Halfway Home, page 11
Carefully, she placed her empty glass on the bedside table. “Jericho, I think I may be going to have a baby.”
It was Jericho’s turn to strangle on a swallow of the fiery spirits. He placed his glass beside hers. “You what?”
“I said—”
“I heard what you said!”
“Yes, well . . . it happened that way with my friend Carrie. Eight months and two weeks after her wedding night, she had a baby girl.”
Jericho felt as if he’d been slammed in the gut with a belaying pin. “You slept with him?”
Of course she slept with him, you dolt. What did you expect, that he’d married her to play dominoes?
“You have to do the marriage act before the marriage is legal. Archibald explained it to me. He was a very kind man, in spite of . . .” She sighed lugubriously. “Well. Mostly, he was kind, anyway.”
Kind. Was that truly what she thought? Jericho wondered whether any woman could be that innocent. “Did he—was it—that is, are you all right?” he asked tentatively.
Nodding, Sara said, “It didn’t hurt nearly as much as I expected.” She flexed her fingers and stared down at them.
Jericho stared at them, too. He didn’t want to know what had happened between them, he really didn’t. Lowering himself to the bed, he stared at the profile of the bride who wasn’t a wife. In only a few days she had been at the hotel, her tanned skin had faded to the color of old ivory.
Or maybe it was the shock she must be feeling after finding herself wed to a bigamist.
“Sara, listen—you remember what we talked about before? About Wilde Oaks and the fact that if I—if something happens to me, it will all go to a scoundrel of a third cousin somewhere out west who might not even still be alive? He hates farming. He’s a—a trapper.”
“I don’t remember about your cousin.” She blinked owlishly and sighed again.
There wasn’t any cousin. He’d only made that up so she wouldn’t feel sorry for him being all alone. He wanted her to marry him, but damn it, he didn’t want her feeling sorry for him. A man had his pride. But, God, it hurt like blazes to think of that scurvy bastard being the first to bed her. Hurt almost as much to think she might be carrying his seed.
“Sara, if you’re already carrying a child, why then, that’s all the more reason for you to marry me,” he reasoned. He was pretty sure she wasn’t, unless they’d had a rowdy old time of it, and he didn’t think the old sot was up to more than a couple of pokes, if that.
Her eyes were taking on a glassy look. He knew he’d better talk fast, or else she’d be asleep. “Sara, about what I said—”
She yawned. “I still don’t understand why you can’t look after Wilde Oaks yourself. You said you were between ships, so why not go back home and do what needs doing?”
Jericho swore under his breath. He hadn’t wanted to tell her the truth, but he didn’t have time to waste on coaxing her to see reason. “There’s something I didn’t tell you,” he said quietly. “The thing is, Sara, I’m engaged to fight a duel. That’s why I came here in the first place.” He heard her gasp, ignored it, and went on with what had to be said. “The man seduced my sister, got her with child, and when she went to speak to him, expecting marriage, he beat her so that she lost the babe and died.”
Even as he watched, the last shred of color left her face. “Oh, no,” she whispered. She turned to face him, and he could see the shock in the clear amber depths of her eyes.
“I’ll likely come through it without a scratch, but in case I don’t, it would please me to know you were safe, and that Wilde Oaks was in good hands. You might even find time to plant a pretty bush or something on the graveyard up the hill from the house.”
She seemed to be struggling with something. He wished he had thought to bring a pot of coffee along with the brandy. Or not brought the brandy at all.
He poured her a tumblerful of water, and she gulped it down. “Of course I would. Plant a bush, I mean—but Jericho, you don’t have to marry me for that. I’ll look after your home until you’re ready to take it back, and then—”
“No. Sara, we do it my way or not at all. As my wife—or widow, if that’s the way it turns out—what’s mine now will be legally yours. You’ll have a name and a home for your child, and money enough to take care of you and yours until the farm is productive again.”
He could almost see the thoughts running through her mind as she twisted her hands in her lap. She had small square hands. Capable hands. Jericho tried not to think about the way those same hands had felt on his body. Here he was, trying his damnedest to get his affairs in order in case he died within the next few hours. She was half drunk and fighting it, and he was swelling up fit to burst his breeches.
Scowling, he cleared his throat. “Then if you’re of a mind to help me out, I’d as soon get on with it. Smithers was due in—”
“Who?”
“The man I’m to meet on the field of honor.”
She stared at him, mouth agape. “Did you say Smithers? Not Titus Smithers?”
She stood up, knocking over the chair in the process. Wild-eyed, she lurched for the door, then swung back. Jericho was at a complete loss. Rising slowly to his feet from the bed where he’d been sitting, he wondered if she had cracked under the strain of finding herself married, impregnated and deserted in less than a day’s time, her reputation in shreds.
Or was it only the brandy? “Now, Sara—”
“Do you know who he is?”
“Who?”
“Titus! He’s my stepbrother! The one who tried to rape me so that I’d be forced to marry him! The one I ran away from! The wastrel who’s gambled and squandered every cent my father left when he died, and now that he knows about my inheritance, he wants to marry it!”
“Jesus,” Jericho whispered reverently. Things like this didn’t happen outside the storybooks.
On the other hand, was it so strange? To meet at a hotel that was known primarily for its matrimonial and dueling arrangements? Sara had come for the one; he had come for the other.
“Sara? I think you’d better marry me right fast, girl. Elsewise, your stepbrother might decide he’d rather take you and leave than stay here and pay his debt of honor.”
Chapter Nine
The bride wore brown. Her brown eyes held ele- ments of both panic and determination. Her brown hair was twisted into a tight coil and anchored on top of her head with four tortoiseshell hairpins. On top of the coil was a hat after the style of French jockey’s caps. It did not match her gown. Neither did it match her boots.
Neither did it match the pitiful bouquet of wilted flowers, too obscure even to have a name, that Jericho had snatched hastily from the ditch bank.
Nevertheless, neither hat nor gown nor these particular flowers had been a part of her first wedding. For some reason, that seemed important.
Standing rigidly side by side on the landing while the packet boat unloaded her passengers and took on those bound for points south, Sara stoically endured her second wedding in twenty-four hours, having still not quite recovered from her first. Under the green and yellow bonnet, her face was frozen into a mask. Slanting a look at the man standing beside her, a man dressed entirely in unrelieved black, she observed the same look on his stern face.
Had they both lost their wits?
Titus. Merciful saints alive, her own stepbrother had done that terrible thing to Jericho’s sister, and was now about to die for it, and Sara couldn’t even find it in her heart to feel sorry for the wretch. She had hated and feared him for too long.
And then she began wondering about the legality of her second marriage. Had she not repeated these very same lines only last evening? Shouldn’t she unsay them before she said them again to someone else?
But then, Archibald and his other wife had probably said the same lines. Perhaps it was the intent that mattered, not the words.
“Hsst! Sara!” Jericho whispered. “Pay attention!”
Love, honor, and obey?
Sara wasn’t sure she could promise to do all that . . .
“I said, do you, Sara Rebecca Young,” repeated the impatient minister, if indeed he was such, “take this man—”
The rest of the phrase was lost in the blast of a steam whistle. Two men brushed past, nearly oversetting the small wedding party in their rush to leap aboard the boat.
“Well? Speak up, miss, do you or don’t you?” Squire Abernathy, who had been hastily coerced to officiate for a price, glanced anxiously over his shoulder. He, too, was scheduled to depart on the packet Albemarle.
“Well, yes. Of course. I mean, I do.”
“Do you, Jericho Jefferson Wilde, take this woman to be—”
“Yessir, that I do. I now pronounce us man and wife, thank ‘ee, sir, here’s your fee.” He handed over a half eagle. “Sara, grab your satchel. Remember, now—Miss Renegar will see that your people are sent for. Closest neighbor’s Rafe Turbyfill—he’ll call on you soon’s he gets back home to see how you’re going on. I’ll be along by-and-by if I make it.”
As if waking from a nightmare only to find that it was real, Sara grabbed his sleeve, wildly searching his face for some shred of reassurance. “Wait! Jericho, just wait a minute—how will I know?”
“Shh, hush now. I’ve already sent off a messenger to tell all them that needs to know that you’re my wife. Rafe’ll be close by, too. Remember to plant something pretty on the hill, will you? Oh, and there’s Louisa’s dog, name of Brig—if he’s still around, you might want to give him a wide berth. He’s not what you might call friendly, but I didn’t have the heart to put him down.”
A dog? What was he talking about? “Jericho, wait, don’t leave yet!” Oh, for mercy’s sake, if only her head wasn’t pounding fit to wake Jerusalem.
Two dockhands began casting off as the Albemarle blew her final warning and made ready to depart. Jericho tossed Sara’s luggage aboard, lifted her by the arms to swing her down, changed his mind in midstream, and brought her up hard against his body.
She thought she heard him swear, but then he was kissing her. The crowd aboard the packet began to cheer, and her heart started beating a tattoo- to match her pounding head. Without even thinking, she wrapped her arms around his neck and hung on for dear life as the universe shrank to contain only the two of them—only those parts of her body that were in contact with the body of this stranger.
This stranger who was kissing her as if he would devour her very soul.
When Jericho finally lifted his mouth to stare down at her, Sara stared right back. He looked as if he’d been poleaxed. Sara, groping for security in a reeling world, grabbed hold of his gun belt. Her fingers curled under the worn leather, and she was instantly aware of two things at once. Hard, living flesh under a thin layer of cloth, and a heavy weight that could only be the two enormous pistols he wore at his side.
Gasping, she jerked back her hand as if she had grabbed hold of the wrong end of a red hot poker. She might have fallen had he not grabbed her by both elbows and swung her down onto the deck of the packet.
Before she could call him back, he stepped away from the edge of the wharf. He swallowed hard—Sara saw his Adam’s apple move—and then he nodded to her as if they were no more than chance met acquaintances.
Which, in a way, she supposed they were, she thought dazedly.
There was no escaping the noisy bustle of getting underway. “Thank you, Sara,” he said, and she read the words from his lips, straining to hear his voice one last time.
“Take care,” she cried, pushing through to the stern rail for one last glimpse of the man who was her husband. “Jericho, please take care!”
The packet gathered speed, kicking up a wake in the coffee-colored water. “Oh, do take care,” she whispered as the distance extended between them.
But the tall figure in black had already left the landing. Her newest husband had not even lingered long enough to wave her out of sight.
*
“You look like you been dug up and hung out to dry,” Rafe observed dryly as he surveyed his friend’s troubled countenance. He’d been waiting impatiently ever since he’d spotted Jericho’s dark head above the throng down at the packet landing. For about half a minute he’d entertained the thought that his friend might be skipping out, but the thought had died almost as quickly as it was born. The two men had spent little time together over the past twenty years, but he’d lay odds that Wilde had not changed all that much. To Rafe’s knowledge he had never ducked out on a fight in his life.
When the two men came together by the livery shed before the packet was even around the bend, Rafe wasted no time on pleasantries. “Got ‘im! Finally located the scoundrel in a crib near Gosport, drunk as a lord. He sobered up quick enough when I dragged him outside, shoved his head in a horse trough and reminded him that he had an engagement at the Halfway Hotel.”
Jericho, glancing around the yard at the handful of patrons going about their business, saw no sign of the young jack-a-dandy. “He’s not here,” Rafe said hastily. “Him and his man went ahead to the field to study the lay of the land. I told him I’d fetch you and we’d be along shortly. Late as it is, I figured you’d still want to get it over with instead of waiting another day.”
It occurred to Jericho that with the morning barely underway, he had already accomplished quite a lot. “I’m ready. But Rafe, first there’s something you need to know.” A solitary man both by nature and by calling, he had always found it hard to confide and damned near impossible to ask for help. But before he could broach the subject foremost in his mind, Turbyfill drew something from the pocket inside his Garrick.
“I don’t know how good you are with a knife—ain’t like you’re an ordinary seaman anymore. Anyways, I bought this off a Spanish man I come across in a tavern while I was tracking Smithers.” He unsheathed an efficient-looking weapon with a short cross guard and a clip point blade some ten inches long. “The heft of it feels about right. Man who sold it to me looks like he’s been in a fight or two, and managed to survive. Maybe some of his luck’ll rub off on you. For what it’s worth, he says if you’ll hold the knife in your right hand and your hat in your left, you can toss your hat in the other bloke’s face if things get dicy. Might throw him off stride just long enough for you to get in under his guard.”
“I don’t need to use tricks, damn it. I’ll win fair and square, or I’ll not win at all.”
“You think Smithers gives a hoot in hell for any stupid rules? You’re fighting for Weezie, man. Don’t forget that.”
“My hat, huh? I’ll try and remember, but Rafe—” Jericho cast a distracted look toward the canal, now empty save for the usual traffic of canal schooners, towboats, and barges. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “What I’m trying to tell you is that I went and married me a wife while I was waiting for Smithers to turn up. I just now set her aboard the southbound with letters of introduction to my housekeeper and old man Kinfield in Elizabeth City. He was Papa’s lawyer. He’ll see she gets to the farm all right, but Rafe—I’d be much obliged if you’d look in on her when you get home. She’s a sensible sort, but I left things in pretty much of a mess there, what with the new overseer and his family not even moved into their quarters yet.”
Rafe stared, his somewhat jaded eyes bulging in their pouches as the knife fell unnoticed to the ground. “You what?” he drawled.
Jericho shrugged. “Yes, well—can’t say much for my timing. Happened she was in a bind, and I didn’t have anything else to do while I waited for you and Smithers to show up.”
Turbyfill cursed a blue streak. He raked all ten fingers through his once tidy hair. And then he sighed in defeat. “I don’t know why I even bother.”
“Me, neither,” said Jericho with a wintery smile. “Leastwise, if things don’t turn out too good this morning, I can rest easy knowing the farm’s in good hands.”
“Good hands. Tarnation, Rico, if you ain’t the most hellfired lamebrain I ever come across in all my days. Don’t you know that once you let a female get her hands in your pocket, you could wind up piss pot poor? Who is she? How long have you known her? How’d she manage to get you by the short hairs so fast?”
“Damn it, Tubby, Sara’s not like that! You met her. Name of Sara Young? As for winding up piss pot poor, I’m likely to wind up doornail dead anyhow, so what difference will it make in the end?”
“Jesus,” Rafe muttered.
Jericho knew he might as well hoist sail and let it all flap in the wind. “That’s not the half of it. Happens Sara and Smithers are kin. Leastwise, not blood kin, but he’s her stepbrother.”
Rafe swore again. With a bleak and self-deprecating smile, Jericho went on to explain how Sara had run away from home at about the same time Wilde had come north to meet Smithers. “She’s afeared of him. I’d take it right kindly if you’d look after her for me if I don’t come through this morning. He’ll go after her again, and this time he’ll be getting more than just her inheritance, however much that is. We didn’t talk about it.”
Rafe’s iron-gray hair, once neatly dressed and combed, stood on end. His fine linen collar was twisted awry, and he was pacing a tight circle on the dusty stable yard. “I don’t believe any of this rigmarole, you know. Not a bloody damn word of it.”
“Me, neither. Trouble is, it’s all true.”
Retrieving the knife from where it had fallen, Rafe wiped the blade off on the sleeve of his coat. “You ain’t fit to be out alone without a leash. Here, take this blasted pigsticker. If I’m going to have to haul your carcass home and dump it out on your widow’s doorstep, I’d just as lief get on with it. I figure if I get out of here within the next hour, I can drop off your remains, go home and get started on drinking myself blind before midnight. And yes, damn it, I’ll look after your widow!”
*
Jericho didn’t much like the look of the man Smithers had chosen to second him. But then, the bastard probably hadn’t had much choice. The two were propped up against a big red bay tree that was riddled with mistletoe. Smithers, resplendent in a soiled and wrinkled blue velvet claw-hammer coat and buff-colored breeches, was picking his teeth with the blade of his knife. The other man was upending a jug, the gurgling sound of the white liquor audible all the way across the clearing.
