He was nearing town and could see the houses of Silver Butte. He paused atop a ridge and looked down. It was not the boom town it had once been, but neither was it a ghost town, like so many others that had peaked during the glory days of the Comstock lode. It was alive.
Colt’s eyes narrowed. Something wasn’t right. He didn’t know what had made him tense up, but even his horse was suddenly standing rigid, alert. An invisible shroud of foreboding had suddenly wrapped around Colt.
Then he heard the high-pitched scream ringing in the still air.
He spurred his horse down the incline, taking a quicker path than the road. He moved fast, hard, but the main street was mired with thick mud, forcing him to slow his reckless gait.
Ahead, a crowd was gathered. As he approached, a murmur rippled through them and people began to step back, making room for Colt.
Colt dismounted, then he saw it…the body of a woman lying in the mud. Hair, once golden, was matted with blood.
A man was on his knees beside the body, face burrowed in his hands, sobbing.
Slowly Carleton Bowden lifted his horror-stricken face and saw Colt. His lips quivered as he struggled to speak.
“You! God damn you, you killed her! Sure as if you’d shot her yourself!”
His voice broke. He gasped, chest heaving. Reddened eyes, overflowing with tears, bulged at Colt. He struck at the air with his fists and screamed, “I’m going to kill you, Coltrane! Just like you killed my little girl!”
Suddenly Bowden caught sight of the holster at eye level, worn by a man standing a few feet away. He lunged for it, but the man caught his hands and wrestled him away from the gun. Other rushed forward to grab Bowden and lift him to his feet. They half carried him out of the street and back inside the bank.
Colt felt a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t move. Vaguely, through the nightmare enveloping him, Colt noted the star on the man’s chest. The sheriff began to speak in a barely audible whisper, his voice sorrowful.
“It was a bank robbery, Coltrane. We’re gettin’ a posse together now. Charlene walked right into the shootin’, like she was sleepwalkin’ or something. Damnedest thing I ever saw. Wasn’t my men who shot her, though. They held their fire when they saw her. My deputy says one of the robbers shot her when he was aimin’ at us. She just walked into the bullet.
“If it’s any comfort,” he added softly, “I don’t think she suffered. Probably never knew what happened to her.”
The sheriff’s words were slowly penetrating Colt’s consciousness.
“They got away,” the sheriff continued angrily. “When we saw her go down, we all just sorta froze, and they got away. But we’ll get ’em, by God.”
Colt shrugged away the consoling hand on his shoulder and made his way forward. The people who were gathered around Charlene moved out of the way as he approached.
He dropped to one knee beside Charlene, then gently lifted her in his arms. He nearly cried out when her head lolled toward him, so limp…so lifeless. He looked into the sightless blue eyes that had so recently burned with passion. With trembling fingertips, he closed them.
He got to his feet, holding her tight against his chest. He staggered through the mud, carrying her out of the street. People spoke to him, but Colt stared straight ahead, hearing nothing.
He took her all the way home. As he carried her up the steps of her house, someone saw him coming and ran to hold the front door open. Inside the house, he passed the parlor, where women were crowded around Juliette Bowden, who lay unconscious on the divan, having fallen into a deep faint.
He moved on up the stairs and when he reached the second floor, went through the first open door and laid Charlene carefully on the bed.
Then he turned and, wordlessly, left the house and walked back into town. People he passed shrank away from the man whose eyes burned with hatred, and a lust for revenge.
John Travis Coltrane had one thought: Charlene’s killers were going to pay. And God help anybody who dared try to stop him.
Chapter Six
Briana de Paul sat before the stone fireplace, knees drawn to her chest, chin propped on her hands, staring pensively into the soot and ashes. A warm spring wind blew in through the open windows behind her, bringing the sweet fragrance of lilacs, but she barely noticed. Neither did she glory in the golden sunshine spilling on the floor.
It was four weeks since she’d seen Charles. He had been taken to the Paris hospital by a doctor who was, as great good fortune had it, leaving the Monaco hospital for greener pastures in Paris. If he hadn’t pitied Charles and seen to a carriage for the boy, Briana would have had to carry her brother herself, she mused.
Her own journey, a week after Charles left, was a great deal harder than she’d known it would be. She’d begged rides in donkey carts and walked when she was forced to, pausing only for exhaustion or bloody blisters.
Charles was in a charity hospital, in a crowded ward, surrounded by critically ill and dying patients. Her heart constricted when she saw him, lying on stained sheets on a rickety cot, his body crumpled like something broken and tossed aside to die.
When he looked up with pain-filled eyes and saw her standing beside the cot, his face lit up. His sister was the only light in Charles’s life. Briana bathed him, begging clean linens from a sour-faced nurse. Charles was even more wasted than when she’d last seen him. The hospital food, he told her, was only scraps, so she went out and begged for centimes until she had enough to buy a pot of soup from a street vendor. Begging was humiliating beyond anything she’d imagined, but she was not going to let her pride stand in the way of Charles’s well-being.
The doctors were not unsympathetic to her financial plight. They had arranged, after all, for Charles to be cared for as a charity case. But charity wouldn’t pay for the expensive surgery. He could remain in the hospital, and they would try to ease his pain, but, they explained, free surgery was out of the question.
Briana tried to elicit their sympathy. “We are talking about a little boy,” she said tearfully, “a little boy who is surely going to die if you don’t try. Surely you don’t need money so badly that you can just turn your back on him.”
They emphasized that a principle was at stake. If they gave their services to Charles, how could they charge other people?
She lost control then. She screamed at them, calling them vultures who preyed on suffering. “God gave you your skills, and you use them to live like kings while a little boy lies dying! How can you stand to live with yourselves?”
They turned away from her. They’d heard the same insults, shrieked by hundreds of others who were equally destitute, equally desperate.
Briana had left Charles and gone back to Madame deBonnett, who was still giving her shelter and a job, however meager the wage. To remain in Paris meant attempting survival on the streets, and that was dangerous. It was not uncommon for women to be found in alleyways, raped, throats cut. She had tried to explain to Charles why she had to return to in to Monaco. She held him close, promising to do everything she could to make money for his operation. He smiled up at her, knowing she’d try, knowing it was hopeless.
From the moment she left Charles, Briana knew utter desolation. How in heaven’s name could she get money for Charles’s operation? She had no family, no friends of means. Everyone she knew was as poor as she was, with the exception of Madame deBonnett, and that was no help. From what she had seen, the deBonnett fortune was rapidly dwindling away. Besides the fact that Madame deBonnett had money problems, Briana knew she would never loan her money because the woman was as cold as could be, caring about no one except herself and that nasty Gavin.
Despite the warmth of the spring day, Briana shuddered. She loathed Gavin Mason. Lascivious, sneaky, cruel, Gavin had been trouble since the day the Count brought his new family to live with him.
One of Briana’s early encounters with Gavin happened when she was twelve. She’d been out in the barn, doing her chores, spreading fresh hay in the hor
ses’ stalls. Suddenly she became aware that Gavin was hiding in one of the lofts above, spying on her. When she called out to him, demanding to know what he was up to, he stood up, laughing. Then he exposed himself to her, chortling, “I’ve got something for you, Briana.”
She screamed in horror, dropped the pitchfork, and ran. But he was quicker, jumping from the loft and landing beside her. He wrestled her to the floor and his hands were everywhere at once, clawing at her breasts, grabbing between her legs. “You want it as much as I do,” he cried, his breath hot on her face. She twisted from side to side, desperate to escape his wet mouth.
He lay on top of her, pinning her, and in a last wild effort to break free, she smashed her fist into the hard pink thing that was thrusting at her belly. He yelped in pain, clutching himself, and rolled away.
She ran from the barn, sobbing breathlessly, fleeing straight to the little cottage and her father. Flinging herself in his arms, she sobbed and sobbed. Louis de Paul held her against him, his eyes narrowing as he managed to get the full story out of her.
Worse was to come. When her father had heard her out, he gave her a fierce shake and said, voice hoarse, “You will say nothing about this, do you hear me? You will forget this happened. And in the future, be on guard lest he try again.” Louis de Paul glared at his daughter.
She stared up at him, stunned. “Papa, you don’t mean this! We have to tell Madame deBonnett. She will punish him so—”
He shook her again, hard. “Are you insane, daughter? She wouldn’t believe you—or else she wouldn’t care. She would send us away, too, and I would have no job and we would have no place to live. No, you mustn’t speak of this. Just keep away from him, do you hear me?”
Briana nodded slowly, her heart breaking. Her own father would not protect her.
Ever since that day, she had been on her guard. Gavin had enjoyed their game, becoming bolder through the years.
“One day,” he taunted constantly, “you will beg me to pleasure you. You are only toying with me, I know.”
It mattered not at all that she bluntly proclaimed her loathing of him; Gavin enjoyed his sport. Even when she declared, “I would rather die than have you touch me!” Gavin only laughed, and waited for another chance to fondle her.
She wanted to go back to Paris and be near Charles, but how could she, when there was no way of knowing whether she would find work? She hadn’t a centime. At least Charles had shelter, and at least the doctors could ease his pain. She would offer Charles nothing by leaving her job and traveling to a city where she might not be able to get another.
Briana missed Charles terribly and worried about him waking and sleeping, having awful nightmares about his being sent to an orphanage because she was dead, or going through the pain of the operation and having it not help. But even so, there was one aspect to her visit to Paris, grueling though the journeys to and from Monaco had been, which warmed her.
She had promised herself a visit to the great Notre Dame Cathedral. One afternoon when Charles had fallen asleep, Briana left the hospital, located two streets from the Pont Neuf, and walked to Notre Dame. There, she gazed up at the many spires and then walked, hesitant and nervous, through the main entrance. It was beautiful inside, beyond anything she had ever seen, the stained-glass windows large and brilliant. The choir sang, and she was there to hear the “Ave Maria”.
Finally, she tore herself away to perform the act she had come for. Going outside again and finding the door dedicated to Saint Anne, Briana’s patron saint, whose name was Briana’s own middle name, she prayed fervently for Charles’s recovery. The door was richly carved, and as she backed away to look at all the designs, she ran smack into the wrought-iron gate, jumping because she thought she’d bumped into someone.
The door was almost seven hundred years old, and Briana stood there marveling at it, oblivious to time, until it began to get quite dark. She turned away, sad, knowing she would probably never see Saint Anne’s door again, and hurried back to Charles.
She was glad, so glad she had made the journey through the streets of Paris and prayed to her patron saint. Saint Anne’s door was something she would remember all her life, and the knowledge comforted her.
She ran across the Pont Neuf. It was fully dark by then, and she was frightened. As she reached the other side of the bridge and ran the two blocks to the hospital, she hoped she was in time to see what Charles was being fed for his supper. She had grave doubts about the food, partly because he hadn’t even bothered trying to tell her it was all right. It wasn’t all right; it was awful. Oh, why was everything in her brother’s life so terrible?
The hospital was old and smelled revolting. She scolded herself for hating to be there. Why, Charles had been there for months, and who knew when he would be able to leave? If he could bear the odor of cabbage and ether, the ancient rotting wood and the flies, if he could live there, then she could stay with him until she had to leave for the night.
One afternoon, when Charles was sleeping again and she thought he wouldn’t mind if she left for a couple of hours, she walked across the Pont Neuf, asking for directions from gendarmes, careful not to look in the eyes of any men on the way, until she reached the much talked-about Gardens of Luxembourg, with their lovely statues and beautiful grounds. Finding an empty bench, she sat and looked at the gardens, the palace ahead, soothed by the air of peace. How charming it all was!
All of Paris, in fact, had such an ethereal air about it, it seemed that nothing bad could possibly happen in Paris. Was it true? Would Charles be safe here? she asked herself for the dozenth time.
Having lived all her life in either Nice or Monaco, Briana was frankly terrified of Paris. The nights were brutal, or so she had been warned, with thieves preying on the unwary and all manner of men chasing unescorted females into dark alleys.
But the days in Paris were so lovely that she always forgot her nighttime terrors. In the sun, Paris gleamed. Many buildings were made of white stucco, and nearly as many had roofs of red tile. The combination was dazzling, beautiful, and she began to understand why people wanted so badly to live there.
There was something unearthly about Paris during the day, especially in bright sunlight, and Briana’s heart took flight when she walked through its colorful streets. Would she really be able to live there one day, she and Charles? Surely he would not fail to get better in this magical place.
The sound of light knocking and the door opening brought Briana out of her reverie. She looked up as Marice Clausand stepped into the cottage. Marice, the daughter of a caretaker on an estate to the south, had been Briana’s friend for several years.
The sight of Marice, lovely in an elegant yellow satin, gown, surprised Briana. “Where on Earth did you get that?” Marice was as poor as she was, and Briana had never seen her in anything but muslin.
Marice, face glowing with happiness, grabbed her skirt and twirled around and around. She stopped before Briana, grinning. “Isn’t it lovely? And look at this!” She held out her wrist, on which sparkled a thin gold bracelet.
Awed, Briana touched it, shaking her head. “What happened? How did you get these things?”
Marice settled herself on the floor near her friend, patting her skirt smugly. Admiring her bracelet, she smiled and said, “Well…let’s just say that I got very, very smart, Briana.”
Briana knew that she had recently taken work at a bistro, much to her parents’ dismay. “I didn’t know you were making so much money.”
Marice laughed sharply. “I’m not, silly—not serving food, anyway.” She leaned forward. “I discovered that I am sitting on pure gold, Briana.”
Briana’s head moved back as she stared at Marice. Surely Marice didn’t mean what Briana thought she meant.
Marice stiffened. “Oh, don’t look so self-righteous. Why should a woman give it away if men are willing to pay for it? All this gown cost me was an hour with a man. If I’d had to pay for it myself, it would have taken me forever to save the money
. And this bracelet…” She held up her arm and shook it. “Two hours of the easiest work I’ve ever done.” She eyed her friend closely, waiting for her response.
Briana began to shake her head slowly from side to side, numb with horror. “Oh, Marice, I know it’s none of my business, but—but it’s terrible. It’s sinful, and—”
“And we’ve both been giving it away free for years,” Marice snapped. “Only I got smart. If you were smart, you’d do the same thing.”
Briana’s ire rose. How dared Marice make such assumptions? “I’ve never given my…anything away. I’ve never sold anything, either. I’ve never been with a man.”
Marice grinned a nasty grin. “Do you expect me to believe you’ve kept your job here without pleasuring Monsieur Mason? Everyone knows how he is.”
“I don’t care what you believe about me,” Briana interrupted hotly. “I wish you hadn’t told me this.”
Marice’s eyes flashed. “I told you this, you little fool, because I care about you. What’s going to become of you when Madame deBonnett loses everything? What will you do? There is no way I could ever have gotten along on what I was making before I got smart. Now I am going to be moving away from my parents. I’m taking a room above the bistro. And when I’ve saved enough money, I’ll buy lots of beautiful gowns so I can move to Paris and marry a wealthy man and spend the rest of my life in luxury.”
“You will become a demimondaine,” Briana said furiously, “and your family will disown you. You will break their hearts. No decent man will have you. The best you’ll ever be able to hope for is to be a mistress.” Angry, and frightened for her friend, she gathered steam. “And what happens when you grow old and lose your beauty? You’ll become madam of a whorehouse!” Briana touched her friend’s shoulder, finishing, “You’re making a tragic mistake.”
Love and Fury: The Coltrane Saga, Book 4 Page 7
