The Drifter

by Susan Wiggs

  I have something to tell you...

  Did it even matter now?

  This is important...

  He’d looked for her this morning, but Perpetua, with her lips so stiff with disapproval she could barely speak, informed him that Dr. Mundy was out calling on patients.

  “So have you decided when we’re going to leave? Where do we go next? Victoria would be nice. I hear it’s very cosmopolitan.” Carrie chattered on, inspecting her perfect fingernails. “I hope it’s a short voyage, because you know how I hate that boat. Still, it was good of you to wait for me—”

  “Carrie.” His voice was quiet, yet some quality of tone captured her attention as if he’d shouted.

  She blinked at him. China-doll eyes. He’d seen them in his dreams for years on end. “Yes?”

  “I need you to listen to me, and I need you to listen real good.”

  She smiled sweetly. “I can do that.”

  “Carrie, since coming here, I’ve finally started to understand something. All my life I’ve dedicated myself to saving you. Rescuing you. Keeping you safe. It took me ten years to find you, and when I did, I was just in time.”

  She nodded vigorously. “Indeed you were. I still have nightmares about Rising Star. Thank God you were there to rescue me. You’re my own personal dragon slayer.”

  “Well, that’s what I’ve started to understand.” He got up and paced the carpeted floor. One of the floorboards squeaked beneath his boot heel. He turned, made himself look at this beautiful, impenetrable woman. “There aren’t any dragons after you. If there were, I could slay them.”

  “I know, and you’d do that for me, wouldn’t you, Jackson?”

  “But it wouldn’t help. The demons are inside you. No matter how much I care, no matter how watchful I am, I can’t live your life for you. I can’t get inside you and make you better. I’ve tried that, and it doesn’t work.”

  She frowned and tilted her head to one side. A strange anticipation glittered in her eyes. “Jackson, what are you saying?”

  “I did my best, honey. I got you away from Devlin’s gang before they did something permanent to you. I took care of the problem in Rising Star as best I could. I got us out of there and kept us one step ahead of the law. But I can’t be with you anymore.”

  “You said you’d always take care of me,” she said.

  “That was a promise made by a boy. We’re all grown up now.”

  “And I need you more than ever.” Her voice rose, quavering over the words.

  “No, I’m not what you need. We’re just not...good together.”

  “Why?” she prompted, her fingers hooking into the crocheted pillow she held in her lap. “Tell me why.”

  He took a deep breath. Pretending hadn’t helped. Maybe the truth would. “Because there’s no love. We came together out of desperation. We stayed together because I had some futile sense of responsibility. But it’s not enough. The future holds no promise for us except more running. More misery. We’ve got to get on with our separate lives—”

  “And what sort of life would that be?” she asked, picking her words as cautiously as if she was picking berries from a thorny bush.

  “Leah—Dr. Mundy—knows of a place you can go. It’s safe there. They’d take care of you, better than I ever could.”

  “You love her, don’t you?”

  “Leah?” Jackson blinked. Carrie had been so drunk with her tonic last night that he’d assumed she hadn’t even noticed the romantic supper for two or even the fact that he’d been on bended knee before Leah.

  “You love her, don’t you?” Carrie asked again, her voice rising dangerously, knuckles whitening as she clutched the pillow.

  “That’s not what this is about,” he said. He could see her unraveling, could see the fury in her eyes. “Honey—”

  “You bastard!” Her high, keening scream pierced the air, making him wince.

  “Now look, Carrie—”

  “You fucking bastard!” The pillow flew at him, striking his chest with ridiculous softness.

  He caught it and set it down. “You’re making too much noise,” he said.

  Carrie launched herself out of the chintz-covered chair. “You want to get rid of me so you can be with her.” She seized a vase from a table and hurled it at his head. Jackson ducked, hearing the glass shatter against the wall behind him. He took a step toward her, but she’d already found something else to throw—the glass chimney from a gaslight. “I won’t let you,” she shrieked. “I won’t! I won’t!” As he advanced toward her, she flung a picture frame at him, then bent and grabbed the hem of her skirt. “You’ll pay for this!” she yelled. “You’ll never get to be with her!”

  As Jackson rushed across the room, he realized his mistake. Carrie yanked a small white-handled gun from her garter. At the same moment, the door opened, then slammed shut, then opened again. Carrie fired wildly and fled, racing down the stairs and out the door.

  “Send for the sheriff!” she screamed. “Help! Help! Send for the sheriff!”

  It took Jackson several seconds to realize he’d been shot. He was on the floor and he had no idea how he’d gotten there. Heat trickled down the side of his face and he put his hand there, feeling the blood and then smelling it. Dizzy, he grabbed the edge of the door and dragged himself up. Just for a second, he locked eyes with Zeke Pomfrit, who had probably come to see what all the ruckus was about.

  Almost guiltily, Pomfrit went to his own room and slammed the door. Jackson didn’t blame the old man for avoiding him. He took a few long breaths through his nose and staggered to the washstand. The bullet had grazed his ear. He’d survived worse.

  He used a towel to wipe away the worst of the blood, then held it a minute to stanch the flow. Then the thought of Carrie, out of her head, an ivory-handled pocket derringer in hand, jolted him into action. She might hurt somebody else.

  Dropping the towel, he hurried to the stairs. When he reached the top, he swayed a little and fixed his gaze on the large round window over the entryway. The ship at sea, rendered in colored glass, looked as distant as a dream.

  He wrenched his gaze away and went out the front door. Carrie’s screams had traveled quickly. People poked their heads out of shops and along the wharf. And Lemuel St. Croix came out of his office.

  Standing on the boardinghouse lawn, Jackson reached instinctively for the gun that wasn’t there. He’d given up wearing it long ago. Leah didn’t like guns.

  Feeling strangely detached, he watched the sheriff and deputy coming toward him. Carrie was in rare form, looking dainty and helpless and compelling all at once, waving a piece of paper Jackson recognized—a copy of the Wanted poster.

  Dull bluish metal gleamed as the sheriff drew his gun.

  Jackson felt himself do something he’d never done in his life—even when it was the prudent thing to do. He raised his hands in surrender.

  And that was how he was standing when Leah drove up in the buggy. Hands high. Staring down the barrel of a gun.

  She looked as vital as the wild land itself, her eyes big, her mouth frozen in a circle of surprise. He knew he would always remember the gesture she made as she looked from Carrie to the sheriff to him. She dropped the reins, and her arms wrapped around her middle as if she felt a terrible pain there.

  It was ironic, really. He’d been at the other end of a gun when he’d captured Leah in the first place. This was how he’d come into her life. It was ironic justice that it was how he would go out.

  Sixteen

  The town had never needed much of a jail. It was built of mortared fieldstone against the back of the sheriff’s office. There were two cells. One was empty. The other housed Jackson Underhill.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Mundy,” said the sheriff’s deputy, standing in the outer office. “I got orde
rs that the prisoner’s not to have any visitors.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Mr. MacPhail.” Leah tried to feel something other than ice around her heart. But from the moment she’d seen the sheriff taking Jackson away at gunpoint, she had been in a state of numb disbelief.

  There was nothing more devastating, she realized too late, than getting a glimpse of a dream come true only to have that dream snatched away. She wished she could turn the clock back to that magical moment on the porch. Why had she hesitated? Why hadn’t she told him about the baby? She could have made him listen.

  But it wouldn’t have changed anything, she conceded. Carrie would always be first with Jackson.

  She craned her neck to see beyond the deputy’s burly shoulder. “You know me. Why on earth you would consider me a threat is—”

  “Ma’am, that’s not the problem. I got strict orders. This Jack Tower character is a dangerous man.”

  “By whose estimation?” she demanded.

  “You seen the Wanted poster yourself, ma’am.”

  Everyone had by now.

  “And you’ve seen Jackson Underhill for yourself,” Leah stated. “You’ve seen him help fend off a pirate attack. You’ve seen him settle disputes, buggy train my horse, help me heal people. I ask you, are those the acts of a dangerous man?”

  “According to the poster, he’s a master of deception and escape. All I know is, I got my orders.”

  “He does.” Sheriff Lemuel St. Croix stepped into the office, brushing a bit of dirt from the sleeve of his coat. “We apprehended the murderer just in time and wired the authorities.” His swaggering self-importance grated on Leah.

  “A little late to start acting like a lawman, isn’t it?” she asked.

  His face paled and hardened like stone. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Just that you haven’t shown much interest in enforcing the law until now.”

  “I keep this town clean,” he shot back. “A federal marshal will be here soon to take the prisoner to trial.”

  “I certainly hope he knows a terrible mistake has been made,” Leah said. “Because he is innocent.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up, ma’am,” St. Croix said. “Fact is, the law wouldn’t go to all this trouble for a man who wasn’t a danger to decent folks.”

  “And you’d know about that,” she snapped, marching out of the office. Yet St. Croix’s words scared her. She wanted to believe Jackson would be cleared and set free. But he needed proof of his innocence, and she didn’t know whether or not he had that.

  She felt a wave of nausea and wondered erratically if Penny Lake, due to arrive any day now, had much experience tending expectant mothers.

  “Dr. Mundy, you all right?” the deputy asked, following her out of the office. “You look a little green around the gills.”

  “Injustice has that effect on me.”

  MacPhail awkwardly put a hand on her shoulder. “No one’s done anything but apprehend a wanted man.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Look, if you want me to give the prisoner a message...”

  Leah couldn’t help herself. She laughed aloud at the magnificent irony of it all. Give the prisoner a message. I never got to answer the question you asked last night. The answer is yes, I want to marry you, and not only that, I’m going to have your baby. Her whole life she’d been waiting to find someone like Jackson, and she didn’t even know she’d been waiting until she met him.

  “No message,” she said quietly. “When did you say the next steamer from Seattle gets in?”

  * * *

  “Sorry, sir,” the clerk at the Mosquito Fleet office informed Joel Santana. “Last boat’s already left. Next one’s the midnight packet.”

  Joel nodded, hiding his irritation. In all his years of duty, he’d learned it was futile to rage against things like schedules and tight-assed timetable clerks.

  There were worse things than spending another day in Seattle. He sort of liked the creaky wooden town. The J & M Hotel was as fine as any he’d stayed in, and more than that, he’d found someone directly connected to his quarry—Adam Armstrong.

  Joel wasn’t big on getting civilians involved with his affairs, but Armstrong himself had insisted. He’d survived an extraordinary ordeal with Caroline—or Carrie as he called her—and now he wanted to see this to the end. He would be taking the steamer over to Whidbey Island, too. Joel turned to go outside and tell Armstrong about the delay.

  But instead of walking across the cracked tile floor of the waiting room, he stopped and stood rooted in amazement.

  He was looking straight at her.

  And she was looking back.

  A jubilant voice inside Joel raised itself in song. It’s her, it’s her, it’s her...

  The woman from his dreams. A big smile and broad hips. A frank, open look that invited him to lift his hat, to say, “Ma’am, I hope you don’t think I’m being too forward or anything, but I want to introduce myself. Name’s Joel Santana.”

  She gazed at him with placid gray eyes, considering. Then she nodded briefly, the curled plume from her hat sweeping down her plain, honest face. “Mr. Santana. My name is Penelope. Dr. Penelope Lake.”

  * * *

  Leah had taken an oath. She had lived by that oath, had inhaled it with every breath she took, had embodied it in some perverse hope that she could make up for her father’s flaws. But when she stood outside Carrie’s room in the boardinghouse, she could only think that the woman in the room, the woman she had worked so hard to care for and to heal, was a sick, manipulative creature not worth saving. Leah’s own anger horrified her. She struggled to find compassion within herself. But still she had no idea how she would behave with Carrie.

  What did one say to the thief of one’s dreams?

  Then she realized it wasn’t Carrie at all, but herself who was in charge of her dreams. Carrie just made the problem more difficult. It was up to Leah to meet the challenge.

  She rapped lightly at the door.

  “Come in.” Carrie’s voice sounded soft from the effects of narcotics; Leah could hear the listlessness.

  She pushed the door open and stepped inside. “Carrie—”

  “All gone.” Like a broken doll, she sat upon the bed, her feet stretched out in front of her, a blue glass bottle cradled in both hands. “It’s all, all, gone.”

  “Carrie, you have to stop. You did so well last time. You can do it again. I’ll help you.”

  Carrie held the bottle out and upended it. A curious blankness dwelt in her eyes as if whatever lay behind them was gone. “All finished. Not even a drop left.”

  “You’re going to stop. For the moment, it’s best you go to sleep.” Leah took the bottle, turning her head away from the thick, sweetish scent, and unlaced Carrie’s boots. She wanted to ask Carrie why she’d betrayed Jackson.

  But in her current state, Carrie would have no answers that made sense. Resigned, Leah helped her undress, putting aside clothes far finer than anything Leah had ever owned.

  Carrie bestirred herself to lift the shift up and over her head, baring her breasts. A fading burn marred her skin. “Adam said I had a beautiful body,” she murmured with a slight giggle. “Do you think I have a beautiful body?”

  “I think the human form is beautiful. I made its healing my life’s work.”

  “Jackson always thought my body was beautiful.”

  An icy chill seized Leah’s shoulders and spine. She didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to know what had occurred between Jackson and Carrie in the long past they shared.

  “Poor Jackson.” Carrie let Leah drop a white lawn nightdress over her head. “Poor, poor Jackson.” She blinked owlishly. “A wanted man.”

  Leah saw a chance to learn more about the incid
ent that had turned him into an outlaw. Maybe Carrie held the key to the secrets he carried inside him. “Because of what happened in Rising Star,” she said.

  “Yes. Godforsaken place anyway.”

  “Was that when he found you?”

  Carrie sighed indulgently. “You should’ve seen the way he rode into town, his duster flapping, his horse all sweaty and foaming at the mouth. He looked like something out of a dream.”

  Leah could imagine it too well. “You must have been overjoyed to see him.”

  “Not at first. He came at sunset. I was standing on the boardwalk in front of a saloon waiting for someone.”

  “Who were you waiting for?” Leah asked, trying to sound neutral.

  Carrie made no reply, and Leah feared she’d lost her in a fog of opium and whiskey. Then Carrie smiled slyly. “He thought I didn’t recognize him.”

  “Jackson?”

  “Yes, but I did recognize him. You know how handsome he is. How could any woman forget? Besides, he had a peculiar expression on his face. He always looked like that, even when he was a kid.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like he’d do anything for me. Die for me.”

  Kill for you? Leah didn’t let herself ask it. She felt as if she stood on the edge of a discovery. This might be her only chance to hear the truth from Carrie’s lips, and she didn’t want to push too hard. She had to draw on all her expertise, all her knowledge of human nature in order to keep Carrie talking.

  “You’re very lucky he’s so devoted,” she said. “Did he greet you right away?”

  Carrie hugged her knees up to her chest. “Mmm-hmm. Took off his hat and just stood there for a minute. Just stood there and said, ‘Carrie. My God, it really is you.’ But I didn’t speak to him. I marched right inside the saloon and sat on Hale Devlin’s lap. You should have seen Jackson’s face.” She laughed softly. “Poor Jackson.”

  Leah shivered. “Hale Devlin,” she said, her mouth dry with apprehension. “That’s the name of the man who died?”