Crimson Palace (14 page)

"Come on, come on. Get on over here by the fire. Wrap yourself up in this blanket. Look at you, you’re shaking like a leaf." He grabbed a blanket from a narrow bed that stood in the corner of the room and wrapped her with it.

Gratefully accepting the warmth of the blanket, she allowed him to lead her to the hearth where she slowly sank to the floor.

Wrapping her arms around her legs, she rested her chin on her knees and gazed into the fire. As she stared into the dancing flames she realized she had no words - felt no emotion.

She seemed totally unaware of Lincoln as he moved about the cabin, bringing in a bucket of water from the rushing river and preparing a pot of steaming coffee. She seemed startled when he crouched down beside her and thrust a hot mug into her chilled hands.

"Here, get some of this into you. It’ll help warm you up."

Speechless, she gazed at him, her expression grave. Her wide, unblinking eyes began to fill until huge tears slowly coursed down her cheeks.

"Now what’s the matter? You’re perfectly safe." He paused for a moment. His voice softened as he continued, "You don’t have to be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you."

In spite of his concern, or perhaps because of it, the tears flowed harder.

"Are you warm enough? Do you want something to eat? What can I do to make you stop crying?" His voice was beginning to sound desperate. One thing he had never learned was how to handle a woman’s tears.

"It’s not you’re fault," she finally said through her tears. "It’s me. I’m just so ashamed." She covered her face with both hands and wept bitterly.

"Awe, come on now. Don’t take it so hard. What do you have to be ashamed of?"

"Are you serious? All those men saw me without my shirt on! Half the population of Downieville must have been in that saloon." The tears gushed even harder.

"Oh, is that all. Forget it! I’ll wager there’s not a man in that bar who hasn’t seen a woman’s naked torso before. More than just the torso, if my guess is right."

"But they hadn’t seen my naked torso before!" She wailed with renewed vigor. The wail was quite suddenly interrupted by a loud hiccup, surprising both Lincoln and Shinonn. Startled, they both looked at each other, then broke into gales of laughter.

"Being seen half naked may seem a laughing matter to you, but it was a very humiliating experience for me," she managed to say between gasps of laughter.

"But I have a great deal more to be ashamed of then being disrobed in front of all those men," she stated more soberly as she began to wipe away the tears with the corner of shirt tail. "Now everyone knows what a total fraud I am. I’ll never be able to show my face in that town again. Who am I fooling? The way stories spread in the gold fields, there won’t be a camp within a hundred miles that won’t know about my deception."

"The men won’t like the idea of having been made fools, that’s for sure. Although, I guess I understand why you did it. A good looking woman like you would never have been able to live alone safely in a gold camp, I don’t think most of them will take too kindly to your pulling the wool over their eyes. And even I can’t see why a woman would want to go through the misery of working a claim. It’s brutal work, even for a man. But, I guess the gold bug can bite a woman just as bad as it bites a man."

"I can’t even blame it on gold fever. Working my claim was only a way to earn enough money to stay in the gold camps. I don’t care if I never see another gold nugget as long as I live. Don’t you see? It was never the gold. I simply had to be here, and I couldn’t see myself earning a living like the girls in the saloons, so I became a prospector."

"But what was the draw? Why was it so important for you to live in the gold camps?"

"I told myself that I came here looking for my brother, but to be honest with myself, I’ve got to admit I never really cared if I found him or not. It was you I was looking for, not Patrick," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Me? But why? I don’t even know you."

"We’ve met before. You don’t remember me, but we did sure as sin meet before."

He reached out gently to tilt her chin up, turning her face toward the fire. Reflections of the flames danced across her face and were mirrored in her exquisite, sapphire blue eyes.

"There is something there. I’ve noticed it before. But for the life of me I can’t place where we’ve met before. I remember the first time I saw you walking down the street in Downieville. I thought you looked familiar then, but I figured it was just my imagination. But that was when I thought you were a boy. Now that I know the truth, the mystery is all the more intriguing."

Her breath caught in her throat as she gazed deeply into his eyes. The moment had arrived at last. How many years had she dreamed of this? How many times had she imagined coming face to face with her father’s killer? It was for this that she had traveled hundreds, no thousands, of miles. Now, here she sat, facing the man who had haunted her thoughts for all those miles and all those years.

"We met in the summer of 1850. You came riding into town and stopped at my father’s livery stable.

You came to town to gamble, and before you left you killed my father."

"Sean Flannery. You’re Sean Flannery’s daughter."

"Yes, I’m Shinonn Flannery. And you’re the man who killed my father."

Rising to his feet, he turned away from her, as if he dreaded facing the daughter of the man he killed. He stared into the leaping flames for several moments before turning back to her.

"Now that you’ve found me, what do you plan to do? Have you hunted me down to kill me, Shinonn Flannery? If that’s what you’re about, well, here I am. I’ll not give you a fight. Is that want you want?"

He stood before her, arms extended, seemingly offering himself for her revenge.

"I don’t know what I want. After all these years, after all those endless miles, I still don’t know what it was I expected to happen when I found you. All I know is that something made me track you down. As crazy as it was, I had to find you."

"Ah, Shinonn," he sighed, "how I hate the memory of that night. I never meant to kill him. I’m no gun fighter. All I wanted was to play a little poker, then, when the time was right, head on out to the next town. I’ve never wanted to wreck any man. I’ve always tried to play a fair game, for fair stakes.

"But it all went wrong that night. I’ve gone over it a million times in my mind, but no matter how many times I think about it, I can never figure out how I could have prevented what happened. You’ve got to understand, it was an accident."

"I know. The sheriff explained it all to me," Shinonn said quietly from her seat on the floor.

"No, you’ve got to let me explain. I always wanted to tell you and your mother how sorry I was that it happened, but the sheriff told me to get out of town. He was afraid if I stayed around it would just cause more trouble. I guess he was right, but I’ve always regretted leaving like that."

He stood gazing into the flames, his mind far away from the cabin. Once again he was in the saloon in that remote prairie town. Once again he felt the weight of Shinonn’s eyes on him as she stood there in her nightgown, staring first at her dead father and then at him. Would he ever be able to forget the eyes of that sad girl?

"Your eyes have haunted me all these years. I could have forgotten Sean Flannery and that miserable town if it hadn’t been for your eyes." The last words were more whispered than spoken.

"All these years I’ve wanted to hate you," Shinonn spoke softly as she sat huddled on the floor before the fireplace. "I wondered if I could kill you if I ever tracked you down. But now I know I can’t do it. I know you didn’t mean to kill my da. The sheriff set me straight right from the start. Oh, I wanted you to be guilty. I wanted to hate you, but in my heart I knew you only did what you had to do.

"I blame myself more than I blame you. I knew he shouldn’t be gambling with you. I knew he would drink too much. Why didn’t I try to stop him sooner? Why did I wait until it was too late?"

Suddenly the unshed tears from all those years were unleashed. The guilt she had been carrying within her from the day of her father’s death spilled out. It had been all her fault! If she had tried harder her father would have stopped drinking and would have come home with her that night. The remorse was more than she could bear.

Suddenly she felt strong, comforting arms surrounding her, holding her close in a firm, yet tender embrace.

"It wasn’t your fault, Shinonn. There wasn’t anything you could have done."

She buried her face in his shoulder as the tears continued to flow. She could feel his face resting against her hair as he gently patted her back. For the first time in her memory she felt the touch of a comforting hand. Even in her grief the sense of his caring seemed to reach to her very soul. Slowly the tears stopped and a wonderful feeling of peace enveloped her.

"It really wasn’t your fault, you know," he said softly, in the low, enticingly raspy voice she had remembered throughout the years. He sighed heavily, then continued, "And it wasn’t my fault either. It just happened. Neither you or I have any reason to go on punishing ourselves forever."

She pulled out of his embrace, and looking very serious, tried to explain. "It was like a sickness with him

- the drinking and gambling. You weren’t the first man he lost everything to. I can’t remember how many times he came home drunk, with not a penny on him. Time after time we had to pull up stakes, leave our home with only what we could carry with us, only to start over again in an even worse house, in a poorer town. Each time it happened, he promised it would never happen again. Each time we moved to a new town everything was going to be different. Only it never was. If there was anyone to blame, it was Da.

Nobody made him drink. And nobody forced him into a card game."

She lay her head back on his shoulder, relishing the warmth of his body and the tenderness of his embrace. Shifting her weight, she cuddled closer to his chest until she could hear the beat of his heart.

Closing her eyes, she sighed peacefully. How wonderful his arms felt, how comforting the caress of his breath against her hair. Her blood raced with an altogether new emotion as she drew her body even closer to his.

What were these feelings, she wondered? Although reluctant to move from his embrace, her curiosity forced her to draw back far enough to enable her to look into his eyes. Was he feeling what she was feeling? Was there magic in this cabin for only her, or was he as entranced as she?

His smoldering dark gray eyes answered her question. Their gazes locked for what seemed an eternity.

Slowly he lowered his head until his lips pressed gently against hers.

Was his kiss meant to comfort? Did it come only from kindness?

She drew back once more, again seeking the answers in his eyes. What she saw sent an unexpected thrill of excitement through her body. Her lips parted slightly in wonder and anticipation as he placed his lips on hers once again. Her arms tightened around him as he drew her even closer. Her heart raced as the kiss grew deeper, more passionate. She could feel the wild beating of his heart through the thin fabric of her shirt, causing her to want to press even closer to the source of his emotion.

How natural it felt to be gently lowered to the floor, until she was lying alongside him in front of the fireplace. How sweet it was to feel the warmth of his kisses, the thrill of his touch as he ran his fingers lightly down her spine. She pressed even closer to his body, molding herself against him. Passion overwhelmed her as she opened her lips, inviting him to claim even more of her.

And then, as suddenly as it began, he pulled away. Chest heaving with emotion, he sat on the floor beside her, gazing at her with troubled eyes. Then, without uttering a word, he rose, grabbed his coat from the back of a chair, and stalked out into the cold, black night.

As he walked through the door, Shinonn could see thick snow flakes drifting down upon his shoulders.

The sudden blast of icy air sent a chill racing down her spine.

Why had he left? Had she somehow managed to offend him? Had she been too forward? She sat before the fire, her heart racing with unspent emotion, aching for his return, wondering if she would ever feel the touch of his lips on hers again.

Chapter 10

Although it seemed an eternity had passed before Lincoln returned, he was actually gone less than an hour. Left alone in the cabin, Shinonn relived over and over the memory of the kiss and the remarkable sensations she had experienced as they lay in each other's arms. Her mind was in turmoil as she tried to sort out all the confusing emotions she had experienced in those brief moments of bliss.

In all her nineteen years she had never allowed any of her suitors to touch her as Lincoln had. She had found their groping hands repulsive. Yet now she longed for Lincoln to return and wrap her in his arms once again, to hold her close, to share his body with her.

Merely allowing herself to think such thoughts was shocking, but the thoughts would not leave. And yet, though she longed to experience those delicious sensations again and again, she felt a stab of fear at the thought of being alone with him here in this remote cabin. Would he expect more of her than she would be willing or capable of giving? If so, was she ready to overcome her fears and give herself completely to him?

Worse yet, what if his leaving meant that he wanted nothing more to do with her? What if he left because she had disgusted him with her forwardness? Oh, how had she gotten herself into such a mess?

The silence was broken by his step on the porch as he stamped his feet firmly to shake off clinging snow.

Her heart nearly stopped beating, then pounded so hard she could barely get her breath. Shear terror ran through her veins for an instant as he opened the door and entered.

"Looks like we got here just in time. That snow’s coming down hard. We may be stuck here longer than I’d expected. Lucky I laid in some food awhile back and there’s still some varmints roaming these hills."