by Sandra Hill
He moved his head up and down hesitantly.
Then, holding his eyes, she made a quick fluid gesture before Briggs or the guard could understand what she was doing. The fingertips of her right hand pointed to herself, pressed briefly over her heart, pointed to him, then made a circular motion near her head.
I love you, stupid.
Etienne’s jaw clenched with anguish, but he nodded.
Harriet knew by late evening that she would have to kill Briggs, or have sex with him. Neither prospect was attractive.
The slimy senator had the tentacles of an octopus and the wet mouth of a fish. She’d felt both on various parts of her anatomy throughout the lengthy dinner and after-dinner drinks, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to put him off much longer.
Harriet had stashed her guns in a small cave before entering Briggs’s property, knowing she would be disarmed as soon as she encountered any of his guards. As expected, she was searched immediately. But she’d hidden a small, lethal knife in her hair, which she’d French-twisted and anchored with a number of bone hairpins. It hardly seemed equal to the challenge of fighting off Briggs, but a gun wouldn’t have worked, either. Its sharp report would have alerted every man on the ranch.
She was in her bedroom now, presumably preparing herself for Briggs’s late-night visit. Yech! She’d tried the eye-hypnotism trick on Briggs earlier, but it hadn’t worked. And her instincts told her not to try standing behind the door and bashing him over the head. Briggs was a creep, but a smart one. And though he pretended to be taken in by her pretense, Harriet was sure he would be on his guard.
When Briggs rapped on her door, she called out, “Come in.”
Not surprisingly, he kicked in the door and waited a few seconds before entering. He beamed with pleasure when he saw her on the other side of the room, wearing only her leopard-print nightie, which Blossom had mended, and panties.
Etienne would have a fit if he knew.
“Well, well, well, aren’t you just the sweetest picture,” Briggs said as he moved closer to her, already removing his jacket and unbuttoning his shirt.
Fifteen minutes later, the naked, bug-eyed, evil man was flat on his back on the bed, a knife blade sticking out of his jugular vein, which gushed blood onto the pure white counterpane.
Harriet retched the contents of her stomach into a chamber pot. Oh, God, oh, God! I actually killed a man. Not that he didn’t deserve it. Oh, I will never forget how his horrible hands felt on me. Never! But he didn’t get inside me. At least I have that. Oh, God!
Finally, Harriet washed herself all over and dressed again. It was after midnight by now, and Harriet knew she’d have to proceed carefully. With tonight’s full moon, her red dress would be instantly visible to any of the many nighttime guards.
Amazingly, Harriet made it to the guardhouse with little trouble, having to wait twice while guards passed by on their rounds before slipping outside. The jailer was luckily the same one as before. He stood abruptly, knocking over a chair when she entered. “What the hell—”
Harriet also noticed that Etienne rose to a sitting position, watching alertly. She ignored him totally, knowing she needed all her concentration.
Dropping down into a second chair near the desk where the guard had probably been snoozing, Harriet hurried to explain her presence before he kicked her out. “I couldn’t sleep, and the only book I have with me I’ve read a hundred times. I noticed you were reading one of those dime novels, and I was just wondering if we might trade for the night.”
She’d startled him with that one. Before he could react, she pulled up her briefcase, flicked open the locks and pulled out Sweet Savage Love. “This is my favorite novel. I think you’d like it. It’s about this rogue who seduces all the women and kills lots of bad guys. What’s yours about?”
The guard was younger than she’d realized…probably no more than twenty-five, although it was hard to say with his scruffy whiskers and unkempt clothing. He smiled tentatively and picked up a slim, well-worn edition of The Wild Times of the Texas Kid. “Mine’s about a rogue who seduces all the women and kills lots of bad guys.”
They exchanged a glance and laughed.
“Do you read a lot? By the way, what’s your name? Mine’s Scarlett.” She chatted companionably, meanwhile letting her shawl slip and pulling out her black feather fan.
“I’m Zeke…Zeke Taylor,” he said with a gulp. His eyes were transfixed by the motion of the fan, which swept in a slow, rhythmic pattern, like a metronome, back and forth, the feathers brushing lightly over the tops of her breasts. “Yeah, I like to read. It gets lonely out here.”
“Oh, I understand loneliness,” Harriet said. She talked and talked to him about books and inconsequential things. The whole time her voice droned in a monotone, the mesmerizing motion of the fan continuing to hold his attention. By the time she said, “You have beautiful eyes, Zeke,” he was already in a trance.
Then Harriet gave Zeke the posthypnotic suggestion. He would scratch his armpits when asked a question and make a blubbering sound…until he heard a cow moo.
Then Harriet turned on Etienne, who was braced up against the bars by now. He stared at her coldly, his judgmental eyes focused on her bruised lips and finger-marked shoulders, but especially the brush-burn over one breast.
She raised her chin defiantly. “You would have done the same for me.”
“Would I?” he said with a sneer.
“Maybe not.” Maybe he really didn’t care for her as much as she cared for him. “Do you want to get out of here or not? Would you rather wallow in there with your self-righteousness?”
“I want out,” he said without hesitation.
She fumbled with the key, then watched as he tied and gagged the guard, a difficult task with his sling.
“Where’s Briggs?” Etienne asked finally, not looking her way as he buckled on the guard’s gun belt.
At first, she didn’t answer.
“Where’s Briggs, Harriet?” Etienne asked again, this time straightening and tilting his head with suspicion.
“Dead.” She stared Etienne in the eye, refusing to cower.
For only a brief second, she thought she saw a flicker of compassion pass over Etienne’s harsh features. His gaze lowered to her hands, which were laced together tightly to still their trembling. Then his eyes came back up to her exposed bosom and the evidence of what she’d done for him.
He deliberately blanked his face. “Let’s go. We have a lot of traveling to do if you’re going to make that train home.”
So I really am going home. Not to Bayou Noir, which I’ve come to regard as home, but back to the future.
She should have been glad.
She was devastated.
“You know, Etienne,” she remarked sadly as they walked toward the doorway and he made a concerted effort not to so much as brush shoulders with her, “there’s such a thing as cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
“Is this another dumb-men joke?”
“No, it’s not a joke. It’s the story of your life.”
“I didn’t have sex with Briggs, you know,” Harriet told him more than two weeks later. She sat on a window seat in the saloon of a New Orleans—bound steamboat. Her remark came out of the throbbing silence that had enveloped them ever since they’d made their remarkable escape from Briggs’s ranch.
Three men had died in the process. They’d had to hide out in a cave for another ten days while he’d succumbed to the pain and fever resulting from his injuries and the further aggravation caused by riding a horse in the escape.
He refused to ponder how Harriet had cared for him during those rough days…how she’d managed to maneuver his much heavier weight, how she’d kept him clean when he was soiled, how she’d found food. If he didn’t think, he wouldn’t have to face some harsh facts. She’d killed a man. For him.
How the hell was he going to live with that fact the rest of his miserable life? She’d been willing to sacrifice hers
elf in the most intimate, degrading manner to save him. He felt like the dregs of humanity…less than a man.
Harriet would leave him soon. It was what he wanted, of course. It would be best for her to depart from this dangerous time and place. Still, he felt as if a bone-crushing weight pressed against his heart.
“Did you hear what I said, Etienne?” Harriet repeated, glancing at him with a resigned acceptance of his taciturn mood. “I didn’t actually do anything with Briggs.”
“Actually?” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice.
She blushed, and he forced himself not to reach out his good hand and touch her heated cheek. Her hair was swept up into a prim knot atop her head, and she wore a dark blue, high-necked gown she’d purchased in Houston. He knew she was going to extra pains to counteract his memory of her lewd conduct. He knew his behavior made her shrivel with shame. He knew he was being a jackass. But he couldn’t stop himself. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Harriet and Briggs, naked together.
“What you don’t understand, Harriet,” he said wearily, “is that it doesn’t matter if you consummated your encounter with Briggs. You would have.”
She sighed. “You’re right. I would have.”
“How did you kill Briggs anyhow? Talk him to death?” Almost immediately, he wished he could take the words back. God, I can’t seem to control my tongue. Why am I doing this to her? Look at that wounded-doe look in her eyes. I’m turning into a monster.
Her lips trembled as she answered, “No. with a knife.”
A knife? Oh, God, no! Now I’ll have that image to haunt me forever, too. “Harriet, I’m…I’m sorry for what I said. About Briggs, I mean.”
“You’re sorry, are you? But only for what you said about Briggs, right? Spare me your sympathy and forgive me if I don’t believe you.” Opening her briefcase, Harriet slammed a copy of Sweet Savage Love into his lap. “You ought to read this sometime. You’d be surprised at the similarities in our stories.”
He arched a brow in disbelief.
“Really. Even your imprisonment parallels that of Steve Morgan. And he misjudged Ginny’s actions on his behalf, too.”
“Oh? And did it all end happily ever after?” he mocked.
She refused to answer. “Read the book and find out.”
He started to shove the novel back into her hands, then changed his mind, slipping it into his jacket pocket. “You’ll be happier when you’re away from here,” he told her with more civility than he’d shown in days.
“Don’t salve your conscience with those hokey sentiments.” Harriet sliced him one of her old glowers of condescension. “I’m going to write a book about you when I get back, Etienne.”
He shook his head at her. She just never gave up.
“The Dumbest Man in the World.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
Chapter Twenty-two
Harriet was an open wound of suffering, and the man slouching on the window seat of the steamboat beside her twiddling his thumbs was the knife. Twiddling his thumbs? Talk about body language! Where’s a thumbscrew when a girl needs one? The brute didn’t have to say a word for the knife to turn and draw new blood. His silence and condemning stares did the job very well, indeed.
Worst of all, Etienne was hurting, too. And Harriet cared more for his anguish than her own.
Harriet was resigned to leaving the past and Etienne. He hadn’t asked her to stay, and she told herself she didn’t want to anyway. But she’d hoped to have healed Etienne before she left. Now he appeared more withdrawn and bitter than ever before. Her “meddling” had increased his problems, not solved them, according to Etienne.
“I’m not going to New Orleans,” Etienne said abruptly.
Harriet jolted to alertness and almost banged her head on the window against which she’d been leaning. It was the first he’d spoken to her in more than an hour. He’d been sitting next to her, long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, reading Sweet Savage Love, to the accompaniment of an occasional snicker or raised eyebrow. When he wasn’t twiddling his thumbs, that was.
She glanced sideways and saw him rubbing his left arm in its bandaged splint. A doctor in Galveston had examined him two days before and said the break should heal perfectly, thanks to her efforts. Etienne hadn’t even bothered to thank her.
She homed in on his sudden comment. “What do you mean…you’re not going to New Orleans?”
“We’ll be in Morgan City tomorrow. I’ve decided to get off, and go up by pirogue to Bayou Noir. I want to check on Saralee.”
Harriet nodded, but a wild hammering began in her head and resonated throughout her body.
Tomorrow? He’s going to leave me tomorrow, and I’ll never see him again. Will he kiss me good-bye, or just get off the boat and never look back? Oh, God! I’m shattering to pieces inside. I can’t let him know. I can’t. “Cain told you in that wire waiting in Galveston that Saralee was fine, that he’d taken her to Blossom after Abel and those government agents rescued them at the warehouse.” Is that me talking so calmly? Amazing!
“I want to see for myself.”
She could understand that. She felt the same. “Will you stay at Bayou Noir?”
“I doubt it. Now that the gold is lost…” The stubborn goat didn’t need to say any more. That was another thing he no doubt blamed on her meddling. Because of her telegraphed message, Abel had managed to remove the gold-laden caskets from the warehouse and had attempted to take them by flatboat to Bayou Noir. In the midst of a violent storm, the glorified raft had tipped over, and the gold now rested in its eternal burial place—the mudflat of a bottomless bayou stream. It would seem that President Grant wouldn’t be obliged to give Etienne his money without the goods.
“Your train to…well, your train back to Chicago won’t be leaving New Orleans for another twelve days, Etienne said in a raspy voice. “If you want to come to Bayou Noir first, you can.”
Harriet’s eyes shot wide.
Etienne avoided her gaze as he spoke, and she couldn’t tell what he meant. He’d resumed the blasted twiddling. Was he saying…?
“I think Saralee will be distraught if she doesn’t see you one more time, don’t you?”
Oh, so it was concern for Saralee that prompted his offer. Harriet’s spirits deflated, but not totally. The separation wouldn’t come tomorrow then. She had a few more days to get accustomed to the concept of a life without Etienne.
Etienne put her book back into his jacket pocket and rubbed a hand over his forehead, closing his eyes. He still had bruises, but they were almost healed now. Even his arm didn’t have to be in a sling all the time. With time and rest and Cain’s medical attention, he would soon be as good as new. On the outside, at least.
“Do you have a migraine?” she asked when he continued to massage his brow.
“Harriet, I always have a headache lately.” The implication was that she was the cause.
Harriet winced. She wanted to help, not hurt him. “Etienne, I can alleviate your migraine if only you’d let—”
“Like you did with the guard back at Briggs’s ranch? Put me in a trance?” he snapped. Still no eye contact, just twiddle, twiddle, twiddle.
“Oh, that was so mean of you!” she cried and turned away from him, hiding her tears. Harriet couldn’t be sure if she wept for the pain caused by his insults, or for the horrendous pain looming on the horizon when she left him for good.
Even if he was a randy, mean old billy goat, she was going to miss him terribly. Luckily, she’d have a few more days to prepare herself and perhaps accomplish the goals of this time-travel fiasco.
Okay, God, Harriet prayed, I’ve got a reprieve here. How about some help? A little heavenly intervention could go a long way in shaking this jerk’s boat. You sent me here. If you want success, you gotta give me some clues. What’s the plan? Huh?
Just then, the pilothouse whistle blew shrilly. The steam boat vibrated a bit as the captain slowed the engines for passage
over a low sandbar. Etienne, off balance because of the sling, rocked forward and almost fell off his seat.
Rocked? Okay, so it was a steamboat, and not Etienne’s emotional boat. Who was quibbling? Harriet smiled as Etienne straightened himself.
With a flash of insight she remembered a legend that a bell rang every time God performed a miracle. Or was that when an angel got its wings? Whatever! Bell, whistle, miracle, angel, big difference! She considered this a divine sign. God was about to perform a miracle.
The goat had better hold on to his boat.
By late that night, Harriet had given up on miracles.
She sat alone in her cabin, crying. What had happened to the old Harriet…the self-confident professional woman who never engaged in bouts of self-pity? The one who tackled any job with gusto? The one who never said never?
She’d fallen in love, that was what. And love had made her weak, exactly as she’d always feared. Just like her mother. Yep, love put a chink in the old armor, for sure. How was a lady knight to go off to battle with a hole in her metal suit?
Harriet smiled at her mental analogy. Geez, I’m a woman of the nineties. I’m intelligent. Power suits, suits of armor…the same thing! A little chewing gum in the weak links and I should be as good as new. Harriet sat up straighter on her narrow bed. That wasn’t a bad idea, really. A battle plan.
The target? Etienne, of course. He’d been sleeping in a separate cabin next to hers, declining even to stay in the same room with her. The coward! He was gambling in the upper saloon right now, but it was after midnight. He should return soon.
Weapons? Harriet had a gun and a knife in her briefcase, but she needed different tools for Etienne. Where was a battering ram when a girl needed one?
Be creative, Harriet. Think like the smart woman you are, not the blind bimbo you’ve been the past few days.
