And so he was silent.
He’d been silent since they had left the George home the night before, aside from absolutely necessary conversation. He had nothing to say, and no inclination to engage in idle chatter.
Not now.
The tension, the anger, the sudden desperate edge he suddenly felt were all suddenly overwhelming, and he only wanted to get to Salem, find out what he must, and put a stop to it. He would put a stop to all of this. No one would lose a father over the despicable antics of those with their own skewed sense of justice, and the gall to act without any consideration for the laws of the country they lived in. There was no excuse, none at all.
And he would settle this. He would sacrifice everything he could to end this insanity and restore balance.
“You worried about your sister, Mr. Henderson?”
A sharp jab in his ribs sent Wyatt turning towards the driver of the wagon, but not before he glared at Diana between them. “I beg your pardon?”
Jesse Crofter smiled beneath his worn hat, his eyes returning to the horses, his hands deftly managing the reins. “You’re pretty far away. Your wife and I have been doing all the talking, and I know what it’s like to be preoccupied about your family in times of worry. I don’t know what the sheriff told you, but the general folk in Salem are just fine, really.”
“Are they?” Wyatt muttered, not caring that he sounded as surly as he undoubtedly looked.
Jesse made a face, flicking the reins lightly. “Well, they aren’t in danger. Provided they fit in with what the caps find agreeable.”
“The caps?” Diana repeated as she peered up at the ginger haired man.
He nodded once. “That’s what they call the group that runs the town now. They make their own rules and consider themselves deliverers of all righteous judgment.” He rolled his eyes and scoffed under his breath. “I’d wager the local Christians don’t quite agree with the caps, but they can’t argue with their tirades against sin.”
“What do they do?” Diana asked, her eyes going wide.
“Oh, it depends on how they’re feeling,” Jesse sighed. “And it’s all across the south of the states. After the Seymour caps’ triumph as Judge Lynch, they laid low everywhere, if you call thrashing, barn burning, and flogging to be low. Salem’s pretty passionate, though. Last fall, they forced two Negro families from their homes and set the buildings on fire before chasing the families down with horses. A month ago, they beat a woman into unconsciousness for leaving her husband, and shot an accused criminal in the head as he was brought into town.”
The burn of rage started in Wyatt’s throat, and he looked away, working to swallow it down. “His crime?”
“Petty theft, I think. Nothing extreme.”
Diana bowed her head, shaking it slightly. “Saints preserve us.”
“No saints in Salem, Mrs. Henderson,” Jesse insisted. “Not anymore.”
“How can you bear this?” Wyatt asked, turning back to him, his voice clipped. “After what happened to your father, how can you stay in this area and be surrounded by all of this?”
Diana slipped her arm through his and hugged herself to it, resting her chin on his shoulder. He was torn between feeling smothered and finding comfort in it. He settled with putting a hand on her knee, patting once, then leaving his hand there, his fingers instinctively curving around it.
Jesse stared out at the horizon, his brow furrowing. He exhaled and glanced at Wyatt. “After Pa died, we moved Mama down to Louisville. She lives with my sister now, but this is home for us. Not New Albany anymore, but this area. We couldn’t go west or very far east and be happy. I’m in Ohio now, and doing just fine. But I don’t know where else to go, to be honest. I’ll never be satisfied with what happened to my father, but not everyone here is responsible for his death. Those people are still worth knowing, you know?”
Wyatt wished he could understand, wished he felt the same, but memories from the past assailed him, and it was all be could do to nod.
Jesse Crofter was a better man than he was. But there was no competition for which sheriff had the better man for a son, and there was nothing to be gained by sharing his own experiences.
“We heard that you did a good turn for Mr. Walsh,” Diana said in a much brighter tone, rubbing Wyatt’s arm a little, though she wouldn’t know the exact reason for his current mood.
“Patrick?” Jesse smiled and shrugged nonchalantly. “Wasn’t as much of a good turn as a great opportunity. The man works twice as hard as any ox I’ve ever used, and just as strong as one. We’ve got plenty of help at the main office in Ohio, but not much on the Indiana side, especially for me, as you might imagine. Walshes are good people, and I’m trying to get their oldest son on board as well.”
Diana hummed thoughtfully. “Mrs. Walsh might be torn about that one. I’m sure he’s a great help to her, but to have the additional income…”
“That and the town seems to suddenly object to Irishmen.” Jesse shook his head, looking more disgruntled. “Patrick in particular. Somehow word got out that he was arrested for drunken disorderly conduct back in Ireland, but as I understand it, it was a case of wrong place and wrong time, and he was quickly cleared. Not that anyone believes.”
Wyatt tuned in with only mild interest, and only to keep his cover identity strong. “So he wasn’t forced to flee Ireland and the law?”
“Not in the slightest. Bad crops did that, and things haven’t been much better here.”
“Hmm,” Wyatt grunted, letting his eyes drift away to the landscape. “Pity the land of opportunity isn’t working out so well for him.”
Diana nudged him hard in the side. “Not yet, anyway. But it can take time, and if he’s as impressive as Jesse says with his work, who knows?”
Jesse chuckled as he turned the team down a fork in the road. “Bit of an optimist, are you, Mrs. Henderson?”
“You have no idea,” Wyatt groaned, not entirely feigning it.
“My husband,” Diana said pointedly, “is more of a realist, and sometimes even a pessimist.”
Wyatt would have given anything to not pick up the banter, but knew he had to say something, if for no other reason than to save himself the plague of questions that would come later if he didn’t play along.
“All the more reason to have married you, dear,” he replied, his tone falling flat. “Someone has to be the sunny side of our life.”
“Or simply enjoy the rain,” she shot back, her eyes flashing a warning.
He didn’t care. She wasn’t really his wife, no matter how attractive he found her, and there was no reason that she, as his partner, should know anything at all about his past. He could be as moody as he liked and as private as he liked, and she would simply have to deal with it.
“Ah, the melodious sounds of matrimony,” Jesse quipped with another laugh. “Can’t say I find a marriage real if they don’t sound like the two of you at least some of the time.”
Diana laughed, somehow sounding natural, and Wyatt tried to echo it.
Tried being the operative word.
“How long to Salem?” he asked, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, Diana’s hands sliding from his arms.
“Another hour or so,” came the unconcerned reply. “We’ll deliver my load, I’ll drop you off, and then I’ll head on to the next place. I can be back for you day after tomorrow, if that’s enough time.”
Wyatt nodded once, fixing his attention on the horizon. “That’ll be perfect, thank you.”
“I’ll warn you though,” Jesse said in a much more serious voice, “you may want to get out of Salem before then. I find I’ve lost my taste for a lot of the town even in small doses.”
“I’m sure we can handle it for that long,” Wyatt replied. “It could be just long enough.”
“Wyatt,” Diana murmured sharply.
“For what?” Jesse asked.
Wyatt smiled at no one in particular. “To leave an impression.”
Chapter 6
Wyatt was going to kill her.
Not actual murder, though Diana wouldn’t put it past him if she perturbed him enough, particularly with the mood he was in.
But he was actually doing the perturbing with his completely stoic, cold, and aloof demeanor. He wasn’t talking to her in any way beyond monosyllabic responses to her questions, grunts as a means of reaction, and blank stares that told her he hadn’t listened to a word she said.
The night before had been torture, staying at a cheaper, less friendly inn than New Albany had offered, and still being forced to parade about as though they were a happily married couple. Wyatt hadn’t done his part, looking mostly sullen the entire night while she pretended to dote on a recalcitrant husband.
It wasn’t as though they had a marriage that actually resembled one in truth, but they had been becoming friends, comfortable with each other’s touch and a measure of trust had begun to form. Now it was as though he had tucked himself away into a remote corner of an impenetrable fortress and left her outside with no way of getting in. She had no idea where his head was at or what he was thinking.
He’d always been warm and open with her, but this man she was dealing with would certainly have been one to storm the offices in Denver and fight Archie over having a woman as an agent. Suddenly she was feeling superfluous in this assignment and good for nothing else than an adornment on whatever his plan was.
She looked out the window of their room, absently braiding and unbraiding her hair. He slept on the far side of the room, his soft snoring strangely soothing, as it had been the night before. Yet she had slept poorly, too concerned about him and too frazzled about a lack of strategy for their time in Salem to find any rest.
She had to make him talk before anything else happened today. She couldn’t be left in the dark, not with what happening in the area.
A knock at the door sounded and she moved quickly to it, Wyatt’s snores fading at once.
Tossing her unbound braid over her shoulder, Diana went to the door, opening it slightly. “Yes?”
A maid stood there, bobbing slightly, a tray of breakfast in hand. “Mrs. Pratt thought you might like some breakfast, ma’am. You and your husband barely ate a bite last night, she says.”
Diana smiled and nodded, opening the door wider. “True, we were both so tired from our journey.” She gestured into the room and the maid moved to the table, setting the tray down.
The maid glanced over to where Wyatt was, somehow miraculously in the bed now instead of on the floor, then smiled at Diana. “Your husband seemed a bit out of sorts last evening, ma’am. I trust a good night of sleep will do him good.”
“Yes,” Diana murmured, trying for a fond look towards the bed. “He doesn’t travel well, and he has some family concerns weighing heavily on him. He is always much better in the morning. Quite warm and lovely. You will see quite a different side of him later today, I promise you.”
A soft clearing of the throat brought Diana back to the maid, and she smiled, more embarrassed than anything else. “Apologies. We’re newly married, and I am still adjusting to the sensation.”
“Understood, ma’am.” The maid bobbed, then moved out of the room, shutting the door softly behind her.
Diana turned to the tray and fidgeted with the food and utensils.
“Thank you.”
The low voice brought her around, though she wasn’t surprised at hearing him. He hadn’t snored since the knock on the door, and he always snored when he slept. “For what?” she replied.
Wyatt sat up in the bed, his shirt loose, and rubbed at his already disheveled hair. “Making excuses for me. Good ones, too.”
Diana shrugged, leaning against the table. “It seemed appropriate.” She lowered her chin a little, staring more directly. “Do you want to tell me what is going on with you?”
He paused and looked at her, then looked away. “Not really.”
“Well, you’re going to have to tell me something, Wyatt,” she sighed, reaching for an orange and beginning to peel it. “Anything would do. Why I am making excuses for you looking as though you’d been through a war when we arrived. Why you haven’t spoken to me in sincerity in over a day. What exactly you have in mind for us here in Salem.” She shook her head again, placing part of the rind back on the table. “Something. I’m not nagging as your wife, pretend or otherwise. This is your partner wondering if you’re going to shoot at something, if I need to shoot, too, or if I need to find a good hiding place until you come to yourself and then make up some more excuses for you.”
Wyatt gripped the back of his neck, and heaved an exhale. “I deserve that.”
“I know.”
His head jerked up, and Diana smiled when it did so. He laughed once, nodding. “Right. I just… I have a very hard time accepting that these people think they can take justice into their own hands. There are laws, and they are there for a reason, and it is not for anyone to act outside of them and to do so without repercussions.”
“I can understand that,” she replied. “Particularly with the Crofters. But when it comes to what happened to the Reno gang…”
“Don’t say it,” Wyatt warned. “Don’t.”
Diana went back to peeling her orange. “They were going to be sentenced to death anyway, right? So what’s an earlier death?”
“One without a fair trial,” Wyatt shot back, disbelief ringing in his voice. “Without judgment. Without the full backing of the law of the United States of America. Diana, the murder of a criminal is still a murder. We don’t get to make up laws to suit our feelings. No one does.”
The energy that had prompted the speech encouraged her more than anything else could have, and a faint burst of warmth spread through her chest. His color was high, his eyes were bright, and he was looking at her. Actually looking.
She smiled softly. “All right. Justice through the law.” She pulled the rest of the rind from the orange and set it on the table, peeling the fruit into pieces. “So what are we doing with our one day in Salem?”
Wyatt leaned back against the headboard and rubbed his hands over his face, then dropped them into his lap. “First, how about you toss me an apple?”
Diana did so, her aim accurate, which made him smile. “Done. Next?”
He tapped his apple in her direction. “Cheeky. Despite being out of sorts last night, I actually made some decent connections to get us somewhere.”
“How fortunate,” Diana returned, sitting in a nearby chair. “Like what?”
Wyatt took a large bite from the apple, chewing thoughtfully. “When the townsfolk get enough drink in them, they like to talk. Not all of them, obviously, but the ones I met did, and I was happy to pay for enough drinks to have them singing like a flock of canaries.”
Diana tipped her head impertinently. “Do canaries flock?”
He ignored her. “The man we need to find today, if we can, is Randolph Hughes. He’s actually a former mayor, if you can believe it. He is now the local pastor, and his congregation loves to obey him.”
“So the shepherd leads his flock into the depths of sin under the guise of heavenly justice?” Diana scoffed with as much derision as she could around a piece of orange. “Now that’s ironic.”
“Clever.” Wyatt swung his legs off of the bed, stretched his back, then came over to the table and dropped himself in the other chair, smiling rather ruefully. “I say we eat and get going. Could be a very busy day.”
Diana reached for the largest biscuit on the tray and nodded firmly. “Yes, dear.”
As it happened, the good reverend wasn’t difficult to find.
He was at the church.
Praying.
Thankfully, he heard them enter, courtesy of the floorboards creaking with their every step.
“So much for a reverent approach,” Wyatt muttered to Diana beside him.
She only widened her eyes in response, taking in the middle-aged man now rising from the front pew. He wasn’t sure what she was se
eing, but it was clear something had caught her attention.
Clever girl.
The pastor turned down the aisle, and came towards them, smiling with all the warmth one expected from a man of the cloth, yet his eyes held suspicion. “Welcome to the house of the Lord. I am Reverend Hughes, do you come to pray?”
Wyatt smiled and slipped his arm around Diana. “No thank you, Pastor. My wife and I have just come into Salem, and we were told that you might be available to show us around. If it won’t take you from your holy duties, of course.”
“We wouldn’t want to intrude on your time with the Almighty,” Diana murmured, dipping her chin in a show of modesty. “It must be so precious to you.”
An Agent for Diana (The Pinkerton Matchmaker, Book 10) Page 8
