Love and Fury: The Coltrane Saga, Book 4 (9 page)

Colt frowned, thinking about Charlene making this ride at night, when rattlesnakes were out in search of water. When Charlene set her mind to something, nothing could stand in her way. She was that stubborn. That spoiled. But this time she had gotten herself into one hell of a mess…and him, too. Carleton Bowden was going to be crazy with rage, no matter that Charlene was to blame.

But was she? he asked himself yet again. He was not guiltless. He should have been stronger, instead of letting lust rule him. He should have made her go home, damn it.

So what was he going to say to Bowden? What
could
he say? Bowden would, of course, insist that Colt “do right” by his daughter and marry her. Quell the gossip. Save the family from shame.

But Colt did not feel guilty enough about the situation to do that. He was not going to be a martyr.

When, and if, he did get married, it would be for love and for no other reason. He was not going to be sacrificed on the altar of respectability. He would not save Charlene’s name by giving her his.

When this scene was over with, he was going to get out of town for a few days. Branch Pope was a hell of a good foreman, and if Colt showed him the ropes about the house chores, Branch could keep things running while Colt got away. Maybe he would ride down to Mexico.

But the immediate task was facing Carleton Bowden, and Colt had never dreaded anything more.

Women!

Hell, he didn’t like to think of himself as a coldhearted bastard, but more and more he was starting to regard women as something to avoid except when he needed one. Give them pleasure, get his own pleasure, then run like hell.

He thought of the half sister he hadn’t seen in almost fourteen years. One of these days she was going to come riding in and claim half of everything—after he’d done all the work! But there was nothing he could do about that, nothing he wanted to do about it because that was the way their father wanted it. Since everything had been Travis’s to start with, Colt figured it was not his place to say anything about the way it got divided up now. Best to keep his thoughts to himself, and his mouth shut.

He was nearing town and could see the houses of Silver Butte. He paused atop a ridge and looked down. It was not the boom town it had once been, but neither was it a ghost town, like so many others that had peaked during the glory days of the Comstock lode. It was alive.

Colt’s eyes narrowed. Something wasn’t right. He didn’t know what had made him tense up, but even his horse was suddenly standing rigid, alert. An invisible shroud of foreboding had suddenly wrapped around Colt.

Then he heard the high-pitched scream ringing in the still air.

He spurred his horse down the incline, taking a quicker path than the road. He moved fast, hard, but the main street was mired with thick mud, forcing him to slow his reckless gait.

Ahead, a crowd was gathered. As he approached, a murmur rippled through them and people began to step back, making room for Colt.

Colt dismounted, then he saw it…the body of a woman lying in the mud. Hair, once golden, was matted with blood.

A man was on his knees beside the body, face burrowed in his hands, sobbing.

Slowly Carleton Bowden lifted his horror-stricken face and saw Colt. His lips quivered as he struggled to speak.

“You!
God damn
you, you killed her! Sure as if you’d shot her yourself!”

His voice broke. He gasped, chest heaving. Reddened eyes, overflowing with tears, bulged at Colt. He struck at the air with his fists and screamed, “I’m going to kill you, Coltrane! Just like you killed my little girl!”

Suddenly Bowden caught sight of the holster at eye level, worn by a man standing a few feet away. He lunged for it, but the man caught his hands and wrestled him away from the gun. Other rushed forward to grab Bowden and lift him to his feet. They half carried him out of the street and back inside the bank.

Colt felt a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t move. Vaguely, through the nightmare enveloping him, Colt noted the star on the man’s chest. The sheriff began to speak in a barely audible whisper, his voice sorrowful.

“It was a bank robbery, Coltrane. We’re gettin’ a posse together now. Charlene walked right into the shootin’, like she was sleepwalkin’ or something. Damnedest thing I ever saw. Wasn’t my men who shot her, though. They held their fire when they saw her. My deputy says one of the robbers shot her when he was aimin’ at us. She just walked into the bullet.

“If it’s any comfort,” he added softly, “I don’t think she suffered. Probably never knew what happened to her.”

The sheriff’s words were slowly penetrating Colt’s consciousness.

“They got away,” the sheriff continued angrily. “When we saw her go down, we all just sorta froze, and they got away. But we’ll get ’em, by God.”

Colt shrugged away the consoling hand on his shoulder and made his way forward. The people who were gathered around Charlene moved out of the way as he approached.

He dropped to one knee beside Charlene, then gently lifted her in his arms. He nearly cried out when her head lolled toward him, so limp…so lifeless. He looked into the sightless blue eyes that had so recently burned with passion. With trembling fingertips, he closed them.

He got to his feet, holding her tight against his chest. He staggered through the mud, carrying her out of the street. People spoke to him, but Colt stared straight ahead, hearing nothing.

He took her all the way home. As he carried her up the steps of her house, someone saw him coming and ran to hold the front door open. Inside the house, he passed the parlor, where women were crowded around Juliette Bowden, who lay unconscious on the divan, having fallen into a deep faint.

He moved on up the stairs and when he reached the second floor, went through the first open door and laid Charlene carefully on the bed.

Then he turned and, wordlessly, left the house and walked back into town. People he passed shrank away from the man whose eyes burned with hatred, and a lust for revenge.

John Travis Coltrane had one thought: Charlene’s killers were going to pay. And God help anybody who dared try to stop him.

Chapter Six

Briana de Paul sat before the stone fireplace, knees drawn to her chest, chin propped on her hands, staring pensively into the soot and ashes. A warm spring wind blew in through the open windows behind her, bringing the sweet fragrance of lilacs, but she barely noticed. Neither did she glory in the golden sunshine spilling on the floor.

It was four weeks since she’d seen Charles. He had been taken to the Paris hospital by a doctor who was, as great good fortune had it, leaving the Monaco hospital for greener pastures in Paris. If he hadn’t pitied Charles and seen to a carriage for the boy, Briana would have had to carry her brother herself, she mused.

Her own journey, a week after Charles left, was a great deal harder than she’d known it would be. She’d begged rides in donkey carts and walked when she was forced to, pausing only for exhaustion or bloody blisters.

Charles was in a charity hospital, in a crowded ward, surrounded by critically ill and dying patients. Her heart constricted when she saw him, lying on stained sheets on a rickety cot, his body crumpled like something broken and tossed aside to die.

When he looked up with pain-filled eyes and saw her standing beside the cot, his face lit up. His sister was the only light in Charles’s life. Briana bathed him, begging clean linens from a sour-faced nurse. Charles was even more wasted than when she’d last seen him. The hospital food, he told her, was only scraps, so she went out and begged for centimes until she had enough to buy a pot of soup from a street vendor. Begging was humiliating beyond anything she’d imagined, but she was not going to let her pride stand in the way of Charles’s well-being.

The doctors were not unsympathetic to her financial plight. They had arranged, after all, for Charles to be cared for as a charity case. But charity wouldn’t pay for the expensive surgery. He could remain in the hospital, and they would try to ease his pain, but, they explained, free surgery was out of the question.

Briana tried to elicit their sympathy. “We are talking about a little boy,” she said tearfully, “a little boy who is surely going to die if you don’t
try.
Surely you don’t need money so badly that you can just turn your back on him.”

They emphasized that a principle was at stake. If they gave their services to Charles, how could they charge other people?

She lost control then. She screamed at them, calling them vultures who preyed on suffering. “God gave you your skills, and you use them to live like kings while a little boy lies dying! How can you stand to live with yourselves?”

They turned away from her. They’d heard the same insults, shrieked by hundreds of others who were equally destitute, equally desperate.

Briana had left Charles and gone back to Madame deBonnett, who was still giving her shelter and a job, however meager the wage. To remain in Paris meant attempting survival on the streets, and that was dangerous. It was not uncommon for women to be found in alleyways, raped, throats cut. She had tried to explain to Charles why she had to return to in to Monaco. She held him close, promising to do everything she could to make money for his operation. He smiled up at her, knowing she’d try, knowing it was hopeless.

From the moment she left Charles, Briana knew utter desolation. How in heaven’s name could she get money for Charles’s operation? She had no family, no friends of means. Everyone she knew was as poor as she was, with the exception of Madame deBonnett, and that was no help. From what she had seen, the deBonnett fortune was rapidly dwindling away. Besides the fact that Madame deBonnett had money problems, Briana knew she would never loan her money because the woman was as cold as could be, caring about no one except herself and that nasty Gavin.

Despite the warmth of the spring day, Briana shuddered. She loathed Gavin Mason. Lascivious, sneaky, cruel, Gavin had been trouble since the day the Count brought his new family to live with him.

One of Briana’s early encounters with Gavin happened when she was twelve. She’d been out in the barn, doing her chores, spreading fresh hay in the horses’ stalls. Suddenly she became aware that Gavin was hiding in one of the lofts above, spying on her. When she called out to him, demanding to know what he was up to, he stood up, laughing. Then he exposed himself to her, chortling, “I’ve got something for you, Briana.”

She screamed in horror, dropped the pitchfork, and ran. But he was quicker, jumping from the loft and landing beside her. He wrestled her to the floor and his hands were everywhere at once, clawing at her breasts, grabbing between her legs. “You want it as much as I do,” he cried, his breath hot on her face. She twisted from side to side, desperate to escape his wet mouth.

He lay on top of her, pinning her, and in a last wild effort to break free, she smashed her fist into the hard pink thing that was thrusting at her belly. He yelped in pain, clutching himself, and rolled away.

She ran from the barn, sobbing breathlessly, fleeing straight to the little cottage and her father. Flinging herself in his arms, she sobbed and sobbed. Louis de Paul held her against him, his eyes narrowing as he managed to get the full story out of her.

Worse was to come. When her father had heard her out, he gave her a fierce shake and said, voice hoarse, “You will say nothing about this, do you hear me? You will forget this happened. And in the future, be on guard lest he try again.” Louis de Paul glared at his daughter.

She stared up at him, stunned. “Papa, you don’t mean this! We have to tell Madame deBonnett. She will punish him so—”

He shook her again, hard. “Are you insane, daughter? She wouldn’t believe you—or else she wouldn’t care. She would send us away, too, and I would have no job and we would have no place to live. No, you mustn’t speak of this. Just keep away from him, do you hear me?”

Briana nodded slowly, her heart breaking. Her own father would not protect her.

Ever since that day, she had been on her guard. Gavin had enjoyed their game, becoming bolder through the years.

“One day,” he taunted constantly, “you will beg me to pleasure you. You are only toying with me, I know.”

It mattered not at all that she bluntly proclaimed her loathing of him; Gavin enjoyed his sport. Even when she declared, “I would rather die than have you touch me!” Gavin only laughed, and waited for another chance to fondle her.

She wanted to go back to Paris and be near Charles, but how could she, when there was no way of knowing whether she would find work? She hadn’t a centime. At least Charles had shelter, and at least the doctors could ease his pain. She would offer Charles nothing by leaving her job and traveling to a city where she might not be able to get another.

Briana missed Charles terribly and worried about him waking and sleeping, having awful nightmares about his being sent to an orphanage because she was dead, or going through the pain of the operation and having it not help. But even so, there was one aspect to her visit to Paris, grueling though the journeys to and from Monaco had been, which warmed her.

She had promised herself a visit to the great Notre Dame Cathedral. One afternoon when Charles had fallen asleep, Briana left the hospital, located two streets from the Pont Neuf, and walked to Notre Dame. There, she gazed up at the many spires and then walked, hesitant and nervous, through the main entrance. It was beautiful inside, beyond anything she had ever seen, the stained-glass windows large and brilliant. The choir sang, and she was there to hear the “Ave Maria”.