by Kaki Warner
“Then don’t,” Jessica cut in, and rather curtly, Molly thought, which was a clear indication of how worried she truly was. “Tears will avail you nothing. And in any event, we have something to discuss with you.” She pulled the crumpled poster from her pocket. “Are you aware of this?”
Daisy read it then groaned. “Oh, God.”
“You knew him?” Jessica pressed. “This Bill Johnson person?”
“Yes. I knew him.” Daisy looked up with a grim, humorless smile. “I killed him.”
Molly met Jessica’s look of shock. Trying to keep her voice from betraying her alarm, she asked, “Why, Daisy? What happened?”
“He was after Kate. He intended to sell her to a brothel.” Daisy explained about finding Edna Tidwell dead at the bottom of the stairs at her boardinghouse, and how when she went upstairs to the room she shared with Kate, she caught Johnson bent over Kate’s bed. Ignoring their gasps of shock, she added in a flat, unemotional voice, “When I pushed him away from her, he tried to choke me. So I shot him. Twice.”
“My word!” Jessica put an arm around Daisy’s shoulders. “You poor dear.”
Molly rose, unable to think as well sitting as she did standing. Movement fueled her mind. “Then what happened?”
“A friend was with me. A d-dear friend.” Daisy’s voice grew more animated and tears again flooded her eyes. “She took care of... everything.” In a faltering voice she told how they had packed hers and Kate’s belongings, then put Daisy’s bloodied coat on Edna Tidwell and the pistol in the dead woman’s hand. “So it would appear that Edna had killed him. Then my friend took us to a nearby church where the pastor hid us until we left to come here.”
“Smart woman,” Molly mused, pacing before the bench.
“I don’t know what I would have done without her help.”
Stopping before her, Molly held out her hand. “May I see the poster again?”
Daisy handed it over.
After skimming it, Molly nodded. “I thought so. There’s nothing here that actually accuses you of Bill Johnson’s murder. They only want to question you about it, perhaps to see if you witnessed anything.” She returned the paper to Daisy. “It sounds as if your friend’s ploy worked.”
“Do you think so?” Daisy asked hopefully.
“No matter,” Jessica cut in, waving that aside. “We can’t know for certain you’re not a suspect, so we can’t take the risk of responding to the inquiry. What’s important is that we figure a way to keep you and Kate safe.”
“I thought we were safe. San Francisco is over a thousand miles away.” Daisy stared down at the poster in her hands. “How did you even get this?”
Plucking the paper from Daisy’s lax grip, Jessica folded it and slipped it back into her skirt pocket. “Stanley Ashford. That bloody bastard.”
“Jessica!” Molly gasped in astonishment. Even the stricken Daisy gaped at the usually oh-so-proper-Englishwoman’s use of harsh language.
Jessica gave a dismissive shrug. “Well, he is.”
Molly sent Daisy a wry smile. “She’s right. He is.”
“Think, ladies,” Jessica persisted. “We must devise a plan.”
Molly resumed pacing. Jessica pursed her lips and frowned into the distance. Daisy seemed more deflated that ever, and even the flies circling the compost pile in the corner of the garden appeared to have lost their vitality.
“I’ll simply have to go back,” Daisy announced after a lengthy pause. “I’ll have to tell them what happened and that I killed him in defense of my daughter.”
“Absolutely not,” Jessica protested.
“Too big a risk,” Molly agreed.
“Then I’ll leave.”
“And go where?”
“New Orleans.”
“Have you family there?”
“No.”
“Then why New Orleans?” From what Molly had heard, New Orleans was no more safe than wild San Francisco. Perhaps even worse, with all the carpetbaggers and Reconstruction troubles. And hadn’t they been having riots there between freedmen and Southern sympathizers?
“I—well—it’s complicated.” Daisy let out a weary breath and seemed to deflate even more. “There’s something I need to do in New Orleans. I have to get on a ship, you see.”
“No, I don’t see.” Jessica sounded curt again, but this time, rather than showing impatience, she sounded a bit angry. “We’re trying to help you, dear. But you must be open with us so we can. Ship going where? And why?”
“Rome.” Daisy seemed to be at war with her own thoughts, but after twisting Jessica’s fine lace hanky into a wrinkled knot, her need to confide in them apparently overcame her reluctance to speak. “You said I should be singing on a stage—a real stage.”
Molly nodded. “And so you should.”
“Well, I have a chance to do that. And train with Madame Sophia Scarlatti in Rome.”
Jessica reared back in surprise. “The Sicilian Songbird?”
“You’ve heard of her?”
“I actually heard her sing once, although I was a child and have no memory of it. My mother said she was phenomenal. But I thought she no longer sang.”
“She doesn’t. But she trains others, and she’s offered to train me.”
Molly heard a note of pride in Daisy’s voice. And no wonder. She had heard of the Sicilian Songbird, too, and although she had never heard her sing, Molly knew the woman was renowned for her exceptional voice. That she would acknowledge Daisy’s gift by offering to train her was high praise indeed. “Daisy, that’s wonderful.”
“It’s been my dream to sing on a stage for as long as I can remember. I-I can’t just let it go.”
“Certainly not,” Jessica said.
Molly nodded her agreement. “And it’s actually the perfect solution to this Bill Johnson debacle. By the time you complete your training, the whole thing will have probably blown over. How long is the training, by the way?”
“Two years. Then for three years after, I tour with Madame Scarlatti’s troupe.”
“Even better.” Jessica beamed, as if everything was all settled. But when she saw Daisy’s spirits hadn’t lifted as well, she tilted her head to study the younger woman’s face. “Something is still bothering you, isn’t it?”
“Jack,” Molly guessed.
Daisy nodded. “Yes, Jack.”
“What does this have to do with Jack?”
Daisy gave a brittle laugh. “Nothing. That’s the problem.”
“You’ve fallen in love with him,” Molly surmised. “And you don’t want to leave him.”
Daisy stared down at the fingers twisting in her lap.
“Then don’t leave him,” Jessica said in exasperation. “Take him with you.”
“It will be difficult enough trying to manage the training and traveling and tending Kate, without having to worry about Jack too.” That laugh again, with an edge of pain and despair that caught at Molly’s heart. “Not that he would be there to worry about. Jack has his own dreams, and I wouldn’t ask him to give up his plans for me, any more than he could expect me to give up mine for him.”
“Have you asked him?”
Daisy shook her head. “I’ve told him nothing. Jack is ...” She paused, a sad look in her eyes. “Impulsive. He would want to go along with us. And he would. For a while. Then that need to escape, to explore, to keep moving, would pull him slowly away from us, and one day we’d look around, and he’d be gone. I know this because it’s happened once already and it nearly killed me. I can’t put Kate through that. I won’t.” With trembling fingertips, she brushed fresh tears from her cheeks. “Better to go our separate ways now before she becomes too attached. Although it may be too late already. Jack’s absence has upset her more than I thought it would.”
“What a mess,” Jessica said with a sigh.
Molly idly watched two sparrows flit among the branches of a tall pine outside the fence and thought about dreams, and taking chances, and making hard choic
es. Everyone thought being a healer was her dream, but it wasn’t. It had been her father’s hope, not hers. Thinking back on it, Molly wondered if she’d ever had dreams of her own. No doubt at one time she had, but they’d been buried so deep so long ago, she’d never really had a chance to explore them. Now her dream of having her own children would have to be buried too. Not out of choice but circumstance. In neither case was the decision hers to make. How much harder it must be for Daisy to have to decide between a lifelong dream and taking a chance on Jack.
Molly turned back to her friends. She wished she knew Jack better and how deeply his feelings for Daisy ran. She knew so little about men. The only one she had ever truly known was Hank, and he was such a rock and so steadfast in his emotions that Molly had no doubt of his feelings for her. If Daisy didn’t have that same unquestionable belief in Jack, then perhaps she was right to pursue her own dreams rather than live in the shadow of his. A terrible choice, though, and one Molly was grateful she had never had to make.
“So what are you going to do?” Jessica asked.
Daisy took a deep breath and let it out. She seemed to re-inflate a bit, as if in having discussed her problem with Molly and Jessica, she had gained the strength to make a decision. “Now that Jack has so generously provided the money I need, I’ll go on to New Orleans. I’ll find someone to come with us on tour to watch over Kate. Then by month’s end, Kate and her nanny and I will be off to Rome.” She gave them a brave smile, and added, “I can scarcely wait.”
Then promptly dissolved in tears.
HAULING JACK OUT WAS MORE COMPLICATED THAN HANK had expected.
Getting him across the creek was easy enough, although judging by the amount of coughing and cursing from Jack, being towed across the current with two ropes tied around his chest was hard on his bruised ribs.
Then once they got him across and pushed the water out of him, they found getting him out of the canyon wouldn’t be any easier, since Jack was adamantly opposed to hiking out, citing his injured leg as the reason.
An understandable concern, Hank supposed, but it posed the new problem of how they were going to get him up to the wagon on top.
Luckily they had plenty of rope. And after a careful study of the situation, and a bit of rummaging through the spare harness parts and hardware he’d had the foresight to add to the sundry supplies in the wagon, Hank was able to rig a sling apparatus to haul Jack straight up the rock wall.
Well, mostly straight. There were a few jut-outs here and there, and a cluster of prickly pear cactus they probably should have avoided, but Jack made it to the top in better shape than he would have if he’d had to walk out. Although his little brother had some harsh opinions about that too.
Kind of a baby, Jack could be. But then, he had had a rough couple of days.
When they finally got him settled down enough so they could tend him, they plucked out the remaining cactus spines, then Brady held him still while Hank doctored the cut on his leg. After cleaning it as best he could with Jack thrashing around, he slapped on some of Molly’s carbolic salve, wrapped the leg tight and tidy, and tossed him in the back of the wagon.
Hank figured if they hurried, they could make it home in time for supper.
JACK PRAYED FOR DEATH.
His or his brothers’.
He didn’t care which.
He just wanted them to either finish killing him, or take him home so he could see for himself that Daisy and Kate were all right. Then once he was assured of that, he would commence killing them.
What a pair of peckerheads. They’d damn near crippled him for life in their zeal to rescue him. Biting back a groan, Jack pulled the blankets closer around his shivering body and tried to ignore the jostling of the wagon over rocks and ruts. And they wondered why he was always so anxious to get away from them. Still, once he recovered, if he hadn’t done them in by then, he would probably be grateful they had come to rescue him. Maybe.
But for now at least his belly was full of water and dried meat—and getting fuller by the minute it seemed, almost as if an entire cow was rehydrating inside him—and the blankets were keeping him mostly warm and soaking up the lingering dampness in his clothes—and he knew Daisy and Kate were safe. So despite the shivering and exhaustion and the gut ache and soreness and constant throbbing in his leg, it was turning out to be a pretty good day after all.
The ride home seemed to take forever, although it was still light when they rolled up to the house. By the time his brothers dragged him out of the wagon, people were swarming down the porch steps like ants from a burning anthill.
Jack couldn’t help but be touched that they’d been that concerned about him. But the two faces he was most anxious to see were absent. Then he saw Daisy running around the corner of the house from the garden with Kate on her hip.
Daisy was grinning. Kate just looked bewildered. Then she saw him and her face split in a toothless giggle and she started bouncing on her mother’s hip the way she did when she was impatient and excited.
And suddenly all his aches and pains and worries faded away.
He wanted to laugh out loud, scoop them up in his arms and dance them across the yard.
But he was too dirty and sore, and he was afraid his leg would give out and they’d all topple into the dirt. So he just watched them come, filling his mind with the sight of them while something almost like pain moved through his chest and up into his throat.
By God, he needed this woman. Maybe he even loved her. He wasn’t sure if he knew what love was, but the feeling that gripped him now as he watched her come toward him was the most powerful, consuming, undeniable emotion he’d ever experienced. He’d certainly never felt that way about Elena. About anything.
It felt bigger than his mind could encompass.
It felt right and strong and true.
It felt like ... flying.
By the time they reached him, Kate was holding a little tighter to her mother and acting shy again, probably not fully sure who he was under the whiskers and bruises and matted hair.
But Daisy knew him, and her smiling face was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. “Jack,” she said with a catch in her breath. “Oh, Jack,” she said again, and burst into tears.
He almost did, too, but masked it with a broad grin that felt as wobbly as his balance on his makeshift crutch. Then he saw the cuts and bruises on the arm holding Kate, and his grin faltered. Reaching out a grimy hand, he cupped her wet cheek. “Are you all right?”
Smiling through her tears, she nodded. “We’re all right. How about you?”
Before he could answer, Kate poked a finger against a tender lump on his forehead. “Jack alwight?”
He tried not to flinch. “I’m all right, Katie-girl. Just dirty.”
“Bad water take Jack gone. Make Mama cry. Katie too.”
Blinking hard, he forced a smile. “Well, I’m back. And look who I brought with me.” Reaching into the waistband of his denims, he pulled out the battered toy he’d guarded like gold over the last days.
“Titty!” Kate shrieked. “Titty come back!” Then before Daisy could stop her, she threw herself at Jack and her toy.
Laughing, Jack caught her. Ignoring his filth and the ache in his ribs, he pinned her tight against his chest with his free arm. She smelled like flowers and sunshine and berry jelly, and the feel of those little arms going around his neck was the sweetest welcome he had ever known. That unnamed emotion rose again and pressed against his throat so hard he could scarcely breathe. “Katie-girl,” he whispered. And closing his eyes against a sudden sting of tears, he breathed in the clean baby scent of his beautiful daughter, and lost his heart forever.
Something that sounded like a collective sigh penetrated his brain, and he opened his eyes to find a crowd of grinning people standing around them.
Embarrassed, he tried to cover his unmanly display of emotion with another big grin. “So what’s for supper?”
THE HOUSE HAD FINALLY SETTLED DOWN FO
R THE NIGHT.
It had been an emotional evening—for everyone but Jack, that is, since Molly had given him enough laudanum to put him out while she tended his injuries. She was still working on him an hour later when the rest of the family sat down to a late supper. The children had all been fed, read, and put to bed, so only the adults sat around the big kitchen table.
Daisy felt so emotionally and physically drained she could barely lift a fork. But the others were in high spirits, and soon the meal became another of those everybody-talking-at-once gatherings that seemed to be the normal routine for this boisterous family. Brady and Hank took great delight in recounting Jack’s epic battle with the bear and his rescue across the flooded creek and out of the canyon. And although they made it sound comical and had them all laughing, Daisy could see the lines of weariness and strain on their faces, and knew Jack’s ordeal had taken its toll on his brothers as well.
No one actually put it into words, but she sensed each of them was thinking the same thing. They’d come within a hair’s breadth of losing Jack, and they were all immensely thankful he had survived. Daisy sent Elena a silent look of gratitude, certain that her prayers had had a big part in bringing Jack back to them.
When Molly joined them, leaving Jack doctored and dozing peacefully, they were relieved to hear that after some fancy stitching on his leg, the removal of a stray cactus spine or two, and some ointment spread on various cuts and scrapes, he was doing remarkably well for all he’d gone through.
“Other than a lingering soreness from his bruised ribs and having to be careful of his leg, he should be feeling up to his old self within a couple or three days,” she announced.
Daisy felt a tightening in her stomach. Three days. During their talk in the garden earlier that afternoon, despite their loudly voiced doubts that Daisy was doing the right thing in leaving Jack, Molly and Jessica had decided that if she was determined to leave, she should do so as soon as they were certain Jack was on the road to recovery. Daisy had agreed, stipulating only that Jack not be told about her impending departure; she knew if given the opportunity, he would probably talk her into forgoing the dream of singing and staying with him ... which she was certain would last only until the lure of the wandering life drew him away from her again.
