Willow: A Novel (No Series) Page 11

  Zachary took a long draft from his appropriated brandy. “Gideon, she didn’t abandon us. According to the terms of our granddad’s will, we had to remain in San Francisco, under the Marshall roof, until we were of legal age. She didn’t want us to be cut off from our inheritances.”

  That was the reasoning, but it didn’t quite hold up, in Gideon’s mind at least. Evadne had married Devlin Gallagher within a few years of her first husband’s death and installed both her young sons in boarding school. They’d spent vacations in the San Francisco house, under the care of a variety of servants.

  Still, the fact that Evadne had been able to walk away from her own children without putting up any kind of a fight nettled him.

  “Maybe the judge wouldn’t have let her bring us along on the honeymoon anyway,” Zachary suggested into the resounding silence. “Did you ever think of that, Gideon? Maybe he didn’t want another man’s get underfoot all the time.”

  Gideon had considered that possibility often, over the years, but now, having met the judge, he didn’t see him in that light. For all his riotous ways, Devlin Gallagher was not the kind of man to shirk responsibility, even if it was only indirectly his. “No,” he said aloud. “The lawyers managing Granddad’s estate brought pressure to bear, and Mama folded under it, that’s all.”

  “She’s dead, Gideon. Let’s just give poor Mama the benefit of the doubt and assume that she did the best she could—all right?”

  It was the only sensible approach and Gideon was more than ready to put his little-boy thoughts and feelings aside. Right or wrong, the past was the past, and Evadne was gone forever. “You’re right,” he conceded, facing his brother with a pensive frown. “Frankly, I’m still a little surprised that you’re here at all, brother. I didn’t think anything—even our mother’s death—could drag you away from the gaming tables and—what’s her name—Melanie?”

  Zachary grinned wearily. “Melanie married a fifty-year-old shipping magnate with a belly and an even bigger bankroll than mine. And I made the journey because—well—because I felt guilty about that little trick I played on you. I thought there might be something I could do to help, but you seem to have things under control.”

  Control? Gideon almost laughed at the word. He was anything but in control; he was acting at odds with his own plans, in fact. He had intended to find Steven Gallagher, to marry Daphne Roberts, and to unite his shares of Central Pacific stock with her father’s, thus gaining a controlling interest.

  Instead of pursuing these objectives, he had bought a house, for God’s sake, and on top of that he’d bedded Willow. He hadn’t told her he loved her, but he’d come damned close, and he had as much as promised her that they would grow old together. Have children.

  What the hell was wrong with him? He’d always been able to think decisively, but now he was torn between two vastly different goals. He did want to live on that small ranch he had so rashly purchased. He did want to see Willow swell to lush roundness with his children.

  And yet he wanted to pursue his other desires, too. Not knowing how else to approach his quandary, Gideon turned on Zachary.

  “Do you have any inkling of what a hell of a mess you’ve made of my life?” he growled furiously.

  Zachary looked amused rather than contrite. “May I remind you that you went along with the idea willingly? You were ready to bed that sweet little morsel, no matter what you had to do to accomplish the purpose. Unless I miss my guess, which I’m sure I haven’t, you’ve been rolling around in the hay with her all afternoon. You could have just quietly annulled the marriage, you know. Obviously, you’ve chosen to do otherwise.”

  Gideon scowled. “Did you tell Daphne about this, by any chance?”

  “Of course I did. I couldn’t have the poor girl running around town, telling everyone that she was engaged to a married man.”

  Gideon closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. “How did she take the news?”

  “Colorfully. I could still hear the bric-a-brac shattering when I got into the carriage to leave.”

  “Wonderful. And her father?”

  Zachary smiled, enjoying his memories. “The old man wanted to have you publicly flogged. Then shot. Then flogged again.”

  So much for uniting two financial empires, despaired Gideon, in grim silence.

  “That isn’t all, I’m afraid,” said Zachary, with thinly veiled relish. “They’re coming here to Virginia City, Daphne and her papa, presumably to make you see the error of your ways and seek some kind of redress for their grievances.”

  Gideon swore again but was stayed from further comment by the sudden appearance of Willow in the parlor doorway. The bright smile on her beautiful face was adequate proof that she hadn’t overheard any of the conversation.

  “We’ll have to stay here tonight, Gideon,” she announced cheerfully. “Maria says there simply isn’t time to gather up all the sheets and towels and other things we’d need to be comfortable at the ranch house. She and I can take care of all that in the morning.”

  Gideon felt as limp as an unstarched shirt, and he avoided the knowing look he knew would be gleaming in Zachary’s eyes. “Fine,” he said, with a sharpness he hadn’t intended.

  Willow was visibly stung, and her smile wavered slightly, threatening to come unfixed. “Is something wrong?”

  Zachary leaped into the conversation, with his usual dashing aplomb. “No, no—nothing is wrong, love.” He took her hand, bent his head, and brushed his lips lightly across her knuckles. “And may I say, welcome to the Marshall family.”

  Gideon winced, but fortunately Willow’s attention was focused on Zachary and she didn’t see.

  “Thank you,” she said softly, and her lovely eyes came to Gideon’s face with a timidity that made him ache inside. With the brusqueness of a single word, he had hurt her, and he hated himself for it. Himself and Zachary.

  “We’ll stay here tonight,” he told his wife, with a gentleness calculated to make up for his earlier brusque tone, “if you’re sure your father wouldn’t mind.”

  For a moment, Gideon thought Willow would come to him and put her arms around him in an embrace. He wouldn’t have been able to bear the sweetness of the gesture if she had. But stopped by the coolness of his manner, she simply summoned up another tremulous smile and said, “He won’t mind—we’re married, after all.”

  This time, Gideon could not hide his reaction to the reminder; it struck his troubled conscience like a lash.

  Willow’s face literally crumbled, but she left the parlor doorway with a dignity Gideon immediately admired, her shoulders straight, head held high.

  “You bastard,” said Zachary. “Why didn’t you just come right to the point and slap her to the floor? She didn’t deserve that.”

  “Will you shut up?” rasped Gideon, at the end of his patience. “None of this would have happened if it weren’t for you.”

  “I may have started it rolling, brother,” Zachary answered dryly, “but I didn’t bed that girl, and I didn’t get her hopes up, either. You did those things, Gideon. You.”

  Zachary was right, though Gideon would never have admitted it aloud. And suddenly, he felt as though Devlin Gallagher’s house was closing in around him, choking the breath from his lungs.

  “I’m going out,” he said crisply. “Are you coming with me?”

  Arching one eyebrow, Zachary shrugged. “Why not?” he intoned.

  Fifteen minutes later, they entered the same saloon where Gideon had encountered Steven Gallagher, then wearing his peddler disguise.

  “A special,” Gideon said, to the grinning bartender. “For my brother, that is. I’ll have whiskey.”

  Zachary was about to protest when the bartender slid a brimming mug of panther piss in front of him, from which he obligingly took a deep drink.

  His violent reaction did much to ease Gideon’s beleaguered spirit.

  “Son of a goddamned bitch!” roared Zachary, alternately spitting and eyeing his glass with horror. �
�What is this stuff?”

  Gideon only grinned.

  * * *

  Maria’s hand was soft and warm on Willow’s shuddering shoulder. “What is it, little one? Why do you cry?”

  Willow’s response was a wail of indignation and pain.

  “Already you and the husband have quarreled?”

  Willow sat up on her childhood bed and sniffled. “Not exactly. He just—well . . .”

  Maria took a seat beside Willow and enfolded her in a motherly embrace. “What, little one? What has he done?”

  “I don’t know—I can’t explain it.”

  A warm, understanding laugh escaped Maria. “You will not worry,” she ordered.

  “Not worry?” snapped Willow, stiffening in the housekeeper’s arms. “Maria, Gideon is my husband and he doesn’t love me!”

  “Hush. Gideon does not know what he feels, and neither do you. Tomorrow there is time to settle things, always there is time. Why do you not get into bed, and I will bring you supper here, no?”

  “No,” Willow answered stubbornly.

  But when Maria returned, only minutes later, with a tray, Willow was snuggled down in her bed, sound asleep and dreaming that Sir Lancelot, riding a white charger, was saving her from a great, scaly dragon, breathing fire.

  * * *

  Gideon opened one eye and groaned. He was sprawled out on the narrow settee in his mother’s sitting room, and his own portrait smirked at him from above the fireplace. He’d been not quite seventeen when he’d posed for the likeness, and at school. Evadne had forced him to submit to days of excruciating stillness by promising, from a distance, to withhold his allowance unless he cooperated.

  Sickness rolled in his stomach and pounded beneath his temples as he sat up. In one corner of the room stood a polished suit of medieval armor, silently mocking him. He arched one eyebrow, which ached as badly as his head, impossible as that was, and idly wondered if that iron garb would fit him.

  Not likely, he thought ruefully, as a lusty snore rose over the top of a brocade chair a few feet away.

  Gideon grinned. His only comfort lay in the fact that Zachary was going to feel every bit as bad as he did, if not worse, and he clung to that. “Zachary!” he said loudly.

  His brother moaned and stirred in the small chair. “Next time you offer me a drink, little brother,” he rasped out, “I fully intend to shoot you.”

  Gideon lifted whiskey-reddened eyes to the ceiling, thinking of Willow. Chances were, Zachary wasn’t the only person in this house inclined to do him violence. He sighed. At least he hadn’t gone to his bride’s bed the night before, though he’d been sorely tempted. In the end, he’d decided that Willow deserved better than the pawing of a drunk.

  Zachary lumbered out of the fussy chair and stretched, giving a painful groan as he did so. “Why the hell did you sleep down here,” he demanded testily, “when your curvaceous little wife was right upstairs?”

  Gideon colored up for the first time in his memory and concentrated on wrenching his boots onto his feet. He said nothing, for at the moment he was too ashamed even to speak Willow’s name.

  “I sure wouldn’t have spent the night on a sofa if I’d been in your situation,” grumbled Zachary, who never knew when to keep his mouth shut.

  “That’s the difference between us,” Gideon answered shortly. With a baleful glance at the suit of armor, he wondered what your average, everyday, run-of-the-mill knight would do in circumstances like these. Chivalry aside, his impulse was to grovel.

  “There aren’t as many differences between you and me as you would like to believe,” Zachary replied, with an insight that was both uncanny and fundamentally disturbing. “The sooner you admit to that and act accordingly, little brother, the better off you’re going to be.”

  “Go to hell,” muttered Gideon.

  “Good morning,” sang Maria, from the sitting room doorway and, even though she was smiling, her velvet-brown eyes fairly snapped with malice. Gideon knew that he had ruffled her chick, and he was going to be pecked severely for the indiscretion. “You will have breakfast, no?”

  “No!” chorused Gideon and Zachary in unison.

  Maria’s smile grew broader. “But is eggs!” she crowed, knowing full well how she was tormenting them, “scrambled eggs, still warm from the nest, with nice peppers and many onions to give flavor!”

  Zachary slapped one hand over his mouth, groaned, and ran for the nearest exit.

  Maria’s vengeful gaze was fixed on Gideon now. “Eggs are funny things, señor,” she commented. “Once, I get one that is all rotten and runny inside—”

  Gideon made a strangled sound and bolted after Zachary.

  * * *

  “Weren’t Gideon and Zachary hungry?” asked Willow brightly, as she sat down at the kitchen table to enjoy a hearty breakfast. Now that it was morning and the sun was warm in the summer sky, she felt optimistic again.

  Maria, standing at the stove, chuckled, the sound vibrating through her great bulk. “No, they are not hungry, little one. They are, I think, looking at the petunias we planted by the fence.”

  Willow frowned. Neither Gideon nor Zachary had struck her as the type of man to be particularly fond of flowers. She shrugged. Later, she would show them the white lilacs and the rose arbor. “Did Papa come home last night?”

  “No,” replied Maria.

  “Do you think he’s with Dove Triskadden, so soon after—?”

  Maria shook her head firmly. “No. The judge took a bedroll with him. Food and a coffeepot, too.”

  “I wish he would come back,” said Willow. “I don’t like the idea of going to live in Gideon’s house without telling Papa first.”

  Maria’s smile was fond as she came to the table and poured hot, fresh coffee into Willow’s cup. “Your papa will not be angry. He knows that a bride must live with her husband.”

  “I’ll miss you when I go, Maria.”

  Bright tears glistened in Maria’s kind eyes. “You will not be far away,” she said, possibly as much for her own benefit as Willow’s. “And perhaps I can come and work for you there, on the ranch.”

  Her fork poised halfway between her plate and her mouth, Willow was immediately cheered. “I’m going to speak to Gideon on your behalf at the first opportunity,” she said.

  But Maria looked sad now. “I was forgetting my duties here. Who will look after your papa, if I leave?”

  Willow had no doubt that Dove Triskadden would be ensconced in this house as soon as propriety allowed, but then Dove probably wasn’t the kind to devote herself to baking bread and scrubbing floors, and it wasn’t as if there were a lot of unemployed housekeepers in Virginia City, just waiting to be offered a job. Willow conceded Maria’s point silently and concentrated on eating her breakfast.

  When that was done, the two women turned to gathering linens and cooking utensils and extra curtains, all to be taken to the house outside of town, the house that would now be Willow’s home. Despite the fact that she had had Maria to look after her all these years, and was thus not only somewhat spoiled but also domestically inept, she was eager to try her hand at homemaking.

  Willow was humming as she folded blankets and quilts, but she stopped abruptly when she sensed Gideon’s presence in the bedroom doorway. Considering his treatment of her the night before, she stiffened, unwilling or unable to speak first.

  “I seem to be apologizing to you at every turn,” he said, from just behind her, his voice husky and low.

  His very nearness made Willow ache inside. “You were out all night,” she said. There was no accusation in her words, no anger.

  “I was out most of the night. I slept in the sitting room.”

  Willow felt a sudden urge to whirl around and slap her husband soundly across the face, but she suppressed it. Her knuckles, though, turned white where she grasped the wedding-ring quilt she had been folding into a linen chest. “Why didn’t you come to my room?”

  There was a short silence, “Would you
have welcomed me, Willow?”

  She spun to face him, pulling the quilt with her, her eyes shooting golden flames. “No!”

  Gideon shrugged and spread his hands. “I rest my case,” he said. He hesitated, then thrust a hand through his hair. “Forgive me?”

  The room seemed to be filled with the scent of white lilacs, flowing in through the open window. “Are you going to be a good husband, Gideon Marshall,” she countered, “or a shameless rounder?”

  “My fate hinges on my answer, I presume?”

  Willow reddened. “It does,” she confirmed.

  He smiled wanly. “Then I’m going to be a good husband,” he answered.

  Against her better judgment, Willow believed him.

  Perhaps because she wanted to so much.

  7

  When Devlin Gallagher returned from his sojourn in the mountains, it was to find Juan and Pablito, the stable workers, loading various trunks and crates into the bed of a buckboard. Understanding immediately, Devlin was filled with a sweeping loneliness.

  Willow was leaving home. His little girl was all grown up now, and married—for better or for worse.

  Wearily, Devlin waved away Pablito’s quick offer of help and stabled his horse himself, seeing that it had water and a little extra feed. He was just bolting the stall door when Gideon Marshall approached him, looking nervous and determined, both at once.

  “You’d best be good to my daughter,” Devlin said gruffly. There was no point in mincing words, especially when the discussion concerned Willow. The girl was strong and spirited, even wild at times, but she had a fragile, innocent side, too.

  Devlin would not see her hurt, and he wanted to make sure his son-in-law understood that.

  Gideon smiled somewhat weakly. It wasn’t hard to guess that he didn’t like knowing that he was putting Willow between her husband and her brother, and that comforted Devlin in an odd sort of way. Most likely, the man had a conscience.

  “I’ll see that Willow never wants for anything,” Gideon promised.