Schulze, Dallas (38 page)

“I’m the one who came to your room that night,” she said quietly.
“Much as I’d like to believe otherwise, the blame isn’t all yours.”

“I should have sent you away,” Bishop said as he stepped into his
pants and pulled them up around his hips.

Lila kept her head lowered, her fingers twisting restlessly in the
loops of the bow at her waist, her hair falling forward to form a thick auburn
curtain around her face. She thought about how different her life would have
been if he’d sent her away. He’d have been gone the next morning. By now she
might have half forgotten him. There would have been no baby, no marriage.
She’d still be at home in Pennsylvania. Trapped in the same, safe little box in
which she’d spent the last few years of her life. Grieving fiancé, loving
sister—watching her life drift away on a sea of social events and meaningless
chatter, desperate to find a way out of the confines of her life and lacking
the courage to do so. If Bishop had sent her away that night, she wouldn’t be
wondering if Douglas would ever speak to her again. She’d just have to wonder
if she was destined to grow old and die without ever having a life of her own.

Lila lifted her head and looked at Bishop. He stood across the bed
from her, his shirt half buttoned. A thick lock of dark hair fell onto his
forehead, an oddly boyish contrast to the beard that shadowed his jaw. Sensing
her gaze, he lifted his head. His eyes were a deep, clear blue, and it suddenly
occurred to her that she wanted their child to inherit those vivid blue eyes.

“I’m not sure you
could
have sent me away,” she said
softly, speaking as much to herself as to him.

Bishop’s eyes widened in surprise. He opened his mouth as if to
question her statement, but Lila didn’t want to continue the discussion. She
couldn’t have explained her words to herself, let alone to him.

“I have to get breakfast started,” she said. Giving her belt an
unnecessary tug, she moved toward the door.

“Lila—” Bishop moved as if to intercept her but Angel’s
voice—bless her sweet innocence—came from the hallway.

“How come the door’s broke, Gavin?”

Pushing aside the chair that had been holding it shut, Lila
slipped out the door to join her stepchildren.

***

Hours later, Bishop glared at a pale swath of sunlight that had
dared to make its way through the window and trace a path across the stone
floor of the jailhouse. He guessed that there were bigger fools than he was,
but he’d be hard-pressed to name one. For weeks, he’d endured the torture of
sharing a bed with Lila and not touching her. He couldn’t count the number of
times he’d stuck his head under the pump and sluiced ice-cold water over the
back of his neck in an effort to drown his hunger for her. A hundred times or
more he’d called himself a fool for agreeing to give her the time she thought
she needed. They were married. What the hell difference was time going to make?
But he’d promised her time and that was what he’d give her.

Last night, all the waiting and cursing and douses of cold water
had ended. Lila had given herself to him, fully and completely. No more lying
awake at night, listening to her breathe and aching with the need to touch her.
It was exactly what he’d wanted. Only a complete fool would be less than
completely happy.

So what did that make him?

Before he was forced to try to come up with an answer to that, the
door of the jailhouse opened and Bart came in. Bishop welcomed the interruption
to his thoughts, though he promised himself that, if Bart brought up the Lang
shooting again, he was going to lock the kid in one of the cells and leave him
there until he turned old and gray. Yesterday Bart had felt compelled to assure
him repeatedly that it had been a clear case of self-defense. It wasn’t that
Bishop didn’t appreciate the younger man’s loyalty, but he was more than a
little tired of everyone telling him about the shooting as if he hadn’t been
there himself.

Luckily for him, Bart had other things on his mind. “Couple got
off the train today,” he announced as he hung his hat on one of the hooks near
the door. Interpreting Bishop’s grunt of acknowledgment as a sign of interest,
he continued to talk as he headed to the stove to pour himself a cup of coffee.
“Real fancy. Man wearing a store-bought suit and a fancy hat like he was goin’
to take a stroll down some street in San Francisco or New York City or
someplace. Woman looked like she stepped outta one of them lady’s magazines.
Her hair was all gussied up and a fancy dress and a hat like you wouldn’t
believe, all full of feathers and ruffles and such-like.”

Bart paused long enough to take a sip of coffee, cursing when the
scalding liquid burned his tongue. But the injury didn’t slow him down. “Pretty
little thing.”

“The hat?” Bishop asked absently. He’d picked up a two-week-old
Denver newspaper and was perusing an article about the efforts of a local
lady’s group to close the town’s plentiful saloons.

“Not the hat!” Bart corrected him with a touch of indignation.
“The gal wearin’ it. She wasn’t very big but she was real pretty. It’d be nice
if the fella with her was her brother but, from the way he was treatin’ her
like she was made out of china, I don’t guess that’s the case.” Bart sighed
over the unfairness of a world in which pretty women all too often came with
husbands already attached.

“Anybody else get off the train?” Bishop asked. He didn’t share
Bart’s interest in the well-dressed couple.

“Nope. They was the only ones. They went right to the hotel. I
watched to make sure.”

Bishop didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that Bart was
reassuring him that there would not be another repeat of the day before when a
stranger had arrived in town and Bart had failed to pinpoint his location.
Bishop considered pointing out that, if another glory hunter showed up looking
to make a reputation by killing Bishop McKenzie, his choice of accommodations
wasn’t going to make much difference to the outcome of his visit, but he
decided to say nothing. If it made Bart feel better to keep an eye on new
arrivals, it couldn’t do any harm.

“Can’t figure what folks like that would be doing here in Paris,”
Bart said, following his own train of thought. “Ain’t much here by way of
entertainment. You suppose they got off in the wrong place?”

“Only if they got
on
in the wrong place. Paris is the only
stop the train makes,” Bishop pointed out dryly.

“They might have got on the wrong train. They’re city folks, for
sure.” As far as Bart was concerned, being “city folk” was a reasonable
explanation for even the most extraordinary acts of stupidity.

“Maybe they’re thinking about buying a mine,” Bishop suggested.
“Or maybe they just like mountains. Unless they plan on shooting at me or
someone else in town, I really don’t care why they’re here.”

He was to remember those words a few hours later when he walked
through the kitchen and stepped into the parlor to find not only Lila and the
children waiting for him but two people who could only be Bart’s mysterious
couple.

“Look who’s here, Bishop,” Lila said with forced good cheer.
“Isn’t this a wonderful surprise?”

Bishop looked from the anxiety in Susan’s soft blue eyes to the
implacable hostility in Douglas’s gaze and thought that “wonderful” wasn’t
exactly the word he’d have chosen.

Once again, the dining room at the Lyman Hotel was filled to
capacity. Word had spread that the sheriff’s in-laws were in town and there was
considerable interest in seeing what they looked like. A gun-fight in the
street yesterday and fancy visitors from the East today—life in Paris hadn’t
been this interesting in months.

No one was surprised to find that the newcomers were elegant and
refined, clearly members of the privileged class. “Stands to reason,” Dot Lyman
told her husband. “It’s plain as the nose on your face that Lila McKenzie is a
real lady. Not that she’s uppity. She doesn’t put on any airs, no matter what
Sara thinks, but manners like hers don’t grow on trees.”

Clem grunted his agreement. Ordinarily, there was nothing he
enjoyed more than discussing the townsfolk with his wife. It was one of the
joys of their married life. But, at the moment, he was wondering if he should
run across to the Lucky Dragon Saloon and see if he could borrow a table. If
they arranged things just right, they might be able to wedge another four
diners into the corner right next to the kitchen. Of course, the door might hit
the back of one of the chairs now and again, but no one was likely to care much
as long as they had a clear view of the sheriff’s table. The McKenzie’s
certainly had been good for business.

***

“Is the hotel always this busy?” Susan asked, glancing around at
the crowded dining room. “The food must be exceptionally good.”

“Dot is a wonderful cook,” Lila said. “But I’m afraid you and
Douglas are more of an attraction than her roast beef. Other than miners and
gamblers, we don’t get many visitors in Paris. You know what small towns are
like.”

“Yes, we do,” Douglas said, his bland agreement seeming to carry
an accusation.

Lila flushed and Bishop’s jaw tightened. If it hadn’t been for the
fact that anything he said or did would add to her embarrassment, he would have
taken great pleasure in punching his brother-in-law on the nose.

“I guess some things don’t change, no matter where you live,”
Susan said lightly, as if Douglas hadn’t made his dour comment.

“That’s true.” Lila’s smile was forced. “Bishop kept telling me
how different things would be from what I was used to, but I’ve found more
similarities than differences. People are much the same everywhere.”

“Not quite. I can’t recall the last time Beaton was privileged to
have a gunfight in the middle of the street,” Douglas said, addressing the
remark to no one in particular.

There was a moment of dead silence, broken by Susan. “I don’t
know, dear. Occasionally, the meetings of the Ladies’ Aid Society become so
vituperative that I’m afraid disagreements can only be settled by pistols at
dawn. At the last meeting, I thought Ethel Jane Cranston and Eugenia Stevens
were going to come to blows over what to serve at tea.”

Bishop didn’t know the women she’d mentioned but he assumed that
the image evoked must be fairly unlikely, since both Douglas and Lila were
momentarily struck dumb. Then Lila laughed and even Douglas was startled into a
genuine smile, and the tension was eased, at least for the moment.

Leaning back in his chair, Bishop let the conversation flow around
him. It was mostly Susan and Lila talking. Douglas spoke occasionally but his
mood was such that neither woman sought to bring him into the conversation.
Sitting next to Lila, Bishop could feel the tension in her. She was nervous as
a one-legged man at fanny kicking, and the careful way she avoided looking at
her brother made the source of the her tension obvious.

Bishop hadn’t needed their conversation this morning to tell him
how much the estrangement with Douglas bothered her. Though he’d spent only a
few days at River Walk, it had been enough for him to see how close the two of
them were. Of all the things he regretted about what had happened between him
and Lila, the rift between her and Douglas was one of the deepest. And one that
he, of all people, could do nothing to correct.

“It just seemed like such a perfect opportunity to come visit,
what with my brother getting married in San Francisco next month,” Susan was
saying. It was a measure of her own uneasiness that this was the second time
she’d felt obliged to explain how it was she and Douglas had come to be in
Paris. “We probably should have written to let you know that we were coming,
but I thought it would be more fun to surprise you.”

“It was certainly that,” Bishop said, smiling at her to take any
sting out of the words.

“It’s wonderful that you’re going to be able to be at your
brother’s wedding,” Lila said.

“Yes, I’m—”

“They’ve been engaged for almost a year,” Douglas said,
interrupting his wife. “No need for a hurried wedding.”

“Douglas!” Susan kept her voice low, but there was no mistaking
the reprimand.

Out the comer of his eye, Bishop saw Lila’s fingers tighten around
her fork until the knuckles turned white with the force of her grip. He leaned
toward his brother-in-law. “One more crack like that, Adams, and you can spend
the rest of the evening picking your teeth up off the floor. If you have
something to say, say it to me. In private. But I won’t tolerate you upsetting
my wife.”

“Your wife?” Douglas’s eyes, as clear and green as Lila’s, flashed
with anger. “She’s my sister.”

“If that wasn’t the case, I’d already have fed you your teeth.”

“Douglas.” Susan’s tone was less a plea than a demand, and her
usually soft mouth was tight with annoyance. “If the two of you want to brawl
like a pair of children, you can go outside. But I don’t think it’s too much to
expect a little civilized behavior at the dinner table.”

“The choice is yours, Adams,” Bishop said, deliberately baiting
the other man. He couldn’t think of anything that would give him more pleasure
than to bury his fist in Douglas’s face.