The Horseman's Bride

He kept his eyes on her face until the darkness pulled him under.

Clara took the colt at an easy trot toward home. The sun was at high morning, the sky a blazing blue that promised a hot afternoon. But the weather was the last thing on Clara’s mind.

She’d left Tanner asleep on Mary’s spare bed, his shoulder dressed and bandaged, his senses drugged by Mary’s potent jimsonweed tea. Knocking him out was the only way to make sure he’d stay put. His body was in shock and he’d lost enough blood to make him weak. He needed to stay off his feet, at least until tomorrow.

After he’d slipped away she had lingered a moment, looking down at him. In sleep he’d looked strangely vulnerable—tawny hair tumbling over his forehead, mahogany lashes lying still against his tanned cheeks.

Where the shirt had been cut away, his skin was like warm ivory. A ray of sunlight, falling between the curtains, made a golden pool in the hollow of his throat. He was a beautiful man, Clara thought—as beautiful in his own way as the stallion he rode.

But who was he and what was he hiding?

Resisting the urge to touch him, Clara had unfolded an afghan from the back of a chair and laid it over his sleeping body. Then she’d tiptoed out of the room and closed the door behind her.

Before leaving, she’d unsaddled Galahad and loosed him in the corral with Mary’s two geldings. The power of the big stallion had thrilled her. Tomorrow she would bring her two mares to the farm and turn them out together in the same pasture. When they were ready to breed, the stallion would know what to do.

She could only hope Tanner would stay around long enough for it to happen.

She was putting way too much trust in the man, Clara lectured herself. For all she knew, he could disappear some night, taking her mares with him.

But that didn’t sound like Tanner. The scenario would be too simple, the crime too easily solved. Tanner had said he wasn’t a thief, and she was inclined to believe him. But other secrets lurked behind his intriguing manner. Clearly he wasn’t the man he pretended to be.

She passed through the opening in the fence where Tanner had planned to build a gate. Seeing the place again brought home the memory of lying on her back, opening her eyes to the sight of his face. For that one heart-stopping instant, his blue eyes had pierced her, held her, touched her in some deep place. Then he’d spoken angrily, shattering the spell.

What had she agreed to when she’d accepted his bargain? An open promise in exchange for the use of the stallion—she must have been out of her mind! He could ask any favor of her and she’d be honor-bound to grant it.

What would that favor be?

Tanner had stepped in to save her and her grandmother. But that didn’t mean he was a good man. For all she knew, he could be plotting something wicked and scheming to make her a part of it. When he’d urged Mary not to call the marshal, she had backed him. But it was her heart, not her head that had made the decision. Tanner was a compellingly attractive man, the stuff of a young girl’s dreams and fantasies. But she couldn’t allow herself to be naïve about him any longer.

It was possible that she really had made a bargain with the devil.

Across the pasture, the two-story Seavers home rose above a flowering orchard. Painted pale cream, with tall windows and dark green shutters, the spacious house was as stately as it was comfortable. Beyond it, the barn, sheds and stables stretched toward the far paddock. Clara had grown up here, with her parents and her younger brother and sister. There was no place on earth she would rather be than here on the ranch, surrounded by her beloved horses and her family.

Slowing Foxfire to a walk, she pondered how much to tell her parents. Judd and Hannah Seavers were protective of Mary and would welcome any excuse to pluck her off the farm and settle her in their home. But Mary was fiercely independent. She’d insisted that Clara not tell them about the two men who’d come by. Clara had reluctantly agreed. But sooner or later, her parents would have to know about Tanner.

Say too much, and they’d go flying over to Mary’s to make sure she was safe.

Say too little, and they’d suspect her of keeping something from them. Either way, there could be trouble.

Clara was still weighing her words as she approached the open pasture gate. The sight of milling men and horses surprised her until she remembered. This was the day her father and the hired cowhands would be driving the cattle to summer pasture in the mountains. It appeared they were about to ride out.

Relief swept over her as she rode into the yard. Her father would be away for at least a week, maybe longer. Hopefully, by the time he returned, the mares would be bred, Tanner would be gone and there’d be no need for questions.

There would still be her mother to get around. But one parent would be easier to manage than two.

Her brother, Daniel, grinned at her as he reined in his skittish horse. He loved going off with the men on the spring cattle drive, and he was in high spirits. Katy sat pouting on the front steps. She had begged her father to let her go along, too. He had given her a firm refusal.

Clara unsaddled Foxfire and turned him out to graze in the paddock. When she returned to the house, her father and mother were saying goodbye on the porch. What a striking couple they made, she thought. Judd Seavers, nearing fifty, was tall and lean, his handsome features leathered by sun and wind. His wife, Hannah, a decade younger, was a classic beauty with thick wheaten hair and a lushly rounded figure. Even after two decades of marriage, they had eyes only for each other.

Katy was still huddled on the top step. Reaching down, Judd ruffled her corn silk hair. “Don’t be upset, Katydid,” he said, using his pet name for her. “You’ll find plenty of adventures around here.”

In response, she turned, wrapped her arms around his legs and hugged them hard. Clara stepped up to embrace him next. “Take care of things, girl,” he whispered. “You’re the one I can always count on.”

Guilt stabbed Clara as she kissed his cheek and stepped aside to make way for her mother. Her father was honorable to his very bones. He was depending on her, and here she was plotting behind his back.

She could only hope that her scheme would turn out for the best.

Judd and Hannah’s kiss was long and heartfelt. Hannah had sent her husband off and welcomed him home countless times over the past twenty years. But each time they clung together as if the parting would be their last. It was almost as if they were two parts of the same soul, neither of them complete without the other.

Clara was well aware of the six-month interval between the date of their wedding and the date of her own birth. She’d never discussed it with her mother, but it didn’t take a mathematician to figure out that Hannah had been a pregnant bride. Clara had come to accept the fact, and refused to let it trouble her. Her parents loved each other. They had raised a close and loving family. The past was, as her grandmother would say, water under the bridge.

Judd released his wife, strode down the steps and mounted his horse. Clara stood on the porch with her mother and sister, watching as the men rode down the long drive and out the gate. Only when the dust had settled behind the horses did the three of them turn and go into the house.

Run!

The word screamed through Jace’s mind as he galloped the stallion across the open fields. By now the police would be arriving at the house. When they discovered his abandoned Packard in the drive and his muddy boot prints on the carpet, they’d be after him like a pack of bloodhounds.

The roads would be blocked. His best chance of a clean getaway depended on catching the midnight train. If he could scramble aboard unseen, leaving the horse to find its way home, he’d be well into Kansas by morning.

By now the westbound freight would be approaching the Wilson’s Creek Bridge. When it slowed down for the crossing he’d have one chance to leap aboard—but only if he could get there in time.

The midnight wind was bitter, the moon a pale scimitar veiled by tattered clouds. Behind him, Rumford’s grand plantation-style house rose out of the flatland, growing smaller with distance. Jace thought of his comfortable apartment in town—gone, like everything else he owned. If he went back for so much as a toothbrush the police would close in and he would finish his life at the end of a rope. He had no choice except to run and keep running.

The train whistle screamed through the darkness. Jace pressed forward in the saddle, cursing as he lashed the horse with the reins. On the far side of the field, the headlamp glowed like a great yellow eye as the engine raced toward the bridge. A ghostly plume of steam trailed from the stack.

Even then, he knew he wasn’t going to make it. But something drove him on. Maybe it was the madness of what had happened tonight—what he’d seen and done and all it implied. Or maybe he was just in shock. The rhythm of hoofbeats pounded through his body. The moon blurred. The wind moaned in his ears.

By the time he neared the bridge, the engine had reached the far side of the creek and picked up speed. Boxcars and flatcars rattled along behind it, going fast, too fast. Could he still do it? Could he fling himself out of the saddle and make the leap? Catch something and hold on?

Would it matter if he died trying?

The whistle shrilled a deafening blast. The stallion screamed, leaping and twisting in terror. Flung out of the saddle, Jace felt himself flying, falling, tumbling toward the rushing wheels …

He woke with a jerk, damning the dream that haunted so many of his nights. The room was dark, the stars glowing faintly through the gauzy curtains. His body felt chilled, his skin paper dry. Only when he tried to sit up and felt pain shoot down his arm did he remember the knife wound and how he’d come by it.

Sinking back onto the pillow, he eased himself to full awareness. He was lying on the bed in Mary’s sewing room, where she’d insisted he stay. A lacy crocheted afghan covered his legs. His shirt was cut away and his boots were missing, but otherwise he was fully dressed.

The rank herbal odor of the poultice seeped through the dressing on his shoulder. Whatever Mary had concocted out of those mysterious jars had yet to work its wonders. The soreness was no worse, but he was beginning to chill. Not a good sign.

Damnation, what a time to be laid up!

Too uncomfortable to go back to sleep, he slid his legs off the couch and pushed himself to his feet. The light-headedness was better, but Jace felt disoriented, like a child awakening in a strange room.

Somehow he needed to get out of here.

His boots were nowhere to be found. For all he knew, Mary could have hidden them to keep him from leaving. Stocking footed, he padded to the front door, opened it quietly and stepped out onto the porch.

The gibbous moon rode low in the west but the sky was still dark, the stars still bright. Insect-seeking bats swished through the moonlight. From the brushy hillside beyond the pasture, the plaintive cry of a coyote rose and faded into stillness.