Читать книгу Here and Then - Linda Lael Miller - Страница 9

Rue took in the crude jail cell, the potbellied stove with a coffeepot and a kettle crowding the top, the black, iron key ring hanging on a peg behind the desk. Her gaze swung to the marshal’s face, and she gestured toward the barred room at the back of the building.

“If I’m under arrest, Marshal,” she said matter-of-factly, “I’d like to know exactly what I’m being charged with.”

The peace officer sighed, hanging his ancient canvas coat from a tarnished brass rack. “Well, miss, we could start with trespassing.” He gestured toward a chair pushed back against the short railing that surrounded the immediate office area. “Sit down and tell me who you are and what you were doing snooping around Dr. Fortner’s house that way.”

Rue was feeling a little weak, a rare occurrence for her. She pulled the chair closer to the desk and sat, pushing her tousled hair back from her face. “I told you. My name is Rue Claridge,” she replied patiently. “Dr. Fortner’s wife is my cousin, and I was looking for her. That’s all.”

The turquoise gaze, sharp with intelligence, rested on the gold pendant at the base of Rue’s throat, causing the pulse beneath to make a strange, sudden leap. “I believe you said Mrs. Fortner has a necklace just like that one.”

Rue swallowed. She was very good at sidestepping issues she didn’t want to discuss, but when it came to telling an outright lie, she hadn’t even attained amateur status. “Y-yes,” she managed to say. Her earlier shock at finding herself in another century was thawing now, becoming low-grade panic. Was it possible that she’d stumbled into Elisabeth’s nervous breakdown, or was she having a separate one, all her own?

The marshal’s jawline tightened under a shadow of beard. His strong, sun-browned fingers were interlaced over his middle as he leaned back in his creaky desk chair. “How do you account for those clothes you’re wearing?”

She took a deep, quivering breath. “Where I come from, lots of women dress like this.”

Marshal Haynes arched one eyebrow. “And where is that?” There was an indulgent tone in his voice that made Rue want to knuckle his head.

Rue thought fast. “Montana. I have a ranch over there.”

Farley scratched the back of his neck with an idleness Rue perceived as entirely false. Although his lackadaisical manner belied the fact, she sensed a certain lethal energy about him, an immense physical and emotional power barely restrained. Before she could stop it, Rue’s mind had made the jump to wondering what it would be like to be held and caressed by this man.

Just the idea gave her a feeling of horrified delight.

“Doesn’t your husband mind having his wife go around dressed like a common cowhand?” he asked evenly.

Color flooded Rue’s face, but she held her temper carefully in check. Marshal Haynes’s attitude toward women was unacceptable, but he was a man of his time and all attempts to convert him to modern thinking would surely be wasted.

“I don’t have a husband.” She thought she saw a flicker of reaction in the incredible eyes.

“Your daddy, then?”

Rue drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m not close to my family,” she said sweetly. For all practical intents and purposes, the statement was true. Rue’s parents had been divorced years before, going their separate ways. Her mother was probably holed up in some fancy spa somewhere, getting ready for the ski season, and her father’s last postcard had been sent from Monaco. “I’m on my own. Except for Elisabeth, of course.”

The marshal studied her for a long moment, looking pensive now, and then leaned forward in his chair. “Yes. Elisabeth Fortner.”

“Right,” Rue agreed, her head spinning. Nothing in her eventful past had prepared her for this particular situation. Somehow, she’d missed Time Travel 101 in college, and the Nostalgia Channel mostly covered the 1940s.

She sighed to herself. If she’d been sent back to the big-band era, maybe she would have known how to act.

“I’m going to let you go for now,” Haynes announced thoughtfully. “But if you get into any trouble, ma’am, you’ll have me to contend with.”

A number of wisecracks came to the forefront of Rue’s mind, but she valiantly held them back. “I’ll just…go now,” she said awkwardly, before racing out of the jailhouse onto the street.

The screech of the mill saw hurt her ears, and she hurried in the opposite direction. It would take a good forty-five minutes to walk back to the house in the country, and by the looks of the sky, the sun would be setting soon.

As she was passing the Hang-Dog Saloon, a shrill cry from above made Rue stop and look up.

Two prostitutes were leaning up against a weathered railing, their seedy-looking satin dresses glowing in the late-afternoon sun. “Where’d you get them pants?” the one in blue inquired, just before spitting tobacco into the street.

The redhead beside her, who was wearing a truly ugly pea green gown, giggled as though her friend had said something incredibly clever.

“You know, Red,” Rue replied, shading her eyes with one hand as she looked up, and choosing to ignore both the question and the tobacco juice, “you really ought to have your colors done. That shade of green is definitely unbecoming.”

The prostitutes looked at each other, then turned and flounced away from the railing, disappearing into the noisy saloon.

The conversation had not been a total loss, Rue decided, looking down at her jeans, sneakers and T-shirt. There was no telling how long she’d have to stay in this backward century, and her modern clothes would be a real hindrance.

She turned and spotted a store across the street, displaying gingham dresses, bridles and wooden buckets behind its fly-speckled front window. “‘And bring your Visa card,’” she muttered to herself, “‘because they don’t take American Express.’”

Rue carefully made her way over, avoiding road apples, mud puddles and two passing wagons.

On the wooden sidewalk in front of the mercantile, she stood squinting, trying to see through the dirty glass. The red-and-white gingham dress on display in the window looked more suited to Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz fame, with its silly collar and big, flouncy bow at the back. The garment’s only saving grace was that it looked as though it would probably fit.

Talking to herself was a habit Rue had acquired because she’d spent so much time alone researching and polishing her stories. “Maybe I can get a pair of ruby slippers, too,” she murmured, walking resolutely toward the store’s entrance. “Then I could just click my heels together and voilà, Toto, we’re back in Kansas.”

A pleasant-looking woman with gray hair and soft blue eyes beamed at Rue as she entered. The smile faded to an expression of chagrined consternation, however, as the old lady took in Rue’s jeans and T-shirt.

“May I help you?” the lady asked, sounding as though she doubted very much that anybody could.

Rue was dizzied by the sheer reality of the place, the woman, the circumstances in which she found herself. A fly bounced helplessly against a window, buzzing in bewilderment the whole time, and Rue felt empathy for it. “That checked dress in the window,” she began, her voice coming out hoarse. “How much is it?”

The fragile blue gaze swept over Rue once again, worriedly. “Why, it’s fifty cents, child.”

For a moment, Rue was delighted. Fifty cents. No problem.

Then she realized she hadn’t brought any money with her. Even if she had, all the bills and currency would have looked suspiciously different from what was being circulated in the 1890s, and she would undoubtedly have found herself back in Farley Haynes’s custody, post haste.

Rue smiled her most winning smile, the one that had gotten her into so many press conferences and out of so many tight spots. “Just put it on my account, please,” she said. Rue possessed considerable bravado, but the strain of the day was beginning to tell.

The store mistress raised delicate eyebrows and cleared her throat. “Do I know you?”

Another glance at the dress—it only added insult to injury that the thing was so relentlessly ugly—gave Rue the impetus to answer, “No. My name is Rue…Miss Rue Claridge, and I’m Elisabeth Fortner’s cousin. Perhaps you could put the dress on her husband’s account?”

The woman sniffed. Clearly, in mentioning the good doctor, Rue had touched a nerve. “Jonathan Fortner ought to have his head examined, marrying a strange woman the way he did. There were odd doings in that house!”

Normally Rue would have been defensive, since she tended to get touchy where Elisabeth was concerned, but she couldn’t help thinking how peculiar her cousin must have seemed to these people. Bethie was a quiet sort, but her ideas and attitudes were strictly modern, and she must surely have rubbed more than one person the wrong way.

Rue focused on the block of cheese sitting on the counter, watching as two flies explored the hard, yellow rind. “What kind of odd doings?” she asked, too much the reporter to let such an opportunity pass.

The storekeeper seemed to forget that Rue was a suspicious type, new in town and wearing clothes more suited, as Farley had said, to a cowhand. Leaning forward, she whispered confidentially, “That woman would simply appear and disappear at will. Not a few of us think she’s a witch and that justice would have been better served if she’d been hanged after that trial of hers!”

For a moment, the fundamentals of winning friends and influencing people slipped Rue’s mind. “Don’t be silly—there’re no such things as witches.” She lowered her voice and, having dispatched with superstition, hurried on to her main concern. “Elisabeth was put on trial and might have been hanged? For what?”

The other woman was in a state of offense, probably because one of her pet theories had just been ridiculed. “For a time, it looked as though she’d murdered not only Dr. Fortner, but his young daughter, Trista, as well, by setting that blaze.” She paused, clearly befuddled. “Then they came back. Just magically reappeared out of the ruins of that burned house.”

Rue was nodding to herself. She didn’t know the rules of this time-travel game, but it didn’t take a MENSA membership to figure out how Bethie’s husband and the little girl had probably escaped the fire. No doubt they’d fled over the threshold into the next century, then had trouble returning. Or perhaps time didn’t pass at the same rate here as it did there….

It seemed to Rue that Aunt Verity had claimed the necklace’s magic was unpredictable, waning and waxing under mysterious rules of its own. Elisabeth had mentioned nothing like that in her letters, however.

Rue brought herself back to the matter at hand—buying the dress. “Dr. Fortner must be a man of responsibility, coming back from the great beyond like that. It would naturally follow that his credit would be good.”

The storekeeper went pale, then pursed her lips and sighed, “I’m sorry. Dr. Fortner is, indeed, a trusted and valued customer, but I cannot add merchandise to his account without his permission. Besides, there’s no telling when he and that bride of his will return from California.”

The woman was nondescript and diminutive, and yet Rue knew she’d be wasting her time to argue. She’d met third-world leaders with more flexible outlooks on life. “Okay,” she said with a sigh. She’d just have to check the house and see if Elisabeth had left any clothes or money behind. Provided she couldn’t get back into her own time, that is.

Rue offered a polite goodbye, only too aware that she might be stuck on this side of 1900 indefinitely.

Although she power walked most of the way home—this drew stares from the drivers of passing buggies and wagons—it was quite dark when Rue arrived. She let herself in through the kitchen door, relieved to find that the housekeeper had left for the day.

After stumbling around in the darkness for a while, Rue found matches and lit the kerosene lamp in the middle of the table.

The weak light flickered over a fire-damaged kitchen, made livable by someone’s hard work. There was an old-fashioned icebox, a pump handle at the sink and a big cookstove with shiny chrome trim.

Bethie actually wanted to stay in this place, Rue reflected, marveling. Her cousin would develop biceps just getting enough water to make the morning coffee, and she’d probably have to chop and carry wood, too. Then there would be the washing and the ironing and the cooking. And childbirth at its most natural, with nothing for the pain except maybe a bullet to bite on.

All this for the mysterious Dr. Jonathan Fortner.

“No man is worth it, Bethie,” Rue protested to the empty room, but Farley Haynes did swagger to mind, and his image was so vivid, she could almost catch the scent of his skin and hair.

Desperately hungry all of a sudden, she ransacked the icebox, helping herself to milk so creamy it had golden streaks on top, and half a cold, boiled potato. When she’d eaten, she took the lamp and headed upstairs, leaving the other rooms to explore later.

She’d had quite enough adventure for one day.

In the second floor hallway, Rue looked at the blackened door and knew without even touching the knob that she would find nothing but more ruins on the other side. Maybe she’d be able to get back to her own century, but it wasn’t going to happen that night.

Reaching the master bedroom, Rue approached the tall armoire first. It soon became apparent that Bethie hadn’t left much behind, certainly nothing Rue could wear, and if there was a cache of money, it wasn’t hidden in that room.

Finally, exhausted, Rue washed as best she could, stripped off her clothes and crawled into the big bed.

Farley didn’t make a habit of turning up in ladies’ bedrooms of a morning, though he’d awakened in more than a few. There was just something about this particular woman that drew him with a force nearly as strong as his will, and it wasn’t just that she wore trousers and claimed to be Lizzie Fortner’s kin.

Her honey-colored hair, shorter than most women wore but still reaching to her shoulders, tumbled across the white pillow, catching the early sunlight, and her skin, visible to her armpits, where the sheet stopped, was a creamy golden peach. Her dark eyelashes lay on her cheeks like the wings of some small bird, and her breathing, even and untroubled, twisted Farley’s senses up tight as the spring of a cheap watch.

He swallowed hard. Rue Claridge might be telling the truth, he thought, at least about being related to Mrs. Fortner. God knew, she was strange enough, with her trousers and her funny way of talking.

“Miss Claridge?” he said after clearing his throat. He wanted to wriggle her toe, but decided everything south of where the sheet stopped was out of his jurisdiction. “Rue!”

She sat bolt upright in bed and, to Farley’s guarded relief and vast disappointment, held the top sheet firmly against her bosom.

Farley Haynes was standing at the foot of the bed, his hands resting on his hips, his handsome head cocked to one side.

Rue sat up hastily, insulted and alarmed and strangely aroused all at once, and wrenched the sheets from her collarbone to her chin.

“I sure hope you’re making yourself at home and all,” Farley said, and the expression in his eyes was wry in spite of his folksy drawl. He wasn’t fooling Rue; this guy was about as slow moving and countrified as a New York politician.

Although the marshal hadn’t touched her, Rue had the oddest sensation of impact, as though she’d been hauled against his chest, with just the sheet between them. “What are you doing here?” she demanded furiously when she found her voice at last. She felt the ornate headboard press against her bare back and bottom.

He arched one eyebrow and folded his arms. “I could ask the same question of you, little lady.”

Enough was enough. Nobody was going to call Rue Claridge “honey,” “sweetie” or “little lady” and get away with it, no matter what century they came from.

“Don’t call me ‘little’ anything!” Rue snapped. “I’m a grown woman and a self-supporting professional, and I won’t be patronized!”

This time, both the intruder’s eyebrows rose, then knit together into a frown. “You sure are a temperamental filly,” Farley allowed. “And mouthy as hell, too.”

“Get out of here!” Rue shouted.

Idly, Farley drew up a rocking chair and sat. Then he rubbed his stubbly chin, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You said you were a professional before. Question is, a professional what?”

Rue was still clutching the covers to her throat, and she was breathing hard, as though she’d just finished a marathon. If she hadn’t been afraid to let go of the bedclothes with even one hand, she would have snatched up the small crockery pitcher on the nightstand and hurled it at his head.

“You would never understand,” she answered haughtily. “Now it’s my turn to ask a question, Marshal. What the hell are you doing in my bedroom?”

“This isn’t your bedroom,” the lawman pointed out quietly. “It’s Jon Fortner’s. And I’m here because Miss Ellen came to town and reported a prowler on the premises.”

Rue gave an outraged sigh. The housekeeper had apparently entered the room, seen an unwelcome guest sleeping there and marched herself into Pine River to demand legal action. “Hellfire and spit,” Rue snapped. “Why didn’t she drag Judge Wapner out here, too?”

Farley’s frown deepened to bewilderment. “There’s no judge by that name around these parts,” he said. “And I wish you’d stop talking like that. If the Presbyterians hear you, they’ll be right put out about it.”

Catching herself just before she would have exploded into frustrated hysterics, Rue sucked in a deep breath and held it until a measure of calm came over her. “All right,” she said finally, in a reasonable tone. “I will try not to stir up the Presbyterians. I promise. The point is, now you’ve investigated and you’ve seen that I’m not a trespasser, but a member of the family. I have a right to be here, Marshal, but, frankly, you don’t. Now if you would please leave.”

Farley sat forward in his chair, turning the brim of his battered, sweat-stained hat in nimble brown fingers. “Until I get word back from San Francisco that it’s all right for you to stay here, ma’am, I’m afraid you’ll have to put up at one of the boardinghouses in town.”

Rue would have agreed to practically anything just to get him to leave the room. The painful truth was, Marshal Farley Haynes made places deep inside her thrum and pulse in response to some hidden dynamic of his personality. That was terrifying because she’d never felt anything like it before.

“Whatever you say,” she replied with a lift of her chin. Innocuous as they were, the words came out sounding defiant. “Just leave this room, please. Immediately.”

She thought she saw a twinkle in Farley’s gem-bright eyes. He stood up with an exaggerated effort and, to Rue’s horror, walked to the head of the bed and stood looking down at her.

“No husband and no daddy,” he reflected sagely. “Little wonder your manners are so sorry.” With that, he cupped one hand under her chin, then bent over and kissed her, just as straightforwardly as if he were shaking her hand.

To Rue’s further mortification, instead of pushing him away, as her acutely trained left brain told her to do, she rose higher on her knees and thrust herself into the kiss. It was soft and warm at first, then Farley touched the seam of her mouth with his tongue and she opened to him, like a night orchid worshiping the moon. He took utter and complete command before suddenly stepping back.

“I expect you to be settled somewhere else by nightfall,” he said gruffly. To his credit, he didn’t avert his eyes, but he didn’t look any happier about what he’d just done than Rue was.

“Get out,” she breathed.

Farley settled his hat on his head, touched the brim in a mockingly cordial way and strolled from the room.

Rue sent her pillow flying after him, because he was so in-sufferable. Because he’d had the unmitigated gall not only to come into her bedroom, but to kiss her. Because her insides were still colliding like carnival rides gone berserk.

Later, ignoring Ellen, who was watchful and patently disapproving, Rue fetched a ladder from the barn and set it against the burned side of the house. At least, she thought, looking down at her jeans and T-shirt, she was dressed for climbing.

She still wanted to find Elisabeth and make sure her cousin was all right, but there were things she’d need to sustain herself in this primitive era. She intended to return to the late twentieth century, buy some suitable clothes from a costume place or a theater troupe, and pick up some old currency at a coin shop. Then she’d return, purchase a ticket on a train or boat headed south and see for herself that Bethie was happy and well.

It was an excellent plan, all in all, except that when Rue reached the top of the ladder and opened the charred door, nothing happened. She knew by the runner on the hallway floor and the pictures on the wall that she was still in 1892, even though she was wearing the necklace and wishing as hard as she could.

Obviously, one couldn’t go back and forth between the two centuries on a whim.

Rue climbed down the ladder in disgust, finally, and stood in the deep grass, dusting her soot-blackened hands off on the legs of her jeans. “Damn it, Bethie,” she muttered, “you’d better have a good reason for putting me through this!”

In the meantime, whether Elisabeth had a viable excuse for being in the wrong century or not, Rue had to make the best of her circumstances. She needed to find a way to fit in—and fast—before the locals decided she was a witch.

Ellen had draped a rug over the clothesline and was busily beating it with something that resembled a snowshoe. Occasionally she glanced warily in Rue’s direction, as though expecting to be turned into a crow at any moment.

Rue wedged her hands into the hip pockets of her jeans and mentally ruled out all possibility of searching Elisabeth’s house for money while the housekeeper was around. There was only one way to get the funds she needed, and if she didn’t get busy, she might find herself spending the night in somebody’s barn.

Or the Pine River jailhouse.

The idea of being behind bars went against her grain. Rue had once done a brief stint in a minimum-security women’s prison for refusing to reveal a source to a grand jury, but this would obviously be different.

Rue headed for the road, walking backward so she could look at the house and “remember” how it would look in another hundred years. A part of her still expected to wake up on the couch in Aunt Verity’s front parlor and discover this whole experience had been nothing more than a dream.

Reaching Pine River, Rue headed straight for the Hang-Dog Saloon, though she did have the discretion to make her way around to the alley and go in the back door.

In a smoky little room in the rear of the building, Rue found exactly what she’d hoped for, exactly what a thousand TV Westerns had conditioned her to expect. Four drunk men were seated around a rickety table, playing poker.

At the sight of a woman entering this inner sanctum, especially one wearing pants, the cardplayers stared. A man sporting a dusty stovepipe hat went so far as to let the unlit stogie fall from between his teeth, and the fat one with garters on his sleeves folded his cards and threw them in.

“What the hell…?”

After swallowing hard, Rue peeled off her digital watch and tossed it into the center of the table. “I’d like to play, if you fellas don’t mind,” she said, sounding much bolder than she felt.

The man in the stovepipe hat had apparently recovered from the shock of seeing the wrong woman in the wrong place; he picked up the wristwatch and studied it with a solemn frown. “Never seen nothin’ like this here,” he told his colleagues.

Being one of those people who believe that great forces come to the aid of the bold, Rue drew up a chair and sat down between a long-haired gunfighter type in a canvas duster and the hefty guy with the garters.

“Deal me in,” she said brightly.

“Where’d you get this thing?” asked the one in the high hat.

“K mart,” Rue answered, reaching for the battered deck lying in the middle of the table. She thought of bumper stickers she’d seen in her own time and couldn’t help grinning. “My other watch is a Rolex,” she added.

Stovepipe looked at her in consternation and opened his mouth to protest, but when Rue shuffled the cards deftly from one hand to the other without dropping a single one, he pressed his lips together.

The gunfighter whistled. “Son of a—Tarnation, ma’am. Where’d you learn to do that?”

Rue was warming to the game, as well as the conversation. “On board Air Force One, about three years ago. A Secret Serviceman taught me.”

Stovepipe and Garters looked at each other in pure bewilderment.

“I say the lady plays,” said the gunslinger.

Nobody argued, perhaps because Quickdraw was wearing a mean-looking forty-five low on his hip.

Rue dealt with a skill born of years of practice—her grandfather had taught her to play five-card draw back in Montana when she was six years old, and she’d been winning matchsticks, watches, ballpoint pens and pocket change ever since.

Rue had taken several pots, made up mostly of coins, though she had raked in a couple of oversize nineteenth-century dollar bills, in this game when the prostitute in the pea green dress came rustling in.

The woman’s painted mouth fell open when she saw Rue sitting at the table, actually playing poker with the men, and her kohl-lined eyes widened. She set a fresh bottle of whiskey down on the table with an irate thump.

“Be quiet, Sissy,” Quickdraw said, talking around the matchstick he was holding between his teeth. “This here is serious poker.”

Sissy’s eyes looked, as Aunt Verity would have said, like two burn holes in a blanket, and Rue felt a stab of pity for her. God knew, nineteenth-century life was hard enough for respectable women. It would be even rougher for ladies of the evening.

Quickdraw picked up Rue’s watch, which was lying next to her stack of winnings, and held it up for Sissy’s inspection. “You bring me good luck, little sugar girl, and I’ll give you this for a trinket.”

“I think I may throw up,” Rue murmured under her breath.

“What’d you say?” Stovepipe demanded, sounding a little testy. Losing at poker clearly didn’t sit well with him.

Rue offered the same smile she would have used to cajole the president of the United States into answering a tough question at a press conference, and replied, “I said I’m sure glad I showed up.”

Sissy tossed the watch back to the table, glared at Rue for a moment, then turned and sashayed out of the room.

Rue was secretly relieved and turned all her concentration on the matter at hand. She had enough winnings to buy that horrible gingham dress and rent herself a room at the boardinghouse; now all she needed to do was ease out of the game without making her companions angry.

She yawned expansively.

Garters gave her a quelling look, clearly not ready to give up on the evening, and the game went on. And on.

It was starting to get embarrassing the way Rue kept winning, when all of a sudden the inner door to the saloon crashed open. There, filling the doorway like some fugitive from a Louis L’Amour novel, was Farley Haynes.

Finding Rue with five cards in her hand and a stack of coins in front of her, he swore. Sissy peered around his broad shoulder and smiled, just to let Rue know she’d been the one to bring about her impending downfall.

“Game’s over,” Farley said in that gruff voice, and none of the players took exception to the announcement. In fact, except for Rue, they all scattered, muttering various excuses and hasty pleasantries as they rushed out.

Rue stood and began stuffing her winnings into the pockets of her jeans. “Don’t get your mustache in a wringer, Marshal,” she said. “I’ve got what I came for and now I’m leaving.”

Farley shook his head in quiet, angry wonderment and gestured toward the door with one hand. “Come along with me, Miss Claridge. You’re under arrest.”