The Drifter

by Lisa Plumley

  Graham laughed. “Never. If you’re bothered by our charade, it’s only your own making.” He raised the wicker basket, drawing their attention to it. “I’ve simply come to take you on a picnic. Can you come?”

  A picnic. An outing befitting a courting couple. It was perfect, and yet… “I’m not sure. Isabel, can you accompany us?”

  “Me?” She looked startled, nearly dropping the strawberry soda she was preparing. “Why me?”

  “To chaperone, silly. I can’t possibly go with Mr. Corley alone, especially outside the boundaries of town.”

  Miss Julia’s Behavior Book, volume three: A true lady never offers herself for untoward speculation. Instead, she minds her manners, seeing nothing she ought not to see, hearing nothing she ought not to hear, and doing nothing she ought not to do. To behave otherwise renders her claims to ladyhood false, and invites any number of scandalous consequences.

  All the same…how she wanted to go!

  “I’m sorry, Julia,” Isabel said, collecting the coins for the soda she’d finished. “I’m helping my mother with the sewing this afternoon. After today, our turn with the new Singer machine is over with.”

  Julia nodded. Several families had pooled their money to buy the expensive high-arm treadle machine, something none of them could have afforded on their own. Making use of a turn with it was an unbreakable commitment. Otherwise, Isabel and her mother would have more than twice the work to clothe their family.

  “Come alone,” Mr. Corley urged Julia. “Please. I promise to behave.”

  His smile utterly contradicted his statement. It was, Julia saw, downright wicked…and completely, curiously, undeniably stimulating.

  Why could she not resist him? Her mind, usually so reliable, seemed to have failed her. Instead of communicating to her heart that picnicking alone with the bounty hunter was impossibly risky, it told her that doing so would be thrilling. Unforgettable. Even worthwhile.

  Did she dare?

  She wanted to, Julia realized. Being alone with Mr. Corley, outside the boundaries of their student-tutor relationship, would give her a chance to discover more about him. To learn who he was, beyond his wandering ways.

  It would also allow her to solidify her bond with him, Julia realized. In the face of her father’s refusal to approve of their betrothal—at least for now—it was more important than ever that she and Graham work together. Her plan simply had to succeed!

  “I truly can’t,” she said reluctantly. “However—” Julia darted a glance toward the druggist’s counter, ensuring that her papa was safely at work “—I do plan to take a walk this afternoon. Right along the…”

  She raised her eyebrows meaningfully toward Mr. Corley. The bounty hunter looked confused for a moment, then caught on.

  “Along the trail that winds up the mountainside?” he asked.

  “Indeed.” A secret excitement made her feel fairly giddy inside. With difficulty, Julia effected a serene demeanor. “If we should happen to meet along the way, perfectly by chance, of course…well, there could hardly be any fault in that, now could there?”

  “No.” With exaggerated seriousness, Mr. Corley shook his head. “I’d think not. Especially if this accidental meeting happened at around…”

  “Two o’clock?”

  He nodded. They shared a conspiratorial grin.

  Julia rose on her tiptoes, filled with a delicious sense of daring. “I shan’t be surprised if we meet,” she said, and then prepared to make it happen for certain.

  Chapter Ten

  The mountains of northern Arizona Territory were as different from the rocky deserts to the south as they could possibly be. Looking like some giant had mislaid them amidst sudden juniper-studded hills, they jutted out of the landscape for miles around Avalanche. It was as though their rocky oak-and-pine-studded angles could not be contained, and demanded to be seen.

  Within the mountains’ craggy hideaways, elk and deer flourished, jays squawked, and a constant cool breeze kept the evergreen branches in motion overhead. Tumbled boulders offered seating. In the spring, fragrant wildflowers carpeted the grassy spots and added their scent to the tang of fir and the earthy scrub of soil. When people visited, as they often did, conversations carried far. Voices rose, despite the grandeur the surroundings provided. Laughter could be heard.

  But none so loud, nor so joyous, as the laughter that Graham and Julia shared, on the day they happened upon one another on the lowest mountain trail…and sat to share a picnic in the shade of a twisted oak.

  For Graham, it was a revelation unlike anything he’d ever known. He’d opened his borrowed basket—and his heart—to a lady whose smile made him happier than his own. And although the picnic lunch he’d bartered for was simple, he and Julia had a splendid time.

  Usually, picnics were nothing he indulged in. Girlish, over-civilized affairs where citified people pretended to be on the trail for an afternoon struck him as ridiculous. But Asa Bennett had confided in him his daughter’s love of a meal out-of-doors while they’d taken their turns at the barber’s, and once inspired, Graham had been unable to resist.

  And so he found himself stretched atop a clean saddle blanket at the end of a long afternoon, head propped in his hand, listening to Julia chatter on about books she’d read and people she’d met at Vassar. She flung her arms wide as she spoke, nodding and laughing, freer than he’d ever seen her.

  Occasionally she’d seem to realize her lapse of decorum, and would return to sitting primly with her hands folded atop her pale pink skirts. But those times never lasted for long. Something about the fresh air, and the fact that Avalanche was out of sight even though it lay over the next rise of trees, seemed to ease her. And Graham was glad for it.

  “You seem happier here,” he said when her latest story was told and they’d eaten their fill of the meal he’d brought. He gestured toward the pines surrounding them, and the expanse of rocky forest rising beyond. “I begin to believe you really want to leave Avalanche, after this.”

  She paused with a cupful of cider halfway to her mouth. Her surprised blue-eyed gaze met his. “You did not believe me before?”

  Something in her face, something instantly guarded, warned him away. Graham shrugged. “While you were so busy beginning a craze for pet-chickens-and-sodas, and setting the newest fashions in outlandish headwear? Pshaw.”

  He nodded toward her latest hat, a tightly woven creation embellished with pink ribbons and colorful wax birds with real tail feathers. He smiled at the sight of it, so thoroughly Julia. “I didn’t believe it for a minute.”

  At his words, she touched her hat. Beneath her gloved fingers, he glimpsed the metalwork of the hatpin he’d given her. Happy as he was to see Julia wearing his gift, he was happier still to see her expression brighten again.

  “Say what you will,” she declared proudly, “Libbie is much happier now. She has more friends than ever before. And my hats are popular. It’s strange…I can’t imagine why the same people who used to—”

  She broke off, looking alarmed.

  “Used to?”

  “It’s nothing. Never mind.”

  Julia waved her arm, and busied herself with repacking the things he’d brought for their picnic. With a mighty frown of concentration that the foodstuffs surely did not deserve, she wrapped the leftover beef jerky, biscuits and tinned peaches.

  “The same people who used to ridicule you?” Graham asked. “The people who mocked you for your mind, the way you feared they’d mock your father for his hairstyle?”

  She crammed the checkered napkins he’d borrowed from his landlady into the basket. “I don’t know what you mean. Really, the afternoon is drawing on, and I—”

  “Julia, tell me,” he urged. Swiftly, he levered himself upward and captured her arm, stopping her movements. Ignoring her indrawn breath, Graham used his other hand to turn her face toward him. “Tell me, and I’ll make it right. I swear it.”

  Her rueful smile made him twice as helpless.


  “It’s too late,” Julia said. “What’s done is done.”

  He shook his head. “The lawmen tell me it’s too late to find the desperadoes I trail. I always track them anyway. I’ve never missed one yet.”

  “Then you’re ahead of me.” Her lips quirked upward, but her eyes did not join the joke. “Because I miss you already, and you haven’t even left yet.”

  Graham gawked at her. Of its own volition, his hand lowered, releasing her. The soft sound of her unbelievable admission still swirled in his head, befuddling him all over again. She would miss him?

  No one had missed him.

  Not even Frankie, not much. Not once she moved on with her new life.

  In astonishment, Graham stared at the woman who was his pretend fiancé, in all but her father’s approval. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. It’s getting late, and I—I—” Julia worked more rapidly, shaking out crumbs from the biscuit box and setting it into the basket with a clatter. She drew in a deep breath, but did not look at him. “I’m saying things I do not mean. It’s polite behavior, nothing more. I sensed that you felt your efforts today hadn’t been properly appreciated, and I wanted you to know, most assuredly, that I—”

  “Stop. Chattering won’t change this.”

  “What will?”

  His mind locked. Her expression, half hopeful and half fearful, made him yearn for a future he could not give.

  “Uhh,” Graham began. “You—” He broke off, shaking his head to clear it. Only one thought persisted. “You’ll miss me?”

  Panic swept her face. “I have to leave.”

  She scrambled to her feet, skirts swishing. He caught a glimpse of high-buttoned boots, lacy petticoats and Julia’s trembling hands before she set out for the trail. Graham followed her, unwilling to let her go.

  He caught up within three strides, beneath the spreading branches of a pine. “Don’t go,” he said. “First it was me, now you, leaving. If we keep at this, we’ll never be together long enough to gain your father’s word.”

  The words were meant as a jest. The hoarse edge to his voice doubtless spoiled the effect.

  Nevertheless, they worked. Julia stopped, and faced him.

  “I must have it!” she said. “He must approve, so I can leave. I’ll not rusticate here, in Avalanche—” Her outflung arm indicated the town they couldn’t see, more than the mountainous forest surrounding them. “—if there is a way out. You must understand. Oh, Mr. Corley!” Julia exclaimed, her eyes bright. “You’ve done everything I could only dream of. You’ve traveled, you’ve seen the world—”

  “Only the meanest parts of it.”

  “—you’ve had adventures, all on your own. It must have been marvelous to be so free. To still be so free.”

  So alone, he thought instantly, but said nothing.

  She wrapped her arm ’round the thick-barked pine beside her and hugged herself toward it, looking outward. In the direction they faced, miles of open land could be seen. “How I envy you the exciting life you’ve lived.”

  With a sigh, she looked over her shoulder at him. All the longing he’d sensed in her before was surely, suddenly, there in her eyes. Graham had thought he’d glimpsed passion in her weeks earlier, when he’d nearly held her…but that was paltry compared with the emotion he sensed in Julia now.

  “That’s how I knew you were perfect for this scheme,” she went on. “A man like you can understand why I need to get away from this place. A man like you won’t try to keep me tethered by his side.”

  “But why not stay here?” Graham asked her, driven to the question by an unease on her behalf he couldn’t name…and a caring he didn’t want to admit. “Avalanche is a good town.” For those suited to such a life. “And you can be happy here. Life afoot…can be lonely.”

  At his grave admission, she looked up. Some of the exhilaration left her half-shadowed expression. “You don’t understand, Mr. Corley,” Julia said, resting her temple against the tree trunk as she gazed outward again. “I’m lonely here.”

  He was stricken. Driven to do something—anything—to help her, Graham moved forward. Only Julia’s narrow back was visible to him now, and all at once she seemed impossibly delicate…dangerously vulnerable. He raised his arms to hold her.

  Inches from her body, he stopped. He flexed his hands, desperate to act correctly. Would a touch from him now be welcome? Or would it only promise more than he, a drifting man, could give?

  Graham stiffened. “I ache for you, Julia.”

  “You should not call me that.” Her voice was muffled, as though with unshed tears. “It’s not prop—”

  “Damn what’s proper. I care what’s right.” His palms lightly touched her shoulders, skimmed outward to the tops of her arms. “I care about you.”

  “Don’t. Don’t say that.”

  He felt too strongly to heed her. “If leaving here is what you want, I’ll make it happen,” Graham said urgently. “Come away with me. Tonight. I have all we need, and—”

  “No. Shhh.” Abruptly, Julia turned. The movement ended their tenuous contact, but in the next moment she lay her gloved fingers over his mouth, stopping his words. “My plan can work, and it will. I know it. So long as you don’t, for my sake, pretend to be someone you’re not.”

  He removed her hand. “I mean what I say.”

  “That you’ll take me away, like a fairy-tale hero spiriting his ladylove away in the night?” A smile crossed her face, making her more beautiful than any mere bonnet or dress ever could. “I don’t doubt your sincerity, Mr. Corley. Truly. But to burden a wandering man with obligations—to saddle him with me—would be very unfair.”

  She rolled her eyes, making a jest of the whole idea. He should have been relieved by her quick thinking, Graham knew. He was not.

  “We have a bargain,” he said stubbornly. “I’ll meet it.”

  Julia wrinkled her nose. “Our bargain calls for you, in return for my tutoring, to court me, to become engaged to me, and even to wed me. With an annulment to follow, once we leave town, of course. It does not require utter self-sacrifice.”

  He frowned.

  “Oh, I can see that you want to take action,” she said, “and we do seem stymied now. But Papa is merely being mulish. He’ll come ’round. As I see it, if he can change his hairstyle and laugh over dinner, all in the same month, then anything is possible.”

  She smiled, and patted his hand. How had it come to pass that Julia was comforting him? ’Twas a muddle, to be sure, and Graham couldn’t make heads nor tails of any of it. Her moods were mercurial, with smiles coming as often as near-tears. It was enough to turn a man nearly loony.

  Or enough to keep him interested for all his days.

  “Honestly,” Julia said. She clasped his hand between hers, and held it as she spoke. “Have faith. And do not say more about taking me away with you, please. If I thought you’d changed from anything but a drifting man, especially for my sake, I couldn’t bear it.”

  Uncomfortably, Graham remembered the happiness he’d taken in being welcomed at the Bennetts’ table during so many past evenings. He recalled the camaraderie he’d discovered at the Avalanche livery stable, and the enjoyment he’d found in tipping his hat to a host of familiar faces on the streets of town…all because of Julia, and the bargain he’d made with her.

  He cleared his throat. Still, his voice was gruff when he spoke. “All right. I’ll say no more about sneaking you away.”

  Graham closed his fingers around hers, treasuring the warmth of her touch. From somewhere inside, he managed a grin with which to lighten the mood between them. It was the least he could do, given her attempts to cheer him.

  “I’ll do this as you wish,” he told her. “No matter how you might tempt me to end this charade my way.”

  His teasing worked. Julia glanced up, batting her lashes coquettishly.

  “Your way?” she asked. “And what, pray tell, would that be?”

  Graham lowered his
gaze to their joined hands. “’Tis simple.” He stroked his thumb over her wrist, teasing the pearl buttons on her glove, remembering the way he’d unbuttoned them once before. “I would compromise you, quite possibly in the woods—” with a speculative air, he examined the deep drifts of fallen pine needles surrounding them “—and most definitely pleasurably. And then you would be forced to wed me, approval or no. Immediately.”

  She gasped. A sharp tug yanked her hand from his.

  “Sir! You would not!”

  Graham raised his eyebrows and gave them a roguish waggle. Julia jumped. Openmouthed, she looked around.

  “In a bed of pine needles?”

  He shrugged.

  “I don’t believe it!”

  For several minutes, Julia gawked at him. More than likely, Graham guessed, she was deciding how heavy an oak branch to use to wallop him with, for his impertinence. ’Twas possible he’d gone too far with her again. But it felt good to have things in the open between them, and he could not regret it.

  “I am a man who solves problems,” he told her. “Problems that sometimes range across several states and territories. I did not earn my reputation by throwing up my hands and surrendering at the first difficulty.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “In this, with you, I’ve kept my solutions to myself for too long,” Graham went on, frowning as he thrust his arm downward for emphasis. “You’d be wrong to think that means I’m an overly amiable man.”

  At his warning, Julia seemed to suppress a grin. “Oh, I doubt very much that I—”

  “Because I am not. Not amiable, not settled—”

  “Will you let me say a word edgewise?” she asked suddenly. Looking exasperated, Julia spread her arms wide. “I believe you, and everything you’ve said. It’s only that I meant to tell you before….”

  She stopped. Bit her lip.

  Now this interested him. Her hesitancy intrigued him, far more than up-and-down moods and near-constant talking. Graham edged closer. “Hmmm? To tell me what?”

  “Well, I meant to ask you….” Her voice grew very small. “Wouldn’t the pine needles poke?”