“Adam, it’s not my choice, but—”
“I know,” he interrupted with gentle regret. “You can’t ignore the appetites of a hundred jacks simply to satisfy mine. Maybe I should convince the other flunkeys to let me watch the stove every night. Then I could make love with you until we had our fill of each other.”
As her arms swept up along his wool coat, she whispered, “Is that possible?”
“For me to have my fill of you?” He shook his head and smiled. “I can’t imagine a time when you aren’t in my mind and in my dreams, even if you can’t be in my arms.”
“But tonight you have the stove watch.” She teased the warm skin beneath his collar. “It would be such a shame for you to watch that stove all alone.”
He drew her bonnet ribbons aside. Each moist flick of his tongue sparked through her soul to settle in the heated depths of her body. As his mouth glided along her chin, she fought the yearning to beg him to love her in the nearest snowdrift.
He smiled. “Let’s make this a short walk, honey, flunkeys or no.”
“I think you’re right.” She tugged on the brim of his hat and laughed when he grimaced. “What an amazing thing! Adam Lassiter is correct about something.”
“It’s not so unusual. I was right about—” His face became rigid.
“What’s wrong?”
“Wait here, honey.”
Gypsy followed his gaze. Something darkened the road ahead of them. She squinted, but could not discern what the jumble of bright blue fabric might be. “Adam, what—”
“Just wait here.” He strode down the road.
At his startled curse, she cried, “What is it, Adam?”
“Just a minute.” His voice sounded as if he had swallowed wrong.
“Adam?”
“I said just a minute. Can’t you have patience for once?”
When he knelt, she clasped her gloved hands in front of her face. Another low curse struck her ears. The pain in the single word sliced through her with the force of a blizzard wind. She stepped forward.
“Stay back, Gypsy.” Before she could take another step, Adam surged to his feet. He seized her arms and pushed her back, all the time staying between her and what lay on the ground. She opened her mouth to protest, but he interrupted her. “You don’t want to see her, Gypsy.”
“Her? What—”
He whipped off his coat. When he turned away, she knew he was covering what remained of Rose Quinlan. It must be Rose. She was the only other woman here.
Gypsy’s stomach wrenched when she saw the stain on her sleeves where Adam had touched her. Slowly she lifted her arms in the faint light of the setting sun.
The blood on the dark wool shattered dams of memory, spilling forth scenes of mangled corpses rotting in the sunshine. Week after week, death had exulted amid smoke from vomiting cannon and the numbing crash of artillery. They had feared the world was coming to an end. As the days passed with the same suffering, they feared it never would.
That had been only the beginning of the horror.
The never-ending horror.
“Gypsy?”
“No,” she groaned.
“Gypsy!”
She shook her head. So many dead. She could not escape.
Adam gripped her shoulders and jolted her out of her terror. She closed her eyes and clung to him. “Gypsy?” Gray tainted his features.
She whispered, “Is it Rose?”
“Yes, but you guessed that.”
“Yes,” she answered as quietly. “Is she dead?”
“Yes.”
“I can go back and—”
“No!” He grabbed her arm, not noticing how she winced as his bloody hands touched her. “I’ll take you back to camp. She can wait. Curse Farley and his asinine pride!”
“But who could have done this?”
He smiled coldly. “That’s the question, isn’t it? I can give you one guess.”
“The same man who killed Lolly Yerkes?”
Herding her ahead of him, he said with a grim tone which ate into her heart, “You’d better hope it is. Otherwise, we’re dealing with two murderers. One we might be able to uncover. With two, we’re at their mercy.”
“Don’t even suggest that, Adam.”
“It’s time someone did. Before you end up as dead as Lolly and Rose.”
Adam’s words rang through Gypsy’s head. She stayed in the kitchen, agreeing not to leave it without one of the flunkeys. When he went to take the terrible tidings to Farley, she sat at the table and cradled her forehead in her hands.
A cup was shoved in front of her. Steam struck her face, but could not warm the frozen emptiness inside her. Slowly she looked at Oscar, who was lowering his lanky form onto the bench across from her.
“I don’t know where you keep the key for the liquor cupboard, Gypsy, but …”
She waved him to silence. “Whiskey won’t help.”
“Forgetting will.”
“Then I’ll have a headache and a heartache.” A smile strained her tight lips.
He clasped his hands on the table, tightening them until his knuckles were as colorless as his face. “Gypsy, could it be the same man who killed Lolly?”
“I asked Adam about that. For the love of heaven, who would want to kill those two women? They have—had—nothing in common.”
“They both slept with a man for a price.” A flush climbed his cheeks. Leaning his head against his fists, he whispered a prayer.
She patted his soft hair. Anything she said to comfort him would be a lie. His shoulders quivered, and she knew he was sobbing.
“Come on, Oscar,” she whispered. “Someone will have to go for Reverend Frisch, so we’d better have food packed.”
“Gypsy, how can you act normal when things are so crazy?” he choked.
“Farley is my friend, and I must be strong for him.”
“That’s not fair!” He bounced to his feet.
“It’s not meant to be.” She sighed. “Let’s get to work. It’s the only way to deal with the pain.”
Gypsy took her own words to heart as she busied herself fixing a grand meal for the jacks. As she had expected, the men drifted into the cook shack. She served sandwiches and bowls of thick soup. Listening to their questions, she told what little she knew. She was surprised in retrospect that Adam had not told her how Rose had died.
When she came back into the kitchen, Adam was talking to the flunkeys. She flung her arms around him. He rubbed her back gently and asked, “How are you doing, Gypsy?”
“I’m all right. How about you?”
“Not all right. Not by a long shot.” He sighed as he glanced past her.
Her fingers clenched his arm. One slot of the knife rack was empty.
“Lor’!” gasped Bert.
“Do you think he stole it?” Per’s voice was less than a whisper.
Lurching to the stove, Gypsy poured coffee for her crew. She put the cups on the table and fixed sandwiches. She had to keep busy. Otherwise, she would see … she swallowed her moan.
She froze when Bert asked, “Do you think ’e’ll come back ’ere with the knife? We should set a watch for ’im.” He glanced back at Gypsy. “Not ’er. ’E might be after ’er next.”
“Gypsy’s off the stove watch for good,” Adam answered with an authority no one questioned.
If she protested, he would convince Farley to send her to Saginaw. But she could not go there. The person who had written those horrible notes had sent them from Saginaw. Maybe he was gone, because no more letters had come. But maybe he was still there, waiting for her.
“Good,” mumbled the Englishman around a mouthful of sandwich. “She must be watched before ’e gets the idea ’e can slit ’er throat, too.”
With a soft cry, she whirled away. She grabbed her coat and raced out the back door.
Glaring at Bert, Adam demanded, “Why are you blabbing all the gory details?”
“I thought she knew. She was with you when you
found ’er.”
Per interjected, “Adam would have kept her from seeing what was done to Rose.” His aged gaze settled on Adam. “Gypsy should leave.”
“She won’t.”
“If you spoke to her—”
Adam chuckled coldly. “No one can convince Gypsy Elliott to do what she should.”
“Farley?” suggested Oscar.
“No one.” He pushed away from the table. “I’ll talk to her, but we all have to keep her from bumbling into that madman’s hands.”
Bert nodded as he lifted his cup. “We’ll not let ’im near ’er. You can be sure of that! Gypsy won’t die like Rose did.”
Gypsy battled the sickness aching through her. Her fingers inched along the logs as she walked around the back of the cook shack. She seldom used the missing knife, because it was unwieldy. Holding her hands over her middle, she ordered her stomach to stop tumbling like a snowball down a hill.
A man strode toward her. The silhouette wore a frock coat. Farley! She had thought he would remain with Rose’s body at his house.
“Calvin, I’m so sorry,” she said when he drew even with her.
“I don’t want to hear it!”
“Hear what?” She had not expected her sympathy to be thrown back into her face.
“I don’t want to hear you say I told you so!”
“You did what you thought was best.”
Tears glistened in his dark eyes, burning like liquid fire. He grabbed her arms. Shaking her viciously, he cried, “What I thought was best? Rose is dead! Dead! Because I didn’t listen to her!”
“Calvin,” she moaned as she tried to escape his fury and grief, “hurting me won’t change anything.”
“Do you know what it’s like to have your beating heart ripped out of your chest and know everyone blames you for what has happened?” His laugh had a hysterical tint as he shook her on each word. His fingers cut like steel blades into her arms.
She groaned, “No one blames you.”
“No?” He jarred her teeth with another sharp jolt. “You do! Why couldn’t it have been you instead of her?”
“Farley, let her go!” came a shout. Adam rushed out of the cookhouse.
“Get out of here, Lassiter, or you’ll be walking. I’m not finished with Gypsy yet.”
With what sounded like a laugh, Adam said, “Oh, yes, you are.”
Fabric tore with a scream. Gypsy stumbled backward and stared from her torn sleeve to where Adam had spun Farley away. Her hands pressed to her mouth as Adam’s fist crashed into the camp manager’s chin. The older man dropped to the snow. Blood coursed from his lip, but he didn’t move.
Adam called to the kitchen crew. Bert rushed forward to heave Farley’s arm over his shoulder. Taking the other side, Adam grinned when they lifted the senseless man to his feet.
“Can we put him in your room, honey?”
She nodded, not caring what Adam called her in front of the flunkeys. Everything was falling apart. How could Calvin Farley say he wanted her dead? She had thought he was her friend. She had thought … for the love of heaven! Had Farley sent the threatening notes? No, she could not believe that.
Stumbling after the others, she whispered her thanks to Per as he helped her inside. She pulled off her coat. Staring at the torn sleeve for a breathless second, she tossed the wrap on the table. Her legs were numb as she staggered toward her bedroom. When she bumped into a hard form, she pushed past Bert and went into her room.
Adam did not smile as he stared at Farley, who was sprawled across the bed. “I hit him a little harder than I should have, I guess. He’s still out.” Rubbing his sore knuckles, he added, “Are you all right?”
She pulled a washcloth from the pile on the table and dipped it in the tepid water. Putting the cloth on Farley’s head, she whispered, “Not really. It’s not easy to hear a man wish you were dead.”
“He may not have meant that.”
Tossing another rag into the water, she laughed coldly. “He was pretty clear.”
“I heard him. Better than you, I’m sure.” He lifted a strand of her loosened hair from her shoulder. “I think he was lamenting the fact he couldn’t win your heart. He knows you wouldn’t have been frightened into doing something as stupid as leaving camp alone.”
“I’m not so sure of that.” She walked toward the door.
He followed, halting her with his hand on her elbow, wanting to draw her into his arms and soothe her pain. “I am, Gypsy. He may have joked about your taking Rose’s place, but he was serious.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered with a sigh. “Rose is dead.”
“And you’re in danger.”
“You’re making something out of nothing. I’m not in danger.”
“You are. I know—” A groan interrupted him.
He cursed under his breath as she bent over Farley. Why hadn’t he seen this before? The answers to the puzzle he was trying to solve might be hidden in Gypsy’s soft green eyes, which could not conceal her fear.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Oscar brushed fresh snow from his shoulders. Like everyone in the camp, his steps were heavy and his smile fleeting. Instead of offering Gypsy a joke, he placed a folded newspaper on the table near where she was pouring a cup of tea for her lunch.
“Chauncey told me this came in the mail for you,” he said as she regarded it with surprise.
“For me?” She picked the newspaper up and slit the brown paper around it. The Saginaw newspaper! The cold quaking of premonition clawed her stiff shoulders. Turning the brown paper over, she did not recognize the handwriting.
“I can take it back to him, if you want.”
She dropped the newspaper’s wrapping on the table. “No. I guess it’s meant for me.”
“All right.” He appeared dubious, but left.
She heard the other flunkeys telling Oscar to climb aboard the sled. In the two weeks since Rose’s savage murder, the men gladly traveled together. She was sure the camaraderie would fade along with the horror, but she wondered when that would be.
She opened the newspaper. Spreading the wide pages on the oilcloth, she scanned the headlines. The paper was more than a week old.
She turned the pages. When she read down a narrow column set in tiny type, one name leaped off the paper as if a lamp burned through it. She stared at Rose Quinlan’s name, but could not read the obituary. Once she read it, she could no longer pretend Rose Quinlan’s death had never happened.
Closing her eyes, she leaned her forehead against the heels of her palms as she wondered if the newspaper was another warning.
She was looking for trouble. That someone sent the newspaper with Rose Quinlan’s obituary to her meant only that the sender knew she would share it with the jacks. Perhaps it was from Reverend Frisch, for the sky pilot would not be back at the camp for another week.
Gypsy bent to read the obituary.
Warm lips teased the back of her neck, and she cried out in shock. Hearing a laugh, she whirled to see Adam. She could not decide whether to throw her arms around him or berate him for frightening her.
He kissed her lightly. Her arms rose to his shoulders as she leaned against his strength. Twining her fingers behind his neck, she sought escape in the pleasure of his touch. She could not keep from smiling as his tongue teased her lips and his wet hair, which glistened with melting snow, brushed her cheek.
“It’s been a thousand eternities since I’ve held you,” he whispered.
“You were the one who stole half our nights together when you set the rule I shouldn’t have the stove watch.”
“Why not steal a few minutes with me now while the flunkeys are gone?”
“Now?” She laughed without mirth. “You know my work must come first.”
His lazy smile suggested ecstasies she had only begun to sample in his arms. “Tell me you don’t think of me while you supervise this kitchen. Tell me you don’t remember our bodies merged in rapture. Tell me you don’t long to share
it again.”
“Don’t, Adam,” she breathed.
“Don’t? Why not? Why shouldn’t we want to recall every glory of the few nights we can have together?”
She was about to reply when her arm brushed the newspaper. As she caught it before the pages could scatter to the floor, renewed horror swept through her.
Her reaction must have flashed in her eyes, for his voice became studiously emotionless. “What’s wrong?”
“This.”
He picked up the sheet. With a low whistle, he shook his head in disbelief. “So our Rose wasn’t honest with Farley. Instead of Miss Quinlan, it should have been Mrs. Quinlan. I wonder if Farley knew, or if she simply convinced him to bring her here so she could take him for every penny he had.”
“Do you think her husband came out here to kill her because she left him and their children?” She smoothed out the page and stared at the unbelievable words. “Four children! Who would have guessed she was more than seventeen or eighteen years old? According to this, she’s older than I am.”
He tipped up her chin with his finger. “You could look as young if you used the rice powder and belladonna she did. Actually, you’re prettier without the cosmetics.”
“Wonderful! Not only do I usually look like an old hag, but now I’m prettier than a dead woman.” She pushed him aside. Folding the newspaper, she pointed at the larder. “Get some apples out and put them to soak. It’s time to begin the pies.”
“Gypsy?”
Reluctantly she turned to look at him. As she had so often, she wished he was not so tall. Tilting her head back at such an odd angle left her at a disadvantage. “Adam, I don’t have time for idle chatter.”
“This isn’t idle by any stretch of the imagination.” He crossed the room. When he did not touch her, she hid her shock. “The idea of her husband chasing her all the way from Saginaw is ludicrous.”
“Murder is ludicrous.”
“Murder is rational to those with a predilection to it. Sane people, like you and me, can’t comprehend anyone tormenting and slaying someone, but—” He interrupted himself as she turned away. “Gypsy, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
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