Fifteen

“Please, come in by the fire.” Jessie urged the half-frozen stranger inside. Whatever the woman meant about wanting to see her baby would have to wait until she warmed herself. Still, the puzzling request triggered no small shock.

Water formed in puddles around the woman’s feet. Rain had plastered her hair as well as her clothing to her body. She stood transfixed, her dark eyes never leaving Marley Rose.

“Duel, will you get a blanket to warm this poor woman?”

He returned a second later, and Jessie helped spread it around the stranger’s shoulders.

“My baby. Dios mio, my baby.”

Jessie wasn’t sure the wetness on the woman’s face was from the rain. Icy fingers of foreboding closed around her heart.

“Kindly explain yourself, ma’am. Who are you?” Duel’s gruff tone finally broke the woman’s trance.

“Maria.” Her gaze fixed once again on Marley. “Marley Rose’s madre.”

The only noise in the room was Duel’s heavy breathing. He sounded as if someone had sucker-punched him in the belly. Jessie clutched her chest to quiet the pain radiating from deep inside. It spread through her veins until the ache became like a fireball. It couldn’t be. She refused to think how empty their world would be without Marley Rose.

“What proof do you have?” Duel’s features hardened into the piece of granite from which his face could have been chiseled. “You expect to waltz in here, lay claim to the child, and we’ll turn her over just because you know her name? Not in a million years, lady.”

“Please, senor. I only want to see her.” Maria’s hands trembled as she clutched the blanket tighter.

“The man who wagered Marley Rose in that poker game told me her mother was dead, that she had no one.” A tic in his jaw twitched. “You telling me he lied?”

Raw hurt sprang from the hoarse question. If he lost another child, Jessie feared he’d slip back into his shell never to return. Marley Rose had plugged the gaping hole from which his spirit seeped.

“Will Gentry take what he want. He take me. Marley Rose come nine months later.”

“Why did Will Gentry tell my husband you were dead?” Jessie felt compelled to try and make sense of it all.

Maria dropped wearily to the floor before the hearth. “Gentry steal Marley. I follow. I see the evil he do.” Though water from the wet strands of hair streamed down her face, Maria didn’t attempt to brush it away.

“Why didn’t you try to stop him?” Anger tinged Duel’s question.

“I only one woman. No law in Cactus Springs.”

Even if there were, Jessie suspected Maria wasn’t strong enough to stand against Will Gentry. Men like him and Jeremiah made their own laws and dared anyone to stop them.

“I follow you. I watch. I see good people. Good home. I see much love.”

Sympathy for Maria swept through Jessie. The woman had been a victim, her plight no better than Jessie’s. She knelt beside Maria.

“Would you like to hold your little girl?”

Tears trickled down Maria’s cheeks as Marley Rose held out her arms.

“Maaaa.”

Mother and child came together, and Jessie’s heart broke from the bittersweet image. Maria’s love for Marley shone in the tender way she pressed her daughter to her bosom.

Through the blur, Jessie glanced up at Duel. Agony ravaged his features, and his amber eyes were suspiciously damp. He spun and grabbed his hat. The door slammed behind him as he stalked heedlessly into the rain.

She knew his destination. Without going to the window, she knew he’d seek solace on the hill. This couldn’t happen to him again. Not now. Not when he’d opened his heart and allowed a little dark-haired girl to climb inside. And what about her own hurt?

“I’ll make some coffee to warm you, Maria.” She stumbled to the kitchen before the sobs tore from her throat.

* * *

Duel returned much later to find Maria playing with Marley Rose as if nothing was amiss. The sight reopened old wounds that twisted his gut inside out. He’d sat on the hill in the driving rain until he’d become frozen from the cold.

“I was worried about you, Duel.” Jessie lifted his sopping wet hat and hung it on the nail, then she draped a blanket around his shoulders.

He barely felt the hand drawing him to the fire. He’d need more than the flames of a blazing hearth to melt the glacier that had formed in his chest. He doubted anything could thaw his chill.

“You’ll be lucky if you don’t catch your death.”

Death would be a welcome relief if it would stop the grief that raged inside.

“It’ll be all right.” Jessie’s comforting murmur sounded far away, as she brushed dripping tendrils from his forehead.

He glanced up to see Jessie bustling toward the kitchen.

“Senor, I give thanks for taking good care of Marley.”

Maria’s soft accent drew his attention to the one place he’d tried to avoid since entering. Now that the woman didn’t look like a drowned rat, he noticed how much she and Marley favored each other. Same black hair and eyes. Same shy smile. Marley Rose was an exact copy of her pretty mother.

“Wasn’t hard. She’s a special little girl.” Even though he sympathized with Maria, he couldn’t disguise the stony hardness of his tone. Surely as Gentry had ripped Marley Rose from Maria’s arms, she meant to do the same to him and Jessie.

“Drink this hot coffee.” Jessie eased a tin mug into his hands. “After you get it down, you need to change into some dry clothes. Don’t want you getting sick.”

“Pa pa pa.” Marley pulled on his leg. “Pa pa pa.”

A mouthful of buttermilk couldn’t have made his stomach churn more. The child didn’t understand she was reaching into his heart and pulling it out by the roots. She didn’t know how big a crater she’d leave.

“Hey, Two Bit.” He pulled her into his lap and kissed the top of her curls. He missed her already, and she hadn’t even left.

“The rain’s stopping.” Jessie spoke softly from the window. Duel thought he heard a catch in her breath.

“Guess you’ll be going soon, Maria.” He supposed he should offer her a place to stay for the night, but that’d make Marley’s leaving more unbearable.

“I leave soon.” Misery painted Maria’s quiet statement. It puzzled him. She had what she came for.

“Jess, better get Two Bit’s things together.” He raised Marley in the air and playfully nuzzled her stomach. She giggled and grabbed handfuls of hair. “Ow. You still know how to get even.”

It took a full minute to get loose from her grasp. He settled her out of reach from anything tender. “Appears you’re going on a journey, darlin’.”

“Senor, you mistake.”

“What?”

“I give you Marley Rose. I no give her good life. She be safe here from Will Gentry. He no find her. He very mean.”

“But—”

“She stay here. You and lady nice people. You give her good life.”

“Why did you come so far to leave empty-handed?” The disbelief on Jessie’s face had to match his own.

“I hide. I watch. I see much love here. Now, I go back to family. I know Gentry not hurt her.”

“You sure you can live with this, Maria?” he asked.

“I must.” Maria rose. “Rain stops. I go now.”

With a tightness squeezing his chest, Duel handed Marley Rose to Maria for one last good-bye. He realized the agony the woman must feel. Couldn’t be any easier than the day he nailed Annie and his son’s coffin lid shut.

“Vaya con Dios, niña.” Maria hugged her daughter tightly, then gave her to Jessie.

“Don’t worry, we’ll keep her safe.” Duel put his arm around Jessie’s waist.

He buried his face in the short, dark curls. Oh God, he’d thought he’d lost his baby. It’d been too close for comfort.

The woman paused at the door and turned. Duel would remember her stricken face as long as he lived. “I ask two things.”

“Name them.”

“Tell Marley Rose her madre love her.” Maria wiped away her tears and lifted her chin defiantly. “And if Will Gentry come, you kill him.”

* * *

The kitchen door opened, and Duel watched his two ladies step out. Laughing, Jessie swung Marley around in a circle before she set the child on her feet and reached back inside for a basket.

“That Jessie’s a sight.” Walt had caught him watching her again. “Picked a handsome one, son.”

“Yep, she sure is.” Try as he might, Duel couldn’t keep from admiring the gentle sway of her hips as she carried the basket of laundry to the clothesline. He’d seen few women with a walk like hers—loose, easy, and full of promise.

“Your mother’s ring looks pretty on her hand.”

“Yep.” Talking to his father about Jessie made him uncomfortable.

“Hard for a feller to keep his mind on his work when she’s within eyeshot.”

Absently, Duel chopped at a clump of weeds. “Yep.”

“Hey! Watch what you’re doin’. Came within a hair of choppin’ my foot.”

“If you hadn’t moved your darn foot and put it right in the way, I wouldn’t have scared you, Pop.”

“You’re gettin’ meaner’n a rattlesnake, son.”

But Duel wasn’t listening. He had other things to occupy him. His heart seemed to float as he gazed at the two people who made his world. A smile curved his lips as Marley Rose toddled after Jessie as fast as her chubby legs could go. A week had passed since Maria had appeared at their door. Though he felt guilty, and he appreciated how great a sacrifice the woman had made, he thanked the good Lord every day for letting him keep the child.

At that moment, Jessie bent over the basket. The sight of her skirted bottom stuck in the air caused a swift intake of air.

“What’s the matter, son? You feelin’ poorly?”

If Walt only knew. Poorly didn’t begin to describe the way he felt. Jessie affected him in ways no other woman had. When she turned those Wedgwood blues on him and smiled in the special way that only she could, his toes curled right up in his boots. Yet she resisted his efforts to get closer.

“I’m fine, Pop.” Long as Jess didn’t bend over again. Or smile at him. Or flash her sooty-lashed eyes his way. Come to think of it, he’d not been fine since she’d ridden into his camp that night.

“Still sleepin’ in the barn, I take it.” Walt stuck both hands inside the bib of his overalls, making his chest puff out.

“That’s my affair; doesn’t concern you if I am.”

“Was that Jessie’s idea or yours?”

“The nosy bug bite you or something?” Duel felt guilty at his snappish reply. His father merely worried. He leaned on the hoe. “It was my idea, Pop. There are unusual circumstances.”

“She has feelings for you, son. I’ve seen how she looks at you when you’re not payin’ attention.”

“I think you’re wrong about that.” Dead wrong. Being made to wear a man’s brand like a steer would sour any woman against menfolk.

“Learned a long time ago, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Yep, she’s got feelings.”

He wished Walt was right, wished with all his heart and soul. Nothing would please him more than holding her in his arms, whispering sweet nothings in her ear.

“Maybe she needs a little persuading,” Walt continued.

“What do you mean?”

“Court her proper-like. Pick her some posies. Buy her some of them fancy chocolates. I hafta draw you a picture?”

Perhaps his father had something there. He marshaled his thoughts into a neat, straight row. Perhaps courting her would change her view, let her see him in a different light. It’d be worth risking his feelings for such an outcome.

“Surefire way to a woman’s heart, all righty.”

Some women, but would the same hold true for Jess? The wind lifted the hem of her skirt, revealing a trim ankle. Then a sudden gust blew the skirt higher until it exposed the white fabric of her pantaloons and a flash of curved leg. Duel swallowed a big wad of spit and choked.

“What’s the trouble, boy? Swallow your tongue?” Walt peered at him through narrowed slits.

The fit of coughing prevented him from replying. It took several minutes to regain control.

“Sure actin’ strange today, son, if I do say so.”

Strange wasn’t all. A man should be able to look at his wife without making a fool of himself.

“Do you mind keeping your opinions to yourself, Pop?” He applied the hoe vigorously to a thistle patch.

Walt softly murmured something about “It’s a duck.” Then he touched Duel’s arm. “Look.”

Duel turned, and what he saw raised alarm. Yellow Dog had circled the edge of the field and now crept toward Marley Rose. The bandage on his leg had evidently managed to come off. Either that or the animal had chewed it off. More likely the latter.

“The dog seems friendly enough. You don’t suppose he’d bite the girl, do ya?” Walt voiced Duel’s exact thoughts.

First instinct told him to shout a warning, get Jessie’s attention. On second thought, that might scare the wounded retriever into doing the unthinkable.

Yellow Dog was so large, Marley so small. One bite could kill the child. His stomach churned. He felt ill. Before he remembered he’d left his forty-five slung over Preacher’s stall in the barn, he reached for it and came up empty.

Spying a hefty rock, he picked it up. He didn’t know if he could hit the animal from that distance, but he meant to try.

“Well, I’ll be a horned toad!”

“What?” Duel’s attention quickly swung back to the scene.

Yellow Dog had dropped to the ground and was crawling across the bare dirt on his belly.

Marley Rose waddled excitedly to him, holding out her arms.

By now, Jessie saw the dog and watched, poised to react if needed. Animal and child met. Yellow Dog’s head drooped shyly, then he flicked his tongue and licked Marley’s hand.

The rock made a soft thud when it dropped to Duel’s feet.