The Temptress (11 page)

Asher led the way out of town the next morning before the sun was up. She'd mumbled answers to his many questions on the night before, saying her engagement to Tynan had been a farce, something to save him from Rory's barbs. Asher seemed satisfied that she was properly contrite.

As they passed the jail, Chris saw the dark shadowy outline of Tynan standing in his cell watching them. She kept her head up high and didn't return his stare. By the time he got out of prison, she'd be far away.

Neither she nor Asher had much to say as they rode, not really running, but not giving themselves time to enjoy the scenery either. At noon they stopped to rest the horses and eat the stale biscuits they'd brought.

As the sound of thundering hooves came down the narrow little road, Chris's heart nearly stopped beating. But it wasn't Tynan or anyone else interested in them. Three big men on scraggy horses went tearing past them, their heads down, their faces hidden under their hat brims.

“I'm glad they aren't looking for us,” Asher said when they'd passed.

Asher didn't talk to Chris much and she remembered how she'd sometimes been rude to him. As he helped her onto her horse, she took every opportunity to smile at him. Now that Tynan was gone, and Chris was no longer blinded by that man's light, she could look at Asher with new eyes. This was a man her father
wanted
her to marry. This man wasn't likely to pull a gun and kill for the smallest offense.

It was nearly sundown before they saw the overturned wagon, and even then they wouldn't have seen it except for Chris having noticed the way the ground had been torn up. There were deep, fresh gouges in the earth, leading off into the underbrush.

“Let's stop here for a moment,” she called, dismounting and running down into the bushes. She hadn't gone but a few feet when she saw the big old wagon on its side, and what looked to be a woman's hand protruding from under it.

She ran back up the bank, shouting for Asher to come and help her. “Under there,” she pointed. “We have to get the wagon up and get her out.”

He only hesitated for a second, then ran forward.

When they got to the far side of the wagon, they could see only part of the woman's arm. Her head and the rest of her body were buried under the wagon.

“Can you lift that?” Chris asked, pointing to a broken part of the wagon. “I'll try to pull the woman out.”

Asher used most of the strength he had as he propped himself against the side of the wagon then squatted until his legs could work to lift the weight.

“Now!” he shouted and the wagon moved.

Chris lost not a second pulling the woman out to safety.

Asher, kneeling, lit a match because the evening was growing very dim, and studied the woman. She seemed to be covered in blood. “She's been shot at least three times,” he said quietly.

“But she's still breathing.” Chris took the woman's bloodied head into her lap. “We'll get you to a doctor,” she whispered to the woman as she began to thrash about.

“My husband,” she gasped. “Where is my husband?”

Chris looked up at Asher but he was already searching the surrounding area. Chris could see where he stopped. Turning, he shook his head.

“Your husband is fine. He's sleeping now.”

“Can you tell us who did this to you?” Asher asked when he came back.

The woman was having great difficulty talking, and blood was seeping steadily from her wounds. “Three men,” she whispered at last. “They wanted us dead because we know about Lionel. We were going to save Lionel.”

Suddenly the woman looked at Chris with eyes as red as the blood that was washing from her body. “Help him. Help Lionel. Promise me that.”

“Yes, of course I will. As soon as you're better we'll both—” She stopped because the woman's head had fallen to one side and she was dead.

Asher sat back on his heels. “We have to get the sheriff out here. We'll leave the bodies here for now while I bring the sheriff back.”

“Chris,” he said sharply because she'd begun to look through the packages that had fallen from the wagon. “What in the world are you doing?”

“Looking for something that will tell who Lionel is.”

He caught her shoulders and turned her toward him. “I don't think we should look for the trouble that got that woman killed. We're going home and we're stopping for no one or nothing. This Lionel will have to take care of himself. Now, we're going to a town.”

“We can't leave them here like this,” Chris said.

He seemed to want to protest, but he stopped, then went to the man's body, and carried it up the bank.

Chris went to the woman, smoothed her hair, crossed her hands over her breast. Even in the darkness, she could see how young the woman was, that her hair, under the blood that stained it, was the color of wheat. She was much too young to have died, especially to have been murdered.

Standing, Chris looked at the bundles around her, a meager lot of women's clothing in a carpet bag, another little sewing bag, one bag of the man's clothes. These had scattered across the ground when the wagon had tumbled down the side of the hill. Something shining in the moonlight caught Chris's eye. When she went to it, she saw that it was a little leather bound book with a brass clasp.

Quickly searching the man's bag, she found a box of matches, lit one and scanned a page of the book. As she hoped, it was a diary and, before Asher saw her, she made out the words, “We must help him” and “Lionel's life may be in danger. He's only a child and he has no one but us.”

When she heard Asher behind her, she slammed the book shut and slipped it into the pocket of her habit.

They left the wagon and the bundles where they were for the sheriff to examine, mounted their horses and rode south.

They got to the inn, and, vaguely she heard Asher murmuring complaints and apologies about the food and the dirt of the place, but Chris wasn't really listening. Over a dinner of burned beans, all she could think of was the diary.

When Chris was finally alone in her room, she sat in the bed and began to read the diary. It started three years ago when Diana Hamilton had married the man she'd thought was the wisest, cleverest man on earth, Whitman Eskridge. It hadn't taken her but a few months to find out that he'd married her for her money. Within six months he'd spent everything she brought to the marriage and wanted more.

Chris read how this man had wheedled his way into the Hamilton business—and it wasn't until after Diana's father's suicide that she found out that Whitman had been embezzling funds.

The company went bankrupt, but Diana stood by her husband through all the scandal and the public auction of their belongings. When he said he wanted to go live with her rich relatives in Washington Territory, Diana had reluctantly agreed. She wrote her cousin, Owen Hamilton, a man she'd never met, and begged him for mercy and kindness—and for a roof over their heads.

There were several days when Diana didn't write in the diary, then she took it up again with the news that Whitman had told her that Owen was stealing from Lionel. Chris found this confusing until she'd read a few pages more. As far as she could tell, Lionel was really the owner of the Hamilton holdings in Washington. He was a boy of about eleven, and everything had been left to him in care of his uncle, the man who was Diana's cousin. And Whitman Eskridge had produced some type of proof that Owen Hamilton was cheating his nephew out of his inheritance. Unfortunately, the diary didn't tell what that proof was.

It was hours later when she finished reading and fell asleep, the book across her lap. She had a dream that she was Diana Eskridge.

“Chris, wake up,” Asher was saying, shaking her awake. “I pounded on the door but no one answered. Did you stay awake all night reading that book?”

Yawning, Chris nodded.

“Well, whatever it is, I hope it was worth it. I just rode in and I wanted to tell you that the sheriff has the bodies. I'm going to sleep now. I'll see you at dinner.”

Chris was tired but she could sleep only fitfully. She kept thinking and dreaming about what she'd read. It was so unfair that the pretty young woman had had such a terrible life. And what would happen now to that poor little boy whose inheritance she was trying to save? Lionel now had no other relatives except his dishonest uncle.

By evening, she was convinced that she should do something about this young woman who had died. She couldn't let her die in vain, couldn't let her agony and pain be for nothing.

At dinner, she asked Asher many questions about the looks of the young woman who'd died.

“Chris, how can you be so morbid?”

“Do you think she was built like me? Was she anything like me at all?”

When he saw she wasn't going to cease, he began to answer her. “Why don't you tell me what you have on your mind,” he said softly.

Chris nearly choked from trying to tell too much too quickly. When she'd calmed herself, she began again. First, she told him about the diary and Diana Eskridge's miserable marriage. “She never had a chance for happiness. And she was on her way to do something very good. She was going to save her cousin whose estate was being stolen from him by a wicked uncle when she was killed.”

Asher looked at his plate of food. “Did it ever occur to you that the wicked uncle might have been the one who killed her?”

“Of course it did. But her dying request was that I help by protecting Lionel.”

“And just how do you propose to do that? Walk up to this uncle and say, ‘Excuse me, but are you stealing from your nephew? If so, would you please turn yourself in and go to jail for the rest of your life?' Really, Chris! This is too absurd.”

Chris took a deep breath. “I thought that since this man has never seen his cousin, I might be able to pose as her.”

Asher's jaw dropped as he gaped at her. “But if he's the one who has had her killed, don't you think he'll be a little suspicious when you walk in the door?”

“I don't guess he can say that he thought I was dead, can he?”

“Not
you,
Chris, Diana Eskridge. You couldn't possibly get away with this. There's too much that you don't know about her. How are the two of them related? Maybe this Diana has a birthmark that's a family trait. There are a thousand things that you don't know. Why has she never met this man before? No, you couldn't possibly do it.”

Chris looked down at her plate and she tried to control herself but she felt the tears coming.

“What's the matter, Chris?” Asher asked, reaching for her hand.

“Tynan,” was all Chris could sob. She heard Asher's sharp intake of breath and she realized it was the first time she'd admitted that there was actually anything between her and the guide. But right now, secrecy didn't matter to her. All she thought about was Tynan.

Asher kept holding her hand. “If you went to visit Diana Eskridge's cousin, what about her husband? Surely Owen Hamilton would be expecting the two of them? You can't exactly say that you lost him on the way out west.”

“I hadn't thought about him,” Chris said, wiping her eyes with her hand. “Maybe I could appear as a widow. Smallpox got him or a rabid dog or maybe Indians on the plains or—”

“What if you appeared
with
him?” Asher interrupted. “What if you came with your husband?”

“You mean get Tynan to pretend to be my husband? After the things he said to me about marriage? He'd probably take after Owen with a gun the first day. He'd no doubt—”

“Could you get that man out of your mind for a moment?” Asher asked angrily. “I was thinking about myself.”

“You as my husband?” Chris asked, her mouth open in disbelief.

Asher gave her a look of disgust for a moment. “Do you
really
want to help Lionel or not?”

“I do but…besides, Mr. Prescott, you can't do this. I'm sure you have somewhere else you have to be and the last place you want to be is risking your life to save someone you don't even know. No, I'll just have to do this by myself. I'll say that my husband was killed under a stampede of horses when the train stopped for water. Or maybe the water pipe fell on him, knocked him unconscious and he drowned in the middle of the desert. I'd like something awful to have happened to Mr. Whitman Eskridge. He deserves it for the way he treated Diana.”

“Chris, if I don't go along on this to take care of you, I'll tell your father where you are and what you're up to this time.”

“You wouldn't,” Chris gasped.

“Try me,” he answered, narrowing his eyes at her.

Chris leaned away from him and suddenly felt his intensity. He'd made several attempts at showing how much he liked her, but now she felt that he sincerely wanted to help her.

Asher smiled at her. “Of course I'll have to read the diary before we go to see just what kind of a son of a—oh, excuse me.” He grinned. “Think you can play the dutiful little wife who agrees with her husband no matter what he does?”