Tears froze on the corners of Jake’s eyes as the horse fell in his tracks. He turned his back on the fallen animal. His job now was to survive. Somehow, he had to walk the seven or so miles back to the house. He found a crooked mesquite branch sticking out of the snow and used it for a crutch. He put his full weight on his bad ankle and cried out at the excruciating pain.
“Damn it all to hell! That hurts!”
He had to keep walking. The storm could be over in an hour, or it could last for days. There was no rescue on the horizon. He had to save himself, or die.
“Where is he?”
Miranda shifted the baby on her hip to put her body between the child and the frightening stranger. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”
“Doors around here are never locked, young lady. Never know when a traveling man might need a meal or refuge from a storm or from a band of marauding savages.” He looked past her shoulder, then repeated, “Where is he?”
Miranda frowned. Doors left unlocked? Strangers walking in unannounced? She’d never heard of such a thing. In Chicago, the last thing her father had done each night was make sure the doors and windows were all secured. Surely this stranger should at least have knocked. She realized she was totally defenseless and glanced around the kitchen for a weapon. Despite all the dirty dishes, she didn’t see a single knife she could grab to protect herself.
She would have to brazen it out. “Why are you here?”
“I want to see that cowardly, back-stabbing stepson of mine.”
Miranda shuddered with relief when the man identified himself as her new stepfather-in-law, even though she was shocked at the ugly picture he’d painted of her husband. It was easy to imagine why Jake might despise his stepfather. She was quickly forming her own unsavory opinion of Alexander Blackthorne.
“We haven’t been introduced,” Miranda said. “My name is—”
“I know who you are and how you got here.”
Miranda flushed. There was nothing wrong with being a mail-order bride, but this tall, broad-shouldered man, with his sharp cheekbones and silver-winged black hair and his piercing, ice-blue eyes, made her feel like she’d committed some crime. She lifted her chin and said, “Then you know the man you’re calling names is my husband. I’ll thank you to mind your tongue when you’re in my home.”
She was startled when he grinned, and even more astounded when he said, “He’s got himself a hellion this time. Look, girl—”
“You may address me as Mrs. Creed.”
The grin broadened. Then he wrinkled his nose. “Well, Mrs. Creed, that baby stinks.”
Miranda was immediately put on the defensive. “I was on my way to change her diaper when you showed up and started—”
“Tell that sorry stepson of mine I’m looking for him,” he interrupted brusquely.
The glimpse of caring human was gone and the heartless monster was back. Her neck hairs hackled. “I don’t believe I will.” Miranda didn’t know what gave her the nerve to speak so defiantly, except she’d formed an instant dislike for this odious, larger-than-life character, especially because she also found him both intriguing and charming. “If you want to speak to Jake, he said he’d be riding fence, whatever that is.”
“He’s a little late,” Blackthorne said. “A bunch of his cattle are already eating grass and drinking Bitter Creek water on my side of the divide.”
“Oh.” That explained his appearance in Jake’s kitchen. “I don’t know where to tell you to find him, Mr. Blackthorne.”
“Just Blackthorne,” he said. “No mister.”
“Is that because you’re a titled gentleman? A duke, perhaps?”
Jake had mentioned his stepfather might be a lord. Miranda had been fascinated by English royalty all her life and, along with her mother, had made a study of the great families of England. Blackthorne was one of them. The line of Blackthorne dukes ran back several centuries. She couldn’t resist asking whether Jake’s stepfather was an honest-to-goodness nobleman.
“I believe the Duke of Blackthorne’s family name is Wharton,” she continued. “Are you perhaps Alexander Wharton, Duke of Blackthorne?” she asked with a whimsical smile. “Should I be addressing you as Your Grace?”
His eyes narrowed. “Keep what you think you know to yourself, Mrs. Creed. Here in Texas I’m plain Alexander Blackthorne.”
“Why is that?” she asked, truly curious now, since he hadn’t denied being a duke. “Why would you give up your title and come to America? Why not use the Wharton name? Why call yourself Blackthorne, if you’re not going to use the title that goes with it? Of course, we don’t have royalty here in America, but—”
“I’ll be taking my leave now,” he said abruptly. “Tell Jake to get his cattle off my land by sundown today or—” He stopped himself, growled “Bloody hell!” under his breath, then said, “If his cattle aren’t gone by sunrise tomorrow, I’ll consider them mine.”
He left the house in a swirl of icy wind, slamming the kitchen door behind him.
Anna Mae clung to her and said, “Mean man.”
“Yes, sweetie, he is,” Miranda agreed. “Let’s go get you changed. Then I need to talk to your grandpa.”
After she’d changed the baby in a small downstairs room she found fitted out so Slim could care for the child during the daylight hours, Miranda set Anna Mae down to play on a blanket near the fire in the parlor. She picked up odds and ends that were scattered around the room and made a pile of stuff to be moved to its proper place while she waited for Nick and Harry to return with the first batch of cut logs.
“It’s cold as a witch’s tit out there!” Nick said as he dropped his load of logs near the fireplace.
“Nicholas Jackson Wentworth!”
“I know, I know,” he said. “Watch my language. But it is that cold, Miranda.”
Miranda cringed at the thought of going out in such weather to find Jake and give him Blackthorne’s message. Maybe Slim would know better what she should do. “Would you please watch the baby? I’m going to talk to Slim.”
“He won’t want to talk to you,” Nick muttered. “None of them want us here. Except maybe this baby here,” he said, picking up Anna Mae, who clung to him like a limpet.
“Give it some time, Nick.”
“It’s not like we can go anywhere,” he said. “It’s cold as a witch’s—” He stopped himself, grimaced, and said, “Anyway, it’s cold.”
“Thanks for the warning,” she said. “I might have to leave the house for a while.”
“And go where?” Nick said. “It’s snowing.”
“Oh, no. Really?” Miranda looked out the parlor window and, sure enough, large snowflakes were drifting down. She frowned. How likely was it she could find Jake if the trail got covered with snow? There didn’t seem to be much sense in going out in this kind of weather. She was more likely to get lost than end up helping Jake.
She wondered if Blackthorne would enforce his threat in spite of the weather. How was Jake supposed to move his cattle by sunrise tomorrow if he didn’t know they’d strayed? Of course, he might already have found the break in the fence and gone hunting the missing cattle on his own, which would mean she’d be heading out in this frigid weather on a useless errand.
As she left the kitchen, Miranda decided the best thing to do was tell Slim what Blackthorne had said and let him make the decision whether she should go hunting Jake.
She hesitated before knocking on Slim’s door, which was on the opposite—unburned—wing of the house from the parlor. She could understand why the old man might resent her taking his daughter’s place in the household. That didn’t make it any easier to endure his bad temper. She took a deep breath and told herself to remain calm, no matter what the old curmudgeon said.
She knocked, and Slim called back, “What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Don’t have nothin’ to say to you. Go away.”
“I need some advice.”
A pause and then, “Do what you want. I don’t care.”
“The problem is, I don’t know what to do. Could I please come in and talk to you?”
“Come on in,” he said gruffly.
Miranda opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind her. Slim’s dark brown eyes looked sunken in his face, and his body looked frail in the battered wooden wheelchair. She saw the unmade bed had been lowered by having the four legs cut off so the paralyzed man could slide from the chair to the bed and back.
Miranda realized Slim must do a lot of reading and, perhaps, writing when he was alone in this room. A bookcase full of heavy tomes covered one wall. A desk complete with pen and ink sat against another. Slim’s bedroom also had a fireplace, and she welcomed the toasty warmth of the crackling fire.
“Thought I heard someone in the house,” Slim said. “Who was it?”
“Blackthorne.”
“That son of a bitch! He knows better than to come here.”
“He wanted me to tell Jake his cattle had gotten through the fence onto Blackthorne land. He wants them moved by tomorrow at sunrise, or he’s going to confiscate them.”
“Like hell he will! That’s stealin’, plain and simple.”
“The cattle are trespassing, I suppose,” Miranda said.
“He knows you can’t keep barbed wire from comin’ down now and again. Weather, wind, cattle rubbin’ up against mesquite posts, knockin’ ’em over. He’s got no right to take Jake’s cattle.”
“Do you think Jake will find the break in the fence and know his cattle have strayed?”
Slim chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Might. Might not.”
“How likely is Blackthorne to make good on his threat?”
“Oh, he’ll take ’em, all right. He’s lookin’ for any excuse he can find to make life hard for Jake. He wants this land.”
“I considered riding out to find Jake to warn him, but it’s snowing. I don’t see how I could find him if I can’t see the trail.”
Slim tugged at the gray whiskers on his chin as he eyed the snow out his bedroom window through the tattered pink curtains. It was blowing sideways now. “I can tell you where I think Jake might be. You follow the fence, and it’ll take you right to him.”
“You don’t think it’s too dangerous?” she asked, her heart beating hard in her chest at the thought of going out all by herself in a strange place in what was fast becoming a blizzard.
“Everythin’ here in Texas is dangerous,” Slim said. “Sometimes you have to take risks.” He sneered. “That is, if you’re not too scared.”
She was plenty scared. She could see Slim wanted her to fail Jake. It would be one more way he could lower her in Jake’s esteem. She looked down her dainty nose at him and said, “I’m not afraid.”
Slim gave her instructions where to go, told her which horse would be easiest to ride, then asked, “You know how to saddle a horse, missy?”
She could put on an English saddle. How much different could a Western saddle be? “I’ll manage. I know you usually take care of the baby. Would you mind keeping an eye on Harry for me? Nick doesn’t always pay him enough mind.”
“The runt can play in here with Anna Mae. It’s warmer than the rest of the house.”
She opened her mouth to correct his use of the term runt to describe Harry, then closed it. No sense starting an argument now. She knew he’d picked up the term from Jake. Once she got Jake to stop using it, Slim would likely stop as well. She ended up saying, “Thank you, Slim.”
“Don’t want thanks. Just be sure you find Jake. Don’t get lost and cause him more trouble. He’s got enough on his plate as it is.”
“I’ll do my best,” she promised.
After leaving Three Oaks, Blackthorne joined his cowhands on the range. He’d sent them out into the storm early to move stock closer to the ranch house, in case the snow continued for several days and it became necessary to drop hay to feed them. He hadn’t gone near Jake’s cattle, but he knew, with their tails to the icy wind, they’d drift farther onto his land.
In light of his wife’s threat, Alex had debated whether to move Jake’s longhorns back across the fence but had decided against it. He’d already given his stepson an extra half day to retrieve his stock. That was as much as he was willing to bend. He would deal with his wife when—if—things came to a head.
By mid-afternoon, the lowering temperatures and blowing snow finally forced Alex to call his men in. He took the time to unsaddle and rub down his own horse, despite the fact that he had a man working in the stable. Alex had learned when he was still a tenderfoot that a good cowman took care of his own horse. He hadn’t forgotten that lesson.
He’d learned a great deal more than that the first year he’d spent in the West. Cowboys had their own code of living—not unlike Society’s rules in England—that must be followed. The difference was, out here he had to earn the respect of the men he hired to work for him. In England, he had that respect by virtue of his name and aristocratic rank.
Alex felt his stomach roll as he remembered the final betrayal that had caused him to leave his patrimony behind and start life anew. He’d married Cricket because it had seemed the most expedient thing to do. Since he didn’t plan to love his wife, one would do as well as another. He smiled ruefully as he acknowledged that he would have had a bloody fight on his hands if he’d tried to evict her.
Cricket hadn’t believed his account of her husband’s death. She’d waited for confirmation from Creed’s battlefield commander. It had come a month later. Alex knew she’d agreed to marry him only because she’d wanted to be sure that her sons had a home when they returned from the war.
The hitch had come when she’d asked that the marriage be in name only.
Alex had refused. “I need sons to carry on after me. I need a wife to provide them.”
Cricket had reminded him that she wasn’t in the first bloom of youth. That she might not be able to give him sons. Even if she was able to conceive a child, it might be female.
It had been reckless on his part to take her to wife, because what she’d said was true. But he’d been entranced by the image of Cricket Creed standing on her front porch confronting him, rifle in hand. Imagine the kind of sons a woman like that would breed if he could get her pregnant! She was the antithesis of the women in the world he’d left behind, which was probably why he found her so desirable as a wife.
Their marriage had been fruitful. He’d been dismayed when Cricket had borne twins, which ran in the Blackthorne family. He was a twin himself, and his relationship with his brother had poisoned his life.
Of course, in England, the aristocratic title and wealth and property all went to the elder twin, with the younger receiving only what the elder chose to give him. The greed and jealousy and envy of one brother for what the other possessed had run rampant, purposely uncurbed by either parent. Alex had endured a miserable childhood.
There were no such rules of inheritance in America, where a father’s fortune was split equally among his heirs. There was no need for one twin to be jealous of the other. He was encouraged to see that, from the very beginning, Cricket treated the twins equally. He realized early on that she didn’t care which had been born first. The red string on the elder twin’s ankle had come untied during the night so often, he wasn’t sure himself whether Nash or Noah had actually been born first.
He was glad it didn’t matter.
Cricket’s son Jake had returned in 1864, his shooting arm badly wounded in the Shenandoah Valley campaign, and stayed. Cricket’s other two sons, Flint and Ransom, didn’t return to Lion’s Dare until more than a year later, when the war ended. They left together soon after, driving a small herd of cattle north to the Wyoming Territory to start a new life. Alex knew his wife missed them every day, the way he knew that the loss of Jarrett Creed had left a hole in her heart.
By the time he’d learned the truth, by the time it became apparent that Jarrett Creed had not di
ed at Gettysburg, Alex was in love with his wife. So much in love, that he couldn’t imagine life without her.
Alex felt a pang of guilt for what he’d done and forced it down.
He’d made an honest mistake thinking Jarrett Creed was dead. The man who’d impersonated Creed in the poker game had died at Gettysburg, and Creed’s death had been mistakenly confirmed by his commander in the field, who’d seen him fall in battle with a head wound.
Jarrett Creed had, in fact, been shot twice on the field of battle. His head had been grazed by a musket ball that had left him both blind and not knowing who he was. He’d also taken shrapnel from a cannon to his knee that had left him on crutches. Jarrett had been taken in and nursed back to health by a widow who lived near the battlefield.
His sight had never returned, but the instant he recovered his memory, he’d returned home.
Unfortunately, he was too late. Cricket had already remarried and borne Alexander Blackthorne’s sons.
Alex had heard the story of Jarrett Creed’s misfortune from the man’s own lips. Alex had often wondered what would have happened if Cricket had been home that day instead of him. She’d gone to visit her sister Bay. She’d left the twins at home because they both had colds. Alex had been home because he was expecting the delivery of a bull he’d bought from another rancher.
If Cricket had known Jarrett was alive, Alex was almost certain she would have gone back to her husband. Even a year into their marriage, he’d loved her a great deal more than she’d loved him. But he hadn’t been willing to lose her. So he’d said what was necessary to make Jarrett Creed go away and never come back.
He’d told Jarrett that Cricket loved him now. Creed might have his wife back but at a terrible price. Alex would keep Lion’s Dare, since possession was nine-tenths of the law, and he would keep the twins his wife had borne. Creed might have Cricket back, but in the process, he would tear her in two. She could have Jarrett, but she would lose both her children and her home.
Texas Bride: A Bitter Creek Novel Page 12
