The Ranger's Bride

Chapter Six

The knock came again, harder this time.

“Yoo-hoo, Addy! Are you there, Addy?”

“Pretend you’re not here!” Rede whispered.

Addy wished she could do just that. The very last thing she needed this morning was one of Beatrice Morgan’s long, chatty visits.

“I can’t!” she whispered back. “If I don’t answer, she’ll think I’m still sleeping and come around and knock at the back. She might even look in a window!” she said, pointing frantically at the two low windows, one to the left of the foot of his bed, the other facing the foot of his bed. The lantana bushes on the side of the house would probably keep Beatrice from getting close to the first window, but she could easily look in the back one. And if she did, the old woman would be able to see Rede Smith sitting up in Addy’s bed, even through the sheer muslin curtains.

“All right, but get rid of her!” Rede growled, gesturing toward the sound.

She glared at him before turning to dash down the hallway. She called, “I’m coming!” in hopes of keeping Beatrice from starting to go around to the back.

How dare Rede Smith try to order her around in her own house? She didn’t intend to encourage Beatrice to stay long, but being polite was the very least she could do after sneaking out on the older woman the way she had yesterday.

She was barely in time. Beatrice was just stepping off the porch when Addy threw open the front door.

“Why, there you are! I was just fixin’ to go ’round to the back,” the old woman said. “Sleep late, did you?” she said, eyeing Addy’s creased wrapper and braided hair. “I shouldn’t wonder, after all that commotion yesterday!”

“Yes, I’m afraid I did,” Addy admitted. “Sorry to take so long getting to the door.”

After bustling back up onto the porch, Beatrice shook a plump finger at Addy. “You were a naughty girl yesterday, not to let me know you were leaving. The next thing I knew, Asa Wilson was shaking me awake! I was so worried about you!”

Addy had to smother a smile at the picture the woman painted. It must have been hours later by the time Asa had returned—no wonder the old woman was ashamed to have been caught dozing.

“I am sorry, Miss Beatrice. You looked so tired, and were sleeping so soundly I didn’t have the heart to wake you. Didn’t you see my note?”

“Harrumph,” the old woman snorted. “As if a note could make me rest easy about you. And you look awful, Addy Kelly. Perhaps you should rest in bed today. Why don’t you let me stay here and look after you?”

“Oh, thanks, but I couldn’t possibly go back to bed,” Addy said quickly. “I’m fine, Miss Beatrice, really. I’m expecting customers today. But why don’t you have a cup of coffee with me? I could bring it out on the porch, and we’ll enjoy the sunshine—”

“I’ll take the cup of coffee, and thank you, Addy, but I’ve been ‘enjoying the sunshine’ all the way here, and it’s already hot enough to wither a fence post out there,” she said, pointing at the sun-baked road. “So I’ll drink it in your kitchen.” Without waiting for an invitation, she let herself in.

Addy worried the whole time Beatrice sat in her kitchen that Rede would make some noise that would betray his presence. She was achingly conscious of him lying in the bed just on the other side of the thin wall between the back bedroom and the kitchen, waiting while the old woman chattered about every inconsequential thing that came to her head.

An hour passed before Beatrice at last rose to go. Addy was just letting her out the front door, when she heard hoofbeats.

She looked up and saw Asa Wilson reining in his bay gelding. Tarnation! Now it would be even longer before Rede got his promised coffee.

Remembering that she was still wearing just the violet-sprigged wrapper, she quickly snatched up a black crocheted shawl from the peg by the door and threw it around her.

“Sheriff, maybe you can talk some sense into her head,” Beatrice Morgan said, pausing by his horse as Asa dismounted. “I told her she needs to rest in bed today and she won’t listen to me. But perhaps you can exert some—ahem!—influence with her, Asa,” she said in a coyly insinuating tone.

Addy felt herself coloring at the implication. Clearly, Beatrice Morgan had discerned Asa’s adoration for Addy and assumed the feeling was mutual. She probably figured Addy and Asa were just waiting for Addy’s year of mourning to be up before they declared themselves.

“Asa, I’m fine,” she said firmly. “Just tired, naturally, after yesterday. I—I couldn’t sleep very well.”

“Well, of course she couldn’t, Asa,” Beatrice Morgan interjected, before Asa could speak. “My heavens, it isn’t every day of the week a gently bred lady is nearly murdered and has to drive a stagecoach with a corpse inside it to town!”

Asa gave Addy a rueful smile before taking his hat off to Beatrice. “I’ll surely do that, ma’am.” Then he reached into his saddlebag and brought out a couple of wrapped parcels, and Addy remembered the fabric, patterns, laces and other sewing notions she had purchased in Austin and brought with her on the stage. She had entirely forgotten about retrieving them yesterday.

“I found these on the top of the stagecoach,” Asa said, holding out the parcels, “and assumed they were yours. There were some bolts of cloth, too, but I’ll have to bring them out another time when I have the buggy.”

“Thanks, Asa. It was good of you. And don’t bother about bringing the rest. I can always hitch up Jessie and come for them.”

“Oh, it’s no bother, Miss Addy,” he assured her. “But right now, if you’ll allow me, I need to talk to you some more about the outlaws’ attack.”

Beatrice started to follow them, obviously eager to hear the horrid details, but Asa put out a hand. “I wouldn’t dream of detaining you, Miss Beatrice. Miss Addy and I will just sit out here on the front porch, so we won’t need a chaperon.”

“But—”

“I promise not to stay too long, Miss Beatrice,” Asa said, and this time Beatrice got the hint.

“I’d about given up on this,” Rede said, when Addy finally handed him the long-awaited coffee.

He was sitting in a chair next to the window, and the curtains were drawn. They had been open when she’d left the room.

“You shouldn’t be up. What if you had started your wounds bleeding again?” she scolded, figuring he’d arisen as soon as she’d left the room to shut the curtains.

He glanced at his shoulder and arm. “I didn’t.”

His matter-of-fact tone was a splash of cold water on her worrying. “I’m sorry you had to wait,” she said as she handed him the mug. “I got rid of them as soon as I could without acting suspicious, but I know it must’ve seemed like forever.”

He took a long sip, then closed his eyes for a moment. “This was worth the wait.” He took another sip, then barked out, “What’d the sheriff have to say?”

Addy shrugged. “The posse didn’t find them. When they got to the site, the outlaws’ trails led off in several different directions. They followed each, but eventually each trail petered out, either at the river or on stony ground.”

“Your sheriff surely didn’t expect them to be hanging around the bodies, counting their loot, did he?”

“He’s not—” she began hotly, then stopped herself from reacting to Rede’s needling. “No, of course not—Asa’s not an idiot, Rede. But I’m sure he was hoping to be able to trail them to their hideout.”

“He won’t find it,” he said, staring out the window rather than at her. “No one ever did before. The reports always indicated that they seemed to vanish into thin air.”

“And you think you can, if no one ever could before?” she challenged, still irritated at his scornful attitude.

He nodded. A half smile played about his lips.

Suddenly she was very conscious of still wearing a wrapper and her hair still lying on her shoulder in its night braid. “Well, if you’re sure you don’t want any breakfast and think you’ll be all right for a little while by yourself, I have chores to do.”

He nodded. “I reckon I’ll be right here,” he said with a wry twist to his lips.

An hour later, she had washed, dressed, and been out to the barn, where she scattered some feed for the chickens clucking in the yard. Next she poured out a measure of oats for Jessie and curried the horse while Jessie munched on them, then turned her out to pasture.

Stopping in the small vegetable garden just in back of the house, Addy picked some black-eyed peas and salad greens, holding them in her apron as she made her way back to the house. She cast an eye at the sun, which was almost directly overhead. Just about time for dinner. She decided she’d stop in the springhouse for a jar of cold water, then mix up some corn bread to serve with the peas and greens.

She’d checked on Rede, and found him dozing, and was just mixing up the corn bread dough when she heard the sound of a buggy halting out front.

Oh dear, another interruption, Addy thought as she hurried to the front of the house after pulling the door to her bedroom quietly shut. Who could that be?

An imperious rapping greeted her ears. “Mrs. Kelly!”

Addy recognized the booming nasal twang of Mrs. Horace Fickhiser, the wife of the mayor. Olympia Fickhiser was the self-appointed social arbiter of Connor’s Crossing and the mother of sixteen-year-old Lucille. The girl fancied herself a belle, but unfortunately she took after her short, thickset father and had too dumpy a build for true elegance.

Forcing a smile onto her face before opening her door, Addy said, “Good morning, Mrs. Fickhiser, Lucy. What can I do for you?”

“Lucille!” Olympia Fickhiser corrected Addy frostily in an overloud voice. “I did not name her Lucille to have it shortened into something so common, Mrs. Kelly.”

“Oh, Mama, she’s forgotten, I can just tell!” cried the girl, a pout forming on her Cupid’s-bow mouth.

“Have you forgotten we were to pick up Lucille’s gown for the cotillion today? I certainly hope it’s completed. It would be most inconvenient if you haven’t finished it.”

Fortunately Addy had completed the gown before her trip to Austin, but after what had happened yesterday, she had totally forgotten they were to pick it up today. But she was not about to admit that to Olympia Fickhiser.

“Naturally Lucille’s gown is ready, Mrs. Fickhiser,” Addy said smoothly. “All but the waist seam, which is only basted. I always leave that till the last minute, because that measurement has a way of changing, even for the best of us. Lucy will need to try it on, so come on in, ladies.”

Lucy must have been stuffing herself with sweets again, Addy thought, for she looked at least two inches bigger around the middle.

“Well, I suppose we should spare some time for this,” Mrs. Fickhiser allowed.

Addy led the way into her sewing room in the front of the house and took down the gown of lavender peau de soie with a white lace trim and a white bow over the bustle. Stepping behind the three-paneled screen to assist Lucy out of the dress she had been wearing and into the new one, she saw that her guess had been right. The bodice that had fit perfectly a week ago was now straining at the waist seam.

“I’m going to have to let out the waist just a little bit,” Addy called out to Olympia Fickhiser. “Don’t worry, it won’t take but a few minutes, so I can do that while you wait,” she added, sighing inwardly at the thought of delaying dinner even longer. Since the Ranger hadn’t wanted any breakfast, she hadn’t bothered to eat anything herself this morning, and now her stomach was growling.

“Nonsense. Just tighten her laces a bit more!” Olympia ordered in her wake-the-dead voice. “Lucille, I told you you shouldn’t have consumed that entire lemon pie!”

Lucy’s face went brick red with embarrassment, and Addy felt sorry for her.

“All right,” Addy called, but she had no intention of complying. The stocky girl was already so tightly laced she could hardly breathe.

Catching Lucy’s eye and putting a finger to her lips, Addy undid the back buttons, then moved to the laces at the back of the corset, but instead of tightening them, she loosened them just a bit.

Lucy gave her a grateful, conspiratorial smile.

After serving Mrs. Fickhiser the rest of the coffee and Lucy a glass of cold water from the springhouse, she set to work on the waist seam while the mayor’s wife chattered nonstop.

“You had quite an ordeal yesterday, didn’t you?” the woman asked, then, without waiting for an answer, droned on. “No wonder you look so fatigued. I’m certain you didn’t sleep a wink last night! Imagine, surviving because a dead man fell over on you! How ghastly! Why, if that had not happened—you could have met with a Fate Worse Than Death,” she intoned. “Didn’t I warn you it was dangerous to travel alone?”

“But Mama, what could be worse than dying?” Lucy asked, her round face all innocence, but there was mischief in her eyes.

“Never you mind!” Olympia snapped.

“Well, I wasn’t exactly alone,” Addy felt compelled to point out. “There were several other passengers…but perhaps we should speak of something else?” she said, darting a meaningful glance toward Lucy.

Olympia’s lips thinned, but she could hardly argue that the murderous assault on the stagecoach was a fit subject to discuss in front of her daughter.

“Of course,” she sniffed. “I merely meant to express sympathy. To change the subject, then, did you happen to hear of the couple that dared to try to buy the lot across from the mayor’s manse? No, of course you did not. This took place, I believe, while you were gone to Austin.”

Only Olympia, Addy thought wryly, would refer to her own house as a manse. “Were they not suitable in some way?” she inquired, keeping her eye on her needlework.

“Unsuitable?” the mayor’s wife crowed. “Why, that’s the understatement of the year, Mrs. Kelly! They had moved here hoping that no one would know what the woman—I shall not call her a lady—really was. But my sister in Houston—that’s where they came from, Houston—wrote and warned me.”

“Do you mean that the woman was a criminal?” Addy inquired, wondering if what Olympia Fickhiser was about to say was any more fitting a subject for an innocent young lady’s ears than murder had been.

“My dear Mrs. Kelly, perhaps not in the eyes of the law, but certainly in the eyes of decent folk. The woman had been divorced,” Olympia Fickhiser intoned in a stage whisper behind her hand.

Addy flinched at the distaste in the woman’s voice. If Olympia Fickhiser even suspected the truth about her, she would gather her skirts and sweep out of Addy’s house, telling everyone in Connor’s Crossing that the widow Kelly was actually a fallen woman whom no decent lady should patronize.

“But even if the woman had been divorced, weren’t they a married couple, or did I misunderstand?” she asked mildly.

“Supposedly, though one only has their word on that,” Olympia Fickhiser muttered in an acid voice. “I sent them running from Connor’s Crossing with their tails between their legs, I can tell you!”

Addy, imagining how the couple must have felt, said nothing.

“But surely you can understand why I could not possibly bring myself to tolerate such a scandalous couple living across the street from my innocent daughter, can’t you?” Her tone indicated Addy’s answer had better be yes, if she hoped for continued business with the mayor’s wife.

Addy would have loved to say that Lucy would probably be better off living with the supposedly scandalous couple than with such a judgmental woman as her mother, but she could not afford to. The disapproval of a pious busybody like Olympia Fickhiser could make Addy’s living on her own in this town financially impossible.

“Of course I can see why you would feel that way,” she hedged. It was women like Olympia Fickhiser who would have made Addy’s life in St. Louis hell after her divorce.

And what on earth would Olympia do if she knew Addy was harboring the Ranger in her bedroom, a man she had just met on the stage yesterday?

As if to echo her thoughts, just then a thud sounded from the back of the house, followed by a muffled sound that Addy thought might be a groan.

“What was that?” Olympia demanded suspiciously. “Is someone here?”

Good Lord, had Rede fallen out of bed? Addy leaped to her feet, throwing the gown on the chair she had just vacated.

“No, of course not,” she called over her shoulder. “I was moving a stack of books to my bedroom when you came, and it sounds as if they’ve fallen over. Let me just check—”

“But that second noise—it sounded like a cry of pain.”

“I thought so, too, Mama,” Lucy said, obviously eager to get back into her mother’s good graces by agreeing with her.

“No, I’m sure you’re mistaken,” Addy assured them, eager to run to the bedroom, her mind full of visons of Rede hemorrhaging from a reopened wound while Olympia Fickhiser babbled on. “It’s an old house, and it makes all sorts of odd noises, especially in hot weather like this.”

“Nonsense, this house isn’t that old. Your uncle built it only ten years ago.” It appeared that the mayor’s wife had every intention of following her back to the bedroom.

She had to get to Rede, but she had to stop the woman from coming with her! “I—I—I hesitate to tell you this, Mrs. Fickhiser,” Addy said desperately, “for I’m sure you’ll think it’s too silly for words, but my aunt wrote me that she’d seen the ghost of my uncle in the house. Of course, I don’t believe such a faradiddle, but my family is Scots-Irish, and you know how fanciful the Irish can be….”

Mrs. Fickhiser turned as white as the lace trim on the high neckline of her dress. “I—we have to be going,” she said, rising unsteadily to her feet. “You may deliver the dress when you’re finished with it.”

Addy watched out the window as Olympia Fickhiser, her daughter in tow, ran out the front door and into her waiting buggy.

She could barely suppress a groan of her own. Now the mayor’s wife would tell everyone the seamstress’s house was haunted, or if she feared to appear foolish, that Adelaide Kelly was mentally deranged enough to believe it was!

But she couldn’t worry about that now. She had to find out what had caused the loud thud in the back bedroom.

Chapter Seven

Addy came bursting into the room, her eyes wild and anxious, calling, “Rede, are you all right? I heard a noise—” She stopped short when she spied him sitting on the bedside chair, his feet propped comfortably on the bed.

“Sorry, Miss Addy. Didn’t mean to alarm you none. I was just a mite clumsy the first time I tried gettin’ up, and knocked the chair over on the floor. It hurt some, makin’ sure I didn’t go over with it.” He put a hand on his ribs, hoping to engage her sympathy, but her expression didn’t change. “Is that loudmouthed old biddy gone? I could hear every word she said, clear back here. I swear she could talk the hide off a longhorn bull.”

Her green eyes kindled and her lips tightened. “You shouldn’t have gotten up without help anyway, Rede Smith! You’re lucky you didn’t fall and tear open your wound! And that ‘loudmouthed old biddy,’ as you call her, is one of my best customers—or was,” she corrected herself while glowering at Rede. “Now she probably won’t ever come again, and she’ll tell everyone in Connor’s Crossing I’m demented, and then no one else will have their dresses made here, and I’ll either starve to death or have to beg my parents for my fare back to St. Louis—”

Rede held up a hand. “Now, just hold your horses! What on earth are you talking about, Miss Addy? Why will they think you’re demented? And why are you goin’ to starve to death?”

Some of the fire died from her eyes. “I—I jumped when I heard the thud, fearing you’d fallen or something,” she began. “That got Mrs. Fickhiser suspicious, and she demanded to know who was here. I tried to…cover up…by saying a stack of books I’d been moving must’ve fallen over, but she didn’t act like she believed me, and…” Now she bit her lower lip and twisted her hands together, looking away from him.

“And what?” he demanded. Lord, had Addy Kelly already given away the secret of his presence to the woman with the biggest mouth in the town?

“And I…oh, heavens, you’re going to think I’m such a silly goose…I implied it might be the ghost of my dead uncle.”

He stared at her, realizing he’d read embarrassment as guilt. He threw back his head and let out a hoot of laughter. “You told her your house might be haunted, yet you want to blame me for ruinin’ your business?”

She stiffened. “I didn’t say it was haunted, just that my aunt had told me that she had seen the ghost of my uncle in here. Oh, it was a complete lie, of course—my uncle was much too kind a man to frighten my aunt by appearing like that—but it was the first fib that popped into my head. I suppose I’m not a very good liar. It was wrong of me to blame you.”

He started to grin at the admission, but then he realized Addy wouldn’t have to be lying about anything if he wasn’t here hiding out at her house.

“I reckon it’s probably better for a person not to be a good liar,” he murmured. “But what kind of business are you in?” he asked, curious.

“I’m a seamstress,” Addy told him, raising her chin a little as she said it. “I sew dresses and do alterations. That’s the reason I was in Austin—buying supplies I couldn’t get at the mercantile here.”

“And you run your business out of your home? Why don’t you have your shop in town?”

“I inherited this place, not a place in town,” she said, a bit defensively. “I can’t afford to rent a shop in town—at least not yet,” she added. “It’s not so far beyond town that people mind coming here—or at least, they didn’t, until I convinced Mrs. Fickhiser the place was haunted, or that I was crazy.” Her brow furrowed in obvious anxiety.

“Your late husband didn’t leave you very well off, I take it?”

Rede was sorry as soon as the question left his lips. Her mouth tightened again, and she looked down at her lap.

“I’m sorry, Miss Addy,” he said quickly. “It ain’t any of my business.”

She raised her head, meeting his gaze squarely. “Indeed it isn’t. But since you asked, no, Charles did not leave me very well off. And I have not been in Connor’s Crossing very long. So I do depend on my good reputation to get my business established and keep it going.”