“Elisabeth!” Rue shouted, gripping the sooty doorjamb and staring down through the ruins.
A little girl in a pinafore and old-fashioned, pinchy black shoes appeared in the overgrown grass, shading her eyes with a small, grubby hand as she looked up at Rue. “You a witch like her?” the child called, her tone cordial and unruffled.
Rue’s heartbeat was so loud that it was thrumming in her ears. She stepped back, then forward, then back again. She stumbled blindly into her room and pulled on jeans, a T-shirt, socks and sneakers, not taking the time to brush her sleep-tangled hair, and she was climbing deftly down through the ruins before she had a moment to consider the consequences.
The child, who had been so brave at a distance, was now backing away, stumbling in her effort to escape, her freckles standing out on her pale face, her eyes enormous.
Great, Rue thought, half-hysterically, now I’m scaring small children.
“Please don’t run away,” she managed to choke out. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
The girl appeared to be weighing Rue’s words, and it seemed that some of the fear had left her face. In the next instant, however, a woman came running around the corner of the house, shrieking and flapping her apron at Rue as though to shoo her away like a chicken.
“Don’t you dare touch that child!” she screeched, and Rue recognized her as the drab soul she’d glimpsed in the parlor mirror the night before, wiping the piano keys.
Rue had withstood much more daunting efforts at intimidation during her travels as a reporter. She held her ground, her hands resting on her hips, her mind cataloging material so rapidly that she was barely aware of the process. The realization that Elisabeth had been right about the necklace and the door in the upstairs hallway and that she was near to finding her, was as exhilarating as a skydive.
“Where did you come from?” the plain woman demanded, thrusting the child slightly behind her.
Rue didn’t even consider trying to explain. In the first place, no one would believe her, and in the second, she didn’t understand what was going on herself. “Back there,” she said, cocking a thumb toward the open doorway above. That was when she noticed that her hands and the knees of her jeans were covered with soot from the climb down through the timbers. “I’m looking for my Cousin Elisabeth.”
“She ain’t around,” was the grudging, somewhat huffy reply. The woman glanced down at the little girl and gave her a tentative shove toward the road. “You run along now, Vera. I saw Farley riding toward your place just a little while ago. If you meet up with him, tell him he ought to come on over here and have a talk with this lady.”
Vera assessed Rue with uncommonly shrewd eyes—she couldn’t have been older than eight or nine—then scampered away through the deep grass.
Rue took a step closer to the woman, even though she was beginning to feel like running back to her own safe world, the one she understood. “Do you know Elisabeth McCartney?” she pressed.
The drudge twisted her calico apron between strong, work-reddened fingers, and her eyes strayed over Rue’s clothes and wildly tousled hair with unconcealed and fearful disapproval. “I never heard of nobody by that name,” she said.
Rue didn’t believe that for a moment, but she was conscious of a strange and sudden urgency, an instinct that warned her to tread lightly, at least for the time being. “You haven’t seen the last of me,” she said, and then she climbed back up through the charred beams to the doorway, hoping her own world would be waiting for her on the other side. “I’ll be back.”
Her exit was drained of all drama when she wriggled over the threshold and found herself on a hard wooden floor decorated with a hideous Persian runner. The hallway in the modern-day house was carpeted.
“Oh, no,” she groaned, just lying there for a moment, trying to think what to do. The curtain in time that had permitted her to pass between one century and the other had closed, and she had no way of knowing when—or if—it would ever open again.
It was just possible that she was trapped in this rerun of Gunsmoke—permanently.
“Damn,” she groaned, getting to her feet and running her hands down the sooty denim of her jeans. When she’d managed to stop shaking, Rue approached one of the series of photographs lining the wall and looked up into the dour face of an old man with a bushy white beard and a look of fanatical righteousness about him. “I sure hope you’re not hanging around here somewhere,” she muttered.
Next, she cautiously opened the door of the room she’d slept in the night before—only it wasn’t the same. All the furniture was obviously antique, yet it looked new. Rue backed out and proceeded along the hallway, her sense of fascinated uneasiness growing with every passing moment.
“Through the looking glass,” she murmured to herself. “Any minute now, I should meet a talking rabbit with a pocket watch and a waistcoat.”
“Or a United States marshal,” said a deep male voice.
Rue whirled, light-headed with surprise, and watched in disbelief as a tall, broad-shouldered cowboy with a badge pinned to his vest mounted the last of the front stairs to stand in the hall. His rumpled brown hair was a touch too long, his turquoise eyes were narrowed with suspicion, and he was badly in need of a shave.
This guy was straight out of the late movie, but his personal magnetism was strictly high-tech.
“What’s your name?” he asked in that gravelly voice of his.
Rue couldn’t help thinking what a hit this guy would be in the average singles’ bar. Not only was he good-looking, in a rough, tough sort of way, he had macho down to an art form. “Rue Claridge,” she said, just a little too heartily, extending one hand in friendly greeting.
The marshal glanced at her hand, but failed to offer his own. “You make a habit of prowling around in other people’s houses?” he asked. His marvelous eyes widened as he took in her jeans, T-shirt and sneakers.
“I’m looking for my cousin Elisabeth.” Rue’s smile was a rigid curve, and she clung to it like someone dangling over the edge of a steep cliff. “I have reason to believe she might be in…these here parts.”
The lawman set his rifle carefully against the wall, and Rue gulped. His expression was dubious. “Who are you?” he demanded again, folding his powerful arms. Afternoon sunlight streamed in through the open door to nowhere, and Rue could smell charred wood.
“I told you, my name is Rue Claridge, and I’m looking for my cousin, Elisabeth McCartney.” Rue held up one hand to indicate a height comparable to her own. “She’s a very pretty blonde, with big, bluish green eyes and a gentle manner.”
The marshal’s eyebrows drew together. “Lizzie?”
Rue shrugged. She’d never known Elisabeth to call herself Lizzie, but then, she hadn’t visited another century, either. “She wrote me that she was in love with a man named Jonathan Fortner.”
At this, the peace officer smiled, and his craggy face was transformed. Rue felt a modicum of comfort for the first time since she’d stepped over the threshold. “They’re gone to San Francisco, Jon and Lizzie are,” he said. “Got married a few months back, right after her trial was over.”
Rue took a step closer to the marshal, one eyebrow raised, the peculiarities and implications of her situation temporarily forgotten. “Trial?”
“It’s a long story.” The splendid eyes swept over her clothes again and narrowed once more. “Where the devil did you get those duds?”
Rue drew in a deep breath and expelled it, making tendrils of her hair float for a few moments. “I come from another—place. What’s your name, anyhow?”
“Farley Haynes,” the cowboy answered.
Privately, Rue thought it was the dumbest handle she’d ever heard, but she was in no position to rile the man. “Well, Mr. Haynes,” she said brightly, “I am sorry that you had to come all the way out here for nothing. The thing is, I know Elisabeth—Lizzie—would want me to stay right here in this house.”
Haynes plunked his battered old hat back
onto his head and regarded Rue from under the brim. “She never mentioned a cousin,” he said. “Maybe you’d better come to town with me and answer a few more questions.”
Rue’s first impulse was to dig in her heels, but she was an inveterate journalist, and despite the fact that her head was still spinning from the shock of sudden transport from one time to another, she was fiercely curious about this place.
“What year is this, anyway?” she asked, not realizing how odd the question sounded until it was already out of her mouth.
The lawman’s right hand cupped her elbow lightly as he ushered Rue down the front stairs. In his left, he carried the rifle with unnerving expertise. “It’s 1892,” he answered, giving her a sidelong look, probably wondering if he should slap the cuffs on her wrists. “The month is October.”
“I suppose you’re wondering why I didn’t know that.” Rue chatted on as the marshal escorted her out through the front door. There was a big sorrel gelding waiting beyond the whitewashed gate. “The fact is, I’ve—I’ve had a fever.”
“You look healthy enough to me,” Haynes responded, and just the timbre of his voice set some chord to vibrating deep inside Rue. He opened the gate and nodded for her to go through it ahead of him.
She took comfort from the presence of the horse; she’d always loved the animals, and some of the happiest times of her life had been spent in the saddle at Ribbon Creek. “Hello, big fella,” she said, patting the gelding’s sweaty neck.
In the next instant, Rue was grabbed around the waist and hoisted up into the saddle. Before she could react in any way, Marshal Haynes had thrust his rifle into the leather scabbard, stuck one booted foot in the stirrup and swung up behind her.
Rue felt seismic repercussions move up her spine in response.
“Am I under arrest?” she asked. He reached around her to grasp the reins, and again Rue was disturbed by the powerful contraction within her. Cowboy fantasies were one thing, she reminded herself, but this was a trip into the Twilight Zone, and she had an awful feeling her ticket was stamped “one-way.” She’d never been on an assignment where it was more important to keep her wits about her.
“That depends,” the marshal said, the words rumbling against her nape, “on whether or not you can explain how you came to be wearing Mrs. Fortner’s necklace.”
Leather creaked as Rue turned to look up into that rugged face, her mind racing in search of an explanation. “My—our aunt gave us each a necklace like this,” she lied, her fingers straying to the filigree pendant. The piece was definitely an original, with a history. “Elis—Lizzie’s probably wearing hers.”
Farley looked skeptical to say the least, but he let the topic drop for the moment. “I don’t mind telling you,” he said, “that the Presbyterians are going to be riled up some when they get a gander at those clothes of yours. It isn’t proper for a lady to wear trousers.”
Rue might have been amused by his remarks if it hadn’t been for the panic that was rising inside her. Nothing in her fairly wide experience had prepared her for being thrust unceremoniously into 1892, after all. “I don’t have anything else to wear,” she said in an uncharacteristically small voice, and then she sank her teeth into her lower lip, gripped the pommel of Marshal Haynes’s saddle in both hands and held on for dear life, even though she was an experienced rider.
After a bumpy, dusty trip over the unpaved country road that led to town—its counterpart in Rue’s time was paved—they reached Pine River. The place had gone into rewind while she wasn’t looking. There were saloons with swinging doors, and a big saw in the lumber mill beside the river screamed and flung sawdust into the air. People walked along board sidewalks and rode in buggies and wagons. Rue couldn’t help gaping at them.
Marshal Haynes lifted her down from the horse before she had a chance to tell him she didn’t need his help, and he gave her an almost imperceptible push toward the sidewalk. Bronze script on the window of the nearest building proclaimed, Pine River Jailhouse. Farley Haynes, Marshal.
Bravely, Rue resigned herself to the possibility of a stretch behind bars. Much as she wanted to see the twentieth century again, she’d changed her mind about leaving 1892 right away—she meant to stick around until Elisabeth came back. Despite those glowing letters, Rue wanted to know her cousin was all right before she put this parallel universe—or whatever it was—behind her.
“Do you believe in ghosts, Farley?” she asked companionably, once they were inside and the marshal had opened a little gate in the railing that separated his desk and cabinet and wood stove from the single jail cell.
“No, ma’am,” he answered with a sigh, hanging his disreputable hat on a hook by the door and laying his rifle down on the cluttered surface of the desk. Once again, his gaze passed over her clothes, troubled and quick. “But I do believe there are some strange things going on in this world that wouldn’t be too easy to explain.”
Rue tucked her hands into the hip pockets of her jeans and looked at the wanted posters on the wall behind Farley’s desk. They should have been yellow and cracked with age, but instead they were new and only slightly crumpled. A collection of archaic rifles filled a gun cabinet, their nickel barrels and wooden stocks gleaming with a high shine that belied their age.
“You won’t get an argument from me,” Rue finally replied.
CHAPTER 2
Rue took in the crude jail cell, the potbellied stove with a coffeepot and a kettle crowding the top, the black, iron key ring hanging on a peg behind the desk. Her gaze swung to the marshal’s face, and she gestured toward the barred room at the back of the building.
“If I’m under arrest, Marshal,” she said matter-of-factly, “I’d like to know exactly what I’m being charged with.”
The peace officer sighed, hanging his ancient canvas coat from a tarnished brass rack. “Well, miss, we could start with trespassing.” He gestured toward a chair pushed back against the short railing that surrounded the immediate office area. “Sit down and tell me who you are and what you were doing snooping around Dr. Fortner’s house that way.”
Rue was feeling a little weak, a rare occurrence for her. She pulled the chair closer to the desk and sat, pushing her tousled hair back from her face. “I told you. My name is Rue Claridge,” she replied patiently. “Dr. Fortner’s wife is my cousin, and I was looking for her. That’s all.”
The turquoise gaze, sharp with intelligence, rested on the gold pendant at the base of Rue’s throat, causing the pulse beneath to make a strange, sudden leap. “I believe you said Mrs. Fortner has a necklace just like that one.”
Rue swallowed. She was very good at sidestepping issues she didn’t want to discuss, but when it came to telling an outright lie, she hadn’t even attained amateur status. “Y-yes,” she managed to say. Her earlier shock at finding herself in another century was thawing now, becoming low-grade panic. Was it possible that she’d stumbled into Elisabeth’s nervous breakdown, or was she having a separate one, all her own?
The marshal’s jawline tightened under a shadow of beard. His strong, sun-browned fingers were interlaced over his middle as he leaned back in his creaky desk chair. “How do you account for those clothes you’re wearing?”
She took a deep, quivering breath. “Where I come from, lots of women dress like this.”
Marshal Haynes arched one eyebrow. “And where is that?” There was an indulgent tone in his voice that made Rue want to knuckle his head.
Rue thought fast. “Montana. I have a ranch over there.”
Farley scratched the back of his neck with an idleness Rue perceived as entirely false. Although his lackadaisical manner belied the fact, she sensed a certain lethal energy about him, an immense physical and emotional power barely restrained. Before she could stop it, Rue’s mind had made the jump to wondering what it would be like to be held and caressed by this man.
Just the idea gave her a feeling of horrified delight.
“Doesn’t your husband mind having his wife go arou
nd dressed like a common cowhand?” he asked evenly.
Color flooded Rue’s face, but she held her temper carefully in check. Marshal Haynes’s attitude toward women was unacceptable, but he was a man of his time and all attempts to convert him to modern thinking would surely be wasted.
“I don’t have a husband.” She thought she saw a flicker of reaction in the incredible eyes.
“Your daddy, then?”
Rue drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m not close to my family,” she said sweetly. For all practical intents and purposes, the statement was true. Rue’s parents had been divorced years before, going their separate ways. Her mother was probably holed up in some fancy spa somewhere, getting ready for the ski season, and her father’s last postcard had been sent from Monaco. “I’m on my own. Except for Elisabeth, of course.”
The marshal studied her for a long moment, looking pensive now, and then leaned forward in his chair. “Yes. Elisabeth Fortner.”
“Right,” Rue agreed, her head spinning. Nothing in her eventful past had prepared her for this particular situation. Somehow, she’d missed Time Travel 101 in college, and the Nostalgia Channel mostly covered the 1940s.
She sighed to herself. If she’d been sent back to the big-band era, maybe she would have known how to act.
“I’m going to let you go for now,” Haynes announced thoughtfully. “But if you get into any trouble, ma’am, you’ll have me to contend with.”
A number of wisecracks came to the forefront of Rue’s mind, but she valiantly held them back. “I’ll just…go now,” she said awkwardly, before racing out of the jailhouse onto the street.
The screech of the mill saw hurt her ears, and she hurried in the opposite direction. It would take a good forty-five minutes to walk back to the house in the country, and by the looks of the sky, the sun would be setting soon.
As she was passing the Hang-Dog Saloon, a shrill cry from above made Rue stop and look up.
Linda Lael Miller Bundle Page 43
