Halfway Home, page 7
Neither did he particularly care for the quick gleam of interest in Turbyfill’s jaded eyes.
“You’re on your way in to breakfast, I take it? Then I’m just in time, ain’t I?” Turbyfill spoke as cheerfully as if he weren’t there for the express purpose of watching a man die. Because they both knew Jericho had no intention of deloping. The law seldom punished scum like Smithers. That duty was left to the male members of the victim’s family.
“Shall we?” Rafe Turbyfill extended an elbow to Sara. “That coffee smells downright paradisiacal.”
Paradisiacal?
Jericho shot the man a scathing look. “If I was you, I’d be after securing a room,” he said with false congeniality. “They seem to be at a premium around here.”
“I thought I’d share your quarters.”
“Then it’ll be the common room. You might ask at the desk. Something could have opened up by now.” So saying, Jericho turned to the now empty place where Sara had stood a moment ago.
“If you’re looking for your ladybird, she’s gone inside. Right now she’s being seated a table with a pair of old haunts who must’ve ridden in on the last broomstick. Friends of yours?”
“Hell and damnation,” Jericho said quietly. It was bad enough to have been forced to introduce her to Turbyfill. It was even worse to see her gathered to the scrawny bosoms of that pair of flap-jaws.
“Come outside for a spell,” Rafe said, suddenly serious. The breakfast and the paradisiacal coffee were apparently forgotten. “We need to talk, and I’d just as lief not have an audience.”
Neither of the men spoke until they had gained the relative privacy of a persimmon thicket on the far side of the road. Rafe pointed out a clearing some distance into the woods.
“That’s the place, I believe. Road cuts off just below that big cypress there. It’s wide enough for a cart to get through to haul the—uh . . .” He cleared his throat and turned his attention to the task of clipping the tip off a cigar.
“To haul the corpse off,” Jericho finished for him. To think that inside the hotel, a few hundred feet away, Sara was having her breakfast, daintily sipping her tea and parrying prying questions from those two old biddies he’d seen in the lobby the day he’d arrived. And here he was, talking about hauling away the corpse of a man he was planning to kill in cold blood.
Not that it would be murder. Murder was killing without a cause. Or for gain. Or in anger.
Jericho was no longer burning with anger, but he was coldly set on justice. If he had to carry the stain on his soul for the rest of his days on earth, so be it. Smithers had taken Louisa’s life. Justice required that he give up his own in return.
“The meeting’s set for three days hence, but Rico—”
“Three days from now! You said a week, and it’s already been more’n that!”
The woods around them, rich with muted autumn color, echoed with distant birdsong. The fragrant smell of Cuban tobacco drifted up to mingle with the gray Spanish moss and the ever present smell of burning peat. Rafe studied the ash forming on the tip of his stogie. “Fellow that usually stands up for him was hard to track down. Even harder to sober up. Rico, there’s something I need to know.”
“There’s something I need to know first. Tell me this, Rafe—just how the hell did you and that lying, raping, murdering son of a bitch get to be such good friends? You and me, we’ve not run with the same crowd in many a year—not since I came home in ‘22 after Louisa fell into the pond and nearly drowned before you fished her out. But I don’t ever remember you running with scum like Smithers. Judas priest, Tubby, if you hadn’t brought him around—”
“I swear to you I never knew what the bastard was up to, Rico. With Weezie, I mean. I knew he’d met her—there was the usual round of house parties and socials last winter, on into the spring. Weezie never was a regular, but she and the Scott girl was friends. That’s where they met the first time.”
Jericho took off his hat, raked his fingers through his hair, and swore foully in three languages.
“First time I met him, I’d invited a few friends down for the dog races. He turned up with old man James’s youngest boy. Seemed a decent enough sort. Dressed well. Didn’t cheat at cards—leastwise, no more’n the rest of that bunch. No good with horses, but hell, that’s no cause to kick a man out of the house. Later on he showed up a few times on his own, and with me rattling around in all those empty rooms, I couldn’t see any good reason to turn him away.” Rafe stubbed out his cigar on the sole of his boot. He seemed suddenly ill at ease. “Rico, how good are you with a knife?”
“A knife?” Jericho shrugged. “As good as the next man, I reckon. Why, you want a fresh cigar cut?”
“About this business with Smithers . . .”
“I know the rules. I’ve never fought a duel before, but I’ve fought my share of fights, and won most of ‘em. This time, instead of fists, I’ll be using a six-iron, but if you’re worried about whether or not I can handle it—”
Rafe cut him off with an impatient gesture. “I know damned well you can shoot. That’s not the trouble. Listen here to me, Rico, the man’s fought five duels! You know how many he’s lost?”
Jericho waited for the score. Smithers might be good, but Jericho knew he was better. He had to be.
“None. Not a frigging one! That whey-faced little pantywaist has killed five men in cold blood, and walked away without a curl out of place!”
Jericho drew a deep, steadying breath. “In case you’ve forgotten just what this is all about, that same whey-faced little pantywaist seduced my sister, got her with child, beat her to within an inch of her life, then let her bleed to death when she miscarried his whelp. I don’t give one sweet damn in hell how many men he’s killed. If I have to come back from the grave to put a bullet through his black heart, I’ll do it.”
Turning away, Rafe stared out over the gray-holed forest of cypress, gum, juniper, and persimmon. Smoke lay like sweet, spicy fog across the flat, swampy land, swirling in damp wisps around his knee-high boots.
Abruptly, he swung back. “Damn it all, Rico, the man fights with a knife! Have you ever killed a man with a knife?”
Jericho felt a bead of sweat start at the base of his throat and work its way down his chest. He had never killed a man at all, but he’d seen many a man die. He could do it if he had to. Because he had to.
“Well? Answer me, damn it! Have you ever knifed a man to death?”
“The last time I used a knife in a fight, I near about sliced a man’s liver out of his side trying to keep him from going for my throat with a broken bottle. But I didn’t kill him. No, I’ve never done that.”
“You know the rules,” Rafe said with a tired finality.
“I know the rules. One to three seconds allowed each principal. Physician present. Sun and wind equally divided, choice of positions decided on the turn of a dollar. Ten paces, seconds to be armed, seconds to be permitted to examine clothing and weapon of each principal and to load each pistol with powder and a single ball in the presence of all parties.”
“You got it right, all but one thing. The challenger chooses the time and place; the challenged chooses the weapons.”
“Christ,” Jericho said reverently.
“It ain’t too soon to be praying, and that’s the truth. The boy told me once he used to practice with his old man’s knife by knocking sparrows off limbs, slicing their legs out from under ‘em. What he didn’t tell me, but I found out by digging around these past few days is that his old man was hanged for murder after he knifed a man to death for spitting on the toe of his boot. That was down in Tennessee. His widow changed her name, took the boy and moved to Virginia, and remarried.”
Jericho swore again, the oath somewhere between a prayer and a curse. For the first time it occurred to him that he just might not leave the swamp alive. He had toyed with the notion before, but it had never taken hold.
Now it did.
Chapter Six
Thinking about what was to take place three days hence, Jericho couldn’t sleep. Turbyfill had managed to find an acquaintance with a private room who was willing to share. They’d offered Jericho space on the floor, but he’d opted for the common room. He had thinking that needed to be done, and he couldn’t do it among people he knew. Strangers were different. They were only noise, and noise could be shut out.
So he lay awake in his corner of the common room, trying to ignore the usual drunken revelry as he thought about his life: his home, his ship, and all he would be leaving behind if he failed to walk out of that clearing in the swamp three days from now.
It struck him as ironic that Rafe should be the one to stand up with him now. As a boy, Jericho had been jealous as hell, partly because Rafe was two years older and considerably more sophisticated. Or so it had seemed at the time.
But mostly because Rafe had got along well with his father. Jericho never had. He had envied his friend that relationship more than anything else.
Strange, the way things turned out. Old man Turbyfill had died of the French pox, although they had put it about that he’d died of a wasting fever. Jericho’s father had died because he’d been trying to read poetry while he was tooling a pair down a dangerous stretch of road and had rolled his carriage. According to Hester Renegar, the book had still been in his hand when they’d found him.
Gradually, the din grew louder until it was impossible to ignore any longer. Jericho rolled over onto his side and covered his exposed ear with his cap. It didn’t help.
“Oh, yeah?” challenged one lout, only slightly more sober than his mates, “I got me a eagle says I’c’n talk my way into ‘er bed ‘fore you can.”
A bearded tough struggled to his feet and thrust out a pugnacious jaw. “You? You couldn’t talk your way into a three-hole privy. My pack mule against your eagle I can bed ‘er before—”
“Pipe down, damn it, else I’ll geld th’ both o’ ye!”
The pair turned as one against the grizzled old shingle captain who was trying to sleep.
Glaring through the miasma of cigar and lamp smoke, Jericho propped himself up on one elbow and wondered if he could find a quiet place out in the livery stable. The air was bound to be fresher. He’d rather smell horseshit than two dozen swampers who hadn’t bathed since President Jackson was inaugurated.
“Stow it, Keeler,” growled one of the unwashed. “We all know you ain’t got no more use for a woman since yer old lady caught ye in bed wi’ that quim peddler an’ cracked yer acorns wi’ a frying pan.”
Amid the general laughter, Jericho swore quietly and got to his feet. He stood about as much chance of grabbing forty winks in this place as rum did of freezing in hell. He was fairly sure these scoundrels were more talk than action. All the same, if they took a notion to do more than brag about their prowess, the lady in question might be in for an uncomfortable night, key or no key.
A few minutes later, using the broad veranda that ran along the front of the hotel for access, he let himself in through the window of her bedroom. The night air was damp and cool, rich with the ever present smell of peat smoke and swamp. He inhaled deeply, taking a moment to get his bearings.
Then, at the sight that met his eyes, he nearly crawled back out through the window again.
This was a mistake. The last thing he needed at this critical point in his life was a distraction. And the vision he saw in the feeble glow of a single candle was a distraction of a major order.
Sara had armed herself with an umbrella, positioned herself in a straight chair in front of the barricaded door, and fallen soundly asleep.
Even with his mind set on his own affairs, Jericho had noticed how delicately she was made the first time he’d ever laid eyes on her, standing by the window. She was small, tidily constructed, and so slight a loud whisper could knock her over. Since then, in spite of his own circumstances, he had begun to feel a strange upwelling of tenderness when he was with her. Tenderness well laced with desire. It was not a feeling he had ever experienced before, nor one he was comfortable with.
The first time he’d had a chance to look her over from stem to stern, she’d been all rigged out in full regalia—corset, bustle, high-tops, fancy headgear, and more rag than a five-masted schooner.
Tonight she was dressed only in two thin layers. A night shift and a worn wrapper that was both too small and thin enough to see through. Candlelight splintered off the hair that tumbled over her shoulders, thick as a waterfall. With her head tilted the way it was, she’d have a crick in her neck sure as the world come morning.
Gusting a sigh of resignation, Jericho moved silently across the room and disarmed her. Again he gave her full marks for spunk. With a good swing an umbrella the size of the one she carried, while it would hardly fell a man, would pretty well discourage him.
She was wearing shoes, not slippers. He eased them off her feet, feeling the cracks in the leather as he set them side by side under the chair. He didn’t know much about the size of that inheritance she’d mentioned, but for an heiress, she wasn’t any too well tricked out. Tenderly, he lifted her and crossed to the bed, his body quickening enthusiastically as he pressed the soft, warm bundle against him. Through it all, she never stirred.
She smelled of soap—the homemade lye kind, not the fancy French stuff. When her hair brushed against his face as he leaned over to fold back the covers, he caught a hint of something spicy and lemony that reminded him of the black-walnut husks Louisa used to delight in as a child, rubbing the scent on the skin of her wrist and demanding that he “ ‘Mell my wist.”
Had Sara done that, too? Did all little girls?
Reluctantly, he laid her on the bed, stood and pulled the covers up under her chin, trying hard to think of her not as a woman but as merely someone in need.
His body refused to be distracted. Mindlessly, it reacted to the womanly feel and the scent of her. Before he could block the thought, he found himself wondering how she would taste. Achingly aroused, it occurred to him that this might be the last night he would ever spend with a woman.
Judas priest, what a waste.
The thought was almost enough to cool his throbbing desire. Which was a good thing, he thought ruefully, because he would hate to believe he was no better than the scum against which he was trying to protect her.
He angled the chair she had vacated so that he could see both the window and the woman, and at the same time, keep an eye on the door. Then he settled down to stand watch until morning.
Gradually the din of late-night revelers faded into the background. From the banks of the nearby canal, a bullfrog croaked. And then another. Cheerful and commonplace, crickets chirped in the corner of the bedroom.
In the comparative quiet of the night, thoughts of what was to happen in a short time once again floated to the surface of Jericho’s mind. It wasn’t the first time he had faced death. Far from it. But other than the natural hazards of a seagoing life, the threat had usually been thrust at him suddenly, offering him no time to dwell on his own mortality.
Now there was time. Time to consider Wilde Oaks, the land that had been bought so cheaply and loved so dearly by generations of Wildes. Time to realize that he might never again know the joy of standing on his own deck with the scent of tar and salt in his nostrils, hearing the crack of canvas overhead and the rush of the sea beneath his hull, with a hold full of lumber bound for the West Indies. Or homeward bound again with a cargo of rum and molasses.
Might never again know the pleasure of undressing a woman, exploring her secrets, discovering what made her gasp and tremble with need, even though the gasping and trembling was seldom genuine. Might never again feel his own flesh hardening, rising to meet the sweet challenge. And then meeting it.
Was he truly never to know the joy of coming home to a wife of his own? He had never before even considered the possibility of marrying, yet now it suddenly seemed the most desirable goal a man could harbor. To watch his sons grow to manhood. To see a child of his flesh burst squalling and red-faced into the world.
Once in the North Atlantic, with forty-foot seas breaking over the decks, Jericho had helped birth a babe in the hold of his ship. A stowaway’s child. The tiny girl child had entered the world kicking mad, both tiny fists waving and howling fit to wake the dead. He had thought it remarkable at the time.
Now he knew it was God’s greatest miracle.
Drawing a deep breath, he stretched his long legs toward the door and rotated his head to ease the tension at the back of his neck. Fingering the cool hexagonal barrel of the pistol he had placed on his lap, he thought about the duel. He thought about fighting with knives and tried to recall all the tricks he had learned over the years aboard various ships and in waterfront dives around the world.
But no matter how hard he tried to concentrate on preparing himself for the upcoming event, his mind and his gaze kept straying back to the woman.
To Sara.
She slept deeply, almost as if she sensed she had nothing to fear. How long had it been since he had slept as well? A week? A month?
That and more.
What he wouldn’t give to be able to slide into bed beside her for no other reason than to bask in her warmth, to let the scent of her lull him to sleep. It might be the last time in this life he would ever lie beside a woman.
Unbidden, the notion kindled and began to glow deep inside him. It wasn’t as if he was asking anything more of her than the comfort of another warm body beside him while he slept. The bed was surely wide enough so that they would not even need to touch. God knows, he would never lay a finger on her while she slept—that would be dishonorable.
Besides, she would never miss the little he wanted from her—never even know. He would be gone long before she awoke.
In the darkest hour of the night, when reasonable men were asleep, and the minds of those who lay awake turned tentatively down twisted paths seldom visible in the light of day, Jericho made up his mind. Removing his boots, he placed them beside the bed. He unbuckled his gun belt and looped it over the bedpost. Sleeping in his clothes was no problem—he did it as often as not—but bedamned if he was going to sleep with a pair of smooth-bore, saw-handle pistols gouging him every time he turned over.
