by Jo Goodman
Eli Burdick caught the sleeve of Kellen’s jacket. He didn’t pull but neither did he let go. “There’s no hurry.” He looked at Kellen’s empty glass. “You want another beer?”
“I was going to get it at the bar.”
“Lorrainey will bring it to you.”
“Lorrainey?”
“The Widder Berry. Are you rooming at one of the boardinghouses or staying at the hotel?”
“The hotel.”
“Well, it’s her place. Lorraine.” He looked past Kellen’s shoulder and had no trouble catching Raine’s eye. “She’s been watching me,” he told Kellen. “She always does.” He raised an arm, then his voice. “Another beer, Lorrainey. And bring that glass I didn’t want before.” He lowered his arm and spoke in a tone that invited confidences. “Watch. She’ll come fluttering. Moth to a flame.”
That was not Kellen’s observation. Mrs. Berry did not flutter. It was hard to imagine a behavior more at odds with her steady nerve. She did not hover, and she certainly did not flit. She set a fresh glass of beer in front of him, grazing his hand ever so lightly. He barely felt the paper packet she tucked under his palm. He made a fist around it as she placed a shot glass beside Eli Burdick’s bottle.
“Is there anything else, Mr. Burdick?” Raine asked.
Eli patted his knee. “How about you sitting here?”
“Only if you were a pincushion and I was a pin.”
He gave a shout of laughter. “That’s a good one, Lorrainey. Go on.” He waved her off and leaned toward Kellen when she was out of hearing. “Did you see? Butter won’t melt in her mouth, but her eyes burn right through a man.” He touched his chest with his forefinger. “This man.”
Kellen thought that was true but not precisely in the way Eli Burdick wanted to believe it was. He offered a noncommittal nod and picked up his beer.
“What’s your line of business?” Eli asked.
“I write for the New York World. Do you know it?”
Eli filled his shot glass and knocked it back. “Can’t say that I do.”
Kellen was amazed at Eli Burdick’s capacity for drink. The man had yet to slur a word or show any indication that he was drunk. Under the table, Kellen scored the packet that Raine had passed to him and carefully began to tear it open. “Ever heard of Joseph Pulitzer?”
“I recollect I have. Doesn’t he have a cattle spread over Dakota way?”
Kellen didn’t blink. “He’s the one.”
“You writing about him?”
“I am writing about ranchers. About the life. People in the big cities are interested.”
“That so?”
“It is. I got off the train at Bitter Springs because someone told me the Burdicks have the biggest spread in this part of Wyoming. I guess he was talking about you.” He paused, frowning slightly. “Unless you’re not one of those Burdicks.”
“Only one family of Burdicks,” Eli said. “Who was talking about us?”
“No one was talking about you. I was asking about cattlemen. Was the information incorrect?”
“No. My family has the biggest spread.”
“Then I imagine you’re well known.”
“Sure.”
“Then it doesn’t matter who told me, does it?”
“Guess not.”
“Good, because the newspaper discourages us from saying who we talked to if we didn’t get permission.”
“You’d tell me, though, if I put a gun in your crotch and said I’d shoot your balls off.”
“Sure would. I’m partial to all my body parts.”
“Good,” Eli said, satisfied. “Just so I can depend on you when it’s something important.”
Kellen nodded. He lifted his glass and drank. Beer touched his upper lip, and he mimicked Eli and used the sleeve of his jacket to swipe at it. “How many Burdicks are there?” he asked.
Eli frowned deeply. “What the hell kind of question is that?”
“I was wondering how large a family it takes to manage the biggest spread in these parts.”
Eli grunted. “There are four of us. My father, my brothers, and me.”
“Ranch hands?”
“Fifteen give or take.”
“Cattle?”
“One thousand seven hundred sixty-four head.”
Kellen smiled. “Give or take.”
Eli did not smile in return. “Cattle are serious business, Mr. Coltrane.”
“I apologize. Call me Kellen.”
“Maybe.”
“Are your brothers around tonight? I wouldn’t mind talking to them.”
“I’d mind.” He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table. “But they didn’t come to town with me so that’s neither here nor there. Shouldn’t you be writing down what I tell you?”
Kellen tapped his temple. “One thousand seven hundred sixty-four head.” He shrugged. “I have a good memory. I’ll write it down when I get back to my room.” He went to reach for Eli’s bottle but stopped short of touching it.
“May I?”
“I suppose that depends on what you mean to do with it.”
“Pour another shot for you.”
“Then be my guest.”
Kellen picked up the bottle. “Who’s that coming into the saloon from the hotel?” he asked. “Someone I should talk to for my story?” He waited until Eli turned halfway around in his chair before he poured. Granules of white powder fell into the slipstream of whiskey.
“That’s Jack Clifton,” Eli said. “I don’t recollect that he’s ever had much to say for himself.”
Kellen wrapped his fingers around the shot glass, blocking Eli’s drink until the last granule dissolved. He put the bottle to the side and slid the glass in front of Eli. “What should we drink to?”
Eli Burdick cast his eyes in Raine’s direction. “To waking up beside a redheaded woman,” he said, lifting his glass. When Kellen didn’t join him, he offered a narrow, satisfied smile. “Good thinking, Coltrane. She’s mine. Always has been.”
Over the course of the next three days and nights, Raine saw nothing of Eli Burdick and very little of Kellen Coltrane. She was grateful for Eli’s absence but found herself wondering from time to time at her hired gun’s whereabouts and questioning the wisdom of their agreement. He was not in her thoughts, though, as she yawned wearily and slipped inside her rooms at the top of the house. Pressing the back of one hand to cover her mouth did nothing at all to stop the yawn short, but it did help to dampen the gasp that followed at the sight of the man sitting near her writing desk.
“Adam?” She blinked. It couldn’t be Adam. Of course it couldn’t. If she were not so tired, his name wouldn’t have crossed her mind or her lips. It was only that the dim, yellow light from the oil lamp played a cruel trick, lending the man’s hair the burnish of a polished chestnut. The narrow shape of his head, the strong jaw, the clearly defined bridge of his nose, were no longer single points of interest but the whole of a handsome face that was at once achingly familiar and frighteningly alien.
He had turned the chair away from her writing desk so that he faced the door. It was exactly what Adam had done when he wanted to speak to her. His forearms rested on the arms of the chair, and his long legs were stretched toward her, crossed at the ankles. Kellen Coltrane looked at his ease, which Adam rarely did when he had something to say. His posture was so relaxed he might have been boneless, a man comfortably contained by the skin he was in.
Raine’s stare went from wide to narrow. She was squinting by the time she took her first step forward. She stamped her foot hard enough to send a vibration across the floorboards and under his chair.
Kellen’s eyelids lifted.
Raine’s husky voice took on a harsh edge. “Were you sleeping?”
“No. Just contemplating.”
“Contemplating? Contemplating what?”
“Sleep.”
His calm did not settle well with her. He was likely only six or so years her senior, yet he made her
feel like a child. She was seized by an urge to kick him. The opportunity, not the urge, passed when Kellen shifted his legs.
Raine shrugged off her shawl and tossed it over the back of a chair. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you. We haven’t spoken much in days. I thought you might show up in my room again, but then I got to thinking that maybe you’re avoiding me. Am I wrong?”
At her sides, her hands curled into loose fists.
Kellen observed this. “I make you want to throw things.”
“At you,” she said. “I want to throw them at you.”
He was philosophical. “That was a given. You demonstrate more control than either of my sisters. Kitty especially.”
Only one response came to Raine’s mind. Her flat voice hinted at her skepticism. “You have sisters.”
Her patent disbelief amused him. He held up two fingers. “Kitty. That’s Kathleen. And Anne.” He unfolded the remaining fingers and thumb, holding out his palm to forestall more questions. “Two brothers, also. Michael is older. Rob is younger. He and Anne are twins. I don’t know how much you needed to know about Nat Church before you hired him, but I can tell you that Michael is a lawyer, Kitty and her husband run a private school for girls, and Rob and Anne are still at home. You already know my father is a professor of humanities at Yale. My mother, Katherine, is an advocate for temperance and women’s rights.”
Raine took all the information in. “I don’t know if you can appreciate that none of that really eases my mind as to your presence in my rooms. Tell me, how would your family describe you?”
“Black sheep.”
“Well,” she said after a moment. “That puts it all into perspective, doesn’t it?”
“Some have said so.”
Raine sighed. She removed the combs from her hair, set them on one corner of the writing desk, and smoothed back the crown of her head with her palm. She would have taken the pins from the coil at her nape, but she had sense enough still to recognize it as an inherently intimate activity. Instead, she went to the stove in the corner of the room and added coals to the grate.
“What was your game the other night?” she asked, coming around to face him. “Did you give it any thought before you sidled up to Eli Burdick? He could kill you as soon as look at you.”
“That occurred to me.” Kellen opened his jacket and reached inside his vest. He held up a .51 caliber derringer with a burnished hardwood grip and laid it on the desk.
Raine looked at it, then at him. “You didn’t have that the day we met.”
“I didn’t have it where you could see it,” he corrected. “There is no point in strapping on one of the Colts when I’m in the saloon. That’s telegraphing that I’m looking for trouble.”
“How is striking up a conversation with Eli different from that? You stay holed up in your room most of the day, eschew company at dinner, and disappear again afterward, but when you finally decide to be sociable, you choose Eli Burdick as a boon companion? The first evening in town? Mr. Coltrane, I’ve been observing you, and I have to wonder at your strategy and at your ability to carry out the terms of our agreement without assistance from Nat Church.”
Kellen gave her another moment in the event she found more words. When she did not, he calmly offered, “No one got shot, did they?”
Raine stared at him.
“I mean,” he went on, “that is the point of the engagement, isn’t it? You don’t want people killed. You want the killing to stop. Or have I misunderstood?”
“I don’t—”
He spoke as if she hadn’t begun to. “Because I can assure you, it’s a whole lot easier to kill people than it is to tiptoe around not killing them. Take Eli the other night, for instance. I could have put a bullet through the soft underside of his jaw anytime he tipped his head to knock back a drink. Calling you Lorrainey provoked me about as much as him drinking straight from the bottle. Now, even with two kinds of provocation, I wouldn’t have shot him dead right then because I had no defense for it that a court would recognize. I don’t have to consult my lawyer brother to know that what Mr. Burdick was doing is mostly considered an annoyance and not a good enough reason to kill him.”
Raine found herself strangely fascinated. His voice was low and seductive, his argument absurdly diverting, and humor played about his mouth like a secret he meant to try to keep. Without being conscious of it at first, she moved closer. Her hands rested lightly on the shawl she had thrown over the back of a chair.
Kellen extended his feet again. “The dilemma, naturally enough, is how to encourage Mr. Burdick to reach for his gun.”
“But not kill you,” Raine said.
“I didn’t think I needed to point that out,” he said dryly, “but clarification never hurts.”
Raine pressed her mouth flat to keep her lips from twitching. She vowed she would not say another word until he was finished.
“Mr. Burdick did not impress me as someone who required much in the way of encouragement to draw his gun. I could have insisted that he address you as Mrs. Berry, taken possession of his bottle without his permission, or beat him at cards. He would have taken out his gun, and he would be dead. It would have been self-defense, confirmed by every customer in your saloon.”
Raine held her tongue, waiting. When he lifted an eyebrow, she recognized he was inviting her to applaud his brilliance. She braced her arms on the back of the chair and set her gaze level with his. “That is where you very much mistake the matter. You could count on my testimony to confirm what happened, but you should never depend on anyone else to come forward. Killing Eli Burdick is like poking a stick in a nest of vipers.”
“The father and brothers, you mean.”
She nodded. “Uriah, Clay, and Isaac. And every ranch hand employed at the Burdick spread.”
“Fifteen, give or take.”
“More like twenty.”
“Eli told me fifteen.”
“Eli cares about cattle, not men. He probably doesn’t know the name of half of the hands that work for his father.”
“So no one crosses them.”
“Not any longer,” she said. “Not since Isaac Burdick’s trial.”
Kellen reached for the lamp and turned up the wick. The flame flickered at first, then held steady. The circle of light widened and chased the shadows from Raine’s finely wrought features. She faced his scrutiny head on. He said, “Walt hinted at something about a trial, but wouldn’t elaborate.”
“When were you talking to Walt?”
“I suppose you’re not watching me as closely as you think. I’ve talked to Walt every night after dinner. I meet him on the porch when he’s done with his chores. We sit outside and talk, watch people coming and going, mostly to and from the saloon.”
“But it’s been bitter cold out there.”
He shrugged. “I dress for it. I go back to my room to get my coat.” And the derringer, but Kellen chose not to mention it. “As for Walt, I am under the impression that he is impervious to the cold.”
Raine nodded absently, vaguely troubled that she hadn’t known what Kellen was doing. It didn’t make sense, given the fact that he was hired for protection, yet she somehow felt obliged to offer it in return. She came around the chair and sat down. “Has Walter been helpful?”
He smiled, recalling how Walter’s broad shoulders extended beyond the back of the rocker, and how the man had folded his arms to rest just below his chest because the arms of the rocker could not contain them.
“I admit I was surprised,” Kellen said. “He doesn’t seem the sort to offer conversational delicacies, does he? Turns out, he’s very good at it.”
Raine thought back to Kellen’s conversation with Eli Burdick. “So that’s how you knew you could talk to Eli about the piano. Did he mention that Eli’s mother left his father for a railroad surveyor who regularly passed through the territory?”
“He didn’t get to that, no.”
“I didn’t think so
. I thought Eli was going to hammer your skull when you decided to toast mothers.”
Kellen remembered thinking the same thing. “Do you like it when he calls you Lorrainey?”
Raine stiffened. “No,” she said. “It makes my skin crawl.”
“Then there is no understanding between you.”
“He said there was an understanding? What did he say? What were his exact words?”
Kellen put out his hands. “Whoa.”
“Whoa?” Raine looked at him sharply. “You said whoa to me?”
“I beg your pardon,” Kellen said. He could have avoided Eli Burdick’s bottle more easily than the Widder Berry’s stare. Her green eyes had taken on a brilliance that gave them a razor’s edge.
“I thought you said your mother advocated for women’s rights.”
“She does, and she taught me better,” Kellen said. “In my defense, I believe I mentioned I was the black sheep.”
“You must sorely try her patience,” said Raine.
“It’s been said, ma’am.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sakes,” she said. “You may call me Mrs. Berry or Lorraine, but please cease calling me ma’am.”
“Raine?” he asked softly.
It was what Adam and Ellen had called her. It was the name she gave to herself, the name of the woman reflected in her mirror. She wished she didn’t like the sound of it quite so much on Kellen Coltrane’s lips.
Mustering carelessness, she said, “If you like.”
Kellen did. He figured she was probably already regretting it, but he wasn’t giving her an opportunity to take it back. Raine. Her name lay cool and sweet on the tip of his tongue. It was a balm for the sting she could inflict with her eyes. He thought she looked uneasy, as though she was no longer certain of the ground she stood on. He gave her something to hold on to.
“But not Lorrainey,” he said.
Raine flared. Heat rushed into her cheeks. “You wouldn’t like the consequences.”
Kellen decided she had recovered. “Probably not,” he said, and meant it. He didn’t need to know what the consequences were. “Now do you still want to know about Eli’s understanding?”
