Stealing Mercy (26 page)

“Huckleberries?” Mercy asked.

“Can you make a huckleberry pie?” Hester asked.

“I don’t even know what a Huckleberry is.”

*****

She suspected that Trent had intentionally led her into the woods before Chloe could follow. He kept looking over his shoulder as they walked deeper into the forest. Under the thick canopy of pines, the air blew much cooler and smelled sweeter. The hot wind, as if angry by the tree’s shelter, whistled through the tree tops. Because of the narrow path they walked single file, first Mercy and then Trent. Occasionally, he’d lean forward to place his hand on her waist to guide her to the river although she could hear it now, rushing over rapids in the near distance.

“Huckleberries?” she asked, looking at him over her shoulder when they stopped in front of a twiggy bush bearing small red berries.

Trent popped a few in his mouth and then tried to feed one to Mercy.

“Is it safe?” she asked as he paused his hand inches from her lips.

“Don’t you trust me?”

She opened her mouth and he dropped berries onto her tongue.

“The first sign of trust,” he said.

The bitter berries stung the back of her mouth and then left a sweet after taste. “Nonsense. I trust you completely.”

He shook his head. “Not enough to tell me why you’re involved with Steele and Lucky Island.”

“That isn’t my confidence to break. Others could be hurt.”

“Like Dorrie.”

She flinched and blinked back rapidly forming tears.

He touched her cheek. She could tell he had something he wanted to say. He took her hand and led her down a path that widened and then forked at the bank of the river. The ground sat several feet above the fast current and the path hugged the edge of the bank. Trent steered her upstream to where the bank rose higher and the river slowed to a quieter pace. The water was considerable deeper, but because of the murk, Mercy couldn’t see the bottom.

She told him, “I’ve never seen a milky white river.” The Hudson and East River ran blackish green.

“Glacier water,” Trent said. “It’s that color when it’s been warm and the glaciers are melting. Fortunately, the fish don’t mind the frigid cold.” He paused. “Have you ever fished before?”

Mercy shook her head. “So, the warmer the weather, the colder the river?”

Trent nodded. “Glacier run off is bone chilling.”

Trent sat down, fiddled with his pole and line and then drew a small bag from his fishing creel. Mercy watched as he withdrew a wriggly worm and stabbed it on the end of the hook.

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think I’ll like this,” she said.

He smiled up at her. “You’d rather pluck innocent berries from their bush and bake them in a pie.”

She spread out her hands as if to say she hadn’t a choice. “It’s what I do.”

Trent’s face turned serious. “Among other things.”

“Like what?”

“Like learning how to fish.” He stood at the river bank and motioned for her to join him.

She balked.

“You can’t stand there,” he told her. “You’ll be in my way when I cast.”

She moved closer and he threw back the line. She watched it sail over the water and land with a tiny splash in the river. Seconds later he pulled the line back to shore.

“Your turn,” he said, giving her a smile.

She took the pole and he positioned her fingers around the end. Then, with his arms around her, he guided the pole so that the line arched above them to land in the stream. She could feel him pressed against her. “Mercy, tell me your history with Steele.”

She immediately stiffened and he tightened his hands on the pole around hers. “Why don’t you trust me?”

Her mind, although sufficiently distracted by Trent’s body leaning against hers, flashed back to the image of Steele lying on the floor of her tiny apartment, blood staining his temple. How could she tell him?

“Why do you follow him? Why did you follow Wallace?”

“What they’re doing is evil.” Mercy tried to turn to see Trent’s face, but from her angle she could only see his jaw.

“Your vendetta, is it personal?”

“Maybe it was, but not anymore,” Mercy said, remembering the commitment she’d made to herself that morning.
That’s the problem with commitments made to oneself
, she thought,
they’re so easy to shift
. Only a few hours ago she’d decided that she could never see Trent again and now she found herself in his arms on a river bank. “I hope to never see Steele again.” She stopped when Trent’s hand left the pole and pressed her closer to him. Taking a deep breath, she continued, “In fact, just this morning I’d determined to donate the money from my mother’s jewels to Georgina and then no longer involve myself her cause.”

Trent began to kiss her neck. She could feel his breath fanning her face.

She managed to say, “Well, other than employ the girls. The pies --”

“You haven’t answered my question. I want to know your history with Steele.”

He took the pole from her hand and turned her to him to kiss her lips. She felt that swooshing again, the tug and pull that said she was powerless against him. He leaned back from her, laughing as she instinctively followed. “My dear, I believe you’ve caught a fish.”

“What?” Her legs had turned to jelly and she wondered if she could stand without Trent’s support. As if he could read her thoughts, he steadied her and wrapped her fingers, laced through his, around the pole.

He gave his attention to the fish flipping at the end of the line, but didn’t release her from his arms. She stood, cradled against him while he fought the fish. “I’m afraid that you will see Steele again. Quite soon.”

She stiffened and tried to withdraw, but Trent had her securely folded against him. “Why would you say that?” She wiggled free when Trent swung the fish onto the bank. She watched, horrified, as the trout shimmered silver in the sparkling sun. The fish’s black eye stared up at her, his gill pulsed open and closed and his mouth moved in a silent scream.

“He’s here.”

“Here?” Mercy took a step backward as her past rushed forward to meet her.

“I’m afraid we’ll be dining with him tonight. That’s why I need to know exactly who is to you.”

Mercy could only stare at Trent. She felt as tormented as the dying fish. She took another step backward, onto the fish, and then skittered, arms flailing.

She splashed into the river.

CHAPTER 25

The Fish Kettle is one of the easiest ways to cook fish. It is a long, thin pan made to accommodate a medium trout to a large salmon. Serve with a bouillon made of white wine, onion, carrot, bay leaves, parsley, and thyme.

From The Recipes of Mercy Faye

Her scream ended when water filled her mouth. She came to the surface sputtering. The water, glacier water, she reminded herself, enveloped her like an Arctic blast. But, it couldn’t cool her anger. The current tugged at her skirts and she let it carry her downstream.

Trent had taken off his shirt and had promptly dived in to join her. He treaded water beside her. “Thank goodness you swim,” he said shaking the water out of his hair. “I thought I’d have to save you.”

Mercy had a mouthful of water which she blew into Trent’s face. “Save yourself!” she said just before cutting through the water toward the bank.

Above the slosh of water she could hear the bafflement in Trent’s voice. “Mercy?”

Mercy swam across the river in clean even strokes. Her skirts felt like led and her corset hampered her breath, but her anger carried to the shore. “There is no Mercy for you!” She shook herself as she climbed out of the frigid water. Her toes and fingers had gone quiet numb and she suspected her brain had followed form. She couldn’t think. She needed to, but she couldn’t. Tried as she might, she couldn’t wrap her thoughts around anything other than she was going to have to spend an evening in the company of Mr. Steele, a man she’d left for dead in New York.

Streams of water ran down her legs. Her hair, heavy and wet, clung to her face. She’d lost one shoe in the river and has she climbed up the bank, mud squished between her toes. In the current, already thirty feet downstream, she watched her shoe bobble in the tide like a tiny blue ship. Mercy did the only thing she could of.

She picked up her sodden skirts and ran after her shoe.

*****

“Mercy!” Trent stared and then splashed after her. He really couldn’t understand her and he knew that he should. He had a sister. He had a grandmother. In reality, women should be as comprehensible to him as men, given as how he’d spent most of his life living with them. Mercy, she made him crazy. Maybe she was crazy. One minute she’d been warm and pliant in his arms and the next she was spitting mad. Literally.

He waded towards the shore, kicking through the river’s pull. Did she really think she could out run him? In wet skirts? He started after her, wondering why. He should probably let her go. Let her live out her own feats of heroism, emerge herself in rescuing lost girls, without his involvement, but then he thought of Rita and his heart twisted.

“Mercy?” He climbed up the bank and looked down the trail. Ferns, mushrooms, rotting fallen logs, no Mercy. She couldn’t have gone far and if she was sane, she’d return to the ranch. But, she wasn’t sane. He’d already established that. She was mercurial, irrepressible, inconstant, strong willed, free spirited, and bossy.

A twig snapped and Trent looked up to see Steele standing on the river bank, fishing pole in hand. He had a good natured smirk on his face and a trout dangling from the line. A wave of frustration swept through Trent.

“Have you lost something, Michaels?”

No, he hadn’t lost her and he wasn’t going to. Ever. He made his tone light. “Yes, a Miss Mercy Faye.”

Trent watched the smirk fade from Steele’s lips. Steele dropped the fishing pole and the trout, flipping on the end of the line, wiggled on the dusty path.

“Perhaps you know her?” Trent asked, fascinated with Steele’s visible reaction to Mercy’s name.

Steele spoke slowly. “I knew a Miss Faye, a baker, in New York. Sadly, she died.”

“Died?” Trent repeated.

Steele nodded. “Suicide. Terrible business.”

“Must have been another Mercy Faye,” Trent said, his gaze scanning the river bank.

Steele narrowed his eyes. “Yes, of course.”

“My
Miss Faye,” he emphasized the possessive, “happens to be wet and angry. We, hum, fell in the stream. If you happen to see a damp, mad woman, please steer her back to the ranch. ”

Steele barked a laugh that sounded harsh. “She sounds like she should be avoided. I wish you luck with her.”

“Thanks,” Trent turned up the path. “Enjoy your day.”

A few steps later he encountered Miles Covington. He stood on the path like a frowning stone monument. “You were speaking of Miss Faye?”

He is my guest
, Trent reminded himself. “Yes, have you seen her?”

Miles crossed his arms over his chest and stared down his nose at Trent, a difficult thing to accomplish when the person being addressed was of similar height. “You’ve lost her in the woods, after, apparently, throwing her in the river.”

“I did not throw her in the river,” Trent ground out wishing he could toss Miles into the river. He stuck his arms through his shirt, disliking the way Miles eyed his biceps and chest, as if weighing the odds of success in a brawl. “She slipped. On a fish.”

Miles lowered his head. “Charming.”

Trent raised his voice. “She
is
charming-”

“I wasn’t talking about her and I don’t want you talking about her.”

He curled his fists into balls. “I can talk about her.”

“Not to me. Not like that.”

Trent took a step back a twig broke beneath his foot. He glanced over his shoulder. Steele had disappeared. “Please excuse me, Carol, but you are not the person I want to talk to right now.” Trent pushed past Miles in the direction where he hoped to find Mercy.

*****

The shock of seeing him rendered her muscles useless. She couldn’t avert her gaze. Raven hair, high forehead, blue eyes that widened with recognition. Steele jolted as if with memory and moved her way.

A bird called out as Mercy ran through the woods. The wind whipped trees and shrubs into her path. She tried to listen for the river to get her bearings, but the river, so audible moments ago, was now drowned out by her labored breath, falling footsteps and the beating of her heart. She moved deeper into the trees, the berries in her basket bouncing to the ground. Running lopsided, one shoe off and one shoe on, reminded her of the nursery rhyme of Brother John, and the rhythm chanted in her mind as she ran.

She’d been a city creature all of her life. The forest was as foreign as the moon; its creatures as alien as dinosaurs -- and nearly as frightening. In her mind she saw revolving images of Drake, Dorrie, and Orson, each bleeding, each menancing.