Willow: A Novel (No Series) Read online

  Maria shook her head, overlooking the irreverent remark, for reasons of her own. “Sí,” she agreed. “The señorita would expect a Third Coming, just for her.”

  Willow was silent until after she had left the bathtub, long minutes and much scrubbing and rinsing later. She dried herself with a thick towel and took modest refuge in a flannel wrapper. “Why did you say I would have to look pretty tonight, Maria?”

  “You are not the only one who suffers. Your father, he is wearing his heart in his eyes. He, too, is afraid and worried. If you do not go down to dinner and behave like a lady, he will have only the señora to talk to. Would you wish this on a man who has been so good to you?”

  Willow sighed. “I wouldn’t wish that on anybody,” she said, with a broken sort of wryness. Once, she and Evadne had liked each other. Everything had been so much easier then. “Why do you suppose he’s here at all, when he could be with Dove?”

  Maria bit her full lower lip and would make no comment.

  * * *

  Gideon realized, with alarm, that he was losing his taste for hard liquor; he’d been nursing the same lousy, watered-down drink for better than an hour. To add insult to injury, he felt distinctly drunk.

  It was late when the traveling peddler came into the saloon. He was a very tall man, with fair hair that stuck out from under his dusty bowler hat, and his suit, ill-fitting and assembled of a bright plaid, was an assault to the eyes.

  Gideon swore under his breath and looked away, blinking.

  As luck would have it, the drummer set his case down within an inch of Gideon’s left boot and jovially pounded on the bar with one fist. “A special!” he shouted to the bartender, in a thick Scots burr that seemed to roll on and on, like a wagon wheel racing downhill. “And one for me new friend here, as well!”

  Was the bartender smirking a little? In his unlikely drunken state, Gideon couldn’t rightly tell. He peered into his glass, wondering if it had been laced with poison.

  “Aye and have a wet for your whistle, then!” enjoined the friendly peddler, as two enormous mugs of foaming beer were set on the bar.

  Gideon looked at the Scot and thought that his mustache was just a bit off center. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said, befuddled, his words a bit slurred.

  He took a sip from the mug allotted to him and the taste of it was so bad that he spat the stuff unceremoniously onto the sawdust floor.

  “We call it panther piss,” explained the barkeeper.

  The peddler laughed richly. “It’s an acquired taste, Mr. . .?”

  “Marshall,” frowned Gideon. “Gideon Marshall.”

  “’Tis a troubled man you are, Gideon Marshall,” guessed the Scot. Did he straighten his mustache? No, it wasn’t possible to do that; Gideon had merely imagined the gesture.

  At the back of the saloon, someone pounded a tinny piano and a woman began to sing a bawdy barroom song, the lyrics of which Gideon would normally have appreciated. Everyone except the bartender, the drummer, and Gideon himself drifted toward the music, singing along.

  The peddler drained his mug and ordered another. He seemed as steady on his feet as before, a remarkable thing, considering. “You’re a wee bit into your cups, Mr. Marshall,” he observed, and it seemed to Gideon that his burr was slipping, just as his mustache had seemed to, moments before. “Might be good if you went back to your house, then. There are those who’ll set upon a man and take his valuables, in an evil and wayward town such as this one.”

  “Evil?” muttered Gideon, drunker than he’d ever been in his life. Virginia City was a wild place, especially when compared to the comforts of San Francisco, but he wouldn’t have gone so far as to say it was evil.

  “’Tis a sin to sell spirits of a Sunday,” announced the peddler, in a jovial tone of confession, raising his glass and looking at it appreciatively before taking a deep draft.

  Gideon sighed inwardly. The world was full of hypocrites and he himself was among the greatest of those. “What’d you say your name was?” he asked the peddler.

  “I didn’t say,” came the reply, with no accent at all, and then the stranger was calmly ushering Gideon out of the bar and onto the almost deserted street.

  There, he suddenly thrust Gideon up against the weathered outside wall of the saloon and landed a very respectable punch in his middle.

  Though he was a fair hand in a fight, thanks to years of defending himself against his older brother, Zachary, Gideon was in no condition to do battle now. He gave a windless grunt and slid ignobly down the wall to rest on his haunches.

  The drummer crouched before Gideon and, to his amazement, handed him the mustache. “I’ll leave you this to remember me by,” he said. “And don’t be playing any more of your tricks on my sister!”

  A moment later, the peddler turned and strode away into the night.

  4

  Befuddled and breathless from the hard blow to his stomach, Gideon stared down at the handlebar mustache in his hand. After a few minutes, the fog shrouding his brain began to dissipate, and he laughed as he lifted himself back to his feet and tucked the glue-crusted hank of fair hair into the pocket of his coat. He’d wanted to meet Steven Gallagher face-to-face, and now he had.

  As he made his way back toward his hotel, Gideon tried to equate the Steven he’d just encountered with the desperado the Central Pacific wanted to see tried and, if possible, hanged. The two images simply wouldn’t go together. After all, considering what had been done to his innocent young sister, two years before, Steven Gallagher had every right to be furious. Few people would have blamed the man if he’d shot Gideon for a scoundrel, but he’d only executed a gut punch, for God’s sake. Was this the revenge of a vicious criminal, the merciless outlaw he’d heard so much about?

  Once in his room, Gideon considered forgetting the whole idea of arresting Steven Gallagher. He’d obtained a temporary appointment as a deputy U.S. marshal before leaving his home city. Now he thought that his time might be better spent by finding some legal means of extricating himself from the sham marriage to Willow, going home, and building a life with Daphne.

  Still short of breath and hurting from the punch to his middle, Gideon sat down on the edge of the bed and braced his head in his hands. Why the devil had he agreed to come to Montana, where he didn’t belong, in the first place? Why had he promised to bring in Steven Gallagher?

  Gideon sighed. He had promised, though; he had given his word. And that had to be respected, despite the fact that he liked Steven Gallagher, liked his father, and felt something disturbingly beyond liking for Willow.

  In near despair, Gideon kicked off his boots, unbuttoned his shirt, then removed his trousers. He couldn’t help drawing a parallel between himself and Benedict Arnold, and the comparison smarted.

  The next morning, groggy from the excess of whiskey and the restless night, Gideon put on his best clothes and set out for Judge Gallagher’s stately house.

  Oh, yes, he thought. And it was his mother’s fine residence, as well.

  * * *

  Willow stared at the disembodied mustache that Gideon had presented to her, in her father’s entry hall, and then tried to suppress the smile of understanding that tugged at one side of her mouth. Once, in a poker game, Steven had acquired the moth-eaten belongings of an out-of-work stage actor. Obviously her brother was making use of the costumes.

  Gideon arched an eyebrow, watching her closely.

  Willow, having momentarily forgotten what her father had told her about Gideon the day before, remembered, and stiffened. This man was not the dashing and chivalrous Lancelot of her fantasies, and she must keep that in mind. Gideon was a liar and a trickster, as well as lecherous, and he’d come to Virginia City to find and arrest Steven. Period.

  Even worse, he was base enough to use Willow herself to achieve this end.

  “Where did you get such a thing?” she asked coolly, handing the mustache back to Gideon.

  He smiled wanly and she felt a tug in the deepest reg
ions of her heart. “It was given to me by a Scot I met in a saloon last night,” he answered, “along with a rather forceful message.”

  Willow longed to shove Gideon back out onto the porch and slam the door in his face, but she didn’t dare. After all, this scoundrel was Evadne’s beloved son, the golden one, and as such, he was welcome in the household no matter what. “Does this—this hank of hair have some significance, or are you merely trying to bore me to death, Mr. Marshall?”

  Gideon laughed. “Does your brother often disguise himself as a peddler and walk among the law-abiding, Mrs. Marshall?” he asked mildly, his eyes dancing.

  Willow grimaced at the reminder of her legal bond with this man. “I asked you not to address me that way,” she said. She was turning away, intending to abandon this unwanted guest to his doting mother, who would soon descend the stairs, when he caught her elbow in his hand and forced her to stay.

  “I’ve been thinking about our situation, Mrs. Marshall,” he announced, in an undertone, a muscle growing taut in his freshly shaven jaw. “Perhaps it would be a good idea if we lived together as man and wife.”

  Willow stared at him in amazement. Her heart grew wings, soared into her throat, and flapped there like a bird trapped in a chimney pipe. “What?”

  He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “You’ve set some very stiff conditions—such as my remaining faithful to you. I am not a celibate man, my dear, and if I cannot share your bed, I promise you, I shall share someone else’s.”

  Willow felt a warm glow in her cheeks and she tried to pull free of his grasp, to no avail. “You may sleep with whomever you please, Mr. Marshall,” she said, and even though she knew what a wretch this man was, the image of him lying in another woman’s arms seared her from the inside, as though she’d swallowed live coals. With a sniff, she added, “I really don’t care what you do, as long as I can be free of you at the earliest possible moment.”

  His wondrous eyes assessed her, seeing beneath the surface, skimming, it seemed, over her very soul. “How you’ve changed since yesterday, when you were demanding my husbandly fidelity.”

  “I didn’t know what you were really after then!”

  Gideon arched one eyebrow. “What am I after?”

  “I think we both know,” Willow whispered angrily, as Evadne came sweeping down the stairway, dressed in a green silk morning gown and glowing at the sight of her son as she trilled a merry greeting.

  Reluctantly, Gideon released Willow and favored his mother with a patient smile. “We’ll discuss this again later, Mrs. Marshall,” he informed his bride, out of the side of his mouth.

  Willow knew real gratitude as her stepmother caught Gideon’s arm and all but dragged him into the parlor, prattling cheerfully on about the “social desolation” of a place like Virginia City, where there simply was no culture to be found.

  Disgruntled and very much at loose ends, Willow wandered into the sitting room and looked up at the massive painting of Gideon displayed over the fireplace. Remembering all the foolish dreams she’d nurtured, both before the debacle in California and after, she made an angry sound and put out her tongue.

  This brief and impotent defiance was immediately followed by a sweep of sadness that took all the starch out of Willow Gallagher and caused her to sink despondently into a nearby chair. She almost wished that Gideon had not reached Virginia City in time to stop her wedding to Norville; if he hadn’t, she would have suffered much in Mr. Pickering’s bed, but she would also have known for a certainty that Steven was still safe.

  She sighed, letting her eyes drift to the suit of armor that stood in one corner of the room, a relic from one of her father and Evadne’s trips to Europe, and new pain filled her. How often had she actually spoken to that ridiculous tangle of iron, pretending that it was a knight?

  Tears filled her eyes. The time for childish games was long past.

  * * *

  Evadne Gallagher nearly dropped her delicate china teacup. “Gideon!” she gasped, her eyes wide with horror. “That is the most scurrilous suggestion I’ve ever heard!”

  Gideon sighed, ignoring the cup of tea that awaited him on the little table beside his chair. “Willow and I are married, Mother,” he said dryly. “Why does it surprise you that I want to live with my own wife?”

  “Married!” Evadne’s hand rose to flutter, fanlike, in front of her reddened face. “Merciful heavens, Gideon, you are not married to that-that hoyden! You were the victim of a trick.”

  Gideon thought of Zachary and longed to strangle him. “Willow was the victim, Mother, not I. She is my wife and I want to live with her.”

  “Live with her! Gideon, how can you even consider such a thing, when . . .”

  Impatience filled all the spaces inside Gideon that were not already occupied by weariness, confusion, and the residual effects of his hangover. “Mother,” he broke in, “I understand that Willow was conceived outside your marriage. What I can’t quite grasp is why you hate her the way you do. Surely you must realize that the circumstances of her birth were no fault of her own.”

  “The child is impossible!”

  “The child isn’t a child at all, Mother,” Gideon corrected her. “She’s a woman, and I want her.”

  His mother looked patently shocked. She fluttered one hand in front of her face and breathed in short gasps. “Gideon!” she finally sputtered. “What a dreadful thing to say . . .”

  He stood up, uncomfortable in that fussy, cluttered parlor with its fringes and tassels and figurines, and went to the window. Recollections of the day before, with Willow, burned through him like some invisible wildfire, and he realized with a jolt that he’d been looking for an excuse to bed her ever since. “Is the judge at home?” he asked, in what he hoped was a reasonable and moderate tone.

  Behind him, Evadne was frantic; the air crackled with her annoyance and her indignation. “Gideon, what about Miss Roberts?” she pleaded. “What about the woman you promised to wed?”

  What indeed, thought Gideon. All his grand plans aside, the fact was that Daphne Roberts wasn’t very likely to want him for a husband, once she learned the enormity of the situation. In Daphne’s social circles, “complications” like Willow were frowned upon. Though he might be able to persuade the comely Miss Roberts to overlook his sins later, Gideon was not dealing with later. He was dealing with now.

  “Gideon!” prodded his mother.

  “Is the judge at home or not, Mother?”

  “Devlin is away for the day,” Evadne finally admitted. “What do you want with him, anyway?”

  “I thought it would be decent to tell the judge that I plan to move his daughter from this house into one of my own,” Gideon said, and it was as though he stood back from himself, watching, marveling. What the hell was he doing?

  Evadne gave a distracted little cry and swooned into her chair, her eyes rolling back in her head, her hands quivering. She’d had these spells for as long as Gideon could remember, usually at her personal convenience, but they never failed to frighten him.

  He strode to the open doorway and shouted for help.

  Both Willow and Maria came on the run, the latter bearing a vial of smelling salts that probably came into continual use in this house. Evadne was revived, after a fashion, and guided upstairs to her room, leaning hard against Maria.

  “What on earth did you say to her?” Willow gasped, one hand to her throat. She was pale, and the worry in her eyes looked genuine.

  A muscle twitched in Gideon’s jaw and he swore under his breath. “I told my mother that I want you to come and live with me, Willow.”

  The full mouth that he had not had enough of, that he longed to kiss even now, rounded into a circle and then parted slightly.

  “Pack your things, Mrs. Marshall,” Gideon said decisively into the pulsing silence. “As soon as I’m sure Mother will be all right, you and I are going home.”

  * * *

  Willow’s emotions ran a gamut ranging from stunned dismay to shee
r joy. “I believe I’ve already told you, sir,” she managed to say, raising her voice a little because her heart was beating so loudly, “that I want absolutely nothing to do with you.”

  “Yesterday,” Gideon reminded her calmly, “your body told me something entirely different.”

  “How can you even bring this up, now of all times, when your mother has just taken sick?”

  “My mother falls ill,” Gideon pointed out, his voice taut, “when it best suits her purposes.”

  “Gideon!”

  “Once Mother adjusts to the idea of our living together, you and me, I mean, she will probably make a most miraculous recovery.”

  Many times over the years, Willow had seen Evadne develop a “sick headache” or the vapors when she wanted to draw attention to herself.

  “Willow,” Gideon persisted, “we are married.”

  “But-but, Gideon, it isn’t a real marriage—you don’t love me—”

  “That is quite true,” he answered, probably having no conception of the depth of the wound he’d just inflicted. “All the same, you will pack your things and be ready when I come back for you.”

  “I refuse to live with you just because you decree it!”

  “You have two hours,” Gideon said, and then he was striding out of the parlor, through the entry hall, onto the front porch. Forty minutes later, he bought a white frame house and seven hundred acres of land he’d read about in that morning’s newspaper and rationalized the brash expenditure by telling himself that he was tired of living in a hotel.

  * * *

  Maria watched her charge with gentle amusement. “Hadn’t you better start packing, señorita?” she asked. “Oh, but now you are a señora, of course. I keep forgetting.”

  Willow, having retreated into her bedroom, glared at the woman who had practically raised her. Her real mother, Chastity, had cared for no one but Jay Forbes; it had been Maria who had shown her unflagging love. “Packing! Are you mad, Maria? I’m not going anywhere with that man!”

  “That man is your husband,” Maria reminded her quietly, “and he is the kind, I think, to come up here after you if you are not ready when he arrives.”