Willow: A Novel (No Series) Page 17

Gideon was outraged, but there was no point in arguing that he didn’t care a whit about Daphne Roberts or any other woman besides Willow herself. Even if they’d managed to settle that, which would be a miracle in itself, it appeared there was still the matter of Steven.

  “I’ll find your brother,” he said icily, regretting his tone even as he spoke, “and when I do, I’ll see him hang.”

  “Good luck,” she replied, with brisk contempt. And then she was gone.

  When Gideon heard the front door slam behind her, he fished the wedding band out of the bathwater and flung it across the room with a bellowed curse. Then he sat back in the cramped tub and squeezed his eyes shut tight.

  The sorrow got through anyway.

  * * *

  Maria met Willow at the front door of Judge Gallagher’s house, casting a quietly disapproving look at the valises she carried, one in each hand. “I will make your room ready,” she said, with a sigh.

  “Thank you,” replied Willow, in a steady voice. “Is Papa at home?”

  Maria took one of the valises and started wearily up the stairs. “No, señora. He is hearing a case today.”

  Willow maintained her composure as she followed the housekeeper up to the second floor and into the room that had been hers before Gideon Marshall, damn his hide, changed everything. “I could sleep for a thousand years,” she confided, sitting down on the edge of her bed.

  “Sleeping will solve nothing. When you awaken, chiquita, all your problems will be waiting.”

  Willow unpinned her modest, wifely hat and flung it across the room. From now on, she would wear low-cut dresses and fancy millinery, the way Dove Triskadden did. Maybe, just to annoy Gideon, she would become someone’s mistress.

  “I will bring tea,” said Maria, pursing her lips just as if she’d heard Willow’s scandalous thoughts.

  “I would rather have sherry,” parried Willow. If she was going to change her image, she might as well start by putting aside temperance.

  “That is too bad,” retorted Maria. “You will have tea.”

  “I said I wanted sherry!”

  “I don’t care what you said,” came the brisk reply. “And I would advise the señora to remember that a lady respects her elders.”

  Willow blushed and bit her lower lip, but when Maria brought the tea, she drank it without protest. Following that, she stripped to her chemise and waited for the solace of sleep to enclose her.

  When it did, it was fitful, and when Willow awakened again, all her troubles were there waiting for her, just as Maria had warned. She cried as she put her dress back on.

  She spent the day alone, reading in her room, but her books did not provide their usual solace. Her mind kept straying back to Gideon.

  She rested.

  She paced.

  She finally went downstairs to help Maria do housework.

  That evening, there were guests for dinner: Dove Triskadden, Daphne and her cousin Hilda—and Gideon.

  Willow would have turned and fled the dining room if her father hadn’t caught her elbow in his hand and muttered, out of the side of his mouth, “Oh, no you don’t, sugarplum. Running away is no solution.”

  Gideon looked up from his wineglass, which had seemed to intrigue him deeply until that moment, and his eyes were unreadable as they swept the length of Willow and came back to her face. Almost as an afterthought, he rose halfheartedly from his chair and then sat down again, turning his attention to Daphne, who had been seated beside him.

  Daphne sparkled in her pale lilac dress, and there were little amethyst ribbons tied among her dark curls. She smiled at Willow and then turned graciously back to Gideon, relating some story about a mutual friend in animated tones.

  Willow forced herself to sit down.

  Daphne and Gideon continued to chat, seemingly absorbed in each other.

  Willow, thinking her own dismal thoughts, soon lost track of their conversation.

  “You may keep your cursed railroads, darling,” Daphne was saying. “I think they’re absolutely dreadful.”

  “Darling!” muttered Willow, under her breath, and it wasn’t until her knuckles began to throb that she realized she was gripping the sides of her chair with all her strength. She darted one outraged look at Daphne.

  “We all have our personal opinions,” Gideon replied, smiling into Daphne’s beguiling face like a besotted idiot. “But surely the train has some redeeming features.”

  “I can’t think what they would be,” Daphne answered blithely. “I declare, the thought of journeying all the way back to San Francisco in one of those cramped seats inclines me toward staying right here in Virginia City for the rest of my life!”

  Willow choked on her asparagus, but it was Hilda who spoke in protest.

  “You promised that we’d leave tomorrow!” she wailed, fixing a piteous gaze on Daphne.

  Daphne shrugged and turned a winning smile on Gideon. “Promises are made to be broken—aren’t they, Gideon dear?”

  Gideon merely smiled, flattered by Daphne’s attention; Willow had to grip her chair seat again, even harder this time, to keep from flinging a wineglass at his head.

  “I have wronged you sorely,” he said to Daphne. “Perhaps I can redeem myself.”

  There was a silence, during which all eyes except Gideon’s and Daphne’s swung to Willow. She forced herself to sit still, though inside she was in a screaming rage.

  “However would you do that?” trilled Daphne, bending so that Gideon might avail himself of a glimpse of her full and shapely bosom, displayed to considerable advantage by the fashionably low neckline of her lovely dress. The garment was the palest purple, nearly the same color as her eyes.

  Gideon’s answer would have led any sensible person to believe that he and Daphne were alone. “There is a supper dance tomorrow night. Will you let me escort you?”

  Daphne flushed prettily, looking for all the world as though she had never even pretended to be Willow’s friend. “Would that be proper?” she countered, lowering her eyes and fluttering her thick lashes. “I mean, you are a married man.”

  Gideon’s gaze sliced, menacing, to Willow’s bloodless face. “You couldn’t prove that by me,” he said evenly.

  At this point, the judge cleared his throat and diplomatically swung the conversation in another direction. Despite his efforts, the remainder of the evening was the purest misery for Willow. At the first opportunity, which came when Gideon and her father retired to the parlor for an after-dinner brandy, she sprang out of her chair and fled up the stairs, her skirts wadded in her hands, to hide behind the heavy door of her bedroom.

  The knock that came a few minutes later was too subdued and refined to be Gideon’s, so Willow opened the door.

  “Good Lord,” said Dove briskly. “Splash some cold water on your face before that rounder downstairs gets a look at you.”

  Willow went to the pitcher and basin immediately, for she would have died before letting Gideon know that she had been crying over him. When she had flung a few handfuls of water over her aching face and dried it with a towel, she turned to look at her father’s mistress.

  “Did Gideon leave yet?”

  “No. He’s closeted away with your father, in Devlin’s study, and I must say that I hope Devlin puts that young scoundrel in his place, once and for all.”

  There seemed to be no strength at all in Willow’s knees, so she sat down in her rocking chair. She had spent many hours in that chair, reading or just dreaming, but it seemed foreign to her now, just as the rest of the house did.

  As familiar as it was, the place wasn’t home anymore.

  “If he didn’t say anything during dinner, I doubt that Papa will come to my defense now,” she mourned.

  Dove sighed and folded her slender, snow-white arms across the bodice of her striking black dress. The neckline was trimmed with real pearls, and they shimmered like milky prisms as she paced back and forth in front of the small fireplace. “Men,” she exclaimed, in happy agreeme
nt. “They do tend to side with each other more often than not, and that’s a fact, I’m sorry to say.”

  Willow drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, heedless of the way she was crumpling her very best gown. “I thought Daphne was my friend,” she whispered, in mourning. In some ways, the end of that illusion was as crushing as the demise of her marriage.

  “You’re like me in that way, I think,” Dove commented pensively. “I’ve never had any female friends—not before you, that is. I know why women don’t like me, Willow, but that doesn’t explain why they don’t take to you.”

  Willow shrugged. Even in San Francisco, where she had diligently followed Evadne’s instructions on manners and spoken to the few people who bothered to speak to her, she’d never had an actual friend.

  It was one of the great sorrows of her life.

  “Having an outlaw for a brother doesn’t help,” she mused, “and everyone has always known about Mother, too. She left Papa and created an awful scandal. She took up with Jay Forbes . . .” Willow paused and shivered at the shadowy recollection of a man she couldn’t completely remember.

  “But you were born,” prodded Dove gently. Her smile was soft, and it made Willow feel a little better.

  “Yes, I guess Papa and Mama met somewhere and I was the result. Evadne hated me for that and everybody else just sort of fell into line and hated me, too.”

  “Do you love Gideon, Willow?”

  She raised swollen, miserable eyes to Dove’s face. “Yes, God help me. But you can see how he feels about me. It’s Daphne he wants.”

  Dove was quiet and introspective for several seconds. “I think perhaps he was just trying to make you jealous. Worked, too, didn’t it?”

  Willow flushed. She was so inexperienced in matters of the heart; the possibility hadn’t even occurred to her. “That doesn’t explain Daphne’s behavior,” she protested. “Why, that woman told me that she never wanted to marry Gideon in the first place, and the next thing you know, she’s throwing herself at him—”

  “She may be in league with Gideon,” mused Dove, one finger pressed to her chin in speculation. “In any case, if you want Gideon Marshall, you’d better stop running off to your bedroom to cry like a little girl whenever you’re challenged. Believe me, with a man like that, you’ll have more than one Daphne to fend off during your lifetime.”

  Willow stared at Dove, mouth agape. Was this woman turning on her now, too? “You make it sound as though I was the one who did something wrong!”

  “You did,” Dove affirmed. “You should have walked straight up to Gideon and slapped that man silly, for a start.”

  “I couldn’t very well do that when I was the one who started all this by leaving him!”

  Dove smiled. “Exactly,” she confirmed, and then she came and knelt beside Willow’s chair. “Sweetie, if you want to own that man more than the devil ever could, I can tell you how. And if you love him, then you’d better fight, because it’s plain that you love him in the forever way, and that means your life could be mighty long and mighty empty if you don’t do something.”

  “Tell me,” Willow pleaded.

  Dove explained, and Willow’s eyes widened as she listened.

  * * *

  “I don’t like this, Gideon,” Daphne said, wringing her hands as she looked up at the bright moon and drew the scent of Willow Marshall’s lilacs into her nostrils. “I don’t like it at all. That woman is my friend.”

  Gideon was standing a few feet away, his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “I don’t deserve any favors from you, Daphne,” he conceded gruffly, “but if you don’t help me, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  Daphne was filled with frustration. She had hurt Willow, and badly, and she hated herself for it. “You know I’m not the type to hold grudges, Gideon, and it probably wouldn’t have been good if we’d married anyway. But I still think you should go back inside that house and tell your wife that you love her.”

  His broad shoulders stiffened beneath his pristine white shirt, and the fabric of his silk vest strained across his back. “She wouldn’t care,” he said. “No one is more important to Willow than her thieving, murdering brother.”

  “Oh, Gideon, don’t be such a fool. You must know how deeply Willow cares for you—it’s in her face, in everything she says and does.” She paused, drew a deep breath. “Besides, she came right out and told me.”

  “She’ll have to choose between Steven and me, Daphne,” Gideon broke in. “And I don’t mind telling you that my prospects aren’t very good.”

  “You’re not going to increase them by flirting with other women under her nose, Gideon.” The mention of Steven Gallagher made Daphne uncomfortable; she’d visited him several times while he was recovering at Gideon’s house, attracted to him like filings to a magnet, and they’d laughed together in the quiet. Once, he’d drawn her down to lie beside him on the bed—he was that bold—and he’d kissed her. Daphne knew for a shattering certainty that if she hadn’t heard footsteps on the stairs at the very last moment, she might have given Steven Gallagher what she had never given to any other man—herself.

  Gideon turned to face her, and she shuddered to think that he might know what she was thinking and feeling. “Tell me, Daphne, what’s keeping you here in Virginia City? You obviously know as well as I do that our, er, association is over.”

  Daphne lowered her eyes. It wouldn’t be wise to admit that she hoped to see Steven Gallagher again, but she couldn’t lie, either. For that reason, she said nothing at all.

  “It’s Steven, isn’t it?” asked Gideon, who could be damnably perceptive. “Christ in heaven, it’s Steven Gallagher!”

  “Yes,” admitted Daphne lamely.

  Gideon swore again and sat down on the marble bench beside her, taking her hand in his own. “He’s an outlaw, Daphne. Life with him would be foreign to everything you’ve ever been taught, everything you’ve believed in—”

  Daphne laughed, despite the tears sliding down her face. “Yes, Papa will—well, you can imagine how Papa would react, I’m sure.”

  Gideon squeezed her hand. “Can you, Daphne?” he countered gently. “Can you even begin to imagine the way society would respond?”

  Glumly, Daphne nodded her head.

  In a brotherly fashion, Gideon took out his handkerchief, unfolded it, and dabbed away the tears that wet her cheeks. “Daphne, does Steven feel the way you do?”

  Again, Daphne laughed, but the sound was one of anguish. “No, I’m sure he doesn’t. No doubt, I’m just another potential conquest to him.”

  “Potential?”

  Daphne swatted at Gideon in reprimand. “Yes, potential. I didn’t give in to him, if that’s what you want to know.”

  Gideon gave a ragged sigh and released Daphne’s suddenly moist and quivering hand. “God damn. Now I suppose I’m going to have to do constant battle not only with Willow but with you, too.”

  “If you mean to hang Steven Gallagher,” Daphne said bravely, “you’ll get no help from me. And that includes this silly charade you want to put on for Willow!”

  “Daphne—”

  “No. I won’t go to the supper dance with you, Gideon Marshall, and I won’t lie to Willow anymore, either. I’ve already told you—she’s my friend!”

  Gideon stood up, looking hard and imperious in the bright moonlight. “I’m your friend, too, Daphne, and I’m warning you. For your own sake, stay away from Steven Gallagher. Go back to San Francisco and marry someone—suitable.”

  “And if I don’t heed your advice?”

  Gideon sighed. “Despite what I’ve done, your father will listen to me, Daphne, and if I wire him that you’ve taken up with a man who makes a habit of robbing Central Pacific trains, he’ll be on his way here within the day.”

  “You would do that to me, after humiliating me in front of the whole city of San Francisco?”

  “In a heartbeat,” replied Gideon, and then he disappeared into the shadows of the ga
rden, leaving Daphne alone with her very disturbing thoughts.

  * * *

  Gideon stood at the base of the stairs, his hand gripping the newel, and stared up into the shadows of the second floor. Watching him from the doorway of his study, Devlin knew that he should be bone-angry with this young rascal, but the truth was that he was amused instead. Any fool would have seen through that act he’d put on at dinner.

  “Problems?” Devlin intoned, with a grin. He had long since removed his dinner jacket and now, to make his comfort complete, he was rolling up his sleeves.

  Gideon flung him a look and tore himself away from the newel. “Just one,” he answered caustically.

  “About so high?” jibed the judge, holding one hand, palm down, to Willow’s approximate height.

  “I need a drink,” said Gideon, with a distracted shake of his head.

  “Nope,” countered the judge good-naturedly. “What you need is to march up those stairs and make some kind of peace with that wife of yours before it’s too late.”

  “Are you crazy? She’d probably shoot me on sight.”

  “Can’t say I’d blame her much, the way you behaved at dinner tonight.”

  “The way I behaved?” growled Gideon. “What about her behavior? She left me!”

  “That she did. But you’re not going to get Willow back by carrying on like a road-show Romeo, my boy. She’s too proud to take that, and if I know my daughter, she’ll give as good as she gets if you try.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that you aren’t the only young fellow around these parts with eyes in his head. Willow is a beautiful young woman.”

  Gideon laughed, though he didn’t sound too amused. “Are you telling me that she might take up with Norville Pickering again?”

  The judge indulged in a slow smile. “Never. But your brother, Zachary—now there’s a possibility, though it would probably take some time. He’s good-looking, and he’s a hand with the women, from what I’ve seen. Seems to me that if you didn’t want Willow, he’d be more than happy to take her off your hands.”

  Gideon’s jaw clamped down like a vise, and his eyes once again were fixed on the top of the stairs. A visible tremor went through his frame before he bolted up them, taking three steps at a time.