The Devil's Daughter (5 page)

With a heavy sigh, Lucy stopped and turned to face her. “Your husband ran off because he couldn’t stand being married to a mad woman. The whole town is afraid your baby will be born mad, too, and I was the only one Jed could convince to come out here and help you.” She paused, then waggled her brow. “Cost him plenty, too.”

“How much?”

Lucy fought the snort. “Practically sold his soul to the devil.”

Maggie gasped, her eyes round as dish plates, her hands splayed protectively across her enormous belly. “Get out!”

“I can’t do that, Maggie.” Lucy planted her hands on her hips and shrugged. “Jed paid good money for me, and I have a job to do.”

“Jedidiah will make you go if I tell him to.”

“No, he won’t.”

“Yes, he will,” Maggie screeched as she ran past Lucy and out the door. “Just you watch, devil woman!”

Shock stopped Lucy from chasing her outside. Surely Maggie couldn’t know. . .

No. That was ridiculous.

Lucy didn’t have time to worry about it anyway. She had a plan and she needed to make it work. Unfortunately, things weren’t quite going the way she’d figured. The dress she’d so carefully selected now lay in a heap on the bed, and in its place, she wore the plainest, most boring cotton sack of a blue dress she’d ever seen. Its high collar nearly choked her, and the long sleeves hugged the length of her arms down to where they buttoned tightly at the wrists.

Even in Hell, she had better clothes.

Outside, Maggie’s screechy voice continued to plead with Jed to send Lucy away. Though she couldn’t make out Jed’s end of the conversation, it obviously wasn’t what Maggie wanted to hear.

Lucy searched the shelves until she found a knife sharp enough to serve her purpose. She slipped out of the dress and in seconds, left the itchy collar and half of each sleeve in a pile at her feet. Without the benefit of a looking glass, she’d have to hope for the best, but to help matters along, she yanked the top three buttons off, leaving it open to the V between her breasts, and fluffed her hair around her shoulders.

“There,” she muttered. “Now we’ll see how strong you really are, Jedidiah.”

Lack of sleeves would only chill her more, but that was a small price to pay if it helped further along her plan.

With the dress remnants collected, she took one last disheartened look around the room, extinguished the lamp, and stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine.

“See?” Maggie cried. “Just look at her!”

“What the. . .?” Jed’s gaze swept the length of Lucy, his mouth hanging open, his hat pushed back on his head.

Lucy resisted the urge to laugh. Men – show them a little skin and they all turned into drooling fools.

“Where’s the stove?” she asked, pretending not to notice his reaction. But for added fun, she lifted her skirt high enough to scratch a nonexistent itch just above her knee.

Maggie cowered behind Jed, her loud whisper carrying across the yard. “She wants to cook me.”

Jed stuttered for a moment, but recovered with remarkable speed. “Nobody’s going to cook you, Maggie.”

“You brought her here to cook me.” Maggie’s pale blue eyes widened in fear as a fresh wave of fear crashed over her. “You got rid of Sam and now you want to get rid of me.”

“I didn’t do anything to Sam,” he said quietly. “And I’d never hurt you, Maggie.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and started back toward the house. “Please go lie down. You need your rest.”

“I’ve had my rest,” Maggie snapped. “That devil woman’s going to cut me open and steal my baby.”

Lucy watched in silence as Jed struggled to get Maggie inside the shack again.

“You’ll be fine,” he soothed. “I promise not to let her touch anything sharp.”

He closed the door, then leaned his forehead against it. A second later, a loud thud sounded from the inside.

Jed looked up at Lucy and smiled sadly. “She sometimes likes to keep the door barred.”

Lucy could have pretended to care, but it hardly seemed worth the effort. Maggie would be easy enough to take; it was Jed she needed to focus on. If he thought for one second something was amiss, he’d no doubt bring everything to a halt, and Lucy didn’t have time for that.

“The stove?” she asked again.

Jed pushed away from the door and pointed toward a large circle of rocks with a spit set above a pile of cold embers. “We cook over the fire.”

“What fire?” She offered him a saucy little smile, and even added a head tilt for good measure.

The slow grin that spread across Jed’s face left Lucy unsettled.

“The fire you’re going to build once you get the chips collected,” he answered.

Lucy gaped. “What? You don’t really expect me. . .”

“’Course,” he answered. “Thought we covered that back at the auction.” He moved around the corner of the house and returned a moment later with a small wooden pushcart.

“Here you go.”

“But--”

“No buts, remember?” When she made no move to take the handles from him, he set it at her feet and walked away.

“Wait,” she called. “I can’t pick up. . .
that
.”

“’Course you can,” he answered over his shoulder. “Go get the gloves we bought and just make sure the chips are good ‘n hard before you touch them.”

Bile swirled up Lucy’s throat. He had to be joking. She was Lucille Firr – the Devil’s daughter! She’d done a lot of humiliating things in her day, but picking up animal chips wasn’t one of them. And regardless of what she might have said back at the auction, she had no intention of starting now.

She tugged her collar open a bit more, fluffed her hair and worked up her most seductive smile.

“But, Jed,” she said softly, following him back toward the wagon. “It’s such a smelly thing for a lady to do, and my gloves are in the house with Maggie.”

“No chips, no fire.” He didn’t stop to look at her – and she was putting on a fine show with her hips swaying and her head tilted to the side a little. She even set her lips in what she’d been told was a beautiful little pout.

She stepped around the wagon and slid her hands up his back, loving the feel of hard muscles against her palms.

“I’d rather light
your
fire,” she purred.

Jed’s hands stilled atop a large bag of flour. For a second, she thought she’d won him over, but then –

“We already talked about that, Lucy,” he said, his voice a little tighter than before.

“No,” she murmured. “You talked.” She moved around him, trailing her finger over his shoulder, then across his jaw. When his Adam’s apple bobbed hard, she pushed his hat off and slid both hands through his hair. “Now it’s my turn to talk.”

“Lucy--” he stepped back, but she wasn’t about to let him get away. The sooner she finished this, the sooner she’d be rid of this ugly dress and that pathetic shack.

“We’re married, Jed,” she whispered. “We’re out here in the middle of nowhere, with no one to see what we’re doing.” She pressed herself against him. “I could do things to you that’d make your--”

“Stop it.” Jed pulled her hands away and stepped back again, holding her at a safe distance. “We had a deal, Lucy.”

“What deal is that?” She tried to tug her hands free, but his grip tightened.

He paused only long enough to lick his lips. “I made it pretty clear you weren’t the woman I needed out here. One of them other girls was more what I wanted.”

Once again, Lucy wasn’t what anyone wanted. Not the mother who’d abandoned her, certainly not her father, and now not even her husband wanted her.

“They were ugly.” She pushed her lip out a bit further, but Jed didn’t look the least bit swayed.

Damn it.

“They were sturdy,” he corrected. “Strong, able-bodied women who’d have gotten right to work when we arrived here. That’s what you agreed to.”

“Did I?” No – she wouldn’t have agreed to such nonsense. But, thinking back, she’d been awfully distracted by her man’s dark eyes and clean smell. And, of course, the knowledge that she needed him to fulfill her plan.

Maybe she
had
agreed to it.

Lucy shrugged. It was irrelevant what she may or may not have agreed to. She didn’t have to actually do it. Not
her
.

“Yes, you did.” Jed released her hands and nodded toward the cart behind her. “It’s getting late and Maggie could use a hot meal, so I suggest you get to work.”

“Why can’t you cut down a tree?”

He sighed heavily. “Look around, Lucy. There’s not exactly an abundance of trees, and the ones we have will be needed for the house and a proper barn. We can’t waste them on a fire.”

There wasn’t exactly an abundance of
anything
on Jed’s land. Far in the distance, there were trees – big ones, too – but he obviously wasn’t to be convinced. Surely there was something else they could burn --

“What about those?” she asked, pointing to the scatterings of prickly pears and thatches of mesquite bushes whose blooms had all seen better days.

“We’re going to need those for corrals and the like.” He smiled at her, but it only grated against her nerves more. “The buffalo herds were kind enough to leave plenty of things to burn when they came through, and we piled it up where we were working, so all you need do is go collect it. If you walk the fence line, you’re sure to find plenty of piles to choose from.”

“But--” She curled her fingers into tight fists.

“No buts.” He moved around her and set to work on shifting more of the supplies toward the back of the wagon. “I’ll get the supplies stored, and you’d best set to work on that fire. There’s matches in the house.”

House. Lucy choked back a snort. That dingy little shack was most definitely
not
a house – certainly not one she wanted to be living in, especially with a lunatic like Maggie.

“No.” She
was not
going to touch buffalo dung, even with gloves. She risked her entire plan by refusing, but she couldn’t do it.
Wouldn’t
do it.

“No?” Jed chuckled, but there was no humor in it. In fact, he almost sounded indifferent. How could that be? She’d been seductive, she’d been sweet, and when that didn’t work, she’d been adamant. Men liked those traits in a woman. Didn’t they?

“Fine with me,” he said. ”I’m used to cold beans.”

“Good, because I won’t do it, Jed.” She folded her arms over her chest and lifted her chin in defiance. “So you can eat all the cold beans you like.”

He shrugged, but didn’t respond. If he thought for one minute he could be more stubborn than she, he was in for a rude awakening.

“You can’t make me do it.”

“You’re right,” he agreed, without looking at her. “I can’t.”

He hauled the huge bag of flour out of the wagon and threw it over his shoulder. “Maggie and her baby could do with a nice hot meal, but they’ve survived so far on cold beans and pork, so I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

Did he honestly think guilt would work on her? Stupid man.

When Lucy didn’t respond or move, he simply pushed past her as if she wasn’t there and headed toward the barn.

No one treated her that way – no one! He’d be good and sorry when he realized who she was. It would make the final moments of his life that much more enjoyable.

And they could go ahead and eat their stupid beans cold for all she cared. Maybe they’d choke on them.

So long as they didn’t die before she claimed that baby’s soul.

Maggie’s means of barring the door consisted of dropping the Bible on the floor in front of it. Lucy pushed it aside with the edge of the door and stepped inside.

Over in the corner, Maggie lay curled up on the mattress again, whimpering in her sleep. Being mad must take a lot out of a person.

“Just look at you.”

Lucy started at the unexpected voice.

Deacon
. She should have expected him, yet seeing him there sent tremors through her veins. Before he sensed her fear, she slammed a wall up between them – she couldn’t let him see into her soul. He might be her brother, but he was very much their father’s son.

“What do you want?” She relit the lamp, low this time, then slumped down on the least rickety chair.

“Just came to see how my favorite sister’s doing with her new husband.” Deacon set his black bowler hat on the small table, then swiped the seat of the other chair with one of his pristine white gloves before sitting. A narrow, twitching nose poked out from inside Deacon’s coat pocket, then wiggled the entire body out onto his lap.

“Ugh – why do you still keep that thing?” Lucy wrinkled her nose at the white ferret as it sniffed the air.

Deacon smiled down at the little rodent and scratched it gently behind the ears.

“You can’t stay here,” Lucy said. “If Maggie wakes up, or Jed sees you, he’ll--”