Fletcher's Woman

by Linda Lael Miller

  Still, that one-word supplication had been answered then, hadn’t it? He’d found Rachel.

  Desperately, Griffin Fletcher clung to that. God would hear him—for Rachel’s sake.

  The opening of the outer door startled him, drew him to a sudden, stomach-twisting halt. Field came in, looking both worried and relieved, and Judge Sheridan was behind him.

  Griffin was afraid to hope, afraid to speak.

  But Judge Sheridan had keys. With maddening slowness, he was unlocking the cell door. “You’re free, Griffin,” he said. “Eliza Hammond saw Jonas kill the woman. Henry’s gone out to arrest him now.”

  Griffin was feeling a number of things—relief, urgency, rage. And the look on Field’s face made him uneasy on some deep, intuitive level.

  “Field, what is it?” he rasped, bolting out of the confining cell, pulling on his suit coat.

  “There was a note,” Field said. “There was a note on my kitchen table when I went to look in on Fawn. Griffin, she and Rachel are on their way to Jonas’s, if they’re not there already.”

  Griffin broke into a dead run, a swearword rattling in his throat. “What in the hell are you doing here, then?” he demanded, in front of the store, as he and Field and Judge Sheridan climbed onto waiting horses.

  Field offered no reply.

  • • •

  It was dark in Jonas’s barn; Rachel hadn’t dared to light even one lantern. Swallowing her fear, she waited, a stack of baled hay scratching at her back.

  The dummy was in place, Fawn was surely at her post at the back door of the barn, everything would happen just as it was supposed to. It simply had to.

  In the many stalls, horses nickered uneasily, invisible in the thick darkness. But a buggy was hitched and ready to go, and that meant that Jonas had believed her note, believed that she wanted to run away with him.

  Rachel closed her eyes, listening to the rapid, hard beat of her own heart.

  And then, suddenly, there was lantern light glowing in the front entrance to the barn, casting ghostly shadows on everything within a radius of several yards. “Rachel?”

  She swallowed. “I’m here, Jonas.”

  He approached, holding the lantern aloft, and even in its flickering light, she could see the strange, frightening contortion of his features. “You’ve had a change of heart,” he said, in an odd, chantlike voice.

  Rachel lifted her chin. “Yes. G-Griffin is a murderer—I made a mistake.”

  Jonas drew nearer, and though he walked upright, he seemed to be crouching, like a wild beast poised to pounce. Rachel swallowed a scream as his hand flashed out, clasped the bodice of her calico dress, and tore the fabric away.

  Idly, his finger traced the tiny birthmark beside her left nipple, his eyes consumed her naked breasts in their golden fire. Rachel closed her eyes, resisting a reflexive need to cover herself.

  “You’re a liar, Rachel,” Jonas said, in a companionable tone. The topaz eyes moved languidly to her face. “I would have been the most adoring of husbands—that’s the irony of it. But you wanted Griffin.”

  Rachel stood still, mute with terror. Now, Fawn, she pleaded silently. Please—now!

  But Jonas’s madness seemed to allow him to view her thoughts as easily as her bared breasts. “Fawn isn’t going to help you, Rachel. She’s bound and gagged at this moment, in my kitchen. I didn’t have time to kill her, but of course, I will.”

  Slowly, Rachel raised her arms to hide her naked chest. She’d gambled, and she’d lost. Worse, Griffin and Fawn would lose, too.

  “What about my father?” she whispered. “And Molly Brady’s husband?”

  Jonas arched one eyebrow. “They were in my way.”

  Sickened, Rachel closed her eyes, opened them again.

  There was a creak at the back of the barn, and Jonas whirled, the lantern swinging dangerously in his hand. “Who’s there?” he yelled.

  The horses hitched to the waiting buggy were spooked by the sound; they broke into a frantic run, dragging the buggy toward the half-open doors of the barn.

  There was a loud, splintering sound as the buggy was caught between the doors, and the horses screamed in panic. Inside the buggy itself, the dummy bounced around like some kind of nightmare specter, horrifying in its limbless motion.

  Rachel’s heart clamored into her throat, lodged there in very real terror. For a moment, she actually believed that Athena had returned to take her own vengeance.

  Jonas’s throat worked convulsively as he stared at the effigy of his guilt, and then he screamed and flung the lantern in his hand. There was a whoosh, followed by a roar as the straw on the barn floor went up in flames, and then the buggy.

  Beyond the barn doors, the trapped horses shrieked and struggled in renewed terror, and the animals inside the stalls were raising havoc, kicking at the sides of their stalls, neighing over the rising roar of the flames.

  Rachel stared, her breath still in her lungs. Jonas stood frozen, gazing sightlessly at the burning buggy.

  We’ll burn to death, Rachel thought. But she still could not move.

  There were voices outside the bam—shouted orders, swearwords. And then the doors were opening, and the blazing buggy was being dragged outside.

  Griffin and Field burst in through the doorway, skirting the inferno that nearly blocked their way.

  Griffin dragged Rachel to the door and thrust her out, into the cool sanction of the night, before he went racing back inside. She was huddling beside a towering madrona tree when Field led a stumbling, witless Jonas to safety and went back to help Griffin.

  The shrieks of the horses rang with terror and pain. Only three had been led from the barn when Field and Griffin were forced to flee themselves.

  The wooden roof was a sheet of leaping orange and yellow flames now, and the fire danced in the windows.

  Suddenly, Jonas screamed Rachel’s name and bounded past Griffin and Field and through the glowing, crimson doorway of the barn. At the same moment, a portly man came from the direction of the main house, half-supporting a dazed, stumbling Fawn.

  Jonas staggered out of the inferno, his clothes and hair afire. He was still screaming Rachel’s name when Griffin and Field tackled him, rolling him on the ground to extinguish the flames.

  Firebrands from the barn exploded into the night sky, landing as far away as the roof of Jonas’s palatial house.

  Rachel stood still, stricken, until Griffin looked up from Jonas’s prone, charred figure and gestured with one hand.

  She stumbled across the short distance, knelt on the ground beside Jonas as Field rushed off to meet his wife.

  “Oh, Jonas—” Rachel whispered, looking down at him. He was hideously burned, but he seemed to be beyond pain.

  “Rachel,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  And then he was dead.

  Griffin pulled off his coat, laid it gently over his cousin’s still, disfigured face. “God,” he said. “Oh, dear God.”

  And Rachel was not surprised to see that there were tears glistening on his face. She rose, moved to Griffin’s side, let go—for the first time—of the torn bodice of her dress, and drew him into her arms.

  “It’s over now,” she whispered. “It’s over.”

  Griffin’s ragged sob was almost inaudible over the crackling roar of the fire. “He thought you were inside—”

  “Yes,” she said, because there was nothing else to say.

  Field appeared, his face, like Griffin’s, masked in soot. He gave Rachel his coat, and gently pulled his stricken friend to his feet.

  Molly came and led Rachel away, too.

  “You were here all the time,” Rachel whispered, seeing Molly’s torn, sooty skirts and disheveled hair. “It was you that made the back door of the barn creak like that—”

  “Aye,” replied Molly. “And it was myself that put the figure of Athena into the buggy seat, too. I heard you and Fawn plotting this, and I followed along to do what I could.” At a good distance from the bl
azing barn, she stopped cold, and her green eyes came, fierce, to Rachel’s face. “I wouldn’t be in your shoes for anything, Miss Rachel McKinnon, when the Doctor hears the whole of this! An effigy in a white dress!” Molly paused to shake her head in furious wonder.

  Rachel lowered her eyes; it was true that the night hadn’t gone according to plan. The dummy was supposed to fall, swinging, from the barn rafters, while Fawn called Jonas’s name in a ghostly voice. And Jonas was only supposed to confess to the murder, not die.

  “He admitted killing my father, Molly. And Patrick.”

  Molly was livid. “And it’s God’s own miracle that he didn’t kill you—and Field Hollister’s brand new bride in the bargain!”

  Rachel looked up, sought Griffin with her eyes, needing the sight of him. He was leaning against a tree, not far away, and his shoulders were moving beneath the smudged fabric of his shirt Field stood, silent and supportive, beside him.

  • • •

  The month to come was a grim one.

  There were more funerals, Athena’s, and then Jonas’s. Intermittently, victims of the raging epidemic of influenza were buried, too.

  There was no time to talk, and certainly no time to make lasting plans. Griffin’s practice consumed every moment, and Rachel followed him doggedly from one tent to another, ignoring his terse orders that she go home, offering what comfort she could to his patients and to John O’Riley’s.

  Finally, the sickness ebbed away.

  The morning of July twentieth dawned bright and clear, and Rachel knew, without being told, that it would be a momentous day.

  There were two sealed jars of cinnamon pears on the kitchen table, along with a small package marked with Rachel’s name. She opened the parcel and smiled at the contents; clearly, this gift, like the ruby red pears, was from Joanna.

  Griffin was in the back yard, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows, industriously digging a hole.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Rachel, from the steps.

  He grinned and then, with a flourish, set a seedling tree into the pit he’d dug. “Planting my wedding present from Joanna O’Riley. Now why would she give me a pear tree?”

  Rachel arched one eyebrow. “Now, why would you get a wedding present?” she countered. “Is there something I don’t know, Griffin Fletcher?”

  Griffin laughed. “Sprite, there are a lot of things you don’t know—like how to handle that mountain full of timber you inherited from my cousin.”

  She lifted her chin. “I’ll learn,” she said. “And Tent Town is going to be rebuilt, too—with cabins.”

  Griffin’s eyes were bright with love and humor as he began shoveling dirt onto the roots of the infant tree. “My future wife, the timber baroness and crusading reformer.”

  Rachel came to stand before him, looking up into his face. “Just how far in the future am I, Griffin?”

  “How does five minutes sound? That’s how long it will take to get to Field’s church.”

  Rachel flung her arms around his neck and held on, laughing up at the sky.

  • • •

  An hour later, as they drove away from the church in Griffin’s buggy, he grinned down at her. “Well, Mrs. Fletcher, now we can enjoy something new—making love in a real bed.”

  Rachel smiled and, once again, opened the little package Joanna O’Riley had sent. She took two handfuls of the tiny bits of paper inside and flung them into the wind, where they billowed and swirled like snow.

  Rachel Fletcher clasped her hands and looked back at the paper-strewn road. That would keep the devil busy, and Griffin was turning lots of corners.

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