A Love Behind The Broken Mask (Western Historical Romance)

by Lydia Olson

  Ryan had never been much of a fighter, but as Eloise had been learning about him, that may have been because he often held back to keep people from seeing the real him. Like Eloise, Wilson seemed to have underestimated Ryan’s strength. Ryan got one good swing in, hitting Wilson square in the face. Wilson stumbled backwards a few paces and then lifted his fists again.

  “How could you do that to her and then say you love her?” Wilson yelled. “You’d better have a good explanation for whatever I just interrupted! What were you gonna do to her?”

  “Nothing worse than what you’ve done!” Ryan retorted. “I saw you with her last night!”

  “What, in the alley?” scoffed Wilson. “What are you accusing me of? The only thing that happened in the alley is I finally got to kiss the woman I’ve loved for as long as I can remember!”

  “No, the woman I loved!” Ryan shrieked. “If you loved her, you never would have left her! And she was about to be happy with me! You came back because you heard I had proposed, and then you did everything in your power to keep her away from me. You’re a snake!”

  As he spoke, Ryan swung his fist toward Wilson’s face, but Wilson blocked the punch. Ryan stumbled past Wilson and fell to his knees. Wilson couldn’t help but laugh, which gave Ryan just enough time to get back to his feet.

  “Ryan, if you really think I’m the snake here, then fine,” Wilson said. “I destroyed your whole world. I ruined your life. Fine. But how dare you bring Eloise’s honor into this!”

  “You destroyed her honor!” Ryan retorted. “She was in your room in the middle of the night. You’ve been trying to sneak kisses from her and tempting her since the day you got back. You may be able to use your fancy words to convince everyone else that you’re a good guy, but I’ve never been fooled by you!”

  “I don’t care what you think about me.” Wilson shrugged. “But what I know is that you tried to get me hanged, and you’ve been the one spreading rumors around town that Eloise’s honor has been compromised. Why would you do that to the woman you claim to love?”

  “Her honor was compromised the second your filthy hands touched her,” Ryan spat. “I was gonna save her from all that, and I was gonna get the deed to her ranch back for her and help her run it until we grew old!”

  Ryan looked down and dropped his hands ever so slightly, which Wilson saw as an opportunity to gain the upper hand in their fight. He darted toward Ryan, grabbed him by the arm, and flung him face down onto the ground. Ryan struggled to break free, but this time, Wilson was prepared. He locked Ryan’s wrist and applied pressure until Ryan screamed out in pain and stopped resisting.

  “Lawson, a little help!” Wilson called out, straining to keep his grip.

  “Oh, right!” Lawson said.

  He smiled at Eloise, patted her on the back, and then scurried over to Wilson’s side. The two of them lifted Ryan to his knees, and Lawson pulled some twine out of his coat pocket, which he used tied Ryan’s wrists together. Ryan wore a smug expression as Wilson and Lawson pulled him over to the fence and secured him to the post like he was a horse.

  “You think you can treat me like an animal just because of what you’ve heard about me?” Ryan demanded.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll have to get used to it,” Lawson said. “As it happens, we’ve got more than a few bits of evidence tying you to a series of crimes. We just needed to talk to the right person. That being said, I’m sure this won’t be the last time you’ll feel like a caged animal.”

  Ryan huffed and shoved his chin to his chest. Lawson brushed his hands together as if he was cleaning dust from his hands and smiled over at Eloise.

  She wasn’t quite ready to get up yet, but having Wilson and Lawson nearby made her feel better. As she crossed her legs and sat upright on the ground, Wilson, now calm, sat on the ground in front of Ryan and furrowed his brow.

  “I just don’t understand why you did it...” Wilson admitted.

  “Did what?” Ryan said.

  “We were best friends,” said Wilson. “I used to come over to your house on my way home, and we’d sneak food out of the kitchen and go hunting for bandits. When I got older, I thought we argued because we were too tough to admit how close we were. I thought I hated you, back then, but I wanted to make right with you now because, as an adult, I didn’t hate you anymore. We were just children with a rivalry.

  “To come back and quickly see that you still hate me... to hear people say all the terrible things you’ve done... I just don’t understand. It was all games to me. Why has that childish rivalry never died for you? So much that you would let me be killed? You were the only person I really thought understood me, because even though I knew there was something painful buried inside you, I thought you knew there was something in me, too.

  “And we never had to talk about it; we just knew. We knew each other had been dealt a bad hand in life, and that we didn’t have the words for it. At least, so I thought. How could you – my best friend – decide that you would rather see me die? Why would you rather see both me and Eloise hurt than let me win what was nothing more than a childhood rivalry? Why wouldn’t you let me make it right with you?”

  “There’s nothing to make right!” Ryan howled. “You did your damage, and I was better after you left! You should’ve stayed gone!”

  Wilson sighed and placed his hand gently on Ryan’s shoulder. Ryan turned his away, but in that moment, Eloise saw the sad little boy she remembered hearing argue with Wilson every day.

  In all these years, Ryan had tried so hard to grow up, but there was still a hurt child underneath it all. Seeing Wilson talk to him like this made her realize that Wilson leaving had hurt Ryan as much as it hurt her.

  “Ryan,” Wilson said, looking the other man in the eye. “I’m sorry I left you behind.”

  “Me?” Ryan scoffed. “You hurt Eloise, not me! I told you it was a stupid idea to go, and you didn’t listen to me! I spent ten years cleaning up the mess you left behind, healing all the wounds you caused, and the first thing you did when you came back was hurt her even more!”

  “Ryan...” Wilson repeated, softly. “I’m sorry for the way I treated you when we were younger.”

  “Don’t tell me that!” Ryan cried. “I’m not the one who needs to hear it!”

  “I’m not saying it for you, then,” said Wilson. “I came back to Cayenne because I needed to make right with all the people I’d taken for granted. Even if you won’t admit it, I recognized you were one of those people. I always valued our friendship, even if I poked fun, and I wanted to tell you that since the moment I saw you, but you refused to let me speak. Now, I’m making you listen.

  “Even if it makes you feel more like a man to pretend you never cared that I left, I want you to go away knowing that my hands have been washed of my mistakes. I wish things could’ve been different, but now, you’re gonna go to jail knowing everything you’ve done since I got back has been by your decision, and it is your fault. This fate was your own making.”

  “If you’re only saying this for you, then why say it at all?” Ryan snarled.

  “Because, Ryan, over the last few hours I’ve uncovered some of the worst mistakes a man I looked up to has ever made... and it opened my eyes and taught me that, while we were both feeling the same kinds of pain as children, there is a right and wrong way to change your circumstances.

  “You tried to make things better for yourself by tricking innocent people out of the things that mattered most to them, while I made things better by winning things that people willingly gambled. We’re the same, ya know? The only difference is, you won’t take responsibility for your failures.

  “Right here, right now, I’m taking responsibility for how I wronged you. I never expected you to apologize for falsely accusing me. I never expected you to admit these were your decisions and it had nothing to do with me. But I wanted to give you the opportunity to prove me wrong.”

  Wilson stood back up, turning his attention to Eloise. With Ryan restr
ained, Eloise felt calmer. Slowly, she rose to her feet and came to stand beside Wilson. He wrapped an arm around her and kissed her on the forehead, which Ryan watched out of the corner of his eye. He refused to look up at Eloise – perhaps, she thought, feeling a shred of regret for what he had done to her.

  “I feel as if our work is not quite done here,” Lawson said, looking behind him at the burning barn.

  “Right, let’s go,” Wilson agreed, rubbing Eloise’s arm. “Are you all right?”

  “I am now,” she assured him, staring down at Ryan. “But you two go on ahead. There’s something I need to talk to Ryan about before I go.”

  Wilson sighed, nodded, and ran after Lawson, glancing over his shoulder every few feet to be sure all was well with Eloise and Ryan. Eloise smiled and laughed to herself.

  It made her feel better to know Wilson was there to keep her safe, but he wasn’t going to force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. More than ever, she knew Wilson was the man she would be the happiest with.

  Sheepishly, Eloise approached Ryan, not entirely sure exactly what she was going to say next.

  She knew there were some things she wanted to address, much like Wilson had, but she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t break down and start screaming nonsense, either. All she knew for sure is he had taken her power from her, and she was going to do anything she had to in order to take it back from him.

  “Ryan,” she began. “Let me ask you this: if Wilson had never returned, and I had accepted your proposal, would you ever have told me that you started the fires?”

  “Hmm...?” Ryan asked, looking up without looking directly at her.

  “If I had accepted your proposal, and we grew old together, would you have expected me to live the rest of my life never knowing that you were responsible for two fires that could’ve killed me or someone I cared about?” she said, slightly louder.

  “I guess we’ll never know, because you didn’t,” Ryan told her.

  “See, that’s the problem, Ryan,” said Eloise. “You expected me to enter into a bond that would tie me to you, ‘until death do us part,’ but it all started with a lie. You came to my daddy and told him you were gonna save our land by merging it with your own, but that wasn’t entirely true, was it?

  “You made us believe that you had the power to protect us from bandits that never existed with a deed you didn’t have, and then you showed us a fake contract – the same thing as what the sheriff did to your parents – and claimed that it was real. When the sheriff did that to you, you killed him.

  “So, now, let me ask you this – do you think if I killed you for what you did to me, right now, that would’ve been the right thing to do? Do you think you deserve to die, because you gave me a false contract and tried to take the rest of my life and my land away from me?”

  Ryan’s eyes widened, which made Eloise realize that her tone made it sound more like a threat than she’d intended it to.

  As angry as she was with Ryan, as betrayed as she was and as powerful as she felt standing above him now, she couldn’t treat him the way he’d treated her. And that, she thought, was what set her apart from him. That was what made her strong.

  “I’m not gonna hurt you right now, Ryan,” she explained. “Because only weak, useless people have to force each other to do what they want just to get anything done. Don’t get me wrong, you deserve whatever comes to ya, and I better never see you again. But – if you ever try to hurt me, Wilson, or my daddy ever again, you’ll find yourself in the same place as you sent the sheriff.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Now, what’s all this, again?” Deputy Wilkens said, resting his hands on his belt.

  “We’ve caught the man responsible for the death of the sheriff, and we’ve found evidence to place him at the scene of multiple other crimes,” Lawson informed him.

  “Yes, but what’s all this...?” Deputy Wilkens pressed, gesturing at the barn.

  Lawson looked over his shoulder at the barn, which had been reduced to nothing but sparkling cinders and ashes. Most of the men had gone inside, and now Henry, John, and Wilson stared at the barn, making a plan to rebuild. Lawson rubbed his hands together and laughed nervously.

  “Well, as you can see, there was a bit of a fire,” he admitted. “But if you’ll follow me this way, we’ve got the man responsible for all the trouble – and did I mention he confessed?”

  Lawson led Deputy Wilkens to where Ryan was secured to the fence post, but the deputy didn’t seem totally sure how to connect the dots between the fire and the murder. He kept glancing over his shoulder and giving Wilson a suspicious glare. Eloise stood back and watched the men work, admiring Wilson’s willingness to help rebuild without having to be asked.

  Dillion had been sitting on the porch since he’d first noticed the fire, looking too exhausted to be able to react. Eloise wanted nothing more than to go to him, but their conversation earlier that evening still stung when she thought about it. After all she’d been through with Ryan since then, she didn’t think she could handle another conversation where she had to explain herself tonight.

  “Ellie, can you come here a second?” Henry yelled, waving her over to the barn.

  “Oh, sure.” Eloise rushed over to join them.

  “Sorry, you said Ryan threw some clothing into the barn while it was on fire?” Henry asked, holding several ash-covered buttons in his hand. “Do these look like they might’ve been part of it?”

  “Yes, I know they were,” she confirmed, holding one of the buttons up to the burn marks on her arm.

  “Wow, those look like some nasty burns,” Henry remarked. “It’s not too hard to believe these could’ve started the fire with how hot they were. I didn’t think something this small could stay hot for that long.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask Wilson if these were his buttons?” Eloise wondered. “They belong to him.”

  “Yeah, well, with the sheriff looking in all the wrong directions, I thought it would be better if you could confirm these were what you found burning in the ditch rather than pointing any more unwanted attention toward Wilson,” he said.

  “Apparently, Henry here’s been second-guessing my guilt, as well,” said Wilson, patting him on the shoulder.

  “Hard to second-guess the guilt of a man when the so-called ‘evidence’ everyone’s been calling proof isn’t proving anything,” Henry pointed out. “They saw someone run away in nice clothes and then found a piece of metal in a dead man’s hand. There are several ways I could think of that happening off the top of my head, and only one of them involves Wilson shooting the sheriff.

  “’Sides, why would a man who just killed the most powerful man in town leave his gun behind? It’s not like anyone was chasing him off – sheriff was dead. Unless someone else was there, I can’t see any part of this story that sounds like anything more than a bunch of gossip. Though, I gotta say, I didn’t much expect it to involve Ryan, neither... That was a bit more than I anticipated.”

  Eloise smiled and glanced to her side, where she saw Dillion slowly walking up to join them with an awkward smile on his face. She turned away, hoping that he wasn’t going to ask her to explain what happened again, or try to send Wilson away.

  “Ellie...” Dillion said, smiling. “How are you? Is your arm all right?”

  “Yeah, it’ll be fine,” she told him. “Just some burns, is all.”

  “Right, um, would it be all right if we had a talk?” he asked. “I’m not upset – in fact, quite the opposite. I said some things out of anger that I should not have, and when I heard that there was a fire at the barn and nobody was sure where you were, except that your room was empty...”

  Eloise sighed loudly and stared at the ground. Henry and Wilson inched toward the barn, trying to give Dillion and Eloise a little more privacy. Eloise wasn’t sure what to say.