Teresa Medeiros (30 page)

It wasn’t until he was striding toward the dun gelding that stood grazing on a sparse patch of grama grass halfway down the hill that she snapped out of her daze.

“Bartholomew Fine, you get back here this instant!”

He paused for a nearly imperceptible second, then resumed walking.

“Don’t you turn your back on me while I’m talking. I
won’t tolerate such impertinence!” Her voice broke on a quavering note.

Her brother was already throwing one leg over the saddle and turning the horse south.

Esmerelda caught Billy’s arm in an imploring grip, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I just found him. I can’t lose him again! Please, Billy, you have to stop him!”

He caught her shoulders in a grip as fierce as her own. “I’d shoot him in the leg if I believed you both wouldn’t hate me and each other for it later.”

“I don’t want you to shoot him. I just want you to talk some sense into the boy!”

He deliberately gentled both his grip and his voice. “He’s not a boy any longer, Esmerelda. He’s a man.”

Sobbing with frustration, she wrenched herself out of his grasp and went tearing down the hill. Bart had already kicked the horse into a canter. Soon he would be nothing but a puff of dust on the horizon.

Esmerelda must have realized it, too, for halfway down the hill, she stumbled to her knees, her shoulders crumpling in defeat.

Although Billy ached to go to her, he’d had plenty of practice biding his time. He leaned against the buckboard until the sun began to climb in the crisp blue sky. Until even the puff of dust had been scattered by the wind.

Only then did he start down the hillside. The brittle grasses crackled beneath his bare feet, warning Esmerelda of his approach.

She sat with one leg drawn up to her stomach, her mouth pressed to her knee. Her tears had dried to dusty streaks on her cheeks. Billy yearned to draw her into his arms, but she looked too brittle—as if one touch might scatter her on the wind as well.

He sank down on the hillside as near as he dared, leaned
back on one elbow, and tucked a hollow blade of grass between his teeth. She surprised him by speaking first.

“Bartholomews little heart was broken when Mama and Papa died. I tried to make it up to him, but I guess I never did.”

Billy frowned, pained by her choice of words. “Hell, Esmerelda, you didn’t kill them.”

She turned to look him straight in the eye. “Oh, but I did.”

When she returned her gaze to the empty horizon, Billy could only stare at the bleak curl of her mouth. “I once had a friend named Rebecca. I was always a little shy and I didn’t make friends easily, so Becky was very precious to me. One evening, I overheard Mama and Papa whispering that she was sick. I begged them to let me go visit her. Mama turned white and Papa, who had never once raised his voice to me, shouted that I was to do no such thing and I must go to my room immediately.

“I ran up the stairs, crying. I rarely disobeyed, you see. I was a
very
good girl.” She slanted him a mocking smile, giving him a glimpse of the mischievous little girl she would have liked to have been. “But this time I managed to convince myself that my parents were just being selfish and mean. I knew I could make Becky feel better if I could only see her. I made her some roses out of yellow tissue paper.”

Billy knew what was coming next. He couldn’t begin to number the muggy summer nights back in Missouri when he’d crept out his window, shed his drawers, and plunged butt-naked into the icy cold waters of a nearby spring.

“I waited until they were all asleep,” Esmerelda continued, “then I slipped down the back staircase and out of the house, clutching my pathetic little bouquet. When I got to
Becky’s house, I could tell there was something terribly wrong. Although it must have been near midnight, every lamp in the house was burning. I could see strangers milling about the parlor. Becky’s mother was crying, and her father was sitting with his face buried in his hands. Before I could duck, he lifted his head and looked right at the window. He didn’t look
at
me.” She shivered. “He looked
through
me.

“I ran, then, as fast as I could, to the back of the house where Becky’s bedroom was. I could see her through the French windows, laid out on her bed in her prettiest nightgown. An old woman I’d never seen before was napping in a chair in the corner.”

Billy had to clench his hands into fists to keep from reaching for her.

“I slipped into the room and crept toward the bed. Becky was always so pink and jolly. It scared me to see her lying there so still and pale. Then I felt ashamed for being afraid. So I reached up, ever so gently, and touched her cheek. Her skin was like ice. I must have made a sound because the woman in the rocking chair came awake with a start.

“ ‘How did you get in here?’ she shouted. ‘Get away from her, you wicked little girl!’

“She frightened me so badly that I dropped the flowers, jumped out the window, and ran all the way home. I threw myself into my bed without even bothering to take off my shoes and pulled the blanket over my head. It took hours for my teeth to stop chattering.” Esmerelda sighed. “I found out later that Becky had died earlier that afternoon. Of cholera.”

Billy lowered his head. He might have been able to stand it if Esmerelda had cried. But her eyes were as dry and barren as a desert that has survived centuries without even the hope of rain.

“I never told Mama and Papa what I’d done. Not even when they lay wracked by chills and soaked in their own sweat. Not when their lips cracked and blood trickled from the corners of their mouths. I nursed them the best I could. No one else would come near the house until the disease had run its course and they were dead.” Her words were edged with all the bitterness and self-loathing that had been festering beneath her composed exterior for thirteen years. “I never suffered so much as a sniffle.”

But she’d been suffering ever since, Billy thought. Suffering because a single moment of willful disobedience had left her spirit crushed like paper flowers beneath the indifferent heel of fate. She’d atoned for her sin by sacrificing her every dream and desire and becoming both mother and father to Bartholomew. Now that he was gone for good, Billy supposed, she wasn’t sure who she was supposed to be.

He rolled the tube of grass between his fingers, choosing his words with deliberate care. “When I was riding with Quantrill and Anderson, we lost more men to disease than we did to Yankee bullets—dysentery, typhoid, influenza … cholera. Almost every one of those sicknesses was spread through contaminated food or drinking water. I don’t believe you could have given your parents cholera by touching a dead girl’s cheek. They most likely just drank from the same water supply as your friend.”

Esmerelda’s gaze was fierce, as if she wanted desperately to believe him, but wouldn’t allow herself. “You might assume that, but can you prove it? Can you swear with absolute certainty that I didn’t invite that monster into my parents’ house?”

Billy wanted to say yes, but knew she wouldn’t believe him anyway. He reached over to stroke her hair. “You were a child, sweetheart. With a child’s generous heart. Even if your parents had known what you’d done, do you really
think they would have blamed you or wanted you to spend the rest of your life blaming yourself?”

Shaking off his caress, Esmerelda sprang to her feet, fury glittering in her dark eyes. “If I won’t accept God’s forgiveness, what makes you think I’d accept yours?”

Growing more wary, Billy climbed to his feet to face her.

She stiffened, looking exactly like the woman who had marched into that saloon and pointed her derringer at his heart. “Since you sent my brother on his merry way with your blessing and Winstead’s money, it seems I’ll no longer be requiring either your pity or your services. You’re dismissed, Mr. Darling.”

Billy had thought being shot in the chest hurt, but that pain was nothing but a sting compared to this. He actually glanced down at his bandage, expecting to find it stained with fresh blood.

Snatching up the dusty skirts of her nightgown as if they were the train of a velvet robe, Esmerelda went marching up the hill toward the house. The only sound he heard through the ringing in his ears was the door slamming in his face one last time.

When Billy returned to the house later that afternoon, he found Esmerelda seated on her trunk by the front door with her gloved hands folded primly in her lap. She’d donned the rumpled traveling costume she’d worn at their very first meeting, wound her hair into a knot so tight she was darn near cross-eyed, and slapped that godawful bonnet over the whole mess. She would have looked no less approachable had she been wearing a full suit of armor.

“If you’re waiting for a stagecoach,” he drawled, leaning against the doorframe, “you’d best be prepared to sit a spell.”

She lifted her face to him. Scrubbed free of tearstains, it
was as pale and stiff as a piece of porcelain. “I was hoping you would escort me back to Calamity so I could catch the stagecoach there.” Her voice dripped honeyed scorn. “I would think it would be the very least you could do.”

He gave her his nastiest smile. “Oh, I could do a lot less than that. But I won’t.”

He straightened to find his entire family staring at him as if he were some snarling wolf who’d wandered into their midst. Jasper was polishing his boots while Virgil and his ma sat smoking companionably by the hearth. Sam was hunched over the table, picking over the crumbs of an apple pie, and Enos, still wearing his wrinkled red drawers, was submerged up to his bony knees in a round wooden tub.

Billy swept them a look so black it raised even Jasper’s eyebrows. “I’m taking that treasury gold to the bank in Eulalie and wiring its rightful owners. I won’t tolerate any argument on the matter.”

“You won’t get any from us,” Virgil said heartily, casting his mother a timid glance. “Ma taught us better than that. ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Right, Ma?”

Zoe rocked and nodded, taking a particularly self-righteous puff on her pipe. Sadie blinked up at her, drooling in adoration.

Billy strode into the bedroom, emerging a few minutes later wearing his boots and the same shirt he’d arrived in. While he’d been unconscious, Esmerelda had managed to mend the bullet tear and scrub most of the bloodstains out of it. He didn’t care to think about what an effort that must have taken.

She was waiting for him on the porch, having already made her farewells. His stride didn’t slow until he’d almost reached the open door.

“Come, Sadie,” he commanded, swinging around and patting his thigh.

The hound hesitated, shooting his mother a questioning glance.

Billy squatted and stretched out his hand. “Sadie, come!” The words came out sharper than he intended. Sadie cowered against his mother’s skirts.

Billy dropped his head and raked a hand through his hair. Hell, he thought, if Sadie turned on him, too, he might just break down and cry right there in front of God and everybody.

Zoe gently nudged the dog with her toe. “Git on with you, you old mutt. One crotchety old bitch around here is enough.”

Taking that as a blessing, Sadie came waddling over, giving Billy’s hand an affectionate snuffle with her cold, wet nose. Billy scratched behind her ears, absurdly grateful for her loyalty.

When he straightened, his brothers were all waiting to clap him on the back and wish him well. A dripping Enos elbowed Samuel aside so he could stutter a goodbye while Virgil pressed some of his own cigars on him. Even Jasper managed a grudging handshake. Billy glanced at his mother. She looked away.

He figured he ought to be getting used to women not speaking to him. Although he had to admit it was going to be mighty nice to get back to Miss Mellie’s. The women there had never minded speaking to him. And they’d made it perfectly clear they wouldn’t mind doing anything else to him if he were so inclined. It was only his strict code of gallantry that had kept him from taking advantage of their hospitality while he resided under their roof. A gallantry he was rapidly beginning to reconsider.

While he saddled his mare and hitched up the mule to the buckboard, Esmerelda stood on the steps, impatiently tapping her foot. He heaved her trunk and violin case into
the bed of the wagon, tempted to throw her over his shoulder and do the same with her. Ignoring his outstretched hand, she clambered stiffly onto the seat and gathered the reins in her gloved hands. Sadie bounded up beside her, her tongue lolling out in excitement.

Billy wasted no time in urging his mare into a trot. He refused to give Esmerelda the satisfaction of glancing back to see if she was following. The strident jingle of the harness told him she was. They were nearly to the bottom of the hill when he heard the door creak open behind them.

He almost fell off his horse when his ma’s shout rang out. “You take care, boy, you hear? And you take care of that gal, too. The good Lord knows she cain’t take care of herself. Standin’ off a Darling with a shotgun! Why, that child ain’t got the sense of a boll weevil. You look after her, you hear!”

Billy’s throat tightened. He wanted to wheel his horse around. But he knew if he did, his mother would just go right back into the house and shut the door.

So he kept riding.

“And you look after my boy, gal! Don’t go lettin’ him get his fool self shot up again. And don’t go breakin’ his heart or you’ll answer to me.”

Billy turned in the saddle to give Esmerelda a long, hard look. He would have almost sworn he saw a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes.

Wheeling north, he spurred his horse into a canter, riding hard until the wind had swallowed even the echo of his mother’s voice.