by Tess LeSue
But when she woke, she was still in the small house in San Jose, with Leonard snoring drunkenly beside her.
He was snoring exactly like that on the morning destiny came calling. She could hear him from the yard, where she was breaking her back over a cauldron of laundry, and had been since before dawn. She stabbed at the boiling linens, imagining she was stabbing Leonard. She was working her fingers to the bone while he did nothing. Well, nothing except rack up debt, stay out all night and whip their son. Phin hadn’t forgiven his father for the strapping, and neither had Georgiana. After that, she made sure the children were never alone with him.
She was so busy stabbing things that she didn’t hear their guests arrive, not until she heard the yapping, followed by Wilby squealing with joy.
“Woof!” he was screeching. “Woof! Woof!”
She looked up to see Wilby and Woof wrestling joyfully in the yard.
“Where did he come from?” she asked, shocked.
“He’s with me,” a familiar voice drawled.
“Tom!” She faltered as she caught sight of him. “Tom?” she said, a little more uncertainly. It was Tom. But he was dressed like an Indian. Rides With Death, she thought with a shiver, remembering Matt’s story: the gunslingers hunting them, the shooting, faking Deathrider’s death.
Deathrider clearly didn’t want to stay dead. His hair was decorated with a single black-tipped eagle feather. He was in full Indian garb, and he even had an Indian woman with him. A woman and a baby.
“You got married?” she said in shock.
“No.” His eerily pale eyes flicked around the yard, looking for someone. “But I hear you did.” The pale eyes flicked back to her. “A couple of times.”
“Matt’s not here,” she blurted.
“So I hear. But I’m not looking for Matt. I’m looking for the other one.”
“The other one?”
“Your other husband.”
“Tom brought Woof!” Wilby crowed. He threw his arms around Tom’s legs and grinned up at him.
Deathrider lifted the boy off his legs and handed him to Georgiana. “Keep the kids out here, hmm?” he said. “I assume that noise is your husband. Or do you have a sick pig in there?”
Georgiana watched, nonplussed, as he strode into the house.
“Ruth,” Wilby called, squirming out of his mother’s grip.
“You’re Will’s wife?” the woman asked, stepping into Georgiana’s yard.
“I beg your pardon?” Georgiana frowned. “Who’s Will?”
“Daddy!” Wilby told her.
The screen door to the house flew open, and Georgiana screeched as Leonard came tumbling down the steps.
“Stand up and fight, you son of a bitch,” Deathrider snarled.
Leonard didn’t, of course. Fighting wasn’t his style. Running was. But Deathrider wouldn’t let him run.
“Wait!” Georgiana yelled, stepping between them. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“This son of a bitch turned us over to a posse,” Deathrider spat. “He told them we kidnapped Wilby. We woke up one morning and Wilby was gone, and next thing we knew we were surrounded by maniacs trying to lynch us.”
“Us?”
“You can’t trust him. He’s nothing but a savage!” Leonard spat. He struggled to his feet. “I saved our son from these savages.”
Deathrider’s lip curled. “And you gave your other son over to the lynch mob.”
“Other son?” Georgiana’s head was starting to hurt.
The baby gave a squall. Georgiana’s blood went cold. Other son? She turned to see Ruth giving Leonard a cold glare. Oh. Oh my.
“Wilby,” Georgiana called him to her. “Who saved you?”
“The lady.”
“This lady?”
He shook his head.
“He was found at Green River by a Lakota woman named White Buffalo,” Deathrider told her. “The Lakota chief summoned me to take him, because I . . . because I am known to the whites. This filth stole the boy off me when I was delirious with fever and his woman had just given birth.”
His woman.
“Is that your child?” Georgiana asked Leonard bluntly.
In typical Leonard style, he went on full offense. “I’m not a monk,” he blustered, “and you have no right to expect me to be!”
“Did you give your child over to a lynch mob?” She didn’t need to hear the answer. She knew.
The boys had gathered on the porch. Georgiana took in their pinched expressions. She didn’t remember the last time she’d had to discipline the twins, she realized. They hadn’t accidentally shot stones through the windows or spooked the horses or harassed her to use the hunting rifle . . . And when was the last time she’d seen them do backflips or try to juggle knives? When had they laughed or teased their sister?
And Susannah . . . There she was, at the window staring out. She was quieter than ever and prone to sucking her thumb. She carried her doll with her everywhere, something she hadn’t done since she was little. Her father never remembered her name. He called her Susan. Susannah had started out correcting him, but after a while she’d just given up, and now she even answered to “Susan.”
Georgiana met Leo’s gaze. Leonard had made him hard and cynical. If the twins didn’t laugh, Leo didn’t so much as smile.
Georgiana drew herself up to her full height of not much at all and gathered all her courage. She was about to do the bravest, most sensible, most scandalous thing she’d ever done in her life.
“Leonard,” she said, pinning him with an icily haughty stare. “I want a divorce.”
43
AN EARLY SNOWSTORM caught Matt out. He straggled into the closest trading post and resigned himself to spending the winter there. This made two winters in a row that he was sleeping rough. At least there were no gunslingers this year. And Hank Larson, who ran the place, was a decent enough fellow. There were a few old trappers who joined them for the winter as well, sitting around the fire and shooting the breeze for hours on end.
Matt helped Hank fix the place up, and then he took himself off trapping when he got bored. He preferred to be alone. It suited his melancholy.
“It’s got to be a woman,” old Perry told the others one afternoon when they were stuck inside due to the snow flurries that were battering the windows. “I’ll bet you a silver dollar it’s a woman that makes him look like that.”
Matt was sitting by the window, fixing a bear trap, trying to ignore their gossiping.
“That’s not a fair bet,” Roland said, spitting a stream of tobacco into an old pail. It made a thunk. “It’s definitely a woman.”
As the flurries picked up, they fell into talking about women they’d known. The stories grew more ribald as the day darkened and the flurries turned into a more serious snowstorm. Matt ignored them as best he could.
The next morning, he went out trapping, to avoid more talk of women and love and heartbreak. He didn’t want to think about women anymore. Or rather, one woman.
The forest was thick with new snow, the pine boughs lacy. Matt stopped at the crest of the hill, his breath coming in plumes. The snow muffled all sound, but something made him turn. He frowned. There was something at the bottom of the hill. And he thought he heard voices, faint and smothered by the snow. Concerned, he slogged down the hill, glad he’d worn his snow shoes. It wasn’t uncommon for travelers to get caught out on the trail in this weather. Whoever it was must have had a brutally cold time of it last night.
A dog bounded up the hill, barking happily. A puppy came close behind it, tripping and falling face-first in the snow. Matt stopped dead. It couldn’t be . . .
But it was.
At the bottom of the hill sat two familiar wagons and a very familiar Indian, digging the wheels free of snow.
“Deathrider?”
&
nbsp; His friend looked up. “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help?”
“Matt!”
A snowball sailed through the air and hit him full in the face. There was a storm of laughter.
He wiped the snow off, disbelieving.
Another snowball came flying, but he managed to duck this one.
“Matt!” Wilby yelled. He was standing precariously on the wagon seat, waving madly. A hand snapped out of the wagon and grabbed his shirt to stop him falling.
Matt’s heart clenched. He knew that hand.
He’d heard that men hallucinated when they froze to death. They grew warm and peaceful and had dreams so vivid they seemed real. That’s what had happened to him, he decided, as he saw Georgiana emerge from the wagon. She was wearing her traveling clothes, including that vest that drove him wild. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, and her blue eyes were sparkling.
He was dying. This was a hallucination. He was sitting in the snow, lost in the forest, freezing to death. It made sense that he’d dream of her as he died. She was all he ever dreamed about.
Thwack. Another snowball hit him full in the face.
Hell. This was real.
* * *
• • •
“YOU’RE HERE,” HE said stupidly, as soon as they were alone. They were in the stable with the animals. Everyone else was in the trading post, warming up by the fire.
“I am,” she agreed. She looked very pleased with herself.
“But . . . Leonard . . .”
“Yes.” She bit her lip. “There’s still Leonard.”
“He’s your husband,” he reminded her.
“Oh no,” she disagreed. “We had a wedding, but we never had a marriage. He is not, and has never been, my husband. He’s just a man I married.”
Matt frowned, lost.
She pressed her palms against his chest. It was hard to think when she touched him like that. “You’re the only husband I’ve ever had,” she told him earnestly. “You looked after me when I couldn’t look after myself; you showed my sons what it’s like to be a man, my daughter how a man should treat her; you fed us and watched over us, grieved with us and comforted us.”
Her words flowed over him like warm water.
“Matt, I never felt for Leonard the way I feel for you.” Her blue eyes held him captive. “You’re all I want, and all I will ever want. I love you.”
The months of pain and loneliness seemed to blow away, like snowflakes in the wind.
“But . . . Leonard,” he said. “There’s still the matter of Leonard.”
“Yes. He’s like a bad smell,” she said, pulling a face. “He just doesn’t go away.” Her hands slid up his chest until they looped around his neck. “But . . . this is the frontier, after all . . .”
“What are you suggesting?” he asked, suspiciously.
“I’m not suggesting anything.” She swayed closer. “I’m saying I’d rather live in sin with you than in sanctified hell with him.”
“What do you mean?” he said, huskily, distracted by the way her fingers played with the hair at the nape of his neck and the way her body felt as she pressed against him.
“I haven’t kissed anyone but you, touched anyone but you, or loved anyone but you since we said our vows. I consider myself married to you. And this is the frontier. And the whole point of the frontier is that we get to be free. We get to start again. We get to reinvent ourselves. Well, I’m reinventing myself as your wife.”
She stretched on tiptoe and pressed a kiss against his lips.
He didn’t know how to feel. When she said she loved him, his heart soared. But he didn’t want to share her.
“I don’t like that you’re still married to him,” he said gruffly.
“Me neither.” She’d moved on to kissing his neck. It was hard to think when her tongue swirled against his skin. “Don’t worry,” she breathed between kisses, “I’m getting a divorce.”
He grabbed her arms and pulled her away so he could see her face. “You what?”
“I’m getting a divorce.”
Joy shot through him, a pure bolt of it, straight through his heart. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”
She pulled another face. “Well, it’s going to take a while. By the time I write to lawyers and we have it approved, it may be a couple of years.”
“He’s going along with it?”
Georgiana gave him a wicked smile. “Deathrider helped convince him.” She laughed. “Not that he needed much convincing. He hates being married, especially when it’s to a woman without money. And the only thing he hates more than being married is children.” She sighed. “Let’s just say, living with him was a disaster. It wasn’t good for any of us.” Her gaze turned serious. “And I was hopelessly in love with someone else.”
“I love you too,” he told her quietly. He touched her face in wonder, not quite able to believe she was here.
“Matthew Slater, will you marry me? In a year or two . . . and live with me in sin until then? Because I am not waiting two years to make love to you again. Not when we already got married.”
“Yes, Georgiana Slater, I will marry you in a year or two. And I will most definitely live with you in sin until then.” He laughed. “And this time we can have a wedding you can actually enjoy.”
“And a wedding night!”
“Yes,” he told her, kissing her thoroughly. “Yes, yes, yes.”
She squealed as he swept her off her feet and carried her up to the hayloft.
“Unbutton that vest, woman,” he ordered, tossing her into the straw. “It’s been a lonely winter.”
She giggled and hurried to comply. Soon they were naked and kissing hungrily. They were both so desperate, they came quickly the first time. The second time was slightly less rushed. And by the third, they were hitting their stride.
“Give me another shot,” he whispered against her neck after she’d come the third time. “Fourth time’s a charm.”
“Oh yes.”
Late in the day, they were dozing, warm and damp with sweat, when they heard the children come looking for them.
“Matt!” Susannah called.
“Matt!” Flip yelled. “Can you tell Susannah she’s full of hot air?”
Matt poked his head over the edge of the loft. “What do you want? We’re having our honeymoon.”
“You already had your honeymoon,” Phin said scornfully. “I know because I got Seline to make the pie.”
“Seline made the pie?” Georgiana gasped.
Matt winced.
“I should have got the recipe,” she said, running her hand over his naked buttocks. “It was delicious.”
“Honeymoons happen every month,” he lied to the children, “so you better get used to it. Now, what do you want? I’ll answer one question, and then you can go away and leave us to our honeymoon. Tell Hank I said you can have some rock candy. Just add it to my account.”
“Quick, ask him the question, Sook, before he changes his mind about the candy.”
“Do you have magic horses in Oregon?” Susannah shouted up the ladder.
“Nah.” Matt shook his head and sighed with exaggerated regret. “They don’t get along with the magic bears.”
Georgiana pressed her cheek into the hard muscle of Matt’s naked back and smiled. She could see this living-in-sin business was going to suit them all very well.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The westerns I’ve always loved are larger-than-life affairs, from Larry McMurtry’s novels, to old movies like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Oklahoma!, The Searchers and High Noon, to the revisionist gritty beauty of Unforgiven and Dances with Wolves, to the Shakespearean magnificence of Deadwood. While I base my westerns in history, it’s a heightened Technicolor kind of history, with some liber
ties taken for the sake of the story.
The biggest historical liberty I have taken in Bound for Sin concerns the dime novels that make Deathrider’s life a misery. In my novel, dime novels exist from the 1840s, when in actual fact they weren’t in publication until 1860. The very first dime novel was published in 1860 in the Beadle’s Dime Novels series (they coined the term). It was a work by Ann S. Stephens, called Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter, which was actually a reprint of a story that she had serialized for the Ladies’ Companion journal in 1839.
These stories were out there being published in journals at the time my characters were heading west (the 1840s and 1850s), but dime novels were not. But the “western” has a series of tropes that we are all familiar with, and dime novels are one of them. It’s much easier to use the term “dime novel” than to clumsily explain serialized stories in journals. My fiction is more fiction than history, but this is one stretching of the truth I wanted to acknowledge.
Especially since Ava Archer will continue to play havoc with the Plague of the West . . .
Turn the page for a sneak peek of
BOUND FOR TEMPTATION
Coming soon from Jove
Moke Hill, California, 1850
SHE WAS RICH. Standing in her fancy office over the saloon, Seline watched as the lawyer’s fountain pen scratched at the ledger, forming a beautiful little billow of zeros. She had to pinch herself. In less than a year, the Heart of Gold had made her wealthier than she’d ever dreamed of being. And this wasn’t even all of it. She still had two other businesses to cash in. Once she’d sold the other whorehouses in Angels Camp and Mariposa, she’d almost be as rich as Midas himself.
She watched as the prissy eastern lawyer transposed all of those lovely zeros onto the contract, her heart a tight little ball in her chest. Each zero he added was another nail in the coffin of her current life. Goodbye, Seline. Goodbye, mining town. Goodbye, men. That money meant a nice little house in San Francisco, maybe even one with a view of the bay. It meant finishing her days when the sun was setting, rather than working through the night. No more hitting her pillow as dawn was breaking. It meant sitting on her lonesome, drinking her first coffee of the day in peace, without having to settle accounts and shoo out the last malingerers filling up her beds. It meant hammering out no more quarrels and mopping up no more tears and helping no more damn fool girls. Once she’d collected the last of her money, Seline planned never to see the inside of another whorehouse in her life.
