Willow: A Novel (No Series) (31 page)

Willow ground her heel into the last gleaming shards of the lens. The glass made a crunching sound and then spread into a veined web.

And changed nothing.

Nothing at all.

Steven was still gone.

Coy and Reilly, too. Any chance they’d had of turning their lives around, of marrying and having children and living like decent men, was lost for good. And they’d had that in them, her stepbrothers, the capacity to change.

At a word from Steven, they would have forsworn their outlaw ways.

Now, they would never get that chance.

Livid over the destruction of his equipment, the portly photographer made a grab for Willow, only to be forestalled by a most unlikely champion—Norville Pickering. Trying to hold back the furious daguerreotypist and keep Willow away from the camera at the same time, he bellowed, “For God’s sake, somebody go fetch Judge Gallagher or the marshal!”

“Get that little she-cat off my camera!” screamed the photographer.

Willow bunched her skirts in both hands and jumped up and down on the already shattered black box in much the same way she’d jumped on beds as a child.

“That cost a hundred dollars!” came the outraged protest.

Suddenly, one strong arm encircled Willow’s waist, held her tight against a rock-hard hip. She kicked and struggled and shrieked, but to no avail. This time, Gideon wasn’t going to let down his guard for so much as a moment.

His narrowed eyes were fixed on Norville and the nearly apoplectic man he was trying to restrain. “I’ll pay for the camera,” he said evenly.

“Well and good!” roared the photographer. “But what about my pictures of the Gallagher gang? How the hell am I supposed to get my goddamned pictures?”

A crowd had gathered by this time; probably, the townspeople had been watching the drama unfold for several minutes already, but Willow hadn’t noticed them until now.

Without even glancing at the wife he was holding prisoner with one arm, Gideon answered coldly, “I guess you’re just out of luck this time.” His gaze sliced to the two men who stood nearest. “Get these bodies in off the street. Now.”

“But, Marshal, we always—”

“Get them in,” Gideon ordered.

Looking petulant, the men moved to do as they were bid, and the mob of onlookers began to disperse. Norville
bent to pick up his spectacles, which had fallen off during the scuffle, and the photographer blustered, “I’ll be by for that hundred dollars, Marshal!”

“Fine,” answered Gideon, and the thwarted picture taker went off, grumbling, toward the nearest saloon.

“Let me go!” Willow finally managed to sputter. Her feet were still well off the ground, and Gideon’s arm felt like a giant steel manacle circling her waist.

Gideon held her easily, seemingly paying her no attention at all. “Norville?”

Norville straightened, his spectacles crooked on his nose. He blinked several times. “Yes?”

“Thank you,” Gideon said. “Thank you for looking after my wife.”

Norville glanced at Willow’s flushed, furious face and smiled sadly. “You’re welcome, Marshal,” he said, and then, embarrassed, he turned and sprinted back toward the newspaper office.

“Take your hands off me, Gideon Marshall,” Willow seethed.

Coldly obliging, Gideon released his hold, and Willow nearly collapsed, her legs were so bloodless, so weak.

“Go home, Willow,” Gideon said as she turned on him.

“Don’t you tell me what to do, you, you wretched, bloodthirsty . . .”

Gideon’s eyes never left Willow’s face, but his hand rose to the star-shaped badge on his coat and deftly unpinned it. “You will go home,” he bit out, “and you will stay there, Mrs. Marshall, until I come for you.”

“The hell I will!”

“The hell you won’t. Move your bustle, my dear, before I forget everything you’ve been through today, haul you into my office, and turn you across my knee!”

Something in Gideon’s eyes gave Willow pause, and she bit down on the rebellious words that sprang to her lips. “My brothers are dead,” she said woodenly, without intending to.

“Yes,” Gideon replied, his gaze still locked with hers.

Neither one moved, or spoke, for a long moment.

Then Willow said, “T-thank you for making those men take them inside, Gideon. It isn’t right, everybody looking at them.”

Gideon didn’t respond. He just nodded. But everything he felt—the despair, the regret, the pity Willow didn’t want—was in his eyes.

“I want to see my brothers.” Willow threw the words into the silence and they seemed to crackle in the weighted air, with its strong scent of blood and death and, already, decay. “Please. Just once, before—before they’re buried.”

He extended one hand. “All right,” he said, and then he ushered Willow inside his office, where Steven, Coy, and Reilly lay now on the floor of the marshal’s office. They were still strapped to their wooden slabs.

*   *   *

Hilda stood blubbering in Virginia City’s tiny depot, overcome by her second devastating experience in the West. “Please, Daphne,” she wailed, over the steam whistle of the approaching train. “Don’t make me go back to San Francisco all alone. What if there’s another robbery along the way? What if—”

“Hush,” Daphne broke in, quite gently, squeezing her cousin’s plump hands in an attempt to reassure her. She was calmer, Daphne was, now that she knew it was impossible.

Steven Gallagher could not possibly be dead.

She loved him too much for that to be true.

“You’ll be perfectly safe, Hilda,” she told her cousin.

“Not when your father finds out that I left you here, I won’t!”

Daphne sighed, too spent to argue. “Godspeed, Hilda. And please tell Papa that I’ll be all right in Virginia City.”

“All right!” prattled Hilda, her color darkening to a mottled red. “Daphne Roberts—”

“All aboard!” shouted the train conductor.

Steam from the great, coal-fed engine billowed around him.

“Good-bye,” insisted Daphne firmly, kissing her cousin’s moist cheek. “God go with you, Hilda.”

Knowing that she would be left behind if she continued to plead, and that such pleading was entirely in vain, Hilda reluctantly boarded the outbound train, a handkerchief pressed to her face.

Daphne watched as the train pulled out, waving long after she couldn’t see Hilda anymore. Then, slowly, she turned back toward the main part of town.

*   *   *

His sobs, deep and dry and raw, tore at Dove Triskadden like the claws of some merciless beast. What words could she offer Devlin, now that the inevitable had finally happened, now that his only son was dead?

There were none, of course. Dove could do nothing more than hold her man in her arms and share his pain. And as great as that suffering was, she would have borne it gladly, if Devlin could have been spared.

He pulled away from her, just far enough to brace his head in his hands, and Dove stroked his broad, heaving shoulders with tender hands and looked deeply into his tormented eyes.

“He was wearing a hood—shot in the face,” he mourned.

“I know, Devlin,” Dove murmured, stroking his hair. “I know.”

“They’re glad. All those leering, gutless squirrels are glad it happened, glad Tudd shot my boy.”

Dove knew he was referring to the townspeople. “No, Devlin,” she said. “Not the ones who matter.”

“Evadne would have been glad. She hated Steven—”

“Shhhh,” Dove said. She continued to soothe this man she loved more than she could have loved herself or, God forgive her, a child they conceived together. She felt the muscles in Devlin’s powerful shoulders begin to go slack as, almost against his will, he began to give up the fight. “You don’t mean that, Dev. You know you don’t. Evadne was doing the best she could to get by, just like the rest of us.”

“I looked for my son for years. Did you know I looked for him, Dove? And he didn’t believe I cared. Steven—my own son—didn’t believe I cared.”

“He knew, sweetheart.”

“No! He died thinking that his own father didn’t give a damn what became of him.”

Dove drew back on Devlin’s shoulders and he came to rest against her generous bosom like a child, broken by his loss. “Shhh,” she said softly. “Shhh.”

*   *   *

The room was shadowy and, because of the heat, beginning to smell. Willow passed Coy and Reilly, having said her fare-thee-wells to them, to stand beside the hooded figure that had once been Steven—her beautiful, errant Steven. God in heaven, what would the world be like without her dashing, chivalrous brother, without his friendship and his laughter and his love?

It didn’t bear thinking about.

It didn’t bear facing.

Tears misted Willow’s eyes as she took Steven’s limp hand in her own, smoothed the cold, rock-hard flesh repeatedly with her thumb. Something quickened within her, inexplicably, and she looked down at the bloodied hood that hid the dear, handsome face, then at the hand she had been holding.

“Thunderation,” Willow whispered, and, after tossing one glance toward the outer office, where Gideon and the undertaker were waiting, she slowly unbuttoned Steven’s soiled shirt.

*   *   *

The loud crash jolted Gideon right down to his raw, aching soul. He bounded out of his desk chair and pushed past the undertaker to enter the room where the bodies had been laid out.

Willow was lying on the floor in a faint.

Gideon gave an involuntary cry and knelt to draw her
into his arms. “Water,” he rasped, to the gaping undertaker. “Get some water.”

She stirred against him, whimpering softly. “Steven,” she said.

And Gideon let his face fall to her hair, weeping into its softness. It was over now, it was over. And he had lost her forever.

“Marshal? Here’s the water.”

Gideon sniffled, lifted his head, then took the dipper with a shaking hand. “Willow?” he nudged her lips softly with the brimming cup. Then, pleading, “Willow!”

She opened her marvelous golden-brown eyes slowly and smiled, just as though her world hadn’t ended. As though she didn’t hold her husband personally responsible for the death of all three of her brothers.

“Gideon,” she said, as though surprised to see him. Or was she simply surprised that he was showing her even a modicum of kindness?

Shame gnawed at him.

“Drink this,” he urged, in a gruff voice, still holding the ladle to her lips.

Her head cradled in the crook of his arm, Willow sipped the cold water obediently, as if to indulge him. “C-could we go home now, please?” she asked in a voice more like that of a child than a woman.

Knowing that his face was wet with tears and not caring, Gideon nodded.

She blinked. “Will you hold me, Gideon, until I sleep?”

A sob ached in Gideon’s throat. “Yes,” he said, and
then he set the dipper aside and stood up, lifting Willow in his arms.

The buggy ride back to their house, the house Gideon had bought with such high and unfounded hopes, was a quiet one, and it seemed endless to him. Willow, perched beside him, her back straight and her shoulders rigid, stared into the distance, her eyes dry.

Once they’d arrived at home, she allowed Gideon to carry her inside, up the stairs, into their bedroom. Such a short time before, they had made love there, with all the restraint of savages, but now they simply lay together, holding on, despairing.

They slept finally, and Gideon was swept up in a howling nightmare that became real when he awakened to the thick darkness of the night.

Willow was gone.

14

At first, Gideon thought that Willow had left him, once and for all. After a few sleep-drugged seconds of helpless grief, however, he heard the distant, tinkling chimes of a music box.

The room was black-velvet dark, but Gideon did not pause to light a lamp; instead, he groped for his trousers, wriggled into them, and made his way out into the hallway. The sprightly tune of the music box drew him toward the steep rear stairway leading down into the kitchen.

Willow sat alone in a pool of platinum moonlight, her toasted-gold hair trailing down over her back and shoulders, a strange half smile curving her lips. Gideon knew a moment of paralyzing, unaccountable fear, and he stood very still, waiting for the feeling to pass, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness.