Beautiful Bandit (Lone Star Legends) (26 page)

Kate tried to read Josh’s face but found it impossible in the semidarkness of Esther’s room. Had he talked with her about personal, private things, like matters of the heart, and his feelings for her?

Dare she hope?

Then, at the thought, she covered her face with her hands. Every day that passed put Frank a day closer to destroying them. And she knew that as surely as she knew her name was not Dinah Theodore.

And yet she stayed.

Earlier that day, Josh had asked her what she was afraid of, and she’d answered truthfully. Kate was afraid of herself—and the devastation that seemed destined to shadow her.

This madness needed to stop.

Her selfishness had to end.

The sooner, the better.

Kate got to her feet and folded both arms over her chest. “I’m going down to the kitchen to fix myself a cup of tea. Would you like one, Esther?”

When the woman started to protest, Kate stopped her. “You’ve been up and about far too much today, and I, for one, don’t want to answer to Dr. Lane if you have a relapse.” She pointed at the door and gestured for Josh to follow her. “So, shall I bring you some tea?”

Glowering, Esther blurted out, “No!” With a wave of one hand, she dismissed them both. “F-fine, then. Go,” she said, and promptly closed her eyes.

Kate pulled the door shut behind them and hurried toward the staircase, Josh close on her heels.

“Would you mind making me a cup of tea while you’re at it?” she heard him say.

She started down the steps. “You don’t even like tea.”

“Is that so?”

“I’ve never seen you drink it. Never heard you ask for a cup, as a matter of fact.” Their dialogue was ridiculous, almost laughable, but it was better than the alternative!

“Did you ever stop to think maybe that’s the problem?” he said when they reached the landing.

“What’s the problem?”

“You don’t see me drinking the stuff because nobody has ever bothered to fix me a—”

“Do you really expect me to believe that a man who can move thousands of cows from Texas to Kansas can’t brew himself a cup of tea? Please.” With that, she dashed down the remaining stairs and half ran down the hall.

In the kitchen, she stood at the cupboard and reached up for two cups hanging from hooks beneath a high shelf.

Josh had stopped in the doorway, standing with one booted foot crossed over the other. “Never said I couldn’t. I only pointed out that it’s never offered to me.”

“And why would anyone offer you tea, since you’re of the opinion that the beverage is strictly for old women and sick people?” She cut him a quick glance and, seeing that her remark had made its intended result, resisted the impulse to grin. Oh, how she loved that slanting smile and those twinkling, blue eyes!

Kate busied herself preparing the tea, thinking that what she really needed at that moment was a good, solid reason not to like Josh. But, try as she might, she couldn’t think of one negative aspect of his character or his personality. She would compile a list of reasons to dislike Josh Neville later, when sleep eluded her, as she knew it would. But something told her it would be a very short list, indeed.

She grabbed a spoon and picked up Esther’s cup. “I’m almost certain I can talk her into swallowing just a few more drops before she goes to sleep. Dr. Lane said it’s important not to let her get dehydrated, so….” Josh said nothing more, so she shrugged and squeezed past him, then walked briskly down the hall and climbed the stairs.

Esther didn’t look nearly as surprised to see her as Josh had when she’d made her hasty getaway. “Thought you might have changed your mind about that tea,” Kate said, setting the cup and saucer on the night table. She helped Esther sit up. “If only I knew how to pray….”

“W-why?”

Kate forced a cheeriness into her voice. “Because then I’d ask God to just—to just fix you right up, good as new, that’s why!”

“Ask, an’…ask, an’ ye shall….”

She put a stop to the woman’s struggling by saying, “‘Ask, and ye shall receive.’ Yes, I’ve heard that one many times.” She scooped a spoonful of tea and held it to Esther’s lips. “But that’s yet another verse intended for good Christian folk, not someone like me.”

Even as the words tumbled from her lips, Kate wondered what had possessed her to say such a thing. What was poor, sick Esther to think, except that her history had either been positively wicked, or that she craved attention? “I haven’t attended church since I was a very little girl, you see,” she quickly inserted, “so my knowledge of the Bible and such things is—well, it’s virtually nonexistent, that’s what.” She paused, then added, “The good Lord has better things to do than listen to the prayers of a woman like me!”

Good grief, Kate, will you just hush already!

Esther held up a hand to stop the next spoonful of tea. “You are…good, good girl….”

Oh, Esther, she wanted to say, if only that were true. “Come now,” she said instead. “The tea isn’t nearly as tasty when it’s lukewarm. Besides, you know what Dr. Lane said about staying hydrated—”

“God l-loves you. He will hear…your…p-prayers!”

Kate put the teacup on the bedside table, rested the spoon on the saucer, and folded both hands in her lap. “I hate to admit it, Esther, but, the truth is, I don’t know how to pray.”

Esther harrumphed.

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin reciting beautiful, poetic prayers like Matthew does before meals.”

The woman waved away her remark. “Prayer is…talk. Just talk…to Him.”

Oh, but praying was so much more than that! Kate knew this as fact because she’d talked to God a thousand times as a little girl—when her father was beating her mama bloody, when her stepfather picked up where her father had left off, and when the horrible man lit into her and then made arrangements to trade her like a sack of flour to pay off his gambling debts. After her mama took her own life, she had talked to Him. Show me the way, she had pleaded, so I won’t get lost, like Mama did….

But He had chosen not to answer, and the only thing she’d been able to draw from that was that she hadn’t been worthy of an answer.

“I have…heard you,” Esther managed to say. “Y-you pray…often!”

If God truly loves His dear child, Esther, Kate thought, He’ll send an angel to earth to flog me, right this instant, for putting the poor woman in the position of trying to comfort me, when it should be the other way around! Because what had she done in her miserable life to merit consolation from this good, long-suffering woman?

Nothing.

She crossed the room, intending to close the curtains, and paused near the hand-hewn cradle near the windows. “This cradle is just lovely, Esther. Has it been in your family long?”

“Ezz-ra….”

“Your husband made it? I might have known.” Smiling, Kate knelt, gave the cradle a gentle push, and watched it rock slowly back and forth. If she closed her eyes, she could picture a tiny infant nestled inside, amid a tangle of soft blankets. She ran one hand over the well-worn wood, tracing the big, bold letter N carved into the headboard.

A peaceful smile settled upon Esther’s face, and she nodded.

The cradle had likely embraced all four of her boys, each of their children, and little Willie, too, from the looks of it, and yet, it was probably just as sturdy now as when Ezra had lovingly crafted it all those years ago. When it dawned on her that Josh had likely slept in this cradle, too, Kate met his grandmother’s eyes. “It’s so beautiful. So precious and priceless.” Oh, to lay a child of her own in this lovely bed one day, a baby born to her and Josh….

The thought put her on her feet so quickly, she nearly lost her balance. Foolish little ninny! she scolded herself. Dreams like that are for other young women, not those who stupidly link themselves to killers and robbers and—

“S-someday,” Esther rasped. “You will…you will see….”

Thankfully, the poor dear drifted into peaceful slumber, sparing Kate the hard task of explaining the tears of regret and remorse that began rolling hot and fast down her cheeks.

30

On his way to town, Josh stopped by the small parcel of land where his wife and infant twins were buried. Griffen, true to his word, had constructed a crude fence around the plot, and as he dismounted, Josh asked God to forgive him for the impatient, unfriendly thoughts he’d harbored about his neighbor.

Holding Callie’s reins in one hand, his Stetson in the other, he read the simple inscription carved into the lone headstone. There should have been three names listed, not one. “Why’d you have to be so confounded stubborn, Sadie?” he grumbled.

SADIE NEVILLE

BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER

JULY 29, 1864–MAY 5, 1885

He had wanted to continue the Neville tradition of choosing baby names from the Bible, but Sadie had refused to discuss it. “Let’s wait until they’re born,” she’d insisted, “so we can pick names that fit their personalities.” Thinking he had months to change her mind, Josh hadn’t pressed her to reconsider.

However, she’d gone into labor far earlier than expected, and, after hours of struggling, she’d barely found the strength to deliver her lecture about Josh welcoming love if it ever found him again. Then, she’d lapsed into unconsciousness and had never come to, leaving him to make the difficult decision alone regarding the inscription.

Even the smallest coffin available had looked a hundred times too large for his tiny baby boys, and he hadn’t been able to bear separating them, so he’d instructed the undertaker to tuck one baby under each of Sadie’s arms.

The wind whispered through the grass and mingled with the peaceful lowing of cattle. He hadn’t known what lesson God was trying to teach by making him a widower at the age of twenty-four, and, three years later, he still hadn’t figured it out. “Don’t rightly know why I’m here,” he said, his hat over his heart. But that wasn’t the whole truth, and Josh knew it. He’d come to say good-bye, once and for all.

As the pallbearers had lowered the casket into the earth, he’d walked away, and, even now, if he closed his eyes, Josh could still hear the dry, Texas dirt being dumped onto the coffin.

“Did you name our boys when you arrived in paradise?” he whispered. Maybe she would have called them Gabriel and Michael, since she’d always claimed each star in the sky represented an angel in heaven.

But the stone stood cold and silent against the blue sky, so he put on his hat and climbed into the saddle. “Well,” he drawled, “I suppose I’ll have to be satisfied, knowing the three of you are with God.”

He gave the marker and the fence and the little plot one last glance, then urged Callie forward and headed west.

For the first quarter mile, he pulled gently on the reins. “What’s your hurry?” he muttered to the mare. But even as he asked, Josh knew the answer. The only running Callie had done in the past week had been from the barn to the corral, then in figure eights and circles inside the enclosure. As much as she liked frolicking with the other saddle horses, Callie had been born to run, had lived her first years wild and free. She could clear a six-foot fence without even trying, so, near as he could figure, she stayed at the Lazy N because she liked the work—and her master.

Callie could pick him out of a crowd of cowboys, even when he tied her clear at one end of town while he did his business at the other. There was nothing particularly special about that, since most horses that received proper care knew their owners by sight and scent. But Callie? Josh grinned, picturing that way she had of prancing, bobbing her head, and whinnying until he waved or whistled to acknowledge her. If he had a nickel for every time he heard “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that filly has a crush on you, Neville,” Josh would have a pocketful of them. He understood that the good-natured taunt was rooted in respect and admiration, for the relationship between horse and cowboy was an important one—one that could mean the difference between life and death for rider and pony. If Dan had been on his own horse instead of the first one picked from the pony line the day those rustlers had showed up, he might not have ended up in the middle of a stampede.

Callie could sense his moods and knew what he needed from her, sometimes even before he identified it himself. She loved the feel of the wind in her mane almost as much as he enjoyed watching the earth speed by under her belly and disappear behind them. Clearly, Callie would have been happier with a trot this day, but earlier, when he’d measured her girth, he was more certain than ever that she was carrying twins. “Plenty of time to gallop later,” he said, patting her shoulder, “after you’ve weaned your young’uns.” She wouldn’t like it, and neither would he, but until then, ambling would have to do.

If he’d chosen another horse today, he could have made it to town and back in half the time. But Callie needed the exercise, and he needed to keep a close eye on her. If he didn’t run into the mayor and the sheriff and the rest of the men who enjoyed jawing on the grocer’s steps, he might get home in time for supper. Plenty of time for a bite to eat and a visit with Mee-Maw. And, maybe, if the good Lord saw fit to answer his prayers, a few minutes with Dinah before turning in for the night.

“How goes it, Neville?”

He looked toward the voice and groaned inwardly. Griffen. “It goes.”