He realized he'd drained his drink, and he signaled for another, tamping down the notion that Ellie wouldn't approve of his drinking—tamping it down, but feeling guilty all the same.
See, that was exactly the type of thing he didn't want to get used to, someone telling him what to do. Blasted woman!
"What'd you say, son?"
Thaddeus realized he must have spoken out loud. He looked over at the old cowboy who was now directing his watery gaze at him.
"Sorry, I'm talking to myself."
"Don't apologize. Sometimes yourself is the only one worth talking to."
He was slurring, but Thaddeus nodded, acknowledging the man's words, and turned away.
"Woman problems?" the cowboy asked after a moment of silence.
"What?"
"I say, you got problems account of some woman?" The man turned toward him, his whole body saying he was ready for a good ol' heart-to-heart.
"Not really." Thaddeus didn't want to talk to this stranger about Ellie. She'd given him the gift of herself, and any complaining he did was beyond disloyal. He ought to be on his knees thanking her for the best sex of his life.
He set down his empty glass and started to get up.
"Bring my friend here another," said the cowboy.
Hm, he couldn't refuse a man who bought him a drink. That was the code of the saloon whether in California or Nebraska or... Where the hell was he anyway? Iowa or Illinois?
"I thank you kindly," Thaddeus said, getting comfortable on his stool.
"No need. I was young and some say handsome once. I had my share of the ladies. And they made sure to get a piece of me." He chuckled for half a second and then grew somber. "But I married one by mistake. What a piece of work! You married?"
"No, sir."
"Good. Stay that way. You hear me?" The cowboy fixed him with a hard stare.
"Yes, sir."
"Well, were you planning to marry before you ran into me and my words o' wisdom?" He looked dead serious. "Were you?"
Thaddeus took a swallow to let the liquid burn a trail down his throat, except it had stopped burning. He knew that meant he'd had enough. But the cowboy was only being sociable. No one was beating each other at cards or trying to get the upper hand. No, this was just good, friendly talk, and the older man was helping him to sort out his thoughts and giving him some good advice.
He pondered Ellie and how she'd tried to keep him in the room so he couldn't go meet the cowboy. Or at least, that's how it seemed now. Why wouldn't she want him to talk to the cowboy? The man was his friend. She was so damned controlling. Thaddeus shook his head.
"No, sir. The last thing on God's green earth I'd ever want is to tie myself down to the likes of the hellcat I got waiting for me in my hotel room."
He slapped his hand on the polished bar for emphasis, but then he paused. Was that true? He frowned. He loved her, didn't he? He'd always loved her. But he remembered hardly being able to take a breath and how his heart felt all squeezed in his chest when she'd chosen Riley over him.
She'd hurt him so badly, right when he was going to confess his love to her at the tender age of 18.
Ellie had considered him a worthless piece of shit, cow crap, not good enough. Never good enough. The sole reason she was with him now was because he could help her. Everyone knew Riley wasn't anywhere near as good with a gun, and as far as Thaddeus recalled, Riley had never jumped on a boxcar in his life. But what if Riley was here?
"Is that so?" said the cowboy. "I know a thing or two about hellcats. You gotta tame 'em, if possible. Show 'em who's boss. And if you can't, you gotta let 'em go. If'n you don't, a woman'll eat you up, your land and your house and everything. And don't forget your heart. If you got one, she'll want it. And she'll eat that, too."
He was mumbling more now, facing his drink again, talking more to himself than to Thaddeus.
Thaddeus stared. He didn't intend to end up broken and bitter like the cowboy. He couldn't let Ellie under his skin.
"I've always been free," Thaddeus proclaimed, "like the mestengo, you know?"
The cowboy nodded at his words but didn't look at him.
Thaddeus continued, "You've seen them running, the wild horses. They're so beautiful."
Why did the notion of a mustang bring Ellie to mind, with her hair flowing and her velvety skin? He shook his head. He was the free-roaming horse, not her.
"I like my life that way and I want to stay that way until the end of my days."
"Unless something better comes along," said the cowboy, looking into his glass.
"Unless something better comes along," agreed Thaddeus, like, for instance, Ellie Prentice, the finest woman he'd even known. Damn it! She'd just told him not to bother going back. After all he'd done for her! Got shot at and everything. "But not that shrew in my room," he finished.
The cowboy put his head down beside his glass and closed his eyes, maybe lost in his own private misery. Thaddeus finished his drink. He wanted to put his head down, too, and sleep, but not here, not on a bar top. He'd get that fresh air after all, and then he'd go apologize to Ellie. He owed her one, but he couldn't think why right then. He couldn't think of anything much at all.
* * *
Thaddeus could hardly believe it when, without mishap, they purchased tickets and boarded an eastern-bound train the next day. He even ignored the long perusing stare the ticket seller gave both him and Ellie, chalking it up to his not having shaved and to Ellie being so surefire beautiful. They were an unlikely pair, perhaps, though Ellie now wore a plain-spun dress he'd bought at a mercantile near the hotel; at least she was dressed decently and had shoes that fit.
Together, they sat in their seats, each lost in thought.
"Better than a boxcar," he said, just to say something into the silence that had reigned all morning, though in truth, he'd always found it perfectly acceptable to stretch out in one.
Ellie didn't even acknowledge his words. She leaned away from him, her head resting against the cushioned seat back, not looking at him, not touching him.
When he'd returned to the room the previous night, with his head spinning and his mouth dry, he'd made sure she was still in the bed and hadn't run off in a fit of anger. Then he'd undressed and lay down beside her, sleeping fitfully if at all. Next thing he'd known, it was morning—a morning with a clearly peeved woman.
She remained silent now as had been the case since he'd awakened and found her already sitting in the chair, wrapped in his coat, waiting for him to go buy her some clothes. He'd also had to sell Lucky, which had made Ellie's lower lip quiver though she'd only shrugged when he'd told her.
He was determined to enjoy the train ride, chiefly because Ellie sat beside him, even if she didn't speak a word to him. He watched her watching the countryside go by, and after an hour, he relaxed, stretching his legs out in front of him and closing his eyes.
When he opened them, she was gone.
He jumped up. There was no way someone had come and abducted her, no way she'd been kidnapped again. Impossible! He would have heard any kind of struggle. That meant she'd gotten up quietly and gone away on her own accord.
He looked across the aisle at a man reading a newspaper.
"Excuse me. Did you see my wife?" He was so used to saying it now, it came off his tongue and didn't even feel like a lie. "I fell asleep and—"
"Pretty lady," the man said. "She went that way." He pointed along the train toward the rear. That way was the dining car and the toilet stalls.
Sitting down again, he willed himself to relax. She wasn't his prisoner. She could go where she wanted, but he sure didn't like the antsy feeling of worrying about someone else. Not one bit. He stroked his three-day growth of beard and waited. He would give her five minutes, not knowing how long she'd been gone already.
He counted the time down in his head, as he'd long ago gambled away his only pocket watch and never saw the need to replace it. Two minutes. He kept counting and realized he was jiggling his leg anxiously
and stopped himself, looking over at the man who was reading.
Thaddeus couldn't count and read the headlines, so he kept counting. Three and a half minutes. At four minutes, he stood up involuntarily, staring along the aisle toward the train's caboose. He had to fight the urge to start running.
And then, at four and a half minutes, the door to the compartment opened and in she walked—regal, smiling at people on both sides of the aisle, bending to talk to a little boy who was traveling with his family. As she straightened, she looked up and saw him. He caught his breath and felt he might melt like candlewax, right onto the train floor—she was that beautiful and that important to him. He slumped into his seat.
Ellie came along and took her seat beside him. "Were you going somewhere?" she asked.
"Nope. Just stretching my legs."
"I didn't want to disturb you," she said and, once again, leaned away from him to look out the window.
He nodded and then added, "Next time, I'd appreciate your telling me where you're going." Was his tone gruff? He cleared his throat.
"All right," she agreed in clipped tones.
"We're still not in the clear, you know."
"I said all right, already. I won't even blink without telling you." She crossed her arms over her chest.
"You do that," he said, looking straight ahead at nothing, until he could stand it no longer. Something had changed between the night before when she'd been the teasing, laughing woman who'd let him make love to her and that morning, when she'd been distant, reserved, and cool.
"Is something wrong?" he asked.
She didn't answer immediately. In fact, it seemed as if she hadn't even heard him. Eventually, she turned from the scene she was viewing outside and glanced at him.
"What could be wrong?" she asked tightly.
"I don't know. That's why I'm asking." He crossed one booted foot over his knee and waited.
"Let's see. I'm married to a killer and traveling with a thief. I've been kidnapped and shot at, and I may have brought danger to my whole town, and I'm speeding directly toward the home of a woman who disdains me," she paused and frowned.
"Oh, and I have scarcely any money. I've lost all my clothes except for the one dress I'm wearing and a whore's gown. What could possibly be wrong?"
He opened his mouth, then shut it. She'd summed him up with the word "thief." Really? Simply because he had some things in his bag from Stoddard? He hadn't expected that.
They sat in silence again for a while, a long while. Then at last, she broke it. "I'm hungry."
He sighed, but in truth, he welcomed the excuse to get up. "Let's go to the dining car."
* * *
Train travel the legal way proved to be long, tiresome, and boring. Except for Ellie's occasional burst of chatter, which then subsided into stillness—particularly if their discussion turned to Boston and what they would encounter when they reached Charlotte's house. It seemed to make Ellie more and more uneasy.
"I know my sister will help you," he reassured her after they'd pulled out of Chatsworth station. "I'd like to say she'll do it without asking questions, but that's not her way. She'll ask a hundred questions and then some."
"More likely, she'll spit in my face and slam the door."
He was shocked by her vitriolic notion. "Why would you say that?"
"I know she hates me. She was smarter than me at school, she had a mother, she was statuesque where I was a runt—she had everything. Including you for a brother."
He would have laughed if she hadn't looked so serious. "If you believed she was so much better than you, then why did you torment her mercilessly, as if you were miles above her?"
Ellie looked out the train window. "Because I could."
He did not understand women. "You know, Charlotte didn't have it easy. We lost both our parents at the same time. She was lonely and a bit awkward, and she had to look after me. Imagine having me for a brother. You wouldn't actually want that, you know."
"It was lonely at my house," she said.
She was feeling sorry for herself again, and he hated that. She had no cause to, at least not for who she was—she was as smart and lovely as anyone he'd ever met—but he wouldn't argue that she had brought herself into a very sorry situation now, entirely through her own doing.
"Charlotte thought you didn't like her, and she wasn't going to go out of her way to make friends. In fact, most people believed you didn't like them, but that never stopped me," he added. "Despite your temper. No one knew what was going to set you off."
She folded her arms again. "Riley had no problem with my temper."
For the first time when she mentioned his old friend, he smiled, and Thaddeus realized, rather childishly, it was because he'd been intimate with Ellie whereas Riley never had. He also realized that today, she was throwing her ex-fiancé's name out to goad him, and he felt no compunction to take the bait.
"I bet he ignored your temper."
She frowned. "He did. He never let it bother him one bit."
He pried her arms free and took one of her hands in his. He wanted more than anything to have the Ellie from the night before back with him.
"Could you put your frown away and give me one of your smiles, darlin'? I've been sorely missing them all day."
He thought she was going to snatch her hand back. Then she looked him in the eye and gave him the briefest of smiles before saying, "In case you hadn't noticed, I've been trying ever so hard over the past few days to be sweet."
"You're nearly succeeding." He lifted her hand and placed a kiss on her knuckles. "I think Charlotte will be surprised."
Just then, shots rang out. Such a familiar sound. Thaddeus leaped to his feet, his gun drawn, before the last reverberations died out. Despite the echoes, he could tell the gunfire came from the front of the train. Two carriages stood between their carriage and the coal car, and in front of that, the engine.
"Get down on the floor," he ordered Ellie, who was peering out the window, as he felt the train start to slow. "Everyone," Thaddeus called out, his eyes honing in on the boy to whom Ellie had spoken earlier, "get down. You'll be safer on the floor."
They all moved at once and then another shot rang out, sounding like rifle fire, and this time from the back of the train. Thaddeus swore under his breath. He would bet men were on the track at the front, and as soon as the train stopped moving completely, more men would circle around behind them. You could halt a train this size with three or four men easily.
"Do you think they're here for me?" Ellie asked, from where she crouched beside the seat.
Noting that her words came between shaky, panicky breaths, he didn't answer. That was exactly what he thought, but if she said it any louder, some of their fellow passengers would likely as not turn her over just to get the shooting to stop. These weren't the wild days of the pioneers when gunfire was a regular occurrence. In fact, since the end of the war between the states, people were used to a measure of decorum.
He heard another shot and it seemed to emit from inside the train. There was often a spotter on these long-distance stretches, housed in the caboose; apparently, this one was doing his job and returning fire.
Thaddeus took out his second gun and held it out to Ellie, who stared at it but didn't reach for it.
"We didn't get to any lessons, but you can point and press the trigger. Just don't put it up to your face to aim, or the kickback could give you a black eye, or worse."
"Don't leave me," she pleaded, though she took the gun.
He hesitated, hearing the fear in her voice, but he couldn't delay, not when he could be moving through the train, perhaps getting the upper hand. Anything was preferable to waiting for trouble to come to him.
"I've got to go take a look. Don't move from this spot."
She blinked at him.
"Ellie, promise me you won't do anything rash. Don't follow me. And, for God's sake, absolutely no jumping off the train."
She pursed her lips, lookin
g anything but obedient.
"Ellie," he warned.
"All right. I'll stay put," she promised.
"I'll be right back." He opened the door in the front of the car and stepped onto the platform attached to the connecting car. He took a cautious peek through the glass and saw nothing but frightened passengers. Grabbing hold of the iron ladder, he climbed to the top.
Everything looked clear, so he eased himself up onto the carriage roof. It was easy with the train stopped. He'd once run the whole length of a train with it going at full speed, and that was something he didn't ever want to repeat.
Thaddeus crawled forward along the top of both carriages until he could see in front of the train. Two men sat on horseback. He could tell by their size that neither one was Bart. That meant this could have nothing to do with him or Ellie at all.
He figured there were at least two more shooters in the back. The train had passed some outcroppings, and the men were probably hunkered down behind the rocks. If whoever was wielding the rifle had good aim, the spotter could end up dead.
And if Thaddeus stuck his own head up too high and was seen, perched like a rabbit in the noonday sun, these men would be on him like hawks. Hawks with nasty lead bullets.
Could they be Jack Stoddard's men? Or was it just an old-fashioned holdup? He sure hoped it was the latter. He hated to think that Stoddard had this kind of power to find them. It meant Stoddard had bribed people at the various eastern-bound stations to keep an eye out for them; maybe the ticket seller at the last station had recognized them from a description. A quick telegraph message or even a telephone call and Stoddard would have discovered where they were.
Below him, he heard the conductor going through the carriage calling loudly, "Is there an Eliza Prentice on board?"
Shit! The lily-livered conductor would undoubtedly give her up to save his own skin. And he was heading into their car next. Thaddeus had to act fast. Getting on his knees, he fired unswervingly at the closest man on horseback, who was pacing back and forth across the track. His target spun sideways and fell off his horse.
Only a shoulder wound, damn it! He'd been aiming for the man's head. If he'd taken another moment to aim properly, but he had to get back to Ellie.
An Inescapable Attraction Page 16
