Autumn Lover

by Elizabeth Lowell

  The front door opened. Penny ran out and threw herself to her knees next to Bill.

  Elyssa started to go to Bill as well. Then she froze as she saw that the man tied to the Ladder S mare had only one arm.

  “Mac,” she said, shocked.

  If Hunter was shocked, he didn’t show it. He simply pulled his belt knife, cut Mac free, and caught him.

  “Is he—” Elyssa began.

  “Alive, barely,” Hunter interrupted.

  He carried Mac to the house. No sooner was Hunter through the door than he called out to Case.

  “Take two men and see which raiders are left alive. If any.”

  Just after noon on the following day, Elyssa went silently down the stairs to the cellar. The house felt strangely empty to her. Most of the men were out rounding up cattle that had been held just beyond Ladder S land. At last count, more than six hundred head had been found.

  The raiders were buried where they were found. Only one Culpepper had been found among the dead.

  It wasn’t Ab.

  Case found mule tracks and followed them until they vanished on a slope of broken rock. Then he had returned to tell Hunter and pack his gear.

  Elyssa knew that Case wouldn’t be on the Ladder S come sundown.

  Nor would Hunter.

  I can’t let my brother go against Ab Culpepper alone.

  Only Bill and Mac remained in the dispensary. Bill wasn’t badly injured. He was simply exhausted from being tied up, beaten, and left for dead by the Culpeppers on their way to raid the Ladder S.

  Mac’s condition was much worse.

  At the bottom of the cellar stairway, Elyssa stopped and let her eyes adjust to the dim light. The flickering lantern revealed little. Mac’s cot was on one side. Bill’s cot was on the other, in a corner where the lantern light barely reached.

  Penny was nowhere in sight.

  Just before Elyssa turned to go back upstairs, there was movement from Bill’s side of the room. As her eyes adjusted, Elyssa saw that there were two people on the cot. They were locked in each other’s arms.

  Words of passion and tenderness filtered through the darkness, telling Elyssa that Bill finally returned the love Penny had for him. Though Elyssa was happy for both of them, the sight of their love was almost painful to her.

  Tomorrow at dawn Morgan, Sonny, and the vaqueros would drive cattle and horses to Camp Halleck, fulfilling the contract.

  Hunter and Case would be going in the opposite direction, following Ab Culpepper’s tracks.

  I can’t let my brother go against Ab Culpepper alone.

  As Elyssa began to retreat, Bill called out to her in a low voice.

  “Come on over here, Sassy. You can be the first to know that Penny has agreed to marry me.”

  There was a startled sound from Penny. She scrambled off the cot and stood beside it.

  “Congratulations,” Elyssa said.

  “On finally getting smart?” Bill retorted.

  “It’s so rare in men,” Elyssa said. Then she gave him a bittersweet smile, taking the sting out of her words.

  Penny laughed out loud. Even Bill’s eyes twinkled against his windburned face.

  “How is Mac doing?” Elyssa asked.

  Slowly Penny shook her head.

  “I just checked on him,” Penny said. “He drifts in and out, but each time he goes under…”

  Penny shrugged and said no more.

  In the time since Mac had returned so unexpectedly to the Ladder S, he had done nothing but fall deeper into the thrall of his wound.

  “It’s just as well,” Bill said tersely. “Saves me the trouble of killing him.”

  “What?” Elyssa said, shocked.

  “Mac was stealing you blind,” Hunter said from the stairway behind Elyssa.

  She spun around.

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

  Hunter looked at Bill.

  “You tell her,” Bill said, taking Penny’s hand. “I’d rather kiss this little lady.”

  Penny’s blush and smile of delight was like a sunrise in the dim room. She bent to receive Bill’s kiss.

  Elyssa looked away.

  “Mac started stealing from you as soon as John Sutton died,” Hunter said to Elyssa.

  She simply shook her head, not understanding.

  “Bill told me that Mac didn’t figure a ‘no-account daughter of an adulteress deserved the sweat of John’s brow,’” Hunter explained. “So Mac started setting up his own ranch.”

  “With Ladder S stock and a Slash River brand?” Elyssa guessed.

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “I suspected,” Bill said a moment later, “but I was too drunk to care.”

  Penny made a low sound and touched Bill’s face. He smiled at her gently.

  “By the time Penny made me see the foolishness of my ways,” Bill said, “the Culpeppers had started moving in. Mac didn’t like it one bit, but he couldn’t stop it.”

  “So he staged his ‘death’ and threw in with the Culpeppers?” Hunter asked.

  Bill nodded.

  Hunter threw a narrow look in Mac’s direction.

  “If he lives,” Hunter said, “I should hang the son of a bitch.”

  Elyssa opened her mouth but could find no words to equal the icy rage in Hunter’s eyes. The appalled sound she made brought his attention back to her.

  “I won’t see a man hanged for rustling,” Elyssa said.

  “Neither would I,” Hunter said flatly. “But Mac tried to kill you three times that I know of.”

  “What?” she asked, shaken.

  “He used that longhorn bull, and a landslide, and then took aim with a gun the night he salted your garden.”

  “Mac?” Elyssa asked in a strained voice. “He hated me that much? But why? What did I ever do to him?”

  “It wasn’t you he hated,” Bill said. “It was Gloria.”

  “What do you mean?” Elyssa asked.

  “Mac and John were partners until Gloria came along,” Bill said. “Mac never forgave her for changing things.”

  “What does that have to do with me?” Elyssa whispered.

  “You look so much like her, sometimes—” Bill hesitated and said simply, “Sometimes it’s like being cut with a knife.”

  Elyssa shook her head, not wanting to believe that Mac had hated her enough to kill her.

  “Sassy.”

  At first Elyssa thought she had imagined the whisper. Then it came again.

  “Sassy.”

  Slowly she turned toward the corner where Mac lay dying.

  Hunter reached the cot before Elyssa did. His hard arm barred her from coming within Mac’s reach.

  “I’m here, Mac,” Elyssa said.

  “Where?” he whispered. “Can’t see.”

  Elyssa stepped around Hunter’s arm and took Mac’s hand.

  “Right here,” she said softly.

  Mac’s eyes focused on her.

  “You know—my brand,” he said painfully.

  “The Slash River?” she asked.

  “Give it—to you.” He took a sharp breath. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t talk,” Elyssa said. “Save your strength for getting well.”

  Something close to a smile crossed Mac’s face, shifting the line of his gray-streaked beard. When he spoke, his voice was stronger, as though he was drawing on a last reserve of strength.

  “I’m dying, Sassy.”

  Elyssa caught her breath and squeezed Mac’s hand gently.

  “Damned whoring Culpeppers,” Mac said, his voice hoarse and laced with contempt. “Just had to have a female. Stole a Ute gal.”

  Elyssa’s eyelids flinched.

  “Fools,” Mac said. “Told ’em so. Then I—went to the marsh.”

  Mac drew several shallow breaths. Each one told of the pain that was consuming him as deeply and finally as death.

  “It was you,” Hunter said. “You shot Gaylord before he could shoot Elyssa.”r />
  Slowly Mac glanced to Hunter and then back to Elyssa again, focusing on her clothing.

  “Looked like a man,” Mac said painfully. “Fought like one. Bravest thing—ever saw. Couldn’t let them—kill you. Ab figured it was me. Gutshot me—so I’d die—slow—hard.”

  Mac’s breath came out with a long, unraveling sound. The hand Elyssa was holding went limp.

  Tears she couldn’t stop fell down her cheeks and dropped onto Mac’s hand.

  Mac didn’t feel it. He was finally beyond feeling anything at all.

  In a way Elyssa almost envied him, for she knew her greatest pain was yet to come.

  When Hunter realized what had happened, he drew the blanket over Mac’s face and turned to Elyssa.

  “Don’t cry, honey,” Hunter said roughly. “He isn’t worth your tears.”

  “I’m not crying only for him,” she whispered. “I’m crying for all of it, the pain and anger and betrayal of the past. What a tangled, bitter legacy.”

  For a moment Hunter was silent. Elyssa sensed he was remembering his own past, his own betrayal, his own bitter legacy of pain and rage.

  That was the most savage part of Elyssa’s pain. She could touch her own past, cry for it, even heal from it in time…but she could not touch Hunter’s past. She could not heal him.

  She could only lose him.

  No, that’s not quite true, Elyssa told herself with painful honesty. I can’t lose what I never had.

  Hunter never gave himself to me. He simply took what I offered. And in return, he gave me pleasure.

  Not his heart. Not his trust. Certainly not his love.

  Just pleasure.

  When Elyssa looked at Hunter again, her eyes were as empty as her heart.

  “What did Case say about the mule tracks he followed?” Elyssa asked.

  Hunter paused, surprised by the distance and lack of emotion in her voice. She was different in a way he couldn’t describe, but he recognized it.

  Being through a war changes you, Hunter reminded himself. Finding out that your trust has been betrayed changes you, too.

  It sure as hell changed me.

  Yet watching it change Elyssa was unexpectedly painful to Hunter. He would have given a great deal to replace the shadows in her eyes with the light of laughter and passion.

  “Ab Culpepper is headed for the Spanish Bottoms,” Hunter said finally.

  “Then you and Case will be leaving soon.”

  Before Hunter could say anything, Bill did.

  “Hunter isn’t going one step off the Ladder S until he marries you,” Bill said bluntly.

  Startled, Elyssa turned toward Bill.

  “I beg your pardon?” she asked.

  “You heard me,” Bill retorted. “From what Penny told me—and from what I can see with my own two eyes—it’s past time a preacher came to the Ladder S.”

  “To marry you and Penny, yes,” Elyssa said.

  “It will be a double wedding,” Bill said.

  “There is no need.”

  “The hell you say,” Bill shot back. “You and Hunter—”

  “I’m not pregnant,” Elyssa interrupted.

  Hunter made an odd sound.

  “You’re certain?” he asked.

  “Quite.”

  “The fact that he’s asking,” Bill said, “means it will be a double wedding. I’ll see to it personally.”

  “No,” Elyssa said.

  “Sassy—” Bill began, exasperated.

  “No,” she repeated. “I won’t.”

  “Why?” Hunter asked bluntly. “You know we’re good together.”

  Elyssa turned to Hunter, confronting him and all that she hadn’t lost, because it had never been given to her in the first place.

  “A husband’s first loyalty should be to his wife,” Elyssa said neutrally. “Yours is to your dead children. And to Case.”

  Hunter lifted his hand as though to touch Elyssa, or to ward off a blow.

  Or both.

  “I want you,” he said. “I can make you want me.”

  “Wanting isn’t enough for marriage.”

  Hunter didn’t disagree. Belinda had taught him that with cruel thoroughness.

  “Marriage requires trust,” Elyssa said, “for without trust, love isn’t possible. You haven’t trusted a woman since Belinda. I don’t really blame you. Being badly burned teaches you not to trust fire.”

  Hunter looked away. He couldn’t endure what he saw in Elyssa’s eyes.

  Then he wished he could stop listening as well, for what Elyssa was saying was more painful than what lay in her eyes. Her voice was an aching combination of exhaustion and understanding and regret that tore at him.

  “I thought I could change your mind, or your heart,” Elyssa said. “I was wrong. There is no room for the future in your mind and heart. Only the past.”

  From the upstairs came the sound of Case calling for his brother.

  “Hunter? If you’re still dead set on hunting Culpeppers with me, the horses are ready and the trail is getting cold.”

  Hunter stiffened. He looked at Elyssa and saw that she already knew he was leaving.

  “Elyssa,” he said hoarsely.

  “Go ahead,” she whispered. “There’s nothing to keep you here. We were lovers. Just lovers.”

  Still Hunter hesitated, feeling as though he had lost something before he could even name it. In a haunted silence he searched Elyssa’s eyes for what had once been there.

  Just lovers.

  Pain stabbed through Hunter as deeply as passion once had, as deeply as ecstasy, slicing all the way to his soul.

  “Hunter?” Case called. “Where are you?”

  “Good-bye, my autumn lover,” Elyssa whispered. “I’ll remember you each year when leaves turn to fire.”

  Hunter simply stared at her, unable to speak.

  “Please excuse me,” Elyssa said. “I haven’t had any sleep worth mentioning in days.”

  Quickly she went to the stairs. When she emerged into the kitchen, Case turned toward her.

  “Have you seen—” he began.

  The look on Elyssa’s face stopped Case cold. She went by him as though he wasn’t there. He watched her go up to the second floor. The sound of a door closing came back down through the silence.

  Hunter strode out of the cellar into the kitchen.

  “What are you standing around for?” Hunter snarled. “The trail is getting cold.”

  Case whistled soundlessly through his teeth.

  “Have you said all your good-byes?” Case asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re a damned fool. That’s a fine woman you’re leaving behind.”

  Hunter bared his teeth.

  “Woman?” Hunter repeated sardonically. “She’s a girl who doesn’t know her own mind from one hour to the next.”

  Just lovers.

  “Horseshit,” Case said matter-of-factly. “She’s a woman grieving for her man.”

  “She’ll get over her tears.”

  “Sassy wasn’t crying. She was grieving. If you don’t know the difference, go upstairs and look at her face.”

  Hunter closed his eyes. They opened an instant later, cold and gray as the winter that follows autumn.

  “Damn you, Case,” Hunter said through clenched teeth. “Let it go.”

  “Just as soon as you do and not one moment before. If you take on Ab Culpepper the way you are now, we’ll both be dead by first snowfall. So tell me again, brother. Why are you leaving the woman who loves you?”

  “She said we were just lovers.”

  Case’s left eyebrow lifted in a black, skeptical arch. “Was that before or after you told her you loved her?” Case asked.

  “I never said any such thing.”

  “Well, that explains it,” Case said agreeably, turning away. “I’m going out to talk to my horse. Its butt has more sense than you do.”

  Hunter glared after his brother, but even anger couldn’t keep him fro
m remembering Elyssa speaking of love.

  And his own silence answering her.

  Or even worse, his words.

  Weren’t you listening to me? Did I ever talk about anything but lust between us?

  Elyssa had finally listened to him. Now she, too, was talking only about lust.

  Just lovers.

  Motionless, Hunter confronted what he had done to her, what she had described to him so calmly.

  There is no room for the future in your mind and heart. Only the past.

  Autumn lover. I’ll remember you each year when leaves turn to fire.

  For a time there was only silence in the house. Then Hunter turned and strode up the stairs to the second floor. With every step, he told himself that Case was wrong.

  He had to be.

  Otherwise it didn’t bear thinking about.

  Hunter reached the door to Elyssa’s bedroom and hesitated, not knowing what to say.

  Silence grew around Hunter. No sound came through the door. The quiet was unnerving. It was as though the room beyond was utterly empty.

  Hunter knocked.

  No one answered.

  When Hunter’s third knock was ignored, he tried the door. It opened soundlessly.

  Elyssa was sitting on the bed in a room whose only illumination came from the rifle slits in the shutter. Her back was to the door and her arms were wrapped around herself as though to hold warmth inside.

  Slowly Hunter walked to the bed. Elyssa neither turned nor spoke when the floor creaked beneath his weight. Hunter hesitated, then walked around the bed until he could see Elyssa’s face.

  His breath came in hard and stayed until it ached.

  Elyssa no longer looked like a girl. Anguish lined her face, drained color from her skin, took life from her eyes, made her whole body rigid. Motionless, barely breathing, she simply endured each breath as it came, and with it the agony of being alive.

  Case had been right. Elyssa was a woman grieving for the loss of the man she loved.

  With a throttled sound of pain, Hunter sank onto the bed next to Elyssa. He lifted her onto his lap and stroked her face with fingers that trembled.

  “It wasn’t you I didn’t trust,” Hunter said in a raw voice. “It was me. I chose wrong and my children paid.”

  A shudder went through Elyssa. She turned and focused on Hunter. The anguish in her eyes made him flinch.

  “Then I saw you,” Hunter said in a low voice. “I wanted you until it hurt to breathe.”