Fletcher's Woman

by Linda Lael Miller

  “You’d better let the lady up, Jonas. If you don’t, that negress over there is going to blow your head off.”

  The blows stopped, and Rachel was freed. The bright embarrassment burning in her face drained away when she scrambled to her feet and saw Mamie standing just inside the saloon, aiming a double-barrelled shotgun at Jonas’s head.

  He rose to his feet so suddenly that Rachel, still standing near him, was hard put to keep her footing. The look in his eyes was murderous, and his throat worked with a convulsive, stifling rage.

  Undaunted, Mamie looked down the polished, blue-black barrel of that gun and met his gaze. “Get out, Wilkes. If you don’t, they’re gonna be scraping up your parts and pieces as far away as Wenatchee!”

  Athena laughed. “I think she means it, Jonas.”

  With a strange dignity, considering the circumstances, Jonas rolled down his sleeves and clasped his dangling cuff links into place. His gaze moved over Rachel in a possessive, scorching sweep. “You owe me a lot of money,” he said, in a low, stomach-numbing tone. “One way or another, Urchin, you’re going to settle the debt.”

  Rachel’s hand, too often independent of her brain, rose to his face with a vengeance, made hard contact.

  Probably conscious of Mamie’s shotgun, Jonas made no move to retaliate physically, but his words were as lethal as any blow could have been. “You slapped me once before, Rachel, and it was a bad mistake even then. This time, it was disastrous.”

  “Get out,” Rachel breathed, seething, her hands clenched so tightly that her nails were digging into the skin on her palms.

  But Jonas only sighed, scanned Rachel’s outraged frame speculatively, and muttered, “You have twenty-four hours, Urchin. At the end of that time, you will either be at my door, or devoutly wishing that you’d seen reason.”

  His meaning, veiled as it was, was crystal clear to Rachel. “And if I do ‘see reason’?”

  He confirmed her suspicions calmly. “Then certain people we both know and love will go right on breathing. You have one day to decide, Rachel.”

  Apparently tired of waiting, Mamie fired the shotgun. The mirror over the bar shattered into shards and, when the smoke cleared, Jonas was striding out of the saloon, dragging a shaken Athena along with him.

  “And don’t you come back here, neither!” Mamie screamed after them.

  Rachel sank into a chair, flinching as her battered bottom made contact with the hard wooden seat. One by one, the prostitutes reappeared, reticules in hand, looking pale and all too aware of the dangerous climate of Becky’s Place.

  By the time an hour had passed, only one remained—the tall blonde who’d spoken up when Rachel had announced her intention of closing the brothel.

  Her name was Elsa, and she informed Rachel placidly that she’d just as soon stay on, if it was all the same to everybody else. She’d saved a few dollars, and when Rachel saw the sense of things and went to Mr. Wilkes, Elsa allowed, she’d have Becky’s Place turning a tidy profit again in no time.

  Rachel listened to all this in appalled silence, sipping the brandy-laced coffee Mamie brought and wishing that she’d never heard of Providence or even Washington Territory, for that matter.

  She’d been a fool to stay, to let matters come to what they had. Now she was beaten, once and for all, and there were no options left.

  If she borrowed steamer fare and fled to Seattle, or points beyond, Jonas would have Griffin killed. If she stayed longer than twenty-four hours, clinging to her stupid dream of running a boardinghouse, the result would be exactly the same.

  Rachel folded her arms on the table and laid her head down on them in mute despair. Griffin had proposed to her, and she knew that he loved her, but she could not turn to him either. The chances were too great that he would die suddenly, in some mysterious “accident,” or just disappear entirely, as her father and Patrick Brady had.

  Small, raw sobs shook Rachel’s shoulders and clogged up her nose. She was going to have to present herself to Jonas within the space of one day, in unqualified surrender.

  Elsa’s hand came to rest cautiously on one of her shoulders. “Don’t cry, Sweetie. Jonas ain’t so bad, really—what’s a few spankin’s and a hard time in bed once in a while compared to all that money?”

  Rachel cried all the harder.

  • • •

  Athena sat quietly in the carriage seat across from Jonas’s, her hands folded in her lap. When it was safe to speak, she would know.

  “Second thoughts?” she asked, five minutes later, when the easing in Jonas’s anguished face told her that the time had come.

  Jonas made an odd, despairing sound—it was almost like a sob. “Why did I do that?” he hissed, without looking at Athena.

  “I guess you want her so badly that you can’t think straight. Jonas, you can’t kill Griffin—I won’t allow it.”

  Jonas’s hands moved, fingers spread apart, to run themselves through his already rumpled hair. “Relax, Sweetheart. I have no intention of killing him.”

  “No one would guess that!” snapped Athena, in retort. “And if you make any more scenes like the one at Becky’s, you may not have a choice!”

  Incredibly, Jonas laughed. “I don’t know. Spanking that saucy little dryad was almost worth dying—she deserved it so richly. Even Griffin would agree to that, I think.”

  Athena wanted to cry, though she didn’t quite know why. “What are you going to do now, Jonas?”

  He met her eyes and grinned. “Back off, of course. Apologize profusely—maybe even grovel.”

  Athena shook her head. “You’re insane, Jonas Wilkes. Totally, unequivocably insane.”

  Jonas sat back in the carriage seat, sighed happily, and cupped his hands behind his head. “Yes. And I’m in august company, Mrs. Bordeau. August company indeed.”

  “Fool,” spat Athena, glaring out at the passing countryside and the light, dismal rain that had just begun to fall.

  • • •

  The night passed with hellish slowness, as far as Rachel was concerned. She tossed and turned in her mother’s bed, hearing the swift approach of her own doom in the steady cadence of the rain.

  The sounds accompanying the dawn were no more comforting. Standing at the window, looking out at the choppy waters of the canal, Rachel listened in glum misery to the raucous calls of the gulls; the clatter of Mamie’s pots and pans in the kitchen below; the lonely, distant whine of the saws in the mill at the base of the mountain.

  But there were other sounds, too—sounds that didn’t belong. Wagon wheels squeaking, muted curses, the steady thwack-thwack-thwack of a hammer.

  Rachel went into the empty room next to her mother’s and looked toward Providence and the harbor. But she needn’t have looked so far, she discovered, for the noise was coming from the thicket of blackberries and ferns not fifty yards from where she stood.

  The framework of a sizable building was going up, and Jonas Wilkes was there, directing the process.

  Impulsively, Rachel wrenched at the window sill until it gave way, leaned out, and called, “What are you doing?”

  Jonas smiled, doffed his rain-beaded hat in a courtly fashion. “You won’t mind having a saloon next door to your boardinghouse, I hope?” he shouted back, jovially.

  Rachel swallowed. “My boardinghouse?”

  Jonas nodded. “It’s all yours, Urchin. And, as for that little disaster yesterday, I’m sorry. For most of it anyway.”

  The men working among the wagons and sawhorses went about their business without taking apparent note of the conversation, though Rachel knew that they would rush to recount it, word for word, at the earliest opportunity. By the time the sun set, everyone in Providence and in the camps up the mountain would know about Jonas’s Grand Gesture.

  What was he up to, anyway?

  Rachel’s cheeks ached with color. “Which part are you apologizing for, Mr. Wilkes?” she demanded.

  “The twenty-four hour ultimatum,” he replied. “That was
unreasonable of me.”

  Unreasonable. What an inadequate word that was for what he had demanded.

  “And the sp—the other part?”

  Jonas laughed. “I can’t deny it, Urchin. I enjoyed that immensely, and I’m not sorry.”

  Supposing that she should have been grateful, Rachel turned crimson, stepped back, and slammed the window so hard that the glass shattered and fell, ringing like tiny bells, at her feet.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The grin on Field Hollister’s face was patently annoying, as far as Griffin was concerned. With a scowl, he closed his medical bag, ruffled the wheat-blond hair of his small, wide-eyed patient, and grumbled, “All right—what is it?”

  Field looked at the little boy lying on a cot in the corner of the tent and smiled all the harder. “Don’t mind Dr. Fletcher, Lucas,” he said to the child. “He was sleeping in class when they covered bedside manner.”

  Lucas looked confused, but he was too sick to say much. “He give me an orange,” he told Field defensively, holding up the fruit as evidence. “See?”

  “I stand corrected,” replied Field, as Griffin brushed past him to walk out of the tent and stand stone-still in the pouring rain. It felt good, streaming down over his face, plastering his hair to his forehead, soaking his shirt.

  Field said something else to the little boy inside, and then came out to stand beside Griffin. There was no trace of the obnoxious grin in his features now, just a sad, wary look. “Influenza?” he asked, in a low voice.

  Griffin nodded.

  “Are there other cases?”

  Griffin tipped his head back, let the rain fall full in his face for a moment. The chill of it allayed some of the deadly fatigue he’d been feeling, if not the ceaseless, raging pain. “Two,” he said, softly.

  Field grasped his arm and ushered him toward the large mess tent standing in the middle of the small community. “Up until now,” he hissed, as they sat down at one of the long wooden tables inside to drink Chang’s abominable coffee, “I would have sworn you had sense enough to come in out of the rain!”

  Griffin tried for a smile, managed a grimace. “Relax, Field. Doctors don’t get sick.”

  Overhead, the rain hammered at the taut canvas roof. “You might. Griffin, you look like hell—when was the last time you slept?”

  He sipped the coffee, cursed in irritation, and reached for a crockery pitcher of cream. A generous measure turned the fierce brew to a sandalwood color and disguised its bitterness a little. “I don’t sleep, Field. It’s a waste of time.”

  “You’re just going to keep moving until you collapse?” Field bit out, stirring his own coffee with such force that the spoon rattled against the sides of the enamel cup.

  Griffin met the angry, turquoise eyes with a frown. “The last time I collapsed, old friend, it was because you and your cronies chloroformed me. Now, while we haven’t had a chance to discuss that, the fact remains that I don’t appreciate it.”

  Field’s gaze was still direct, still full of challenge. “I didn’t think you would,” he said. “And I don’t really care. Do you think there’s going to be an epidemic?”

  The coffee curdled on Griffin’s tongue, and he resisted an innate need to spew it onto the sawdust floor. His aching shoulders moved in a weary shrug. “It’s possible. This place breeds disease—it’s a wonder there hasn’t been typhoid or cholera already.”

  The reverend paled slightly. “Well, something has got to be done!”

  Again, Griffin shrugged. “Tell that to Jonas, my friend. Those wet tents and open sewers are his province, not mine.”

  Exasperated, Field forced down three or four gulps of his coffee. “Maybe so, but the patients are yours, Griffin.”

  “You don’t honestly think I ever forget that, do you?” Griffin asked evenly. “By the way, what were you grinning about, back there in the Larson’s tent?”

  “Rachel,” Field replied, and the smile was back in his eyes again, though it looked a bit tarnished now.

  The name prodded a shifting core of pain inside Griffin, lent a gruff note to his voice. “What about her?”

  “I can’t believe it—you really haven’t heard!”

  Griffin glared at his friend. “What about her?” he demanded.

  Field laughed. “She backed Jonas Wilkes down, Griffin—with a little help from Mamie and her ‘oyster gun.’”

  Griffin was all attention. “What?”

  “She’s closed down Becky’s Place, Griffin. Tomorrow it opens as McKinnon’s Rooming House.”

  Impatient, Griffin waved away this news and insisted. “Never mind the rooming house—what’s this about Jonas and Mamie and a gun?”

  There was a grin—a real one—twitching at the comer of Field’s mouth. “The way Mamie told it, Jonas came into that saloon roaring like a lion and demanded that Rachel pack her things and leave with him.” He paused, held up both hands when he saw the fury in Griffin’s face. “Now, let me finish, will you? Rachel declined, none too politely, and they had words. Griffin, she must have pushed Jonas right over the edge—he spanked her.”

  While the thought of Jonas touching Rachel in any way stirred murderous things inside Griffin, he couldn’t help grinning at the picture that sprang into his mind. “And I thought he was all bad,” he said.

  Field laughed, his hands cupped around his empty coffee mug. “There’s more. Mamie got out that shotgun she claims she keeps around in case any oysters decide to rush the place, and she pointed it at Jonas’s head. At which time, he deemed it advisable to quit blistering Rachel. Only he didn’t leave soon enough to suit Mamie, so she fired a warning shot and hit that mirror Becky had shipped in from San Francisco.”

  “Damn,” Griffin muttered, too tired to laugh. His eyes scanned Field’s face, knowing it well, seeing the serious look behind his grin. “What is it that you’re not telling me?”

  “Mamie got the impression that Jonas meant to kill somebody if Rachel didn’t appear at his front door within twenty-four hours.”

  Griffin shot to his feet so quickly that the bench he’d been sitting on fell sideways, onto the sawdust floor. “Damn that son of a bitch, I’ll—”

  Field was shaking his head resolutely. “Sit down, Griffin. Now.”

  “That—”

  “Listen to me! Jonas backed off, and I think you should, too. If you don’t make any trouble, chances are, he won’t.”

  Griffin barely heard his friend’s reasoning. He was too busy thinking what a fool he’d made of himself, how stupid he’d been to believe Rachel when she’d said she didn’t love him. Twice, her body had told him eloquently that she did.

  He clasped the edges of the table with both hands and swore. Molly had been right; Rachel was trying to protect him. And he had a suspicion that she would have gone to Jonas’s house if she’d had to, just to save his hide.

  “You say Jonas backed down. What accounts for that?”

  Field frowned. “Who knows? My guess would be that he regretted showing his true colors the way he did.”

  Griffin whirled suddenly, abandoning his friend, his coffee, the overturned bench. Outside, the rain was hammering at the ground, as if to wash the world clean of evils like Tent Town.

  He ran, coatless, unconcerned with appearances, until he reached the locked doors of Becky’s Place. Drenched to the skin, breathing hard from the exertion, he raised both fists and pounded at the doors until one of them creaked open.

  And Rachel was standing there, her orchid eyes wide, her chin high.

  “You lied!” he said, jubilantly. “You thought Jonas would kill me if you married me, and you lied!”

  Her lower lip quivered. “I still believe that he would, Griffin Fletcher. And nothing on earth could make me take the chance.”

  He reached for her cautiously, his hands resting on her shoulders. “There’s only one problem with your reasoning, Sprite. I can handle Jonas.”

  One tear trickled down Rachel’s cheek, and she shook her
head. “No. Jonas isn’t straightforward like you, Griffin. He would ambush you—attack when you weren’t expecting it, just like he did in Seattle, in the O’Rileys’ garden.”

  “All right,” Griffin conceded, “Maybe he would. He usually does things that way. I know this: I’d rather take my chances than live without you.”

  Rachel let her face rest, tear dampened, against one of his hands. “I love you, Griffin Fletcher. But I won’t marry you until I know I won’t end up a widow, the way Molly Brady did.”

  At that point in time, Griffin was willing to agree to almost anything. He sighed. “I’ve got to get back to my rounds, Sprite. Will you just do me one favor?”

  Rachel smiled uncertainly. “What?”

  “Stop worrying about what Jonas might do to me. Everything is going to be all right.”

  She didn’t look the least bit convinced, but Griffin didn’t care. She loved him, and for now, that was all that mattered. He bent, kissed her lightly, and turned to go.

  Rachel caught his arm. “Griffin?”

  “What?” he asked, turning back just in time to see an ominous shadow loom in her eyes and then fade away again.

  Splotches of crimson gathered on her fine cheekbones, and she looked away. “It’s nothing—really. C-Could you come to supper tonight, and bring Molly and Billy, too?”

  Something primal and cryptic convulsed within Griffin, and he knew only that the feeling had nothing to do with anything so mundane as supper. What was that odd, writhing darkness he had seen in her eyes? “Rachel—”

  But she was gone, suddenly, closing the saloon doors behind her. “Seven o’clock!” she called, through the glass and wood, a kind of stricken cheer ringing in her voice.

  Griffin walked slowly back to Tent Town, oblivious to the rain, the wagons grinding through the thickening mud, and the beautiful, silvery-haired woman who watched him from the porch of Judge Sheridan’s house.

  • • •

  Athena would have preferred to stay with Jonas, just as she had the night before, but she didn’t dare. Heaven knew, if word got back to Griffin that she’d slept beneath that particular roof, any chance of reaching him would be gone.