Slowly, Mari nodded. “Maybe. I hope so. Truly, I do. But…then what?”
To Luke’s surprise and dismay, a pair of big fat tears spilled from her eyes and slid slowly down her cheek.
Mari swiped the wetness away with the back of her hand. “What explanation will she give me? What if it’s something selfish and unforgivable? What will I do then? Or what if she refuses to come home? He is her husband now. If she wants to stay with him, if she doesn’t think she needs her family anymore, I can’t make her do anything.”
“Why don’t you ford that river when you reach it,” Luke advised. “No sense worrying yourself sick over something that probably won’t happen.”
“But I need to be prepared.” Mari closed her eyes and visibly shuddered. “If this elopement of hers was nothing more than a dramatic frolic, if she’s put my family through hell for no good reason, then I’m going to regret ever coming after her.”
What he should have done was remind her that they believed Rory was trying to hide from someone, and that Kat’s silence to her family might be an effort to protect them. Instead, the question was on his lips and out of his mouth before Luke had the sense to stop it. “Will you regret me, Maribeth?”
“What?”
It was a straightforward query. What didn’t she understand? Luke’s chest suddenly felt tight, and his muscles tensed as he repeated his question. The answer, he realized, mattered.
“Regret you?” She gave her head a little shake as if to clear it. Then she looked him straight in the eyes, her honesty and sincerity shining like a beacon, as she declared, “I’ll never regret you, Luke Garrett. Never. No matter what happens. My grandmother Monique always taught us that a woman should never regret her first love.”
First love. It was a bullet between the eyes. That was the elusive truth that had ghosted through his mind for days now. It was a warmth to fill the cold void inside him, the essence of a bone-deep yearning he’d refused to recognize. It was a dream he’d long denied. Somehow, it had sneaked up and taken hold of him.
Luke Garrett, outlaw, spy and erstwhile bodyguard, had gone and fallen in love with Maribeth McBride.
And she thinks she’s scared?
AS SHE stood poised on the steps outside the Prairie Star Saloon, a disturbing mix of anticipation and trepidation churned in Mari’s stomach. Her breaths came in shallow pants and her heartbeat fluttered like a hummingbird’s wings. What if Luke was wrong? What if it wasn’t her sister? What if—
“Oh, stop it,” she murmured before taking a deep, calming breath. Whatever happened, she’d deal with it. She was strong.
As Luke stepped up beside her, she grabbed hold of his hand and gripped it hard. “You ready?” she asked.
Inside the saloon, applause broke out. Mari took another deep breath, then moved toward the door.
A ticket taker stopped them before she could push past the swinging saloon doors. Restlessly, Mari waited for Luke to dig out the required coin. When laughter erupted from the saloon, she abandoned what little patience she had left and darted around both men. The wooden door felt cool against her palm as she pushed it open. The scent of sulphur teased her nostrils as she stepped into the building, but it was a particular sound that grabbed her attention.
Feminine laughter. Rippling, joyous, irresistible feminine laughter. Familiar feminine laughter.
Mari turned her head toward the sound, and her knees turned to water. “Kat.”
The trembling came from out of nowhere, and it rippled through her body like a fever. She swayed on her feet and might have melted to the floor had Luke not offered her a supporting hand.
“Kat,” she murmured again, drinking in the sight of her sister.
Kat stood elevated on a temporary stage at the far corner of the room. She looked thinner, Mari thought. Thin and tanned and beautiful. She wore a rather shocking costume, a shoulder-baring toga of emerald silk the color of her eyes—and the pendant hanging around her neck. So, Rory hadn’t sold the piece after all. Thank goodness. Mari’s hand lifted to clutch at her own pendant. She’d had it repaired in Trickling Springs and worn it ever since. Mari blinked back tears and watched her sister assist her masked companion in a trick that turned an audience member’s six-shooter into a snow-white dove.
It was when the audience applauded and Rory and Kat clasped hands to take a bow that Kat appeared to sense something had changed. In the midst of dipping her head toward the floor, the magician’s assistant froze. Her head snapped up. Her gaze panned the room.
Mari took half a step forward.
Kat saw her and gasped. She dropped her partner’s hand and brought both of hers up to her mouth. Mari could see her lips move, but it wasn’t until the applause died that she was able to hear Kat say “Maribeth?” Then, louder, “Maribeth?” After that, a squeal. “Maribeth!”
Kat leaped off the makeshift stage and rushed toward Mari, who darted forward to meet her sister in the middle. Both women had tears streaming down their faces by the time they wrapped their arms around each other. Mari clutched her sister against her, breathed in her familiar cinnamon-and-sunshine scent, and sent up a quick, heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving. She was only vaguely aware of Luke as he brushed past her, headed for the stage.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” Kat said. “Why are you here? How did you find us? Or is this just a wonderful coincidence? And what in the world are you doing with Luke Garrett?”
Mari glanced around. The audience’s attention was divided equally between her and Kat, and the stage where Luke was holding a quiet discussion with Magnifico the Magnificent. “Let’s go somewhere private to talk.”
“All right. In a few minutes, though. I need to finish the show.” But as she turned around, the masked man on the stage spoke in a heavily Spanish-accented voice.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Rory Callahan said with a flourish. “This man, this infidel, has dared to question Magnifico’s magic. Watch now as I demonstrate to him the true extent of my powers.”
Kat took a step toward the stage, saying, “What in the world?”
Luke made a show of scoffing. “Powers? Ha. This ‘magic’ of yours is nothing more than cow patties. Just a bunch of smoke and mirrors hoo-ha.”
A crusty old cowboy in the audience stood up and said, “Yeah!”
A chorus of others joined in. On stage, Luke folded his arms. Magnifico flourished his cape, then smiled magnificently at the crowd. “My friends, prepare to be amazed.”
“What is he doing?” Kat murmured.
Shaking his head, Luke turned his back on Rory and began to leave the stage. A puff of smoke exploded at his feet. He stopped, his eyes going round with shock, then narrowing with disdain. “Smoke and mirrors,” he repeated.
The masked magician held out his hands, an offer of innocence, and Luke gave him a dismissive wave, then took another step. Smoke puffed from the floor at his feet. He shot the magician a suspicious look but took another step. More smoke. Now alone on stage, Rory folded his arms. Puffs of smoke followed Luke all the way down the aisle as he moved toward Mari and Kat.
“My,” Kat breathed. “I’ve never seen him do something like that. How is he doing it?”
“He’s not,” Mari said flatly, quietly. The audience’s attention was back on the stage. “Luke is. Come on, let’s go.”
“Luke? How does he—”
“Hush, Kat.” Mari grabbed hold of her sister’s arm and tugged her toward the door.
Kat dragged her feet. “But…the show…”
“Luke will finish it. He’s giving us the chance to talk. Let’s take advantage of it.”
“Luke Garrett? What does he know about magic?”
Mari thought about that morning on the trail, when she’d awoken to the dance of his fingers across the bare expanse of her flesh. “You’d be surprised, sister.”
Outside on the street, Mari looked around for a place for them to talk. She wanted privacy. Now that the first exultant rush of joy was fading,
the anger she’d nursed for so long had begun nipping at the edges of her consciousness. If their discussion took a turn toward the ugly, she’d just as soon it not happen out on the street. “Do you have a hotel room?”
“Well, sort of.”
“Let’s go there to talk. Which way is it?”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Kat said, grimacing. “It’s…um…upstairs.”
Upstairs? Above the saloon? “You’re sleeping in a whorehouse?”
Her sister shrugged and smiled sheepishly. “It’s cheap.”
Another woman might have been horrified, but not Mari. The McBride sisters weren’t strangers to such places, although it wasn’t their practice to spend the night in one. At least, not ordinarily. “Remember that time we sneaked into Rachel’s Social Emporium and spent the night?”
“Just barely,” Kat replied with a smile. “That was before Papa married Jenny, right? I was awfully young. I didn’t have a clue what all that giggling and groping was about.”
That wasn’t the case anymore, for either of them.
Kat was a married woman. Mari had learned plenty about giggling and groping during the past few days. “It’s early yet. It shouldn’t be too busy, especially with the show still going on. Is there an outside staircase?”
“Around back.”
Mari gestured for Kat to lead the way. Kat slipped her arm through Mari’s as they walked, and Mari expected her to ask about their family. Instead, she said, “I wish it would rain tonight. Those clouds building off to the west look promising, don’t you think?”
The weather? She wanted to talk about the weather? Well, she probably preferred privacy herself for the upcoming conversation. Still, it depressed Mari a bit to think that she and her younger sister had come to filling conversational gaps with talk about the summer drought. How times had changed. Offering a weak smile, Mari agreed, “Rain would be nice.”
The back staircase led to a narrow, second-story hallway lined on each side by a half-dozen closed doors. Kat led the way to the last door on the left. Inside was a bed and nothing else. Maybe this wasn’t a good place to talk, after all.
Before Mari could broach the subject, Kat climbed onto the bed and sat cross-legged. “Sit down, Mari. I’m dying to hear all the news from home.”
Funny she should use that particular turn of phrase. Mari walked to the dirt-fogged window that overlooked Main Street and pushed aside a threadbare curtain. Where to start? Staring down into the near-empty street, she said, “I think it’s safe to say that home is pretty anxious for news from you, too.”
A long moment ticked by in silence. Finally, with a hitch in her voice, Kat asked, “Are they?”
Mari glanced over her shoulder. Her brows winged up at the earnest expression on her sister’s face.
“Be honest, Mari.” Kat plucked at a loose thread on the bedspread. “I’m prepared. I know they probably hate me. I know what I did was awful.”
“Yes, it was,” Mari shot back, surprised herself at the amount of venom in her tone. “How could you, Kat? How could you do that us? To me and Emma, Billy and the boys and to Mama. And Papa. God, Kat. How could you have done that to Papa?”
Tears welled, spilled from Kat’s eyes. “I don’t know. I didn’t set out to elope that night. I was mad at Papa because he’d forbidden me to see Rory again. It got all over me, Mari. All over me!”
Mari was surprised to feel tears swelling in her eyes. The emotion of that awful night had come rushing back, and she now had a cold stone of pain lodged within her chest, weighing her down.
“I was angry with Papa, and in love with Rory, so I acted irresponsibly,” Kat continued. “I’m so sorry, Mari. Not for loving Rory, mind you, but for acting indiscreetly that night. And for our argument. It haunted me that the last words we exchanged were so harsh.”
“Haunted you!” Mari snapped, whirling around. “For three months, I had to live with the fact of those words.” Dead cold ashes. She shuddered at the memory. “I thought I’d had a premonition, and that by ignoring it, I sent you to your fate. That’s what I’ve been living with, Katrina. While you’ve been gallivanting around Texas with your new husband, that’s what I’ve had to deal with. Not to mention the family’s grief. That’s a whole other subject.”
Now, a hint of mulishness joined the heartbreak in Kat’s expression. “I won’t apologize for marrying the man I love. The family could have accepted that, accepted him. You ask how I could have done this to y’all. Well, I ask how y’all could have done this to me? Was eloping with the man I love such an unforgivable thing? How could you cut me out of your lives this way?”
“You were dead to us, Kat.”
“That was cruel!”
“Yes, it was!”
Seated on the bed, Kat clenched her fists. At the window, Mari wrapped her arms around herself. So much anger, hurt, and pain swirled in the room that it seemed as if a third person had joined them.
Finally, Kat sighed. “I knew Papa would be mad, but I never thought he’d totally turn against me. And Mama…I know they always try to present a united front to the children, but I honestly can’t believe she went along with him. They ripped my heart out, Mari. The day I got that telegram was the absolute worst day of my life.”
Mari waited a beat, tried to think it through and make sense of what Kat had said. She couldn’t. “What telegram?”
“Papa’s telegram. The one he sent in answer to mine.”
Mari went totally still. “You sent Papa a telegram? When?”
“Right after Rory and I got married. I wish you could have been there, Mari. We found the prettiest little church in Paradise Prairie. It had a brand-new coat of white paint with yellow rosebushes in bloom all around it.” She smiled wistfully, then sighed. “The preacher was out of town, but we got a judge to do the honors. It was the happiest day of my life, but also the saddest. I was marrying the man of my dreams, but my family wasn’t there.”
Mari’s heartbeat thumped in her chest. “And you telegraphed Papa with your news?”
“Yes, that, and I asked if the family was all right, because I heard about the Texas Spring Palace fire.”
“And he responded.”
Kat nodded, her tears welling anew. “He said everyone was fine, but that he was ashamed of me and disowning me, and for me to never contact the family again.”
“What?” Mari screeched.
Kat frowned, blinked twice. “You didn’t know?”
“It didn’t happen!”
“Yes, it did. It really did. Papa said those things to me. I couldn’t believe it. I cried for a week afterward. I even sent two more telegrams, one to Mama and one to Emma, but I guess he wouldn’t let them reply.”
“No!” Mari paced the small space between bed and window, and waved her arms as she spoke. “You don’t understand. It-did-not-happen. Papa never got a telegram from you. When I said you were dead to us, I meant d-e-a-d. We thought you died in the fire, Kat. We thought we’d lost you forever!”
Kat’s mouth dropped open. “Dead?”
Mari nodded.
Color leached from Kat’s face. “You thought I was dead?”
“Yes!”
She ducked her head, thought for a moment, then looked at her sister and asked, “Not you’re-not-family-anymore-and-I-won’t-think-about-you dead, but dearly-departed dead?”
“Cold corpse in a coffin in a Pioneer’s Rest Cemetery plot dead.”
“I always liked Pioneer’s Rest Cemetery,” Kat absently observed before the confusion in her expression cleared and she demanded, “Why? How could you think such a thing?”
The words tumbled from Mari’s mouth. “Billy was watching when you knocked over the candle, then went back behind the curtain. He saved Luke, but by then the fire was too hot, and he couldn’t get to you. They told us there was no other way out.”
Speechless, Kat simply stared at Mari, shaking her head. “I didn’t…we left right away…I never even knew about the fire
until the next…oh, wait. Wait! You said I knocked over a candle?”
Reluctantly, Mari nodded. It was a sign of Mari’s distress that she’d mentioned the candle in the first place since she’d never intended to share that particular detail with her sister.
Kat’s eyes rounded in horror. “Oh, my God. Mari, did I start the Spring Palace fire?”
“They never determined exactly how it started.”
“But I knocked over a candle. Oh, Mari, people died in that fire! Because of me.” She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth. “I killed them. I killed them!”
“No, honey.” Mari rushed to sit beside her sister and take her in her arms. “No, it was an accident. Just an accident.”
“People died because of me,” Kat murmured before burying her head against her sister’s bosom and sobbing.
Mari held on, stroking Kat’s hair, quietly shushing her, offering soft words of comfort until the storm ended. When Kat finally dried her eyes, Mari returned to the subject of the telegrams. “Honey, who sent the telegrams?”
Sniff. Sniff. “Rory.”
“Hmm…”
“What do you mean, hmm…?”
“Obviously, something isn’t right about all this. Papa never received a telegraph from you, Kat.”
“Maybe he did. Maybe he hates me for starting the fire and running away. Maybe he just let the rest of you think I was…I was…”
“No. You know better than that, Kat. Your father loves you. He loves you.”
“But—”
“No! Stop that right now. You’re being foolish. Think about it. Even if the world turned on its axis, and he decided he didn’t love you anymore, he still wouldn’t have lied to the rest of us. Kat, this nearly killed Mama. And Billy? Oh, Kat, you wouldn’t recognize him, he’s changed so much—and not for the better. He carries the weight of your ‘death’ on his shoulders like a yoke. In fact, Papa and Mama were so worried about him that they took the boys to Britain to visit the Rosses. That’s why, when I learned you might still be alive, I came looking for you, not Papa.”
Her Bodyguard Page 21
