Fair Is the Rose

by Meagan Mckinney

  She met his gaze. If she were the girl she had once been, she would have dropped the tray and whiskey, and slapped his face, then walked away with all the dignity of a dowager duchess.

  But she wasn't that girl any longer. She'd slept with this man, clung to him for protection, and now feared him as she feared few others. If things were different, and he asked her to be his wife and have his children, she believed she might be the happiest woman alive. But things were all messed up, and her feelings for him were all stirred into the mess. And now all she wanted was him to be gone. She had too much to lose to allow herself to be intimate with him.

  "Excuse me," she said coolly, refusing to look at him. With slow, wooden steps, she returned to the kitchen.

  She silently gave Jericho his drink. Ivy and he were whispering and laughing so much, they hardly noticed her pensive mood. She was about to return to the saloon, when Faulty burst through the kitchen door.

  "Where the hell are you girls? Dixiana's out there trying to please the whole of 'em while you two are back here just sittin'—and—" Faulty's gaze found Jericho. Jericho stood, his mouth tense, his eyes defiant. Ivy nearly fainted. Christal just looked on in horror.

  "What the hell are you doin'?" Faulty gasped. In a knee-jerk reaction, he skittered to the kitchen door to close it to the view of his customers. Then he nearly knocked Ivy over in his fury. "Are you stupid, girl? I can't have no darkies in here! That'll bust up business surer than a tornado!"

  "They were only spending a moment together," Christal interrupted. "Jericho comes to town on Tuesdays to get his supplies. He just stopped by to say hello. I invited him in. It was my doing, not Ivy's."

  "No—Christal—don't—" Ivy stood, her entire body trembling in fear. "You know he was here for me."

  "Yes, but I invited him in."

  Faulty turned to her. "Christal, if you do this again, I'll beat you, girl. You understand that? I'll beat you senseless."

  Christal didn't answer. She couldn't. She didn't understand any of this.

  "Answer me, girl. You know what I'm talkin' about or do I have to take a hand to you now to show you the error of your ways?"

  She still didn't speak. She wasn't going to say she understood why Jericho couldn't come in the bar and visit with Ivy when she didn't and never would.

  Faulty raised his hand to her, but a voice at the kitchen door nearly made him leap to the ceiling.

  "I wouldn't do that."

  Macaulay stood at the kitchen door. In the fray, he had entered without anyone even seeing him. Now he lounged against the closed door, arms crossed casually over his chest, as if he were surveying a bunch of bickering children.

  Faulty pointed to Jericho. "Sheriff, arrest this man for trespassing. There ain't no darkies allowed in this saloon."

  "No!" Ivy cried out, running to Jericho's side.

  "That's ridiculous!" Christal gasped. She turned to Macaulay. "I invited the man in. He isn't trespassing. You can't arrest him."

  Faulty chimed in, "This here is my saloon and I'm not gonna let people think I'm servin' Negroes. Arrest him, Sheriff."

  Macaulay looked around the room, his gaze coolly surveying the situation.

  By now several customers were peeking through the kitchen door. Faulty had no choice but to make a show of protesting Jericho's presence and demand that the sheriff take the trespasser away. He began to rant, "Ain't no darkies allowed in this saloon. Take him away! Ain't no darkies allowed in this here saloon, no sir!"

  Finally Cain turned to Faulty. "This man isn't in your saloon. He's in your kitchen. There's no law that says this man can't be in your kitchen if invited."

  "Well, he weren't invited! No sirree!"

  Christal stepped forward and glared at the men crowding the saloon door. "But he was invited. I invited him in."

  Faulty let out a wince and began shaking his head, as if he were watching his saloon fall right down to the ground.

  Cain looked at the customers crowding the doorway. "Go on, go back to your drinkin'. Nothing's gonna happen in here tonight."

  The men slowly left the doorway.

  Faulty slammed it closed again. "What do you mean, Sheriff, by not arresting this man? There ain't nobody gonna come to this saloon if they think I'm serving darkies."

  "This man was in your kitchen, not out in the bar, and I'm not going to arrest a man for something he didn't do."

  "But he's a Negro and Negroes ain't allowed in here!"

  Macaulay nodded to Jericho. "I'm not going to take this man out of here like he just robbed a bank. He didn't. All he did was come here, thinkin' he had some friends."

  "Well, don't that beat all." Faulty dropped his jaw. "Never thought I'd see one of you Rebs stickin' up for a darkie."

  Cain's mouth hardened. Christal's gaze riveted to his face. If there was ever a sore subject with Cain, Faulty had just gone and picked it. She knew how passionately Cain viewed his role in the war, how guildess he'd felt about it during the fighting, and how guilty the North had branded him afterward.

  "It's the law. I go by the letter of the law. This man broke no law. I'm not going to arrest him."

  "Then take him out of here!" Faulty snorted. "I just uninvited him!"

  Jericho looked as if he could have slammed his fist into Faulty's face. Instead, he looked at Cain.

  Cain nodded. "C'mon. Let's go. If it's whiskey you want, I got a bottle warming at the jail. No reason to stay here any longer."

  Christal almost admired Cain at that moment. He'd saved the day. Even Ivy was looking at him with something akin to hero worship. A weaker man wouldn't have stood his ground for a black man.

  Jericho whispered a reassurance to Ivy. He then followed Cain out the front door—ironically, the first time he'd ever been allowed to walk through the saloon.

  Joe began playing a lively tune and men began drinking and talking again. Dixi was heard laughing somewhere in the crowd, but in the kitchen, no one was laughing.

  Faulty muttered something about tending his customers. He warned both girls to get to work, but Ivy started crying and Christal could find no way to leave her. Faulty left them alone, bursting into the saloon with the chant, "Ain't no darkies allowed in here, no sirree!"

  "Someday things will be different," Christal whispered to Ivy, who was weeping into her hands.

  "He's so angry, I just know he's going to get himself arrested one day. He'll come back here and they'll throw him in jail until the judge comes to town in the spring. Then all his cattle will die and then he'll never have enough . . . enough . . ." She broke down weeping anew.

  "Macaulay won't let that happen," Christal soothed.

  Ivy looked at her, tears marring her smooth coffee-colored cheeks. "How do you know? Do you know him that well? Because I heard tell he was a Confederate. My mama was colored and she said the Confederates hated her."

  "No . . . he's not like that ..." Christal whispered. Deep in her heart she knew he wasn't. Perhaps it was his acutely honed sense of justice, but she could not see him stripping Jericho of all he held dear just because of a stupid incident and the man's skin color.

  "Are you sure, Christal? I love Jericho. I couldn't stand to watch the law go and ruin him."

  She patted Ivy's hand, forcing herself to believe the words, if just for the moment. "You won't. The law . . . the law . . . well, it just isn't there to ruin lives."

  Chapter Sixteen

  I'll choose me then a lover brave

  From all that gallant band;

  The soldier lad I loved the best

  Shall have my heart and hand.

  "The Homespun Dress"

  Carrie Belle Sinclair,

  Confederate niece of Robert

  Fulton, inventor of the

  steamboat, 1872

  At half past three in the morning, Faulty kicked out the last drunken cowboy and latched the front door to the saloon. Two more customers lingered, but they were upstairs. The girls would let them out when they were through.

/>   Exhausted, Christal walked to the kitchen with pieces of a broken glass, telling herself she'd sweep up the rest in the morning. There was nothing she longed for more than sleep, but when she walked through the darkened saloon to the stairs, she noticed the lights still burning at the jail.

  She stifled the impulse to see him. Cain had handled the situation tonight with Jericho well; he'd been scrupulously fair. It tempted her. She wondered if he could also be fair with her.

  Her eyes rested on Ivy's black cape, draped forgotten across a chair. Without quite pondering what she was going to do, she grabbed it.

  The cold sucked away her breath even going the hundred feet to the jail. Flurries fell from a starless sky, coyly drifting down as if playing with the idea of a snowstorm. Even Ivy's heavy cloak was poor shelter from the frigid night. By the time Christal reached the jailhouse, she longed to be invited inside, if just to stand by the stove and thaw.

  With anxiety pumping through her, she gave a knock. The door flew open. Macaulay stood there, a vague annoyance on his face. He looked at her small form huddled in the cloak. His annoyance quickly melted into a wicked pleasure.

  "Why, if it isn't Widow Smith . . ." His gaze flickered down her black-clad body as if somehow he was remembering how she looked in her weeds. The only thing visible was her face, a pale oval against the heavy folds of the dark hood.

  He stared at her long enough to let the snow dust her shoulders and lashes, long enough to allow the icy air to further sting her cheeks and redden her lips.

  She grew uncomfortable. By his expression, he looked more than capable of warming her up.

  "I—I just wanted to thank you. You handled the situation back at the saloon very well," she said softly, wishing he wouldn't look at her with that gaze which seemed to pierce through to her very soul. "I saw your lights burning. I couldn't come until I was finished for the night. I know it's late so—"

  "Come in." He stepped aside and let her enter. To her surprise, the room wasn't empty. Jericho was sitting at a table strewn with playing cards and whiskey glasses. Cigar smoke hung on the ceiling as if the men had been playing an intense game of poker.

  "I guess I'll be headin' out now, Cain." Jericho glanced at Christal. "Tell Ivy Rose I'll be back next Tuesday."

  She frowned. "You know Faulty will be on the lookout for you. You'll just be caught."

  Jericho gave a defiant shrug. He donned his enormous bearkskin coat and hat. With a nod to Macaulay, he stepped out of the small jail and disappeared into the cold night.

  "He shouldn't have to sneak around to see Ivy. She loves him, he loves her. It isn't right they can't be together." She watched Macaulay.

  "It's the law. He can't go into a saloon that won't accept coloreds."

  "It's an unfair law. I'm glad you don't really believe in it."

  "Whether I believe in it or not makes no difference. Until the law's changed, I'll enforce it."

  "You're not that cruel."

  He stared at her, placing his hand against her cold cheek. "But I am cruel, darlin'."

  Fear began to twitter in her stomach like a trapped butterfly. His threat didn't bother her so much as the tone he used. She looked deep into his eyes and an ominous feeling of foreboding took hold. "But if you're so cruel, you would have arrested Jericho tonight and you didn't."

  "He wasn't in the saloon. You invited him into the kitchen—and, I might add—proved stupidly brave in confessing that you had. Faulty could have caused a lot of trouble on that point, you know. I might have had to lock you and Jericho up."

  A chill ran down her spine. She never thought he might have arrested her for defending Jericho. "Must you be so literal? You know as well as I do what happened tonight was ridiculous—"

  He touched her lips to quiet her. "I'm the sheriff and I uphold the law. That's all I did."

  "But you saw that the end was just."

  "The end is usually just when you follow the law."

  She stared at him, unable to agree.

  He slowly smiled. "Why'd you come here tonight, Christal?"

  "Just to thank you. I was glad you didn't hurt Ivy and Jericho."

  "And you were wantin' to talk, weren't you?"

  Her stomach dropped. He seemed to be waiting for a confession. Suddenly she no longer felt like talking. "I must be going. It's very late."

  He slid his hand beneath the cloak and put an arm around her waist. He pushed her against him and said gently, "Answer one question. If you do that, I'll let you leave."

  Her eyes glittered with anxiety. "What's the question?"

  "You must promise to answer it without knowing what it is. Otherwise I think I might keep you here indefinitely." His arm tightened. He almost smiled.

  She stared at him. He was bound to ask her where she came from, or her sister's name, or such. But she could get around the question somehow. Surely she could. "Go on, ask your infernal question."

  "You'll tell me the truth?"

  She watched him, her gaze direct and cool. "If I lie, it's only by omission."

  His smile was strangely not reassuring. He pulled her down to a chair at the table. With both hands capturing her face, he said, "Tell me, who is the one person you love most?"

  She couldn't hide her surprise. It was an unexpected question. The answer was Alana, of course. All she had to do was utter the words my sister and she could leave the jail.

  But when she met his gaze, a sudden and terrible emotion hit her. She loved her sister deeply, yet perhaps because she hadn't seen Alana in four years and the despair of ever seeing her again ran deep, she wondered if the answer was as simple as she thought. Her sister might have forgotten her by now. Alana Sheridan had a life in New York complete with husband and by now, no doubt, babies. Sometimes Christal even wondered whether Alana would want her back. Christabel Van Alen was different now. Didier and Wyoming had made her hard. She didn't fit into the Knickerbocker life anymore. Maybe, despite everything, she never would again.

  And maybe that was why she couldn't say her sister was the true and only answer to Macaulay's question. But she knew it wasn't. Her love for her sister was still as strong as ever, yet looking into Macaulay's eyes, she knew there was another answer to his question. It echoed through her heart, whispering, You.

  He lifted her chin, her silence clearly bothering him. Gently he said, "What's wrong, Christal?"

  She didn't look at him. "I can't answer your question after all."

  "Does the memory"—his voice grew husky—"hurt?"

  She shut her eyes in despair. I was in an asylum for the criminally insane. Do you believe me? Do you believe me? She shoved aside her tortured thoughts. "I won't talk about it. Really, I must go—"

  "Was it a man who led you astray?" His voice turned quiet. Jealous. "If a woman's come out here, the cause is always a man. They either die on you or abandon you. Which was it happened to you?"

  "I can't talk about this—"

  "Is he comin' back for you? Is that why you left Camp Brown the way you did? Are you covering for him? Or are you covering for yourself?"

  She stood, the chair screeching violently across the raw floorboards. "I won't talk about it. I've told you that a million times."

  "Goddammit, I'm sick of begging! Is he coming back? What kind of trouble are you in, girl?" The desperation in his voice made her look at him. He held on to her arm until she nearly moaned with pain.

  "Please . . ." she whispered, knowing any second she was going to confess what was in her soul and doom herself. I was in an asylum for the insane, the demented, the mad. I didn't do it, I tell you. . . . You do believe me. . . . Why, you must believe me. . . .

  "Tell me, just tell me . . ."

  She put her hands to her ears to shut him out. On the brink of tears, she said, "There is no man. No one's coming for me. No one I care about."

  He studied her for a moment, as if trying to decide for himself whether she was lying. Then, as if he couldn't decide, or no longer cared, he pulled her do
wn to him, branding her mouth with his own. A kiss that said he would never relinquish her. She could taste the whiskey he'd been drinking, and though it should have repulsed her, it didn't. Deep down she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted to taste him, touch him, hold him. She was in love with him. She wanted intimacy.

  "Let's go upstairs." He roughly took her hand.

  She studied his face in the flickering lantern light. He'd never know how much she wanted to say yes. If there was a man for her, the one she wanted was the one standing before her. Her need for him was like an ache only he could ease. She was so desperately weary of standing and fighting all alone. And he was so strong.

  "Make me trust you, Macaulay," she whispered.

  His breath was heated and quick against her temple. "If it's fear stoppin' you, girl, then know this: I fear you equally. I want to be free, but you're my obsession. And if I want you above all else, so must I fear you above all else."

  "Is obsession love?" she whispered almost to herself. She stared deep into those fathomless cold eyes, and couldn't find the answer. She wasn't sure he knew himself.

  Silently he took her hand and pulled her toward the stairs. She hesitated, wanting to follow, at the same time wanting to flee. Perhaps it was the drink, but he handled her more roughly than necessary. As if he were the outlaw and she, again, his captive, he pulled her ahead of him and gestured for her to lead the way upstairs.

  "No, not tonight," she whispered, sentencing herself to another night of unfulfilled desire and dreams.

  "Yes. Tonight."

  "No," she answered, pulling away.

  "I want you. You want me. If there isn't another man, what's stopping you?"

  Her gaze slid to the star still pinned to his shirt. Six little points of tin. It stopped her more resolutely than a gun.