Two Brothers

by Linda Lael Miller

  Aislinn closed her eyes as relief swept through her. She’d taken a big enough risk, helping Liza Sue to escape the Yellow Garter Saloon. Letting Shay McQuillan kiss her in front of God and everybody had been downright reckless, given Eugenie’s strict standards. “I—I don’t know what came over me,” she said, and she was telling the absolute truth. “I’ve always been so—so sensible.”

  Eugenie ignored that. “How’s that little Liza Sue gal fittin’ in?”

  Aislinn stiffened. “Fine,” she said, in a thin voice. She hated lying, especially to Eugenie, who’d been so unfailingly kind, but she’d been left with little choice in the matter. Liza Sue had nowhere to go but back to the Yellow Garter, if things didn’t work out there at the hotel.

  At last, Eugenie turned, still holding the cup. “I reckon she’s glad to get away from Jake and that bunch over in that hellhole saloon.”

  “J-Jake?” Aislinn’s heart was beating fast, and the music in the small ballroom seemed farther away than before.

  “That’s a mighty hard life,” Eugenie said sadly. “There ain’t anybody bad enough to deserve that kind of sufferin’.”

  Misery threatened to swamp Aislinn: the thing she had most feared had come upon her; she’d been found out. Eugenie was sure to change her mind about sending her packing, and she’d have no choice but to move on, leaving the homestead behind, for someone else to purchase. Thomas and Mark, counting the days until they could leave their school and board a westbound train, would be bitterly disappointed, and her own dreams, so close as to be almost within her grasp only the day before, seemed hopelessly out of reach. She started to speak, swallowed, and fell into a wretched silence.

  Eugenie approached, sat down beside her at the table. “Thought you had me fooled, did you?”

  Aislinn imagined herself writing to her brothers, telling them they couldn’t come to California after all. Imagined herself leaving Prominence. “I was hoping so,” she admitted. “But plainly I was wrong. How did you know?”

  Eugenie smiled and patted Aislinn’s cold hand. “Well, for one thing, the girl didn’t have no belongin’s with her. For another, you don’t get bruises like that fallin’ down steps. Them sort of marks, they almost always come from a man’s fist, and even when they fade away, you can still see the shadows of ’em in a woman’s eyes. And you ain’t got so many dresses that I don’t know ’em all as well as my own.”

  “Are you going to send her away?” Her own situation was serious enough, but Liza Sue’s was dire. With no roof over her head, and no money to buy stagecoach passage out of Prominence, the other girl would surely end up back in the saloon, worse off than ever.

  Eugenie sighed heavily. She sounded exhausted, like someone who’s just come to the end of a long and difficult journey. “That’s what you’re afraid of? That I won’t let that little gal stay here?”

  Aislinn nodded. “That man who beat Liza Sue—she says he’ll kill her next time, and I believe her.”

  “That’s most likely so,” Eugenie agreed, and she seemed to be staring through the kitchen wall, through the night itself, toward something far off in the distance. “She’s not goin’ anyplace, Aislinn, and neither are you. Not tonight, anyhow. You just get on up to bed. I expect a good day’s work out of you tomorrow.”

  Tears sprang to Aislinn’s eyes, and she blinked them back, rising from the bench. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you!”

  Eugenie turned to look up at her. The lamp was burning low, and in that moment the night seemed especially dark, pressing at the window like some diabolical fog. “You’re a fine girl, Aislinn, and I confess I’m inclined to favor you over the others, just a mite. But I made them rules of mine for a reason, and I’ve got to see that they’re kept. You understand what I’m sayin’ here, don’t you? You’ll have to find yourself another place if you don’t behave yourself proper.”

  Aislinn nodded. Eugenie liked her, but she wouldn’t turn a blind eye again; it was a matter of principle. “I understand,” she confirmed. Then she hurried up the rear stairs, never bothering with a lantern, and let herself into the dormitory. The room was black, and the girls were all asleep, except for Liza Sue, who sat bolt upright on her cot, bathed in a single beam of moonlight, her arms wrapped around her knees.

  “She knows,” Liza Sue whispered.

  “Yes,” Aislinn answered, just as softly. “But it’s all right.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Eugenie will protect you. Now, go to sleep.” Aislinn snuggled down, and was just about to doze off, when Liza Sue spoke again, very softly.

  “You hear that racket, down at the saloon? A little while ago, there were some shots fired.”

  Aislinn hadn’t noticed the noise until then. The only law in town, Shay was almost surely square in the middle of the situation, whatever it was, and the realization was terrifying, now that she cared about him so much. She sat up again, listening. A popping noise punctured the night.

  “Was that a shot?”

  “I don’t know,” Liza Sue said. “Billy’s probably kilt somebody. Maybe that good-looking marshal, for making such a fool out of him in the street.”

  Some demon took Aislinn over in that moment. Tossing back her blanket, she scrambled got out of bed. “Where’s that dress you were wearing?”

  Liza Sue didn’t reply until they were both out in the corridor. “It’s behind that big crate in the storeroom,” she hissed. “Why?”

  Aislinn headed for the door across the hall. “Never mind. You just go back to bed.”

  The former prostitute stayed on Aislinn’s heels. “That’s my dress, and I have a right to know what you mean to do with it,” she insisted.

  Inside the small, stuffy room, Aislinn groped and searched until she found the crumpled gown. She shed her nightdress and wriggled into the garment, which was slightly too small and smelled of sweat, cheap perfume and stale whiskey. She suppressed a shudder. “In this instance,” she answered, however belatedly, “ignorance is most certainly bliss.”

  “You’re not actually planning to—to go down there, to the Yellow Garter? In that dress? Why, you’ll stand out like a sore thumb!” Liza Sue stopped, struggled to bring her rising voice under control. “Are you touched in the head? If you don’t get shot or beaten or arrested, you’re bound to be thrown out of this place once and for all!”

  Aislinn was well aware that what she was doing was pure lunacy, and she’d meant her implied promise to Eugenie, that she’d abide by the rules from then on and look for no special dispensation if she broke them, but she couldn’t ignore the very real possibility that Shay was in terrible trouble. She knew, everybody knew, about his confrontation with Billy Kyle that afternoon, out in front of the undertaker’s, and the rancher’s son had probably been fueling his indignation with liquor ever since. How could she lie there, in that stuffy attic room, throughout the night, wondering if the marshal was alive, or if he’d been gunned down?

  As for the dress, well, she was headed for a saloon, not a church social. By her reckoning, she’d have been a lot more obvious in one of her prim calicos.

  She made for the stairs, began a careful but quick descent. Liza Sue hovered at the top, like a disgruntled guardian angel, but she didn’t follow.

  On the second-floor landing, Aislinn collided full speed with an immovable object—Eugenie. The older woman, the sentinel, struck a match to the wick in a brass wall sconce.

  Her gray hair was wound into a bristly plait and dangling over one shoulder, and she was clad in a high-necked nightgown and a plaid wrapper. Her eyes pinned Aislinn to the wall as effectively as a spear.

  “I have to go,” Aislinn gasped.

  Eugenie took in the ridiculous dress for a second time, slowly. “I don’t reckon I need to ask where you’re headed, but I sure as hell want to know why you’re headed there, and in such a getup as that one.”

  “I’ve got to see for myself that Shay’s all right. That’s all. Billy Kyle swore to kill him and I�
�m sure he’s in the Yellow Garter, and I heard shots—”

  “I won’t let you do it,” Eugenie said. “He’s a grown man, Shay is, and a United States marshal to boot. He’s fought his own battles for most of his life and he can fight them now. Fact is, he won’t thank you for interferin’.”

  “I have to go,” Aislinn repeated, and moved to step around Eugenie.

  The other woman swore quietly. “Just hold on for a minute, then. I got somethin’ you’ll need.”

  Maybe it was curiosity, maybe it was an instinct for self-preservation, but Aislinn waited while Eugenie went back into her bedroom, returning only moments later to offer a small object in one extended hand.

  Aislinn accepted the tiny pistol shakily.

  “It’s loaded,” Eugenie said. “If you have to use it, step in close and make the shot count. You only got one bullet.”

  Aislinn didn’t ask any questions; she just took the pearl-handled, nickel-plated derringer and sped down the steps, through the lobby. The dance was over, and the music was only an echo. The night clerk looked at her with popping eyes, and if he said anything, she didn’t hear. She was outside, racing down the wooden sidewalk, her whole being attuned to the cacophony belching out of the saloon, like smoke billowing from a corridor to hell.

  The street was empty, except for horses tied to various hitching rails, and a drunk sleeping in a trough, up to his chin in water. Reaching the Yellow Garter, Aislinn took a deep breath, prayed that God would look after Thomas and Mark if anything happened to her, and burst through the swinging doors.

  She was well inside, and ankle-deep in filthy sawdust, before her eyes adjusted to the brighter light and the blinding sting of burning tobacco. Cowboys and gamblers looked at her with scurrilous interest, but she paid them little mind.

  Shay was in the middle of the saloon, engaged in a game of pool, his pistol lying close at hand on the table’s edge. His opponent was a man she didn’t recognize, tall and thin and pockmarked. His holster was empty but his firearm, like Shay’s, was within easy reach. Billy Kyle sat on the floor, his back to the bar. He was handcuffed to the boot rail, red-faced and rumpled, and even from a distance, Aislinn could see both his temples throbbing with fury.

  She hardly dared to look at Shay again, for she could already feel his gaze boring into her, every bit as ill-tempered as Kyle’s was, but she made herself meet his eyes. She’d pegged his expression just about right, which was no consolation, of course. She’d been rash, and made a terrible mistake because of it.

  Laying down his cue stick, his blue eyes narrowed, Shay took in the borrowed dress, the derringer and her face, in a slow, scathing sweep.

  “Maybe the little lady would like a dance,” a hapless cowboy speculated, swerving in Aislinn’s direction.

  Shay never looked away from her, although he recovered his pistol with an unerring motion of one hand and slipped it back into its holster as easily as if it were slathered in bear grease. “Anybody moves,” he said, in a deathly quiet voice that nonetheless seemed to carry to every part of that godforsaken monument to sin and depravity, “I’ll plug ’em.”

  The stranger at the pool table smiled, leaning on his cue stick now, both hands clasping it like a pole he meant to climb. The piano jangled to a discordant, echoing stop, and the cowboy who’d wanted to dance stood unsteadily, but still.

  Aislinn took a step backward, and Shay advanced.

  “I guess this was a reckless thing to do,” she said, with a hard swallow.

  That statement brought a nervous laugh from the assembly of revelers, prostitutes and general ne’er-do-wells, and Aislinn, while still painfully conscious of her blunder, was also indignant. She felt hot color pulsing beneath the flesh of her face. She’d come here on a heroic mission, after all, however misguided, and she deserved some understanding.

  Reaching her at last, Shay snatched the derringer out of her hand and dropped it into his shirt pocket. He bore little resemblance, at least in manner, to the man who had kissed her so thoroughly on the hotel veranda, that very evening. His voice was low, pitched for her ears alone, as hard and as burning cold as a pump handle in a prairie blizzard. “You’re under arrest,” he said.

  That was just about the last thing Aislinn had expected him to say. She stood there, her vocal cords paralyzed, while he strode over to Billy Kyle, bent down to take him by the hair. “You wait here for me, Billy. You hear?”

  Adam’s apple bobbing, a muscle jumping in his cheek, Billy looked as though he’d sooner spit on Shay than draw his next breath, but after a long and awkward moment, he nodded. Not that he could have gone far, cuffed to that foot rail the way he was.

  Shay straightened then and, sparing not so much as a look for anyone else, returned to Aislinn, took her firmly by the arm and propelled her across the floor, with its disgusting clumps, toward the doors. The moment they gained the sidewalk, a roar of laughter arose inside.

  Aislinn closed her eyes tightly. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Shay headed for the street with barely a pause, dragging her along behind him. She didn’t need to be told that he was too furious to speak.

  “I think you’re being unreasonable about this,” she pointed out breathlessly. She was in good shape, but he was walking so fast that she had to take three steps for every one of his. “It should be obvious that I was merely trying to help.”

  They were not going toward the hotel, as Aislinn had expected, but toward the jailhouse. Apparently, he’d meant what he said, about her being under arrest. She couldn’t believe he was serious.

  “What, precisely, is my crime? You can’t just throw me in jail because you want to, you know. I have rights!”

  Shay hooked an arm around her waist and hoisted her off her feet, carrying her against his side like a rug loosely rolled. When they reached the door to the jail, he kicked it open, a gesture Aislinn thought was a bit excessive, not to mention hard on the nerves. It wasn’t as though she’d robbed a bank, after all.

  “I demand that you answer me!” she cried.

  He carried her across his small office and into a cell, flinging her down onto the narrow cot inside. It didn’t seem odd to her, in the chaos of the moment, that there were lamps burning here and there, spilling unsteady light over the rough board floors. “You can demand all you want,” he growled. “Course, there won’t be anybody around to listen to you.” He went out before she could scramble off the cot, slammed the cell door, and locked it with a heavy key.

  Aislinn rushed after him, arriving too late, clasping the bars in both hands. “Wait!” she called, to his retreating back. “You can’t leave me here like this … I haven’t broken any laws!”

  Shay turned on his heel and glared at her. He’d left his hat behind at the Yellow Garter, and his bright hair was mussed in a way that, despite her angry frustration, made her want to comb it with her fingers. “Get a lawyer, then!” he yelled, jabbing a finger at her. “Sue me!”

  She sagged against the bars, near tears, and only then saw the man sitting behind the desk, booted feet up and crossed at the ankles, an open book resting on his chest, the faintest possible grin perched at one corner of his mouth. Aislinn blinked, looked at Shay, looked back at the cheerful observer. He might have been Shay, so perfect was the resemblance, except for an indefinable something in his aspect or his manner that set him apart.

  Seeing the other man at last, Shay swore succinctly. “What are you doing here?”

  His counterpart ignored the question, stood, and approached the cell. With a little bow, and a grin as cocky as Shay’s, he said, “ ’Evening. I’m Tristan Saint-Laurent. Who are you?”

  Shay was in front of the desk, leaning against it, his arms folded, his face rigid. Aislinn felt an actual jolt when their gazes connected, a shuddering impact, like two trains meeting on the same track.

  “My name is Aislinn Lethaby,” she said, drawing herself up. It was hard to be dignified in that dress, but she made a valiant attempt, and felt a distinct
need to clarify her identity. “I am employed at the hotel, in the dining room.”

  “Somebody ought to speak to them about the gear they make you wear,” Tristan observed, and though his voice was dry, his eyes twinkled with knavery. “Folks might get the wrong idea.”

  Up close, Aislinn could clearly see the differences between the two men, although she couldn’t have defined them for the life of her, and she realized that it was Tristan she’d seen that morning, not Shay back for a second breakfast. It explained, if nothing else, why she’d been unmoved by him.

  “Stop bothering the prisoner,” Shay snapped. Aislinn had had the distinct impression that he’d planned to get back to the saloon as soon as he’d locked her up, but he showed no signs of leaving now.

  Tristan winked at Aislinn before turning to face Shay. His twin, of course. There could be no other explanation. “What’s the charge, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I do mind your asking,” Shay retorted. “It’s none of your damn business.”

  “I was merely trying to save you from getting shot!” Aislinn spouted. He’d ruined her, Shay McQuillan had, throwing her in jail that way. Even if Eugenie forgave her again, by some miracle, the church ladies would run her out of town on a rail.

  “That’s a crime?” Tristan inquired, arching one eyebrow.

  “Stay out of this!” Shay yelled.

  “I think he asked a legitimate question!” Aislinn cried.

  “I don’t give a damn what you think!” Shay bellowed back, shaking his finger at her again. “I’m the marshal here. You’re under arrest and that’s that.”

  “For what?” Aislinn insisted. If he was going to lay claim to the last word, he’d have to fight for it. After all, it wasn’t like he was in the right or anything.

  “For wearing that dress!” Shay replied.

  Tristan laughed. “If it was up to me, I’d give her a commendation—that’s some dress—but you’re right, little brother. It ought to be illegal for any woman to look that good in something that ugly.” He cast an appreciative look back at Aislinn and winked again, and she found herself liking him tremendously, despite his next words. “That’s a case of indecent exposure if I’ve ever seen one.”