How could he know that when they had not been tested?
He looked over at Diana, so perfectly composed, and she looked at him, eyes steady.
He nodded once, and she returned it.
The time was now.
They strode into the room, and Wyatt stepped closer to her, setting his hand at the small of her back. She exhaled at the touch, and his fingers drummed ever-so-faintly against her. Her chin dipped in another very faint nod, and then, after making a show of glancing about the room, she parted from him, moving towards a table of ladies in a corner.
Several pairs of eyes followed her.
Wyatt smirked at that. His beautiful wife would undoubtedly get further than he in certain aspects of this investigation, but he would be perfectly happy to be carried along by the trains of her skirts if it would take them where they needed to be.
“Mr. Henderson, may I fetch you a drink, sir?”
He turned to see Mr. Foster approaching, rubbing his hands on his apron, his expression still cheerful but wrinkled with anticipation.
“I wouldn’t refuse an ale, Foster,” Wyatt admitted with a laugh. “And a plate of supper wouldn’t be so bad either. Whatever your cook sees fit.”
Foster nodded, now rubbing his hands together. “And your wife, sir?”
Wyatt looked across the room, seeing Diana being welcomed at the table with the other ladies, smiles all around, and watching how Diana pretended to fuss with her hair. He smiled at the sight. “Send my wife a plate of the same, if you please. With my compliments.”
“Very good, sir.” Foster shuffled off, and his voice could be faintly heard in the kitchens.
“You regularly send your wife items with your compliments, sir?” asked a slurring voice nearby. “Must be a newlywed. It won’t last.”
Wyatt turned towards the man, whose head was already hanging close to the table. “We’ve been married two years, sir. Henderson’s the name.”
The man snorted once. “Two years. A babe in arms, that’s what you are. Wait til you have fifteen years under you. You’ll despise the sight of each other, and then she’ll make off with your business partner, move into a bigger house, and think she can stay in the town without any problem.” He looked up at Wyatt with red rimmed, bloodshot eyes. “But it’s a sin for a man to covet another man’s wife. Bible says so. Now they recollect that.”
“Do they?” Wyatt murmured to himself, raising a brow. “How do they?”
A loud throat clearing from his other side brought Wyatt around. “Ignore him, sir. Chelsey spouts smut of all sorts when he drink more’n half a pint.” A man in his thirties or so rose and held out his hand, his barely visible mouth curving beneath the dark and thick beard he wore. “Henderson, was it?”
“Yes, sir,” Wyatt said with a nod. “Wyatt Henderson.”
“Bill Albright,” came the reply. “Will you join us?”
Wyatt looked along the table, seeing the polite faces of the others, one or two smiling while the rest were more guarded. “I will, if there are no objections.”
Albright looked along the table, then back at Wyatt. “I see none. Please, sit.”
Wyatt did so, nodding to the man at his left and his right, situating himself across from Albright, who quickly made the introductions of the others there. Supper was brought out, and Wyatt ate slowly, listening to the conversations around him, carefully listening as well.
“Henderson,” a man down at the end called, sounding amused, “you’ve got an admirer.”
“What?” Wyatt replied. “Where?”
The man, Johnston, if he recalled, pointed across the room. “Dark haired beauty. Never seen her before.”
Wyatt looked only to see his wife smiling at him, the plate of food before her. She tilted her head towards the plate, her smile spreading.
“Heavenly days,” one of the others breathed. “If a woman looked at me like that…”
“I don’t know that any of them would,” another chortled.
Wyatt ignored them and raised his glass in Diana’s direction. She dipped her chin, then dragged her attention back to the ladies.
“Excellent catch, Henderson,” the one they called Peters praised. “Do you know who she is?”
“I do,” Wyatt told him, sipping his ale and smirking at the group. “She’s my wife.”
Groans of all sort resounded up and down the table, and at least three men saluted Wyatt with their own tankards.
“Glad you all think I am fortunate,” Wyatt said with a laugh. “Some others seemed to think I’d put myself in a noose.”
“As I said,” Albright told him, “ignore him. The man is a drunk.”
“He’s been railing about his wife leaving him for ages,” agreed Timmons, the man to his left. “It’s an old story.”
“So what happened?” Wyatt asked as he tore off a bit of bread and popped in in his mouth.
The large man to his right grunted, which nearly shook the whole table. “House burned down season before last. Idiot Irish housemaid didn’t tend the fire before bed, caught the whole place up.”
Wyatt swore softly, forcing his eyes wide. “Any lives lost?”
“Hard to say,” the man replied. “They never found George’s body.”
“Morris,” someone said firmly, though the owner of the voice was impossible to pick out.
The large man grunted again and downed his drink. “Over now,” he exhaled after he swallowed. “Matter’s closed.”
Is it, Wyatt wondered to himself.
Nods around the table echoed Morris’s sentiment, and Wyatt shrugged. “There’s a Chelsey in every town, I think. I knew at least four back in Texas.”
There were a few chuckles at that. “I knew a pair in Cincinnati,” Paul Oliver laughed. “The Dutch brothers. Frank could outdrink Tyrone, but no one else could. And they could still win at poker when they’d topped off.”
“How much did you lose to them, eh?”
There was more laughter then, which was interrupted by a roar of rage from the bar. Wyatt turned just as a man went flying and a table overturned. Screams from the women roused others, and Wyatt groaned under his breath as punches began being thrown in the middle of the room.
The men at his table jumped into the fray, and it wasn’t clear if they were trying to stop the fight or improve it. Wyatt wasn’t one to shy away from a fight himself, but he didn’t even know what this was about, and as a newcomer to the town, joining in seemed unwise, if not downright stupid.
So he picked up his plate and tankard of ale, and moved clear of the melee, sticking to the far side of the room. And he was not the only one to do so.
A quick tapping at his foot brought his attention down, and he saw, to his amazement, Diana beneath the table, little Cathleen trembling in her arms.
He gave her a rueful look, and Diana looked flatly exasperated by her present position. He sighed and took the rest of his bread from the plate, handing it to her under the table.
The bread was snatched and his hand was batted, making him chuckle in spite of the fight he was witnessing.
Albright was a good fighter, as was Morris, and despite his conversations with them, neither of them were able to calm the fighting or command those participating. And despite the professed aversion to brawls before, Foster was nowhere to be seen.
Interesting.
“That’s enough now!” a voice boomed over the rest. “That’s enough!”
A burly lad of no more than twenty-five picked up one of the fighters and tossed him away, standing in the midst of the fight, one hand pressed against the chest of a bleeding man and the other fisting the shirt of a clearly drunk and flailing one.
“I said ‘Enough!’” the man bellowed again.
The room went relatively silent.
“Look here, Crofter,” Timmons said in a sneering voice, moving around the others and coming directly into the man’s face. “No one asked you to intervene.”
“You’re not the sheriff,” Peters
added in the same tone. “We don’t need you poking your head in our affairs. We ran you out of town for a reason.”
Crofter looked at both with disdain. “I remember. I’m only thinking of the ladies, who, if you can’t tell, don’t enjoy this mess.”
Wyatt glanced over, and while what he said was true, most of them didn’t seem to care that he was the one pointing it out.
“You let us worry about our women,” Timmons scoffed. “Now let Tom go.”
Crofter released the one whose shirt he had held. “Tom’s a cheat and you all know it. If your sheriff did his job right…”
“That’s not your concern though, is it?” someone interrupted. “Finish your business here and be gone by morning, or you might get a reminder of what happened to your pa when he ignored a warning.”
Crofter looked as though he could murder the man where he stood, whoever had said it, his tanned throat working to swallow. Then he turned and stormed out of the taproom, the door slamming behind him.
The room bustled a bit as they tidied up, then someone struck up the piano, and a few patrons began to leave.
Albright came to Wyatt, seemingly out of nowhere, and brushed off his hat. “Sorry you had to see that, Henderson, especially on your first night. Tempers run high sometimes, and it’s hard to control them.”
Wyatt waved it off, forcing a smile. “No worries. I’m from Texas, remember?”
Albright chuckled, turning his hat slightly. “Well, I apologize anyway. Tomorrow I hope we can prove more favorable.”
“Hey, Albright,” Wyatt said, almost as an afterthought, “who was that man? Crafter, was it?”
Albright’s face tightened, but he only looked down at the floor. “Jesse Crofter. Use to live here in New Albany, grew up here as a boy. Works for a lumber company out in Ohio, still makes deliveries out here and in Kentucky. His pa used to be our sheriff.”
“Used to be?” Wyatt echoed, lifting his tankard. “What happened?”
“He died.” Albright nodded, put on his hat, and moved towards the door of the taproom, taking the arm of a sour faced woman as he did so.
Wyatt slowly set down his drink, then peered under the table.
Diana looked back at him, wide-eyed. “Good heavens,” she whispered.
He could only nod in return.
Chapter 4
“I can’t sleep, Wyatt.”
“That’s a pity.”
“Wyatt!”
“Just because you can’t doesn’t mean I have to suffer.”
A rather stiff throw pillow landed directly on his face. “Wyatt!”
“Ow!” he protested, shoving the offending pillow aside. “What, Diana?”
“I said I can’t sleep!”
Wyatt exhaled in the faint morning light, shifting on his improvised bed on the floor. “Technically it’s morning now, so you don’t have to.”
He could hear Diana sigh in blatant irritation on the bed above him, and heard her rustling in the sheets. “It’s barely morning, and we can’t even have breakfast yet.”
The petulant note in her voice made him grin, but he was quick to stifle it on the off chance that she would peer over the bed at him. “So lay there quietly and pretend it’s still night.”
“You’re awake,” she pointed out.
He nodded against his pillow, releasing a would-be fatigued breath and closing his eyes in faux sleep. “Very astute,” he replied with a yawn. “But I would very much enjoy not being so.”
“You promised you would teach me to shoot.”
He frowned, even in his pretend sleep, and turned his face towards her bed again. “And you bring this up now because...?”
More rustling sounded from above him. “Neither of us are sleeping, and we cannot do anything for the investigation yet. Why not?”
“Because shooting guns in the early morning is not at all suspicious,” he drawled with as much sarcasm as the morning could muster within him.
“All the better,” Diana fairly chirped, her tone far too bright for the early morning. “Why not attract attention to better root out the more suspicious candidates of the town?”
Wyatt’s eyes snapped open and he looked up at the bed. Diana was propped up on her elbow now, staring down at him with a smug tilt to her lips, one eyebrow cocked.
He couldn’t help it; he smiled at her without reservation, chuckling with something almost like pride. “Well, well, Diana McGrath... We might make a fine agent out of you yet.”
They dressed quickly, in separate rooms, naturally, and when Diana presented herself in a denim colored dress with a simple belt at the waist, her hair loosely braided, Wyatt gave her a thorough looking over.
“What?” she demanded, setting her hands on her hips.
“Where’s the gun?” he asked with a wry smile, patting his own holster, where his gun was clearly situated.
She tilted her head back and forth a bit. “Still not telling. Can we go now?”
He chuckled and gestured for the door. Diana strode across the room, her face alight with excitement. It was astonishing how such an expression enhanced her beauty further still, even dressed as simply as she was, and he found himself rather willing to follow her wherever she would lead.
Which would have been a terrible idea, and he scolded himself quickly as he followed her out of the room.
She didn’t say a word as they quietly slipped out of the nearly silent boarding house, and only gave him an inquiring look when she had stepped off of the porch.
Wyatt shook his head. “Do you remember the old barn we passed yesterday?”
Diana nodded, immediately glancing down the main street towards the south. “Yes, I do. Not quite the edge of town, just off the main street here a bit. That should do nicely.”
“Glad you approve.”
She glanced up at him, squinting a little in the morning light. “Remote enough from town to not be obvious, yet close enough to attract a bit of attention. It should set the stage for us very well, don’t you agree?”
Wyatt leaned back, surveying this clever partner of his with real appreciation. “You have been thinking about this, haven’t you?”
She only shrugged. “I needed something to turn over while I tried to fall asleep.” She tilted her head in invitation, but didn’t wait for him as she started in that direction.
He jogged down the steps and came to her side, throwing his arm around her shoulders as his eyes took in a woman wearing a stained apron exiting a building nearby.
Diana stiffened at the contact.
“Steady,” he murmured, leaning his head close to hers. “We’re being watched at the moment.”
She immediately smiled and relaxed into him, ducking her chin as though he had said something to make her blush. “It’s early for that, isn’t it?”
“The industrious rise at all hours,” he replied, nudging his nose against the sable richness of her hair. “Maybe she works at the bakery.”
Diana’s arm slid around his waist, pulling herself nearly flush against his side, her leg brushing his as they walked. “They have a bakery?” she asked, turning her face towards him and nuzzling her cheek against his shoulder.
Answering suddenly became difficult as various parts of him were suddenly on fire, coincidentally the precise places where she made contact with him. The sensations dried his throat in an instant, and he could only croak his reply. “I think so.”
“Hmm,” his wife said, the hum rippling from her into him with the sort of buzz that would have made a lesser man gasp in delight or pain. “Then you really ought to buy your wife a pastry after shooting, if there are any to be had.”
Her firmness made him laugh despite his current torment. “Really? Is that a sign of affection?”
“Respect. Dignity.” She pulled back just enough to give him a teasing look. “Self-preservation.”
The strangest desire to brush his nose against hers suddenly rose within him, and he settled it by pulling her closer and nearly touching
his brow to hers. “Am I in danger, then?”
He felt rather than heard her sharp intake of breath, and there was an accompanying warm burst in his chest at it. If he was to be tossed about like a tumbleweed across the lands he grew up on, he wasn’t going to be tossed alone.
An Agent for Diana (The Pinkerton Matchmaker, Book 10) Page 5
