A Reckless Love, page 7
He returned her stare for a long moment. “I have nothing to do with the trial except guarding judge and witnesses. But I take the assignment seriously. And I will not talk about it.”
Leaning in, she stared into that cold green eye. “That is commendable and will make me sleep marginally better at night.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “But I am not stupid, and I am not some weak clinging vine. I’m worried about my sisters and Schuyler and Levi—and my employees, who are all targets of the Klan. You may not think it to look at me, but I’m capable of picking up lots of information that people drop without realizing it. I’m willing to help you—or whoever is prosecuting those cowards. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t hiding some motive to help them escape.”
His gaze did not waver as he growled, “I assure you I have no intention of letting them miss their day in court. And I appreciate your concern, but your help is not needed. Let me make myself clear, Miss Daughtry. Stay out of my way.”
Aurora jerked upright, entertaining the urge to slap his handsome, ravaged young face. She would not give him the satisfaction. Instead, she began to methodically load dishes back into the basket, ignoring Zane Sager’s awkward attempts to assist. “Thank you,” she said sweetly. “I don’t need your help.”
Looking stung, he folded his arms across his chest. “Touché.”
When at last she hooked the basket over her arm and headed for the door, she couldn’t resist looking over her shoulder and dipping a curtsey. Something about his guarded expression made her throat close, but he’d done it to himself. She’d entertained a stranger, but he was no angel.
“Nice to meet you, Deputy Marshal. I’ll be careful to stay out of your way from now on.” She jerked open the door, prepared to go looking for Schuyler. “Uh-oh.”
A crowd of men advanced toward the jail, and she did not think they were coming for pie.
“Now what?” Trying not to look at the red-haired blight in the doorway, Zane returned the ladderback chair to its spot against the wall.
He had hurt her, but he told himself he didn’t care. How many times had he seen otherwise effective agents and officers lured down the primrose path by pretty girls? And she had as much as admitted that that was her “strategy” for assisting him. Well, he wasn’t falling for it himself.
“I think you’d better come see this,” Aurora said, then stood on her tiptoes and shouted, “Schuyler! Where are you?”
“What the—” Zane hurried to the door, saw about twenty men coming down the street, and yanked her back inside behind him. He recognized an angry mob when he saw one. “Get back to the far wall,” he told Aurora. Pulling his gun, he stepped outside, shut the door, and looked around. Pickett was nowhere in sight.
Maybe that was just as well.
Waiting for the leader of the pack, a portly fellow with a bad toupee, to get close enough to hear him, he called out, “You men stop right where you are. I’m Deputy Marshal Sager, and I need you to state your business before you come any closer.”
Mr. Toupee slowed but took another experimental step or two. “You’re not welcome here, Deputy Marshal. Our constable and Sheriff Gere, plus the citizens of this town, don’t need the federal government’s help in running our local justice.” He looked over his shoulder to make sure his companions agreed. Receiving a loud grumble of approval, he smirked at Zane. “We suggest you get back on that train and go back to Washington, or wherever you came from.”
Zane felt a cold, familiar calm pour through his veins—the one that had sustained him through a multitude of heinous situations over the last ten years. He kept his voice as steady as the gun in his hand. “I don’t believe you gave me your name, sir. I don’t want there to be any confusion when I make my report to the US Attorney when he gets here Monday.”
“The name is Whitmore.” The man’s tone implied that he was a man of such importance that Zane should have recognized him on sight. “Behind me is my son-in-law, Bowen Nester.”
Taking his gaze off Whitmore long enough to acknowledge the pockmarked young thug carrying what looked like a bricklayer’s shovel, Zane scanned the rest of the crowd. He counted eighteen men in a variety of ages, shapes, and sizes. All but two were armed with either a rifle or a holstered pistol, and they all seemed to be spoiling for a fight.
What if he’d been stupid enough to leave his prisoners with Pickett? Sometimes his suspicious nature stood him in good stead. Just as often it left him facing unpleasant circumstances all alone. Now he was going to have to get creative.
“Mr. Whitmore,” he said, “I’m not going anywhere until I’ve finished the job I was given authority to do by Federal Marshal Eaton.”
“We didn’t vote for your boss.” Whitmore took a belligerent stance. “And you can’t strong-arm us into housing and feeding federal prisoners.”
“I’m not here to usurp local law enforcement,” Zane said, striving for a reasonable tone. “In fact, Constable Pickett himself helped me lock my prisoners up. I’m just borrowing the jail until the judge can get here and sort out—”
“Judge?” A handsome middle-aged man in a neat frock coat—one of the unarmed men—stepped forward. “What judge would that be? Not that lily-livered liberal Bob Hill, from over in Oxford?”
Zane gritted his teeth. “Please state your name, sir?”
“Why?” the man sneered. “Am I going in your report too? I’m Frank Brown, owner of the Gum Pond Hotel.”
One by one, the other men gave their names, moving forward until the whole gang had approached to within a few yards of Zane’s position on the porch.
Refusing to give way, he tried to identify the leaders. He didn’t want to shoot anybody, but he was sorely outnumbered, and he had a defenseless female inside the building, not to mention the prisoners.
Unfortunately, the defenseless female chose that moment to open the door behind him. “Mr. Carpenter!” Her clear soprano carried over the rumble of male voices. “Have you brought me a telegram?”
Without looking over his shoulder, Zane froze. “Get back inside!” he hissed through his teeth.
“You’re taking too long,” she whispered with sunny obstinacy, then said more loudly, “Mr. Carpenter, did you hear me?”
A slight gentleman with sandy-gray hair stepped away from the crowd. He was unarmed, and he looked embarrassed. “No. There’s no telegram, Miss Aurora.”
“Then what are you doing here?” She sounded genuinely puzzled. “Is the station closed?”
“No, actually—”
Whitmore pushed Carpenter aside, cutting short whatever explanation he’d been about to provide. “Miss Daughtry, I might ask you the same question. What are you doing here alone—in the jail—with this interloper? Where is your escort?”
Zane would have intervened, except some of the hostility had seeped from the crowd with Aurora’s sudden appearance. He could almost hear the long eyelashes flapping as she sashayed around him.
“Schuyler was right here a minute ago.” She cast a bewildered gaze to the right, then the left. Then up at the sky, as if he might have flown away on a chariot of fire. Innocent brown eyes returned to Whitmore. “Have you seen him?”
“No, I haven’t seen him,” blustered the fat man, shoving at his toupee. “My wife is right. You Daughtry girls have no sense of propriety—”
“Stow it, Whitmore,” came a deep drawl from the back of the crowd. “Unlike my betrothed and her sisters, your wife has no sense of charity—which, it seems to me, is more useful and attractive than propriety on any day of the week.”
As the gang parted, Zane saw Schuyler Beaumont casually nudging people out of the way with an elbow and the barrel of a .46-caliber Remington revolver. Behind him came a short, rumpled gentleman with rimless spectacles stuck atop his balding head and a businesslike shotgun under his arm.
Aurora waved. “There you are, Sky! And Mr. McCanless! See, Mr. Whitmore? Everything is perfectly respectable. We just came to demonstrate a little Christian charity.” She lifted her arm to display her basket. “You know how Pastor Reese says when we visit those who are sick and in prison, it’s like doing the same to Jesus?” She turned to Zane. “I’m sorry about this, Mr. Sager. It’s just a big ol’ misunderstanding.”
Zane’s senses were alive to every source of potential danger in the situation. The restless mob, whose tension seemed to be defusing by the moment. Beaumont and McCanless ready to assist him. The prisoners in the jailhouse cells. Mainly he was aware of the perilous position into which Aurora Daughtry had thrust herself. One glance at her white face told him she recognized it, but was either too stupid or too brave to care.
He suspected the latter. And he was going to have to respond. He couldn’t just stand here and let a girl dressed like a daffodil take over this confrontation. He moved in front of her in a nonthreatening stance, keeping his gun unholstered but pointed at the ground. “Gentlemen,” he said with intentional irony, “I’m afraid your welcome committee visit has run its course. Nobody wants trouble less than me. Your concerns about my presence should be addressed to Judge Hill when he gets here. Until then, you should know that I’m here to protect you as well as my prisoners. Please let me know if I can assist you in any way.” He waited, expecting the crowd to disperse. Most of the time bullies only needed a show of resolve before their bravado crumpled.
To his surprise, Beaumont and McCanless came to stand on the porch, one on either side of him. Aurora was now shielded by three guns, which made Zane feel a lot better. He hoped she’d have enough sense to stay where she was.
Whitmore’s jowls shook. “This isn’t over, so you’d better watch yourself, Deputy Marshal.” He cast a mean look at Beaumont and then McCanless. “Things don’t turn out so good for people who turn against their neighbors, do they, Wimus?”
When the little bald man looked ready to jump off the porch, Zane gave him a warning hiss. “Let ’em go.”
To his relief, Whitmore revolved his arm in a gesture that called off his pack of dogs. With a low growl, they moved back in the direction they’d come—all except the man who’d introduced himself as Brown, the hotel owner.
Brown took a threatening step toward the jailhouse. “I want to know what those men are on trial for. I hear the federals are coming down on Klan activities in Mississippi, like they did in Georgia and South Carolina. Gonna send troops down here to put their Yankee boots back on us. That true?”
“I’m sure you know what I think about the Klan,” Beaumont said in a friendly tone. “I hope somebody’s planning to do something about it.”
“You’re a rat, Beaumont,” Brown snarled. “We exterminate pests around here.”
“Aw, now, Mr. Brown, you’re just showing your jealousy over the success of Daughtry House. I’m sure I could get General Forrest to stop one night at the Gum Pond, if you’re serious about getting rid of the bedbugs.”
“Why you—” Brown raised his fists as if he might rush the porch, but since Beaumont’s gun remained lazily pointed in the general direction of the street, the hotelier contented himself with fuming for an impotent moment before wheeling toward the business district.
Zane laughed and put away his gun. This was turning into a regular farce.
Then he turned around and found himself face-to-face with one smug Mississippi belle. “See there, Mr. I-Don’t-Need-Your-Help? That’s how we do things the Daughtry way. Creativity and brains, not hardware.”
seven
AURORA AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING to the familiar sound of hammers banging on one of the outbuildings that seemed to be under perpetual reconstruction. The roof was going back up on the kitchen and storeroom, Joelle’s school was being rebuilt, and Nathan and Charmion’s new house had been framed on the ashes of the little cabin that had burned along with the blacksmith shop.
It seemed like every time they got the hotel rolling toward solvency, something else happened to kick it down.
But, praise be to God, the main house hadn’t been touched, and the manager’s cottage—where she, Joelle, and ThomasAnne lived—remained in good shape. Her natural optimism surged. It was going to be a good day.
Stretching, she looked out the open window, where filmy new curtains made by Charmion floated in a summer breeze, and caught a glance at the mantel clock. She’d slept through breakfast! Why had no one awakened her?
Jumping out of bed, she hurriedly washed her face, then began the tricky business of brushing her hair.
She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised that she’d overslept by two hours. They’d all been up late, discussing the ramifications of her encounter with Deputy Marshal Zane Sager. Her family seemed convinced the whole thing had been her fault. But really, she’d been the only one with the sense to prevent what had promised to be a nasty, maybe even lethal, confrontation. She hadn’t brought that bunch of men over to threaten the lawman. She hadn’t stood alone on a porch with a loaded gun, goading one of the most arrogant, self-important fools in town into proving his manhood.
Men.
She pictured Zane Sager’s face as he’d turned around after Mr. Brown slunk away. Mercy, that slow grin had scrambled her brain. And she had probably blurted something inappropriate. She couldn’t remember what it was, but his smile had faded and that cynical twist came back to his fine mouth. So she’d hustled Schuyler over to the hitching lot where they’d left the carriage, and she’d jumped in without waiting for assistance. And she’d managed to ignore Schuyler for the remainder of the drive home, despite his aggravating insistence on taking all the credit for dispersing the mob.
Of course Schuyler had to relate the whole thing to Joelle, who stomped around like a mama bear (did bears stomp?) until Aurora begged her to stop because she had a headache. Thank goodness Jo decided not to bother Levi and Selah, who had already retired to the old overseer’s cabin, but ThomasAnne had been predictably overcome with postmortem vapors.
ThomasAnne had a genius for making one feel guilty for nothing.
She stopped brushing. It was nothing, wasn’t it? She’d lain awake until the wee hours, nursing the headache and thinking about the coiled-spring muscles in Zane Sager’s back when he’d moved protectively in front of her on the porch. Yes, she’d managed to distract Mr. Whitmore and keep him from rushing the jail. But her presence had also given the deputy marshal one more thing to worry about.
Something very odd took root in the pit of her stomach. Probably hunger.
Finishing with the hairbrush, she twisted her mass of red curls into the most mature knot she could manufacture without a mirror, encircled it with a yellow ribbon, then put on a two-piece summer dress of dark blue calico. First things first, she thought. Food.
She accomplished the short walk to the back porch of the main house in less than a minute, slowing only to admire the peacock strutting past the chicken yard with his gorgeous fan on display for the benefit of the plebeian fenced poultry. Something about that imagery bothered her, but she’d have to trace the source of her discomfort later. She wanted to catch Levi before he headed for town this morning.
She found the kitchen abandoned, the counters cleared and wiped down, breakfast evidently long past. Resigned, she poked through the little corner pantry and discovered a couple of leftover biscuits with burnt bottoms wrapped in a napkin. Pulling off the tops to eat, she returned to the chicken yard and tossed in the burnt bread, laughing as she watched the hens peck and flap with squawks of joy. “Everything is relative, isn’t it, ladies?” Dusting crumbs off her hands, she followed the sound of voices to the front of the house.
Neither of her sisters was anywhere in sight, but Schuyler held the horses while Levi loaded the boot of the carriage.
“Wait! I want to go!” She hustled around to the passenger side.
“Where do you think we’re going?” Levi’s dimple appeared as he came around to boost her onto the seat.
“Obviously you’re going to town.” She settled herself as Schuyler gathered the reins and vaulted up beside Aurora, while Levi climbed onto the rear seat. “I wanted to talk to you both anyway, and I need your help.”
Schuyler gave her a sideways look. “I take it you’re not angry with me anymore.”
Aurora sighed. “I knew you were going to tell Joelle what happened last night. I’m sure Levi knows by now too.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Don’t you?”
Her brother-in-law hesitated before he said in his measured way, “Aurora, I’ve advised Schuyler not to leave you alone like that again. The times we live in—”
“I wasn’t alone! I was with an armed US deputy marshal. Besides, if Schuyler hadn’t gone after Mr. McCanless, we’d have been in a real pickle.”
Schuyler released an exasperated breath. “But if you hadn’t been there in the first place, the situation might not have escalated.”
She wasn’t giving in on this one. “From my perspective, I kept things from escalating. You and Levi weren’t there, so there’s no way you’d know. Anyway, I don’t want to rehash that. I stayed awake last night, formulating a business plan for the new boardinghouse. Schuyler, I want you to send Shug Pogue over to look at it and give me an estimate of how much it will cost to renovate, and how long he thinks it will take.”
“Shug’s already busy with rebuilding after the fire.” Schuyler sounded obstinate. “Tell her, Levi.”
“Don’t put me in the middle of this,” Levi said.
Aurora felt like exploding with frustration. “If Shug’s not available, I’ll find someone else. Why are y’all being so difficult?”
Schuyler exchanged a look with Levi. “I think you’ve got to tell her, or she’s going to go off on some half-cocked plan to restore soiled doves to polite society.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve got in—What do you mean, he’s got to tell me? I knew there was something funny going on. Levi?” She wheeled in the seat as the carriage tilted after a teeth-jarring bump over a rut. “Schuyler! Watch what you’re doing!”
