Wyoming Widow. Elizabeth Lane
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old family friend, Hamilton Crawford, had recently retired from the Pinkerton agency and was living in Cheyenne. Tomorrow—no, tonight, Morgan resolved—he would write to Ham and ask him to check out Cassandra Riley’s story. That way he could send one of Chang’s boys to Fort Caspar with the letter first thing in the morning. Ham’s reply might be slow in coming, but the mere knowledge that an ex-Pinkerton agent was checking her background could be enough to give the mysterious Miss Riley second thoughts.
But what if she was telling the truth?
Morgan’s eyes lingered on her sleeping face as he pondered the idea, then brusquely dismissed it. Her story couldn’t possibly be true. There were too many coincidences, too many holes. He owed it to his father, and to Ryan’s memory, to uncover the lie and to send her packing before it was too late.
His knuckle brushed her skin as he reached down and tugged the quilt upward to cover her exposed shoulder. The satiny coolness of her flesh tingled all the way up his arm. Ignoring the sensation, he turned and walked quietly out of the room only to pause in the doorway, scowling back at her slumbering form as the thought struck him.
Who the devil was Seamus?
Cassandra awoke to the warmth of sunlight on her face. She opened her eyes, only to jerk them shut again as the morning glare jolted her senses through the bare window.
For the first few seconds she remembered nothing. Where was she? How did she get here? Her mind groped for a foothold on reason. Flinging her forearm across her eyes, she forced herself to lie still and take long, deep breaths.
The memory of the dream, in all its grotesque horror, came back first. Seamus had returned to the shack in Laramie, dressed in the brown suit that Jake had worn for his burial. Terrified by his vacant eyes, she had fled from him, running through the empty stockyards in a dreamer’s slow motion, as if her feet were stuck in thick black tar. He had floated behind her, screaming the vilest names she had ever heard. Bitch…filthy, lying whore…
He had finally cornered her against a loading chute. His death-glazed eyes had glittered like a wolf’s as he closed in on her, mouth smiling, hands reaching for her throat. She had cried out, begging him for her baby’s life…No, Seamus…no…
You’re dreaming, that’s all. Rest, Cassandra.
The low, soothing voice had come out of nowhere, as had the gentle touch on her forehead. The strange thing was, she had known at once that the voice spoke the truth. She was dreaming. Seamus was gone.
She had caused his death herself, and fled, terrified, into the night.
Fully awake now, Cassandra curled onto her side and gazed around the little bedroom. The previous day was coming back to her now. Near the foot of her bed was the pine rocker where Morgan Tolliver—the enemy—had sat. Her sewing kit lay open on the bedside table, with her needle stuck into a spool of brown cotton thread. On the far wall, bathed in morning sunlight, the painting on the elk skin she’d barely noticed last night revealed itself as a swirling arrangement of horses, deer and buffalo, all pursued by mounted warriors in streaming, feathered war bonnets. So exquisitely drawn and positioned were these tiny figures that they seemed to be galloping over the creamy leather surface.
Cassandra sat up slowly, feeling the baby awaken and stir in its warm, secret world. “Getting a little tight for you in there, is it?” she whispered, patting the solid roundness. “Don’t worry, little one. You’ll be out in the world soon enough.”
Carefully she stood up, wincing at the bone-deep soreness in her legs and buttocks. She sighed as her hands massaged the small of her back. How long would it be? she wondered. A month? More? Her menses had always been irregular, and with no experienced woman to guide her through the strangeness of it, she had only a vague idea of how far along she was or what to expect when the time came. She had helped her grandfather at lambing time, and she supposed the process would not be so different. Except this would be her baby, and she would be its mother. She could only pray that when the time came she would know what to do.
But why was she standing here muddling when it was time she got dressed and faced the day? The Tollivers wouldn’t think much of her if she malingered in her bedroom half the morning. And it was essential that they think well of her, or at least that they care about her baby. She had made a poor start last night with Morgan Tolliver. But if she could find other allies here, even friends…
Impulsively Cassandra crossed to the window and peered out through the dust-streaked panes. Through the yellow-brown blur she could make out a vast maze of sheds and corrals, dominated by a weathered barn that jutted upward like a cathedral above a town. Behind the nearest fence, large, dark shapes swirled and shifted. Horses? Cassandra’s impatient fingers fumbled with the window latch. Her soft push swung the sash outward.
A light breeze swept into the room, carrying with it a pungent blend of prairie dust, wood smoke, horse dung and fresh morning air. A tantalizing whiff of bacon drifted upward from the kitchen, triggering a growl in the pit of her stomach.
Feeling alive for the first time in days, she leaned outward into the sunlight, her breasts resting on the windowsill. The house was set on a slight rise, overlooking the rest of the ranch. Now she could see the sloping tin roof of the bunkhouse and the fenced enclosure around the coop, where bustling red hens and their fluffy chicks pecked at the earth. Horses milled in the spacious log corral, rearing and nipping in spirited play. Next to the feed trough, Xavier, her own dear mule, stood placidly munching hay. Poor old thing, he probably thought he’d died and gone to heaven. She would go out and visit him later. With luck, she might even be able to smuggle him a treat from the kitchen.
Beyond the dusty sprawl of buildings and corrals, the rolling prairie swept outward like the waves of a yellow sea. Most summers the wild grass would have been pale green, but the drought had left it so tinder dry that the threat of a prairie fire had haunted Cassandra all the way from Laramie. Like a land rising from a far-off shore, the Big Horn mountains jutted the length of the western horizon, blue in the hazy distance, the sunlight glinting on their snowless peaks.
The trill of a meadowlark echoed pure and clear on the morning air. Listening, Cassandra suppressed a little shiver of contentment. This was a good place, she sensed, a clean and honest place, like her grandparents’ lost Nebraska homestead. She would give anything, do anything, to give her child the chance to grow up here, free from danger and want, free from shame.
If only there were some other way.
Below her window, a squat figure distinguished by a graying pigtail that dangled from beneath a blue cotton cap, hobbled off the porch and headed toward the chicken coop.
“Chang!” she said in a low voice. “Good morning, Chang!”
The startled Chinese cook glanced up, caught sight of her and grinned. “Morning, miss. Breakfast? I bring it up?” He motioned toward her with his hand. She had already come to like the small, lively man who’d served her a supper of roast beef and cloudlike buttered biscuits the night before.
“Breakfast, yes,” she replied. “But please don’t bother bringing it up to me. I’ll get dressed and come downstairs.”
“Good!” His smile broadened. “Mr. Jacob, Mr. Morgan, they can eat with you. Almost ready. Hurry.”
“Give me just a few minutes.” Cassandra felt her heart drop into the pit of her stomach as she spun away from the window and fumbled in the carpetbag for her only presentable dress. Once more it was time to begin the ugly game of lies and deception, playing her wits against the Tolliver men from behind the mask of Ryan’s grieving sweetheart.
The mask she was prepared to wear for the rest of her life.
Morgan sat in the dining rooming, leaning back in his chair as Chang carried in platters of bacon, flapjacks and scrambled eggs to accompany the steaming pot of beans he had already placed on the table.
In the Tolliver household it was a long-standing custom not to eat breakfast before the morning chores were done. Morgan had risen at six, gulped down a mug of hot black coffee and gone outside to look after the stock. Most