Emma and the Outlaw

by Linda Lael Miller

  By then Dirk was only half conscious. He spat at Steven and closed his eyes, his face going pale as wax.

  Steven felt strong hands on his shoulders and looked back to see his best friend and second, Garrick Wright. Garrick’s voice seemed to echo through the isolated clearing, even though he spoke quietly. “Let’s go. It’s over now.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, Steven rose to his feet again. When he spoke he addressed his words to the doctor. “He’ll be all right?”

  The older man looked up at Steven with grim gray eyes. Early morning moisture beaded his salt-and-pepper hair and mustache. “Men like Dirk are never ‘all right,’” he replied. “They cannot be content until they’ve challenged the world and brought about their own deaths.”

  Steven swallowed hard. “He’ll die, then?”

  “Not this time,” the doctor replied.

  And Steven turned and walked away to begin the dream again. It always repeated itself, over and over, for one night or a hundred nights, as it might choose.

  Emma was waiting when Mrs. Birdwell opened the general store at nine o’clock Monday morning. She went immediately to the bolts of fabric, as though by selecting material and sewing a dress for Saturday’s party, she could make everything right.

  “I’d have thought you’d be opening up the library by now,” Mrs. Birdwell trilled, flipping through a stack of invoices at the counter. She wore a smug expression on her plain face, suggesting she was privy to some defamatory secret.

  “I’m taking the day off,” Emma announced, taking pleasure in the way Mrs. Birdwell pushed her spectacles the length of her nose, until their rims pressed against her forehead.

  “Next you’ll tell me you’re not meeting the train!”

  Emma shook her head. “Oh, no. I’ve got a fresh batch of posterver at the depot right now. As soon as I hear the whistle, I’ll be headed that way.”

  Mrs. Birdwell pretended friendly concern. “Don’t you think you should give up trying to find those sisters of yours? After all, they’re surely either married or dead, after all this time.”

  Emma, who had been examining a bolt of green watered silk, laid it down on the yardage table to turn and face Mrs. Birdwell squarely. “Lily and Caroline might well be married—they’d have grown up to be beautiful women—but they’re not dead. I would have known it if they were.”

  Mrs. Birdwell subsided slightly, not daring, apparently, to ask how Emma would know such a thing.

  Emma, not sure how she knew but bone-certain that she did, all the same, snatched up the bolt of watered silk, and carried it to the counter, where she set it down sharply. “Is there any lace for trim? I didn’t see it there.”

  The storekeeper strode through the well-stocked mercantile, as though it were a trial to have to wait on such a tiresome customer, and opened a drawer in the notions table. “White or ecru?” she snapped.

  “Ecru,” Emma answered, hiding a smile. “And some of your best silk thread as well.”

  “Have you a pattern?” Mrs. Birdwell demanded, returning with a length of ecru lace and two spools of green thread.

  Emma nodded. “I ordered one from a magazine, months ago.”

  Mrs. Birdwell was duly offended. “You know, Mr. Birdwell and I try our best to stock the store with everything a person could want,” she complained. “I can’t think why you’d want to send away for anything.”

  “It has to be a special dress,” Emma answered sweetly. “It’s not every night one attends a party at the Crystal Lake Hotel.”

  Mrs. Birdwell’s small eyes narrowed behind her spectacles. “I can just imagine what Cobina Whitney will say when she finds out who her boy’s been consorting with,” she huffed.

  Emma smiled remotely and took money from her handbag to pay for the fabric.

  In the distance a train whistle sounded. Emma knew from long experience that it was still a good way off, just rounding the far side of the lake, no doubt. She waited patiently while Mrs. Birdwell measured the length of silk and totalled up the bill.

  Fifteen minutes later, her purchases wrapped in brown paper and string, Emma arrived at the railroad station.

  Mr. Lathrop waved at her as he stepped down from the train. “More posters?” the conductor asked good-naturedly as she hurried up to him.

  She handed over a ream of freshly printed notices. “Here they are,” she said, smiling. “Any news?”

  He shook his head. “Not this time. I’m sorry, Miss Emma.”

  Emma’s disappointment was as keen as ever, but it faded quickly. There was always the next train, and the one after that. One of these days, somebody who knew Lily or Caroline was going to sef tf those posters.

  After exchanging a few pleasantries with Mr. Lathrop and walking up and down the aisles of the passenger cars once, to look for familiar faces, Emma took her parcel home. There she spread the fabric out on the long dining room table, pinned the pattern into place, and cut out her dress.

  By lunchtime, she had completed the arduous task and sewn tiny whip stitches around most of the pieces so the fabric wouldn’t ravel.

  She was outside in the back yard, seated in the swing Big John Lenahan had made for her when she was eleven, and watching the spring sun shimmer on the lake when she felt masculine hands encircle her waist.

  “Want a push?” Fulton asked.

  Emma would never have confessed to the disappointment she felt. She forced a smile to her lips. “No, thanks,” she said. “What are you doing here? It’s the middle of the day.”

  “I couldn’t think of a better time to catch you alone.” He took hold of the swing’s ropes and twisted them so that Emma was facing him. His eyes moved hungrily over her breasts, her trim waist and womanly thighs. “Let’s go into the summerhouse, Emma. I’ll make you forget that gunslinger once and for all.”

  Emma swallowed and then forced herself to smile. “What gunslinger?” she asked, to prove she’d forgotten Steven Fairfax already.

  Emma hummed as she stitched a bodice seam on her new silk dress. The evening was fairly cool, so there was a fire snapping on the parlor hearth, and a cup of hot, sweet tea waited at her elbow. An authoritative knock sounded at the front door, and some instinct made her stiffen. She sat rigid in her chair while Daisy went to answer the imperious summons.

  “Someone to see you, Miss Emma,” the housekeeper announced, with uncommonly good cheer.

  Emma’s heart fluttered when she rose from her chair—the silk bodice in her hands—to see Steven walk through the parlor doorway, his hat in his hands. His clothes, though they were the rough, practical garments of a rancher, were clean. For all of that, he was wearing that pistol of his, riding low on his hip, in just the way a gunslinger would.

  “Hello, Emma,” he said with a grin, when she found she couldn’t speak.

  She sank back into her chair, and Steven went to stand by the fire, one arm resting on the mantel.

  “That color will look good on you,” he observed, speaking of the green silk in her lap. She was busily stitching again.

  “Thank you very much,” she said coolly. She didn’t ask Steven to sit down because she didn’t want him to stay. She’d only just managed to put her scandalous encounters with him out of her mind.

  “Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

  Emma made herself meet his eyes. “No,” she said. “I do not.”

  He chuckled, unmoved, as always, by her discourtesy. “We’re going on a picnic Saturday,” he announced.

  Emma had had all she could take of Steven Fairfax’s audacity. She glared at him, her cheeks throbbing. “I hardly think that will be possible. You see, I’ve agreed to attend a party with Fulton on Saturday evening.”

  Steven sighed. “So you’re still seeing the banker, huh?”

  “Honestly,” Emma snapped, amazed, “you are insufferable. And I’m not going on any picnic with you, now or ever!” The silk crumpled between her clenched fingers, and she nearly stuck herself with the needle. “Perhaps I have fina
lly made myself clear?”

  He smiled. “I do comprehend what you’re trying to say, Miss Emma. I just disagree with you, that’s all.”

  Emma hurled down the bodice of the dress she’d been sewing and bolted out of her chair. “What on earth gives you the idea that it matters, whether you and I agree or not?”

  His eyes glittered with firelight and humor as he watched her. “You are indeed a beauty, Miss Emma—the kind of prize a man dreams of winning. Win you I will, and when I do, I intend to have you well and often.”

  A tremor of mingled fury and desire coursed through Emma’s slender frame. “What will it take to make you go away and leave me alone?” she whispered, clasping her hands together as though she were praying.

  Steven drew her to him without moving, without extending a hand. Before she knew what was happening, Emma was standing on the hearth, looking up into his face. He touched her lips, very lightly, with his finger, sending a storm of fire all through her. “Go on the picnic with me,” he said quietly. “Then if you still want me to leave, I will.”

  Emma’s eyes widened. She felt hope, but also a raw sort of dismay. “You mean you’ll actually saddle your horse and leave Whitneyville entirely? You won’t even work on Big John’s ranch anymore?”

  “That’s right,” Steven answered hoarsely, winding an escaped tendril of Emma’s blaze-colored hair around the same finger that had caressed her lips. “If you can tell me you never want to see me again after our picnic, I’ll ride out.”

  Emma bit her lip and laid one hand to her heart, as though to slow its rapid beat so Steven wouldn’t hear it. “But the dance…”

  “You’ll be back in plenty of time for that.”

  Within Emma’s breast, reason and whimsy did battle. And as so often happened where this man was concerned, whimsy won. “All right,” she sighed with resolution. “But I expect you to keep your word.” She waggled a finger at him. “There’ll be no backing out after I say I never want to see you again.”

  He bent his head and kissed her lightly, tantalizingly, on the lips. “You have my word of honor,” he told her between soft samplings of her mouth that sent sweet shocks jolting to her nerve endings.

  Emma wanted desperately to be held and soundly kissed; she longed to melt into Steven’s hard frame and lose hern en the riotous pleasure of his touch. But saying so outright just wouldn’t have done. Especially not under the circumstances. “Good night, Mr. Fairfax,” she said in a shaky voice.

  Steven laughed and tossed his hat onto a settee to pull her against him. Her heart raced and heat climbed from her stomach to her chest at the intimacy of their contact—Emma could feel his rocklike masculinity pressing against the soft flesh of her thigh.

  “Mr. Fairfax,” she protested. “I must insist—”

  Her words were smothered by the warm, moist conquest of his mouth. His tongue teased the corners of her lips, and when they opened for him, he consumed her. Emma whimpered and sagged slightly in surrender, as he plundered her sweetness. By the time the kiss ended, the room was spinning so that she could barely stand, and Steven deposited her in a nearby chair.

  “See you Saturday, Miss Emma,” he said with a low chuckle.

  “Go to perdition, Mr. Fairfax,” Emma replied breathlessly, not daring to meet his eyes. But she knew she’d go on the picnic with him, and so did he.

  Chloe swept in almost the moment the front door had closed behind him. “I’ll make sure there’s a basket packed,” she said, making no pretense that she hadn’t heard all or most of the conversation.

  Emma snatched her bodice from the floor, took up her needle and thread, and began making furious, stabbing stitches. “If you cared about me at all, Chloe Reese, you would forbid me to be alone with that man for a minute, let alone a whole day!”

  Chloe laughed. “Would you obey me if I did?”

  The look Emma gave her was sheepish. “No,” she answered honestly. “I probably wouldn’t.”

  Green eyes flashing with amusement, Chloe sat down in the chair nearest Emma’s. “The way he kissed you made me think of Big John. Now, there’s a man.”

  Emma sighed, mortified that Chloe had witnessed such a personal moment. But her guardian had offered her a chance to change the subject, and she wasn’t going to overlook it. “Why don’t you marry John? It’s obvious you love him.”

  Chloe’s rich taffeta skirts swished and rustled as she settled herself in the chair and crossed her shapely legs. “Mr. Lenahan is a proud man,” she answered, her tone sad. “I won’t have people making fun of him because he took a whore for a wife.”

  Emma’s gaze shot to Chloe’s face. “But you’re not—you don’t—”

  “I might as well be, Emma. Folks take the same view of me as if I did.”

  Given all she’d suffered over the years because of Chloe’s occupation, there was no denying her assertion. “Has he ever proposed?” Emma asked, her needle suspended.

  Chloe smiled. “Oh, yes, once or twice.”

  “I think you should marry him,” Emma announced with certainty. “And hang what everybody else has to say about it!”

  “And I think you should stay plumb away from Fulton Whitney. It isn’t right, Emma, using one man to hold off another like that.”

  Emma bit her lower lip and went back to sewing her seam. She still had a lot to do if she wanted to wear the dress on Saturday night. “Who says I’m using anyone?”

  Chloe gave a rich burst of laughter. “I do.” She was a vivid woman, still beautiful despite what seemed to Emma an advanced age, and she was smart. It was no wonder a fine man like Big John Lenahan wanted her for his wife. “I suppose you’re thinking you’ll be an old maid if you don’t tie the knot with Whitney—still puttering around that library and meeting every train with a stack of posters when you’re ninety.”

  Dismayed, Emma let her hands rest in her lap. “You sound as though you don’t think I’ll ever find my sisters.”

  Chloe’s eyes softened. “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said gently. “You’ll find them, all right, if there’s any justice in this world.”

  Emma was relieved that Chloe thought so, and she managed a smile. “Why do you dislike Fulton so much? I do believe you’re pleased that I’m going on a picnic with an outlaw—a man you said yourself was probably just one step ahead of real trouble.”

  “My reasons for not liking Fulton are my own business,” Chloe replied. “You’d see what’s wrong with him for yourself if you’d just open your eyes. And I’ve changed my mind about you seeing Mr. Fairfax because Big John says he’s solid as bedrock. Fact is, I think he could bring out a side of you the rest of us have never seen.”

  Reflecting on the way she’d responded to Steven’s kisses, Emma dropped her eyes. “Maybe that side is better left alone,” she said, feeling a stirring of desire as well as shame.

  “Nonsense,” Chloe said briskly, “it’s as much a part of you as that lovely copper-colored hair of yours and your blue eyes. You’re a woman now, Emma, and it’s time you stopped trying to mold yourself into a bluestocking.”

  I’m terrified of that other Emma, she thought. “My mother had a passionate side,” she observed aloud. “It brought her to ruin and made her give up her own children.”

  “She was weak,” Chloe insisted.

  Emma recalled how easily Steven had been able to make her submit to him. “Perhaps I’m weak, too.”

  “Only where one man is concerned, I think,” was Chloe’s reply. She rose from her chair and yawned daintily. “I’ll be off to bed now. It’s been a long day.”

  “Good night,” Emma said, standing.

  Chloe kissed her cheek. “Good night, Emma, dear. And don’t stay up half the night berating yourself because some cowboy can make your knees melt. It just means you’re a normal, healthy woman, that’s all.”

  Emma reflected that the Presbyterians would probably argue that point, but she didn’t say so out loud. She just sat back dowand went right on sewing her party
dress.

  His cattle were still spread all over the ranch, and Big John Lenahan watched with interest as Fairfax dispatched men for the roundup. He was a born leader, that young Reb, despite his soft-spoken ways and gentlemanly manner. Although some of the men begrudged him his authority, none of them wanted to cross him.

  Fairfax was just about to mount his own horse and ride out when Big John hailed him.

  He turned, pushing the beat-up old hat to the back of his head, and stood beside his gelding, watching the rancher approach.

  “The army’s just put in an order for a couple hundred head of cattle,” Big John said, patting the pocket of his shirt where the telegram rested. “How’d you like to head up a drive?”

  Fairfax was clearly interested, but there was a look of reluctance about him, too. “Where to?”

  “Spokane, over in the Washington Territory,” Big John answered. “The army’ll take ’em from there to Fort Deveraux.”

  “That’s about ten days from here,” Fairfax mused.

  “Maybe as long as two weeks,” Big John allowed. ‘After all, two hundred cattle and a couple of supply wagons can’t be expected to move as fast as one man on horseback.”

  Fairfax nodded in agreement, and Big John knew he hadn’t said anything to surprise the man.

  “All right. When do you want us to head out?”

  Big John scratched the back of his neck. It didn’t itch, but it was his habit to scratch something when he was thinking. “Sunday morning, I reckon. I’m depending on the Lord to forgive us for working on the Sabbath Day.”

  “How many men?”

  “Twelve good ones ought to do you. You can choose them yourself, of course.”

  Fairfax nodded his head. “Fine,” he said, and the two men shook hands to bind the agreement.

  As Big John strode away back to his study and the book work he hated, he allowed himself the fanciful wish that Steven Fairfax would fall in love with Joellen and marry her. She was just sixteen, of course, but it wasn’t unheard-of for a girl that young to tie the knot, and God knew it would be nice to let somebody else take the responsibility for her.