs had taught her well. Her few precious years with David had primed her perfectly for the political life. It was too bad she didn’t recognize it as a blessing at the time.
Heaven help her, she wasn’t going to make it to a pillow!
Right there, against the doorframe, she buried her face into the crook of her arm and began to sob. The sorrow racked her body as it had when David had died. As it had when she’d been alone inside a carriage being escorted to Denver City, carried away from her few precious memories. But as she gulped in air, prepared to release it into her sleeves once again, she tasted him again. Devlin. Even through the tears she smelled him. It was strong enough, distracting enough, she was able to turn her grief over losing the arch into something less painful.
She was furious. Devlin had been in her room. At her door. The wood frame fairly reeked of him.
She moved around the room, sniffing, tasting.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Then by the bed. The pillows were new. But the bed was not.
Devlin Zollinger had slept in her room. There was no question.
But why? Just to replace the scent of her with his own?
With no answer in sight, her thoughts settled back to where they’d started. The arch. Her precious arch. The beacon that had brought her back. All those years, it was easier to think of the arch than to think about most of the other memories of the ranch, but the happiness represented by that gate could never be taken from her.
At least she would never have believed it could be.
Devlin! Devlin! Why couldn’t you have burned down the house instead? The barn? Anything!
But she knew why.
He’d wanted to erase one of the few happy memories they’d all shared. Perhaps, for the past ten years, he’d been struck with that memory each and every time he’d ridden beneath that arch. Perhaps he’d been able to forget about her, little by little, until that memory faded. And now that she was back, perhaps his memories came back nice and clear.
Just as hers had.
Perhaps he wanted to erase her from Diamond Springs as badly as she wanted to erase him.
She’d made the opening move. He’d answered. Now it was her turn again. And if he thought sending him that plaque had been her next move, he was wrong. She just needed to make sure the next move hurt him as much as he’d hurt her. She only hoped she could be there when it happened.
Gen dried her tears, and when some cool water and a little time had reduced the puffiness of her face, she unlocked her door and sent for a new bed...and a half dozen women to come scrub the devil out of her room.
CHAPTER TEN
A note arrived from Devlin for the third morning in a row. Another request for a chance inside the house to gather his personal things.
“Yes,” she mumbled to herself. “I’d like you to remove your stench, too, but that’s unlikely.”
She scribbled a quick reply and sent Fontaine to deliver it. Then she headed to David’s room after collecting Mrs. Willot from the study. She thought the woman could report anything she might have learned thus far, from the accounting books, while she herself packed a trunk to appease her brother-in-law for a while. She decided she’d be sure to let him know that she’d packed his things personally. Perhaps it would bother him to imagine she’d touched it all, sifted through his private things, poked her nose into his secrets.
Not that she cared to, of course. She’d rather not expose herself further to his scent, but she wasn’t about to let anything off the ranch that should rightfully belong to her. She wasn’t greedy, she was just possessive of anything and everything that had been David’s. What had been his was rightfully hers, and if all she could have of him now was his things, she’d take them, and gladly.
She tried not to dwell on the fact that she’d settled for possessions before, that she’d never really had anything more until she’d read that journal. Then she’d had a month of his love. Apparently, it had driven Devlin mad with jealousy.
She attacked his room with a vengeance and found a few surprises.
First of all, Devlin hadn’t wasted much of David’s money on clothing. Most of what she found would serve better as kindling than apparel. Even the patches had patches. It had disturbed her to find the furnishings of the entire house nearly exactly as she’d left them, but now she believed it hadn’t been for sentimental reasons, but rather, she acknowledge the truth, that he hadn’t spent the money to change them out.
A little pang of guilt shot through her chest. Perhaps the exorbitant purchase of horseflesh hadn’t been a way for him to waste David’s money. Perhaps he’d saved...
She shook her head. Nonsense. In the midst of a battle was no time to paint
the opposition with flattering brushstrokes. Devlin cheated her out of her share of the ranch and chased her off, believing she was too stupid to see what he was doing. And he’d murdered David in order to get it all. He’d been jealous from the start. A green-eyed monster who took her husband from her as soon as things had changed for the better. Her marriage had survived a plague of mistrust, recovered miraculously, only to be swallowed by that monster in one gulp. And the beast’s large, angry tail had swept her aside, never to be thought of again.
Gen found herself throwing things into the open trunk with unnecessary force. She tossed a boot jack into the lot and heard the crack of glass. Mrs. Willot stopped her recitation of numbers and looked up. Gen sighed and started removing items again. If no one else had been in the room, she probably would have left broken glass for Devlin to find, so she was glad the other woman had been there to keep her from doing something a little too cruel, even for her.
When she’d tossed the unfamiliar plaid blanket into the trunk, she’d noted its weight, but assigned it to the fact it was thick wool. She hadn’t thought to look closer. But the edge of the boot jack rested in the center, so whatever was cracked, was hidden in the folds.
Mrs. Willot closed her book and peered over the edge of the big box, and Gen had to resist the urge to ask her to leave the room. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust the woman to hold her tongue once she left the ranch in the evenings, but she didn’t care to give the woman reason to gossip while she was still on the premises. And what would incite gossip more than Gen requesting a moment alone with Devlin’s personal things?
“A special bottle of whiskey, perhaps?” Mrs. Willot sniffed at the trunk.
Gen shook her head and reached for the folded mass. “Something flat. A mirror, maybe. Perhaps Devlin Zollinger is more vain than I’d imagined.
Mrs. Willot frowned. “Not vain. Not with these old clothes.”
Gen winced at the reminder and laid the blanket on the counterpane. A lovely plaid. Finely made. Pretty colors. But she’d let him have it because it had never been David’s.
She unfolded it carefully, but nothing shifted. No small pieces of glass fell. Whatever it was, it was likely only cracked. She could wrap it back up and tuck it away and others would believe it had fractured while being transported—not that she’d damaged it with her carelessness. The town of Sage River would only love her if they believed her always to be a lady, she reminded herself.
But she was also determined to find some detail about Devlin that would help maintain his monstrous image in her mind. So she unfolded the heap completely, praying for some miraculous and incriminating find.
The frame was face down. Perhaps a mirror after all. But a little flash of excitement, and something else, fingered up and down her spine when she supposed it might be a picture. Perhaps of a woman he loved.
The monster might have a weakness she hadn’t uncovered!
Had she ruined his happiness by taking the ranch from him?
That would be a boon indeed. It wasn’t that she didn’t want the man to be in love, though that almost felt true—it was because she wouldn’t want some woman to be involved with a murderer. That was all. That was the only reason her stomach clenched as she turned the frame over, praying it was only a mirror after all, realizing by slow degrees, that it was, indeed, a photograph.
Mrs. Willot was able to see it first and gasped. Gen finished turning it and dropped it onto the bed as if it were a snake coiled and ready to strike. Which it was, in a way.
She nearly fainted from the conflicting emotions crashing in her chest when she realized it was a photograph her second husband had arranged to be taken of her a few years after they’d been married. The photograph that had gone missing from their New York home.
Gen was shocked. Angry. She felt as though her privacy and her person had been violated.
But the most horrifying...was her relief.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Devlin paced the fifteen-foot width of the sheriff’s office only because he was tired of the looks he was getting while pacing the saloon. And he knew the office to be fifteen feet wide because his own stride measured three feet, and he was able to pace exactly five steps, barely, each time before he turned.
A rider pulled up on the reins in front of the boardwalk and dismounted. Dev didn’t give a fig about his pride and went out to meet them, hoping the form beneath that wide brim was a woman.
And it was!
She flipped the reins over the rail in no apparent hurry, then moved to the steps. Dev tapped his foot as she came to stand before him. The brim lifted to reveal her rather pretty smile. She’d tortured him on purpose.
He exhaled sharply through his nose. “Well?”
She tipped her hat back and frowned, like she was trying to remember.
He refused to react.
She raised her brows in feigned surprise, then reached into the pocket of her shirt and produced the same note he’d had delivered to his ranch.
He snatched it from her, frowning, trying not to allow his gaze to linger on the reasons why that man’s shirt fit her so poorly. Then he opened it and read it, unconcerned with who might be watching him.
“Come to the gate at four o’clock. Face what you have done, and I’ll have your things ready for you. I’ll pack them personally.”
She signed the note, written below his own, with a flourishing letter G.
He remembered that G, damn her.
“I’ll be there,” he snapped. “And tell her, if she makes one mistake, I’ll be going inside to collect what’s mine.”
He turned and headed back into the office, but not to pace. He needed a good stiff drink and the best place for that would always be the bottom left drawer of the sheriff’s desk.
To God, he whispered, “Please. If you have any mercy at all, don’t let her find the journals.”
~ ~ ~
Gen laughed lightly after she found her wits. “I was wondering where this had gotten to.” She scooped up the frame and held it against her. “He must have wrapped up my husband’s things and forgotten about it.”
She took one more glance at the picture. A fine crack ran down the center of the curved glass, from above the image’s head, to mid bust. It was almost fitting. She’d always been of two minds, and two hearts.
“I’m going to go put this in my room so we don’t accidentally send it to the enemy,” she told Mrs. Willot. “If you wouldn’t mind, you could move that pile of clothes from the bed into the trunk while you’re waiting for me.” She headed for the door.
“Oh! Mrs. Carnegie,” the woman hollered. “There’s something more here.”
Gen turned back, chiding herself for not looking through the blanket for more pictures. But Mrs. Willot wasn’t holding out more frames; she was holding two of the little blue volumes.
“Yes. David’s journals.” She took them reverently and placed them between the frame and her body, then hurried away before she broke her rules about emotional displays.
~ ~ ~
Out of spite, Devlin took Stoddard and Blankenship with him later that afternoon. They were the orneriest of his crew and he was feeling mean himself. Milton followed with a wagon, just in case the bitch saw reason. There were a few things that meant something to him, which he’d listed, including a long white bench from Mexico.
He’d dealt generously with a horse rancher just south of the border, and admired the impressively carved piece. And by the time he’d reached Diamond Ranch again, the bench had been waiting. It had been a great lesson to him. Dealing generously with any man was bound to pay off in some way. Sometimes the opposite was true, unfortunately, but the good more than compensated for the bad.
Stoddard was a bit full of himself for being invited along, but Dev had needed to take someone unsettling with him, in case he needed to negotiate his way into the house. Agreeing to leave the unfriendly faces of Stoddard and Blankenship at the gate might earn him a little leeway.
The b
ench was waiting. Unfortunately, it was waiting much too close to a still-smoldering pile of ashes, and he dismounted before his horse could stop, to get to it quickly. But he’d realized too late that she’d distracted him on purpose, and he didn’t understand his jeopardy until he heard the pistol cock to his right.
“I could shoot you right now for trespassing, Devlin.”
He got his feet under him and straightened carefully with his hands raised just a bit higher than his shoulders. He turned, just as slowly, to see if Gen had murder in her eyes. His gaze didn’t make it that far, though. It kept snagging on the sight of Gen in men’s clothing. Fine clothing, mind you, but still intended for a man. Her shirt seemed to have been tailored a bit more...appropriately than her messenger gal’s. But it was the britches that got his attention. He’d only seen Gen’s legs once before when he’d come upon David and her bathing in the springs. That sight had haunted him for a decade, and now it seemed he was going to be haunted for another decade at least by the sight of those legs wrapped in buckskin.
Thank heavens she’d never tried to dress that way when they were living together. Their old lives had been hard enough without that kind of temptation added to the mix.
Finally, he tore his attention from her thigh and looked at her face.
She grinned. “Nice bench.”
He looked left again. Smoke meandered out of a little pile of black and ash. The few inches of scorched grass between that and his beloved bench was enough to allow him to breathe again, at least until he found out what game she was playing.
“It was a gift,” he explained.
“From?”
Why should she care? Unless she thought it was a gift from a woman. And that would only make sense if she were jealous. But before you could have jealousy, you had to care whether a person lived or died, or lost his ranch...
“From a Mexican,” he said. “A Mexican gentleman,” he added, to see if that made any difference. And his knees nearly buckled when she relaxed, ever so slightly, in her saddle.
