Rebecca felt a ghostly chill down her spine as she remembered the smothering blackness that had almost cost her and the child their lives. She sucked in another breath of clean air. "If you hadn't come back for us... But maybe there wouldn't have been a fire if you hadn't gotten into that fight with—"
"That coyote-shit blacksmith," Bruce supplied. "Weren't Shaw's fault. Ewen was dancin' with his wife, and the smithy took offense."
Ewen nodded. "Guess he thought he could treat his woman like those two slaves he owns. He started smackin' her around."
Rebecca glanced from Ewen back to Shaw. "And you had to get in the middle of it, didn't you?"
"I don't like to see women hit," he answered softly. "Not even by a husband. And I don't care much for slaveholders."
"Nor do I," she said. "That's the only thing your father and mine ever had in common. But will the blacksmith go any easier on his wife tonight because you fought him? I'm afraid you've only bought her more grief."
"She's a handful, that gal," Bruce put in. "If Ewen had've—" Shaw cleared his throat meaningfully and glared at Bruce. Bruce reddened. "Guess I'll just—"
"Check on the horses," Shaw suggested. "Both of you."
"Yeah, check on the horses." Bruce put his hat back on, nodded to Rebecca, and sauntered off toward the mill with Ewen.
"Regardless of how the fight got started, I owe you my life," Rebecca admitted. "Mine and Hetty's." Somehow, in the darkness, alone and without the glare of torchlight, it was easier to talk to him.
"You gave me a start when I got to that heap of sacks and you weren't there." The deep timbre of his voice sent shivers through her. Shaw's words were innocent enough, nothing one neighbor couldn't say to another. But beneath what he was saying, she was certain she could read another message.
"You could have run and saved yourself like everyone else did."
"No, not like everyone else, Becca," he said. "You put that poppet ahead of your own safety. That was a brave thing you did."
"Or foolhardy." She offered her hand, and he helped her to her feet. "The smoke made everything so confusing. But you were near the door. Why didn't you—"
He silenced her with two fingers over her lips. "No need to run on about it," he said. Removing his shirt, he slipped it around her shoulders. "Here, wear this. Your dress got torn."
"I can't take your shirt," she replied. "It's cool and—"
"I've got a jacket in my saddle roll. I'll survive."
"Thank you." She pulled the garment close around her. "Actually, I tore the sleeve myself. I thought it would be easier to breathe through." She still felt giddy, her thoughts clouded. She knew that the last thing she should do is to be seen in public wearing Shaw MacCade's clothing. But his shirt was warm against her skin and smelled not just of charred wood and smoke, but of him. The scent brought back a lot of memories, not all of them bad ones.
She could feel his gaze on her in the darkness, and heat flashed under her skin. Her heart felt as though it was ready to leap out of her chest. And if she wasn't careful, she'd lose all sense of reason.
"You always were the smartest girl I knew."
"And you were the wildest boy."
"I'm not a boy anymore, Bee."
"No, you're not. But I can see you didn't learn much out west. You're still in the middle of trouble."
"Reckon that's true," he agreed.
A wagon rolled past, followed by a man on horseback and a couple on foot. Families and individuals were scattering into the darkness. Rebecca heard a baby crying, and a woman murmuring to it in a foreign tongue.
"I have to get back to my friends," Rebecca said. "I came with the Andersons. They'll be worried sick about me, and—"
"They left."
"They what?" Her eyes widened. "Jorgan wouldn't leave without me. He promised my father—"
"Bruce and Ewen had a talk with him. Told him I'd see you safely home."
"You had no right. I'm grateful to you for saving my life, but that doesn't mean you can—"
"Did." He offered his arm. "He's not good enough for you. If he was, he'd never have left you in that burning mill."
"That's not fair. We were separated when everyone started running. Jorgan—"
"He got out; you didn't. That says all that's needed about what kind of man he is."
"What business is it of yours who courts me?"
"Courting, is it? You can do better for yourself than that mule driver."
"You don't have the right to tell me who to choose as friends."
"Save it for another day, Becca. It's gettin' late. Do you want to go home, or do you want to stay in town with some—"
"How do I know you're telling the truth?" she demanded. "How do I know that Jorgan's gone?"
"I don't lie. You ought to know that."
She shrugged off his grasp and began to walk unsteadily toward the road. "I can get my own self home, thank you very much."
He followed her. "Walkin'? You mean to walk home? Fifteen miles in the dark?"
"Yes, I do."
"The hell you will. Wait here while I get my horse. I'll take you home."
"No, you won't. Poppa would kill me. I'll catch a ride with a neighbor, or I'll walk to Angel Crossing. You've done enough for me tonight."
He tried to take her arm, and she refused. "Leave me alone, Shaw. There will be talk enough about us without making things worse."
She kept walking. Behind her, she heard Shaw give a shrill whistle. She was trembling, and her knees felt weak; but she kept putting one foot in front of the other until she reached the rutted road that led northwest, away from town. The moon was a huge white disc. The shimmering light turned the surrounding landscape to silver, bright enough to see without a lantern.
She told herself that she wasn't afraid. Nothing ahead of her could be as frightening as the danger behind her.
* * *
"Come on, Becca, be reasonable," Shaw said. He was following close behind on Chinook, but she hadn't slowed her brisk walk or spoken to him, although they must have covered a good two miles from Eden Spring. "Why are you so mad at me?" he asked her for the second time. "You can't be that fond of that big Swede."
Without warning she whirled on him, spooking Chinook and sending the stallion up on his hind legs. "Whoa, whoa, boy," he soothed the horse. Chinook came down, but arched his neck and laid both ears back against his head as he danced a tight circle in the dirt.
"You want me to come out and say it, don't you, Shaw?"
"Hell, yes, I do," he agreed. "Regardless of what happened before I left, you had no call to try and drown me."
"Didn't I?"
"What happened before I left... that was a long time ago. I can't change any of it." His voice thickened. "When you saw who I was, on the ferry, you could have told me about Laird. You knew how close we were." When she hesitated, he went on. "Is this over your father? Do you blame me because they tried him for killing Laird?"
"This has nothing to do with your brother or Poppa's arrest. I'm sorry about Laird. You may not believe it, but I am. Why I'm furious with you is... is—"
"Spit it out, woman." Chinook was high-stepping, nostrils flared. Shaw gave a snap on the reins to remind the animal who was boss. "Say what you've got to say, Becca."
Angrily, she rested balled fists on her hips. "Eve!"
"Eve, what?" He dismounted and strode toward her, the reins in his hands. She didn't back down an inch. "You're still mad because I got drunk and kissed her? After four years?" He made a sound of disbelief. "It was as much her kissing me as—"
"No!" Her voice cracked with anguish. "It's that Eve—"
"Has something happened to your sister?"
"You could say that."
The moonlight glittered in her eyes, making them glow with a cold fire. But there was more than anger in her gut; he could hear the pain. "I don't know what you're getting at. What about Eve?"
"She had a baby."
"She got married? I didn't hear th
at—"
"Three years ago. A boy, Shaw. She had your son."
"Hellfire and damnation." He pushed his hat brim back from his forehead and swore softly. "So that's what this is all about. You think I—"
"Don't try to lie your way out of it!" she flung back at him. "I know you're the 'cather. My whole family knows." She was crying now, her words coming out in hot, quick sobs. "Eve told me it was you, Shaw. You got her with child, and you rode off and left her."
"It ain't true."
"I don't believe you. You're lying to me now. Lying to cover up what you did! Bastard!" She flew at him with flying fists, and he had to throw up his arms to protect himself.
"Stop it!" These were no girlish taps, but real blows. He'd taught her how to use her fists himself, and years of hard work had given her the strength and muscle to deliver them.
"Liar!"
"I said, stop!" he repeated. In the end, he had to yank her up tight against his chest and hold her there. She struggled in silent fury, breathing fast and kicking at him with her hard-toed boots. "Listen to me," he murmured into her hair. "I didn't do it."
She was quivering like a bird caught in a bush, and weeping bitterly. "I saw you with Eve," she reminded him. "I saw you—"
"Becca! Enough. You saw me kissing her, that's all."
"That wasn't all," she protested. "You had your hand under her—"
"Yes, I admit it. I was drunk, and she was willin'. But that's as far as it went. I swear it."
"My sister?" Her voice was a broken whisper. "My own sister."
"There's no way I could be the father of Eve's baby No way at all. I didn't... We never..." He swore softly. "Hell, Bee, this isn't something we should be talkin' about."
"Why not? If you could do it, why—"
He grasped her shoulders and pushed her far enough away that he could stare into her face. "Eve's a pretty girl. Why wouldn't I kiss her if she'd let me? You'd made it plain enough that you wanted no part of me. But there was nothin' more than slap and tickle. I'd had too much to drink that night, and she—"
"It's a habit of yours, isn't it? Having too much to drink?" She glared into his face. "Even tonight."
"I'm not drunk." If he had been, the fire had sobered him quickly enough—that and the terror that had wrenched his gut when he couldn't find Becca in the smoke.
"I suppose I'm not the judge of how much a man can drink before he loses all reason, am I?"
"I'm no drunk," he insisted. "And I would have hit that bully if I was cold sober."
"You like fighting, don't you? All of you MacCades do."
He loosened his hold on her and stepped back. "We've not come to that, have we? Echoing hard words against our families? I thought we swore we'd never let the feud come between us."
"Us? There isn't any us," she replied harshly. "My father almost threw Eve out when he learned she was in the family way. Did you know that? Or care? She was ruined. The least you could have done was marry her once you had your way with her."
He swore again, a Spanish oath that would have curled his mother's hair. "Are you listenin' to me?" he demanded. "How plain do you want it? I never bedded your sister. Not once."
She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. "I suppose you didn't bed Libby Hurd either?"
He gritted his teeth. Becca's hair smelled of smoke, but her own special scent lay just beneath it, the scent that had haunted him a thousand miles away. Even now, he wanted her...
wanted to throw her back on the ground and run his hands over her soft curves. Wanted more... wanted...
"You can't deny it. Can you?"
"What happened or didn't happen between me and Libby isn't up for discussion. Libby Hurd..." It galled him to talk bad about a woman, no matter how loose her morals. If Libby had gone to California, she'd have made a fortune in the gold camps selling what she was giving away here at home. But Libby was a merry soul, and he'd not damn her for it.
"You can't deny Libby, yet you expect me to believe..."
He shook his head and backed off a step. Lord, but Bee was a spitfire when she got her dander up. He hadn't seen her this mad since her father had drowned a litter of wolf pups when she was sixteen.
Rebecca drew in a ragged breath. "Eve never lied to me. And she wouldn't start now. Not about the father of her child."
"Have I ever lied to you?"
"I don't know. That's the trouble, Shaw. I don't know."
"I guess that's something that needs straightenin' out, doesn't it? Where is she? We'll just go and ask her. Maybe her memory will be—"
Rebecca shook her head. "There was nothing for her here. She went away, to Saint Louis. She's working in a laundry. I haven't seen her in two years."
"So that's it. All this time, you've been thinkin' that I—"
"He looks like you, Shaw. He's got your hair, and your eyes."
"Lots of kids have dark hair. It doesn't make him mine."
"She gave him your middle name: James. Jamie, she calls him."
"When was he born? Exactly."
"About eight months after you left." Her shoulders stiffened. "Not long after your brother was killed."
"Laird." He wondered. Was is possible that Laird or Bruce had been with Eve?
"It broke Poppa's heart, Eve shaming him that way with a MacCade. But it was worse, that you had run off without—"
"You're not hearin' what I'm sayin', are you?" He tried to curb his own rising anger, tried not to think that maybe Eve's swelling belly had something to do with his brother's murder.
"I've done a lot of things in my life to be ashamed of, but getting your sister with child and abandoning her isn't one of them."
"Then why would she tell me that you did?"
"Spite, maybe. Or protecting somebody else. How the hell do I know?" He looped the reins over Chinook's neck and thrust his foot into the stirrup. He swung up, then offered her his hand. "Maybe she did it to protect the real father."
"Why did you go away?"
"Climb up here behind me, and I'll tell you."
"I'd sooner leap naked into the devil's bake oven."
Chapter 7
"Use your head, woman. You can argue with me up here as well as ploddin' through the dirt. It's thirteen miles to Angel Crossing."
"I know how far it is."
"If you're going to cuss me all the way, won't you need your strength?" Stubborn, she'd always been stubborn. It was a Raeburn trait.
Abruptly, she offered him her hand. "All right. But it doesn't mean I believe your lies." She grasped his fingers tightly, and he pulled her up.
"Fair enough." When she had locked her arms around his waist and settled her skirts around her legs, he said, "I left for a lot of reasons, Bee. We were finished. I wanted to see what was out there on the other side of the plains, and I needed to get away from my father before I got used to takin' orders like Will and Tom. You know I was always independent. And Pap's a hard master to serve."
Becca perched stiffly behind the saddle, her spine as straight as a Cheyenne's, her breath coming soft against the back of his neck... and those long legs of hers pressed against his. He could feel the warmth of her body through the layers of cloth that separated them, and he wished she were riding in front of him instead. If she were... All sorts of interesting possibilities tantalized him.
Damn, but she was a fine woman!
He knew he was sexually attracted to Becca, but her allure was more than physical. Having her there, barely a heartbeat away, scared and tempted him at the same time. Again he felt a wave of bitter regret that everything had gone wrong between them, that there were reasons he could never tell her why he hadn't asked her to marry him four years ago.
"You knew me better than anybody else in the world," he said aloud as he nudged Chinook into a trot. A muscle twitched along his jawline as he tried to summon the right words to tell her how he felt. He wasn't a man for sharing what was in his heart, but Becca had always been different.
"Maybe I d
idn't know you when we were kids; maybe I just thought I did."
"Damn it, woman, I told you things I never thought of tellin' my brothers—not even Laird. But when we had that fight, you made it plain that it was time we stopped sneaking around to see each other. You didn't want us to be friends, and you wouldn't let us be more."
"You know why I said it."
"Do I?" He scowled.
"Don't." Some of the hardness melted out of her voice, and a lump gathered in his throat. "Don't make me say all those things again."
"That tore me up, Becca," he admitted. "You telling me not to look for you anymore because you were finished with meeting me... done with the way we felt about each other."
"I don't want to talk about this again," she said. "It was hard enough to let you go once."
"Was it?" He remembered that day as clearly as if it were yesterday. He'd kissed her, and suddenly everything had fallen apart.
"There's no sense in going over this," she said. "You're a MacCade; I'm a Raeburn. I'll always be a Raeburn. I'll be the daughter of the murderer your father curses whenever he thinks of him."
"You say your pop didn't shoot Laird."
"Of course, he didn't. But nobody—other than Raeburns—believes it. There's too much bad blood between our families. Not just your brother's death, but your Uncle Robert's and all the rest, running all the way back to the Highlands of Scotland." She made a small sound of distress. "And it was never just the feud."
"No?" He gritted his teeth.
"We're different, Shaw," she continued. "You know how much I love Angel Crossing. I like things the same. I love sleeping in my own bed and seeing the sun come up over the same hill in the morning. I like planting roses and apple trees and knowing I'll be here to smell the blooms and pick the apples. I don't need mountain ranges and far-off places. You said it yourself. You were never one for too many laws, or rules, or for settling down with one woman and a passel of squalling babies."
Her words drove a clenched fist straight into his groin. He'd said it, and he'd meant it. At least he'd meant it then. But he couldn't tell her why. Now he realized what he'd had within his reach and lost. And the taste was bitter in his throat.
The Taming of Shaw MacCade Page 7
