“Yes.” Her voice hardened, but she stared at the flowing water, keeping her gaze completely averted from him, making it impossible to read her expression.
“Then you would rather live here? You wouldn’t want to leave.”
A wren left its perch on a nearby branch and flitted across their path. Lady shook her head with a snort then settled.
“Eliza?”
“No.” Her spine straightened but her shoulders seemed to slump. She glanced back. “No, I don’t want to leave.” Her heels rammed Stiches ribs, and the gray mare lurched forward then spun as Eliza yanked the reins to the side, forcing her around and past Axel toward the meadow.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m tired. I’m going back to the cabin.”
Axel watched her. As usual, Eliza wanted to be alone, and she’d make it home easily enough. To be sure, he followed to the trail. Then, instead of turning right as she had, he reined left, an idea forming. With the barn in ashes, now was not the time to spend money, but he wanted Eliza to be happy here. Though Desert Lady was a little balky since she’d lost her partner, a long ride would work some of that out of her, and he could be back in a couple of hours.
Anticipation surged through Axel, and he encouraged Lady to a faster clip. He’d buy Eliza something nice. As long as Captain Gray wasn’t out on patrol with his men, he’d be able to get into the safe at the cavalry office and send the money to Phoenix with Sam.
Axel glanced at the sun, almost directly above him. If he hurried, he might catch the stage and be able to discuss his plan with Sam in person. The man owed him a favor, and Axel couldn’t think of a better time to collect.
He’d order nails for a new barn while he was at it.
***
Elizabeth melted onto the bed, her hand slipping to the indent on Axel’s pillow where his head rested each night…so close to hers. How was it possible to be so affected by a man? One she was supposed to despise. Since she’d stepped off the stagecoach and saw him standing there, her heart had been drawn to him. Just as it had as a young girl, only seeing him once every twelve months.
But Lars was still responsible for all her losses. She had to leave, and had the means to do it and a plan in place. She couldn’t stop now. Her hand was set to the plow. Just like the scripture.
Oh, why couldn’t other scriptures have penetrated her as that one had? Ones like Lars read to them and old Luke the last two Sundays. Why couldn’t she believe in forgiveness and grace? Or in a God who cared for her? They had seemed easy concepts before Mother’s…
Elizabeth pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes trying to blot out the memories of her mother’s final days, wasted away to not much more than a skeleton, her cough persistent, keeping everyone from sleep in the long hours of the night. Blood staining the once white handkerchiefs and their delicate lace.
Rolling off the bed onto her knees, Elizabeth crawled to the chest holding all she had left of her past. She drew out its contents one by one. Under her own modest clothes lay Mother’s lace shawl and matching gloves rolled together. She slipped the first over her head, and then pulled the gloves up her arms to her elbows. Next came Father’s cigar box with his old pocket watch and a hair comb with pale pink roses. And at the very bottom, their family Bible. Every important date recorded within its cover. Every birth, death and marriage of the Landviks for the past hundred years. Elizabeth let her finger, veiled in the intricate weave of threads, trace over the entries, pausing over the last two—the ones she had written herself.
She let her eyes close. They remained dry, but her chest ached with such awful pain.
Chapter 10
Elizabeth stared at the door and the perfect square of light glowing through the window. The half-moon would make it easier to find her way across the countryside. If she followed through with her plan. She stilled her breath to listen to the slow rhythm of Axel’s. She wished she could close her eyes and fall asleep. She’d wake in the morning, no longer Elizabeth Landvick. Axel need never know the truth. She could stay Eliza Forsberg…
And spend her life hating herself and Lars. What if Axel someday learned who she was? How long could she bury her identity….as she had her parents. Wouldn’t that be the greatest betrayal of all?
She slipped from the bed.
Elizabeth quietly dressed, her clothes prepared, but didn’t put on her shoes until she’d stepped outside and closed the door. The night sat silent. Even the crickets slept. One of the horses gave a low nicker as she approached with Stitches’ bridle. The little mare stood as Elizabeth slipped the bit into her mouth. The saddle was so much heavier than Axel made it appear, but at least he had showed her how to fasten the straps. Finally, she pulled herself onto Stitches back and reined her toward the trail leading to the Coopers.
As Elizabeth rode, she rehearsed every memory of her parents, fortifying her resolve to follow through. Mother’s tears as she wrapped the last of her jewels, even heirlooms, and sold them to pay off Father’s debts. The crates filled with everything they owned lining the walls of their empty home. The drafty apartment in an unsavory part of town. Thin walls and dirty hallways.
Elizabeth followed the trail a ways before the homestead came into view with barns and a couple of large stacks of hay. A low light shone from the open door on the main barn. Someone was probably there. Reining Stitches to the edge of the trail, Elizabeth dismounted. Her pulse sped. Two huge haystacks blocked her from being seen from the cabin. They would have to do. Leading Stitches after her, Elizabeth crept toward the first stack, pulling Lar’s timepiece from her pocket. She dropped it and continued on. Her hand fumbled with the matchbox as she struggled to forget the look on Axel’s face at the sight of the burning barn—before the rage had appeared.
“Axel.” Elizabeth gritted her teeth and lit a match. There was no way to hurt Lars without Axel feeling some of the sting.
But what if she took it too far?
What was she doing? She blew out the match. The Coopers hadn’t even done anything to her family, and yet here she stood, about to burn their hay and start a war.
We are ruined. Forsberg has destroyed us. He’s left us with nothing. There’s no money left. The business, the house, everything. It’s lost.
Her father’s sobs surrounded her in the darkness as they had every night trying to sleep in that box of a room, alone because Mother was dead and Father didn’t bother coming home until dawn arrived and he’d drunk away what little he’d earned the day before.
Elizabeth struck another match. She stared at the tiny flame cradling the tip. All she had to do was let go. The hay would burn. A feud would begin. And she’d make her escape with the ring and brooch.
The flicker of orange and red crept down the thin splinter of wood. How could she do this to Axel? What if something happened to him? Should he pay for his father’s sins?
She could walk away now. Isn’t that what Lars kept reading to them from the Bible? The Bible that had once been a part of her life. Mother had believed. Even at the end.
Elizabeth pressed her eyes closed. “Oh, God. Please. Let me forgive. I don’t want to hate anymore. Help me walk away before I hurt him again.”
Searing pain bit her fingers, and she jerked her hand, releasing the match. Her eyes flew open to see the flame sink into the loose hay…and spread.
“No.”
She stamped her boot over the flame. Again and again, fighting the growing blaze as Stitches tried to jerk away, almost pulling her off balance. Heat pricked her legs. Her hem lit the darkness. With a yelp she stumbled back and hit her knees, somehow keeping hold on the rein while smothering the flame in the dirt.
Stitches continued to toss her head and pull back.
“Easy.” Elizabeth got her to hold still long enough to climb into the saddle.
“Who goes there?” a man hollered from the barn. The discharge of a gun and then the cry of “fire!” perforated the night. Stitches needed no encouragement in racing toward home. Th
e pungent smell of the horse’s sweat filled Elizabeth’s senses by time she slowed the animal on Forsberg land. She would need to brush the lathered coat well before putting Stitches back in the corral. She would also need to wash herself and hide her scorched dress.
***
The mattresses shifted and something cold touched his leg, drawing him out of sleep.
“Eliza?”
She stilled. “Yes?” The word wavered.
He blinked the weariness from his eyes and touched her arm. Her skin felt chill through the thin linen sleeve. “Come here.” Axel wrapped her close and she complied, but trembled. “What’s wrong?”
“A nightmare.”
He tightened his hold. If only he could protect her from them, as well. He turned her toward him. Axel cupped her cheek, brushing his thumb over her lips, barely visible with the sun still below the horizon. Dare he? Before his weary mind could decide, her lips touched his. Just as quickly she withdrew and rotated away from him.
Every ounce of weariness fled. “Eliza?”
“Go to sleep, Axel.”
That might have been possible before she’d kissed him. But now… He leaned closer, so his face touched her braided hair. He pressed his mouth to her neck. “Eliza. Is there nothing I can do for you?”
“You can go to sleep.” Yet even as she said the words, her body eased against his.
Taking courage, Axel slipped his hand along her waist and across her stomach, gradually turning her back toward him. She gave, and he maneuvered his arm, and then shoulder, under her head. She looked up, and the first ray of dawn touched the room, and her eyes. They closed as he guided her chin with the tips of his fingers. Their mouths met.
As their kiss lengthened, Axel’s chest tightened until it hurt. The need to hold her, protect her, and love her, gripped him and lit the ends of each nerve. She was his wife. They would work together, laugh together, and raise a family. He would give her his life. And never let her go. His hand slid up her back to her head as he rotated above her. His fingers pressed under her pillow. Pain bit the tips.
He yanked his hand away and broke the kiss. “What was…?” Droplets of crimson trickled down his hand.
Her eyes widened as he rolled off of her. “What happened?” She pushed up onto her elbows, and he yanked the pillow away.
A knife.
“Eliza?” Axel balled his hand so the pressure of his palm would stanch the bleeding. “Why do you have a knife?”
Her expression hardened as she scrambled to her feet and backed away from the bed.
“What would you need a knife for?” He sat back with a glance to where she had been laying—where they had been laying. “What sort of marriage did you want this to be?”
“I didn’t want a marriage.” She spoke so suddenly and so softly, he almost missed her words. Eliza’s hands pressed against her cheeks.
Axel stared, the wind knocked out of him. “But you said… W—why would you come here…and marry me…if…” And how did the knife fit in? “Did you plan to kill me in my sleep, or just threaten me if I got to close to you? I don’t understand, Eliza. If you didn’t want a marriage, why—”
“I’m not who you think I am.”
“You didn’t write those letters?”
Instead of answering, she sank against the wall, and then to the floor.
Axel straightened, grinding his teeth. “Then who are you?” He shifted his gaze to the knife. His boots sat where he left them at the foot of the bed. No prints were ever found after Desert Lady was released or the barn burned. And he’d never made sense of that stack of saddles outside the burning barn. His gut clenched. “It was you?” The rattlesnake had been in their bedroll all along.
When she remained mute, he turned his back to pull his clothes on and thrust his feet in each boot. Eliza, or whatever her name was, never moved. Just sat there expressionless. Like she had no feeling in her. But still just as pretty as ever with dark strands of hair free from her braid, laid across her white face. He needed some distance to sort the pieces of this puzzle. He plunged out of the bedroom.
Pa was already awake and started a fire in the stove. He looked up, the lamp lighting his curious brow. “Axel?”
“If you can take care of the chores here, I’m riding out to check on the cattle. Don’t let…” he thrust a finger toward the bedroom, “that woman out of your sight ‘til I get back.” He wrapped his cut fingers and snatched his gun belt from its hook, buckling it on. Then collected his saddle and bridle from the floor.
The morning air greeted Axel with a breeze that nipped at the sweat on his forehead. His anger only increased at the blackened remains of the barn. He trotted to the corral where his gelding waited. Dessert Lady could sit tight for now. The last thing he need this morning was to be thrown onto a dung pile by another female.
Chapter 11
He was gone. Still there were no tears. Just the pain radiating from her center as it had when Mother, and then Father, left. Elizabeth touched a finger against her lips as she closed her eyes to relive that moment in Axel’s arms. The sun streamed through the window before she struggled to her feet, her legs numb. She dressed and then stuffed her parents’ keepsakes into the saddlebags she’d hidden in the chest. She wouldn’t be able to take everything with her this time, the saddlebags too small, but it was better she leave before Axel returned.
First she needed to get past Lars. He sat at the table, his Bible open, his head tipped forward. “Why don’t you have a seat, and I’ll pour you some coffee, Elizabeth.”
She dropped the saddlebags just out of sight in the bedroom before moving toward the stove. “I can pour my own.” Halfway across the floor she froze with the realization of what he’d called her. “How long have you known?”
He closed the Bible and looked up. His mouth showed a sad smile. “For sure, I didn’t know until you arrived. You’ve grown a mite since I saw you last, but you look a lot like your Mother…and I already suspected. After the first couple of letters, I remembered why your name had such a familiar ring to it. Danton. After your mother. You probably didn’t know this, but I met your mother before her marriage to your father. They were only engaged when your father first started coming to me with his ideas. Three years later I joined him. Just after you were born.”
“You knew all along?” Elizabeth sidestepped to the nearest chair and dropped into it. “Then why…?” Why would he bring her out here, let her marry his son and wreak havoc on their lives? Had he guessed she was responsible for the horse and the barn?
“When you wrote of being alone…” Lars stood, took up the kettle and filled a cup. Then set it in front of her. “I contacted some old associates in New York who told me what happened to your family. I felt somewhat responsible. I wanted to make sure you’d be looked after. I felt I owed your parents that much.”
Elizabeth clamped a hand over her mouth. Her head throbbed and her empty stomach turned. He owed her father more. Lars Forsberg was still guilty for their ruin, and if he thought he could ever recompense for that…
She pushed away from the table. The legs of the chair squeaked against the floor. “I’m leaving.”
Lars stepped around the table, his brows pressing together. “Elizabeth, please wait. Let Axel calm down. Give him a chance to know the truth. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
She stumbled back to the bedroom door and fished for the saddlebags. “None of this is about Axel. It never was.” Otherwise she might be able to stay. “Please, don’t try to stop me.”
Lars followed her out into the yard. “Where will you go? And how? Elizabeth, let me help you.”
She spun, her anger searing her throat as it released in a scream. “It’s all your fault. I don’t want your help.” A sob choked her, stealing the venom from her voice. “I wanted to ruin you like you ruined us. I wanted to make you miserable…but I only hurt Axel. You made me hurt him. I hate you for bringing me here, for making me feel like I stood a chance at revenge.”
Lazy cows chewed their cud, chipper birds danced in the trees behind him—a world at odds with the turmoil within Axel. He’d been a fool to marry a complete stranger, but Pa had been certain of her. So much didn’t make sense. Why would a woman he’d never met come all the way from New York for the sole purpose of making him miserable?
Blowing out his breath, Axel nudged his horse past the herd and toward the stream. He’d follow it to the border of their land before turning toward home. The only angle that he hadn’t considered yet was if the Coopers had hired Eliza—or whatever her name was—to run him and Pa off their land. The notion soured his stomach all the more. She must have laughed at his speech about honesty and his attempts to be a good husband.
Axel followed the stream for almost a mile before he noticed that the current ran a little slower than yesterday. And lower. He encouraged the gelding to a lope until they came to the trail separating Forsberg from Cooper land. Through the trees he could make out horses tied near the rocky bank. The crack of a hammer rang out. Axel slapped his reins against the sides of the saddle and the gelding dug dirt, springing forward into a gallop. He charged up the ridge and around the bend in the stream that shielded a newly constructed dam. Two of the Cooper boys slid another thick plank into place, while a third shoveled mud against the sides.
“What are you doing?”
“Well, well.” The eldest straightened. John Cooper wasn’t a tall man, but the breadth of his chest and shoulders made up the difference. “You’re out and about bright and early this morning.”
“Harvey agreed no dams.”
“That’s Mr. Cooper to you. You ain’t your Pa.”
Axel swung down from his horse and took a step, his hand instinctively resting over the hilt of his revolver as his temper flared. “Take out the planks.”
Mail-Order Revenge Page 6
