Renegade Most Wanted
From now on it was just Emma, free to come and go, free to sit or stand, with nobody wanting a thing from her.
Emma watched the rectangle of light grow dark when Jesse closed the barn door. She turned about and walked with open arms toward her horse.
“Well, Pearl, old girl.” Pearl wasn’t really old, but she was blind and tended to move with caution, which gave her an aged look. Emma stroked the velvety nose that nudged her ribs in welcome. “I missed you, too. There’s just a little chance that you’ll have to spend the night at the livery one more time. Seems like the men here are a bit skittish when it comes to matrimony. It’s not at all like everyone back in Indiana says.”
No indeed, it was so much more complicated getting a husband. She had expected to simply file on the land that Edna Harkins had written her about and gone to live on a piece of earth that would be her own.
She hadn’t figured on the trials of having to get a man. Well, that was just one more complication of having been an orphan. Being left on the steps of a church as a newborn had made her who she was, for good and for ill.
Emma rubbed Pearl behind one ear, then patted the white diamond on the chestnut head before she went to the corner of the livery where her rented wagon stood ready and waiting to make the trip to her homestead.
“Don’t you worry, Pearl, we’ll go home soon,” Emma called out to the horse while she lifted the flap covering the goods necessary to set up housekeeping. She had passed the morning at various shops in Dodge using an uncomfortable portion of her savings, but she had spent wisely and had the funds to get started and then some.
Emma touched the bag of money tied about her waist. It couldn’t be seen beneath her skirt, but when she walked, it hit her thigh with a reassuring slap.
Very soon, life would be grander than she could have ever imagined. Those days of caring for everyone but herself were at an end. Poor orphan Emma, whom everyone pitied enough to take into their home in exchange for working her youth away, was about to become queen of her world.
“This time tomorrow, Pearl, you’ll be grazing on land so nice and flat and big that you can wander about all day and never leave home.”
Poor blind Pearl—Emma hoped that the horse would enjoy the freedom of the open country. Years ago an employer had given her the horse as a parting gift when he had decided to move his family to the East Coast. Families came and went, but Pearl was her own.
With a sigh, she put away misty memories of children that were not her own and trees that grew tall without her.
The troublesome search for a husband had done her in. Surely she would have better luck after she was fresh and rested. Just behind her rented wagon was a clean heap of straw that would do for a short nap. She lay down on it, spread her arms wide and watched dust specks play tag in a beam of light.
Wasn’t this fine? To simply lie back without an employer needing this or that seemed the life of luxury.
Just as soon as she borrowed a man, life would be cherries and cream.
Emma came awake to the urgent whispers of two men behind the livery. As the pleasant fuzziness of her nap cleared from her mind, she recognized one voice as that of Jesse Adams.
She sat up, then heard running bootsteps pounding outside, following the sidewall of the livery. They made a skidding turn, then dashed inside.
The wagon, loaded with her supplies, prevented her from seeing who the running boots belonged to, but she heard the quick rush of a man’s winded breathing.
His feet shuffled in the dirt and then three white stockings came flying over the wagon. They whooshed past her face and drifted down onto her straw bed.
She snatched them up. The livery filled with shouting male voices, one deep voice barking out over the rest for order.
“Look what we’ve got here, boys,” the deep voice said. Emma scrunched low on her bed of straw, lying flat on her belly to peer through the spokes of the wagon wheels.
One pair of motionless boots faced half a dozen pair that shuffled up dust on the livery floor.
With seven men in the livery, odds were fair that at least one of them was a single man.
“Afternoon, Marshal Deeds,” said the owner of the pair of boots facing the others.
“Afternoon, Suede. You happen to see a ghost run in here?” Deep guffaws followed the marshal’s question.
A ghost? Emma opened the stockings wadded up in her fists. Yes, indeed, a ghost. Her fingers popped right through the cut-out eyeholes of one of the scraps.
“You been drinking on the job, Marshal?”
“Mighty funny, Matt, that The Ghost comes flying into the livery and here you happen to be, all alone.” This voice came from the back of the gathering of boots.
Lands! That handsome Mr. Suede who had sent her drunk prospect packing was a bank robber? He’d seemed such a decent sort. Perhaps there was some personal grudge between Mr. Pendragon and … The Ghost, since the dandy was the only one who got robbed.
“It’s no crime to be in the livery.”
“Give it up, Suede. Everyone here saw you run inside.”
The boots belonging to the marshal took a step forward. Matt Suede’s boots didn’t move a piece of grit out of place.
“I’m going to have to arrest you, Suede.”
“Pendragon’s going to see that you hang,” the owner of a pair of boots with a rip in one toe said. “You might have ate your last meal and not even known it.”
Mercy! Just when things seemed darkest, life always seemed to take a bright turn.
Emma opened the first button of her bodice, glanced down to judge the effect, then opened three more. For good measure she stuffed in a hank of straw. Hopefully her eyes still had a sleepy, languid look from her nap. A few more pieces of straw would be just the thing. She snatched them up, poked them into her hair, then mussed the whole thing with her fingertips.
She wadded up the stocking scraps and slowly, silently shoved them deep into the straw.
“Matt? Honey …” Emma stood up from the straw bed stretching and yawning like a cat full of cream. “Come on back here—you can check on poor blind Pearl later.”
Matt Suede turned in a slow pivot. His manly jaw fell open. Earth-colored brows shot up over golden-brown eyes gone wide with surprise. Gradually his mouth closed, his grin stretched wide. Wrinkles creased the corners of eyes that seemed to be laughing in relief and mischief. Mostly mischief.
Emma stepped out from behind the wagon looking down and pretending to struggle with the buttons of her gown as though she hadn’t noticed the men gawking at her.
“Button these back up for me, will you?” Did her hips sashay the right way? Appearing scandalous had never been among her best skills. “You’re so much better at it than I—”
Emma looked up, gasped and covered her half-naked breasts with the splayed fingers of one hand.
“Lands! Matt, honey, who are these men?”
“The marshal.” Matt Suede gripped her shoulders with firm, calloused hands. He inclined his head toward the body of men. “And his friends.”
Matt stared down at her gaping bodice, then looked into her eyes. His brows rose in an expression that she could see, but not the men standing behind him. Clearly, he was seeking permission to complete the intimate task. With an infinite dip of her head she answered him. Yes.
“Don’t you gentlemen know not to intrude on a private moment?” She tried to use a scolding voice, but Matt’s rough-skinned knuckles brushed her chest when he slid a button home. Her voice sounded husky instead of incensed.
“They say they saw The Ghost fly into the barn,” Matt said. Emma took a shaking breath and wished he would hurry with those buttons. She couldn’t take her gaze off those brown, weathered fingers lingering on her flesh. Lands, the blush flooded her skin in heat waves. “They figure that since I’m the only man in here, I must be The Ghost.”
“What foolishness,” Emma declared, and straightened the collar of her now demurely buttoned gown. “I believe that if Matt were a spirit, I would have noticed some moments back.” She inclined her head toward the rumpled pile of hay behind the wagon and plucked a blade of straw from her hair. “I’m quite sure this man is flesh and blood.”
Evidently her declaration of his humanity pleased him, for a grin shot over his lightly bristled jaw. He swatted a hank of golden-brown hair back from his face and slipped his arm around her waist.
He seemed awfully relaxed. His arm made itself at home, snuggling against her back while his fingers stroked her ribs, petting as though they had done it a thousand times before.
Emma flashed Matt Suede what she hoped was a seductive smile. She leaned into his hug and became distracted by the playful dusting of freckles frolicking over his nose and across his cheeks.
Matt bent his head, whispering in for a kiss.
Emma pressed two fingers to his lips, preventing what promised to be a fascinating experience.
“Matt, honey, you did promise me a proper wedding. I don’t think we should keep the preacher waiting.”
Matt’s arm stiffened, his fingers cramped about her middle. There was a very good chance that he had quit breathing.
The marshal let out a deep-bellied laugh that startled poor Pearl and made her whinny. “Looks like you been caught after all, Suede.”
“If you ain’t The Ghost, you can’t deny being the groom,” someone snickered.
“Since you don’t see a spook standing here, I believe you’re looking at the groom.” Matt Suede’s voice croaked on the word groom.
“The problem is, I don’t recall you having a steady girl, Suede,” the marshal said. “Just to be sure you and the lady here aren’t in cahoots, I think the boys and I will just go along to witness those holy vows.”
A man slapped his thigh and let out a roaring hoot. “Singing Trigger Suede goes through with this marriage and we’ll know he’s telling the truth.”
“You’ve got the wrong bank robber, boys. The next hour will see me hitched and tied.”
Matt bent his mouth close to her ear. His breath warmed her cheek.
“You sure you want to do this, ma’am?” he whispered. The men standing nearby wouldn’t hear him, since they stood close to the barn door and the traffic traveling down Front Street drowned his words to anyone but her. “I’m better than that old drunk, but only a little.”
Chapter Two
It’s not that Matt had anything against married men. In fact, he judged that, largely, they were the lucky ones. He’d just never figured to be one of them. Not every man could live up to the responsibility.
He glanced down at the small gloved hand nestling in the crook of his elbow. The woman had saved him from the hangman’s noose. He guessed he owed her for that and would have to go along with what she was up to, for now.
Even if he didn’t owe her, when the choice was hang or wed, what was a neck-loving man to do?
It hadn’t taken more than a couple of minutes for the marshal and his cohorts to hunt up Mrs. Sizeloff, a lay preacher who had just come down the bank steps. The marshal and five hooting witnesses demanded her immediate services as reverend. Since lay ministers were allowed to perform churchly duties, she had been whisked away to make sure he was wed.
It felt like a lynching more than a wedding, but the lady beside him didn’t flinch. In fact, her smile looked brighter than the sun riding big and low in the western sky.
Now here they were, if not dearly beloved, at least gathered together in the land office. He’d gallantly pointed out that there was a church at the edge of town, but his bride had muttered something odd that sounded like the land office was getting ready to close.
In under a quarter of an hour his whole life had upended. Already the preacher was winding up to the big “I do.”
Preacher Sizeloff spoke of living together in love and peace. Every soul in the land office had known Matt for years. Which one of them believed that Singing Trigger Suede had suddenly given his heart to the pretty newcomer to Dodge? He’d better act like a man smitten if he wanted to escape that noose.
When the reverend spoke about forsaking all others, Matt gulped. This was so permanent, so final, but what choice did he have but to turn his head and grin down at his bride as though that’s just what he had been dreaming of, cleaving only to his wife?
Mrs. Sizeloff asked him to swear it before God and all these witnesses.
“I, Matthew Jonathan Suede, take you—” Who? Ma’am?
He was vowing to honor and cherish a woman whose name he didn’t even know! Panic tripped his heart. The marshal would never believe he hadn’t just met her a few moments ago in the livery.
His bride smiled brilliantly—it almost made him forget to breathe. She dabbed at her eye with a grimy white glove.
“Matt, honey,” she said. “Aren’t we a pair? My mama always said, Emma Parker, you’re too emotional by half. The only time you can’t get out a word is when you’re about to weep. Oh, Matt … I … I …”
All of a sudden Emma Parker hid her face in her hands and sobbed.
Matt lifted her chin and tried to peer past her fingers. He brushed her hands aside. Real tears rolled down her face, leaving dirty streaks from the dust on her gloves.
“It’s all right, Emma darlin’.” He stroked her cheeks to dry and clean them. “I do take you to be my wedded wife.”
“I take you, too, Matt, to love and obey.” Didn’t her eyes look blue and sincere? He nearly believed her.
“Well, then …” Mrs. Sizeloff sighed and looked fondly upon them, hugged up tight together. She must believe it, as well. “I now pronounce you man and wife. Matt, you and your wife will need to come by the church and sign the marriage license, but for now, you may kiss the bride.”
This was something he could do convincingly. Those pink lips had been setting off poetry in his mind ever since he’d first seen them, not an hour ago.
For an instant hesitation flashed in Emma’s eyes, but he had to make this look good or those fools standing around with horse laughs breaking out on their faces would string him up.
He touched the curls at Emma Parker’s temple while he dipped his head low. His bride had hair that felt like dove’s feathers. Would she let him touch it again after this show was over?
Emma closed her eyes and puckered her mouth. He pressed his lips on the rosy, tense circle. He should probably pull away, let it end chaste and sweet, but a man didn’t get married every day.
His blood began a slow swell, throbbing in his heart and lower. He pressed the kiss deeper and traced the crease of her mouth with his tongue.
Emma’s lips parted in what must have been surprise. She tipped her head backward, opened her eyes and gazed at him. Did ever eyes shine so blue with bewilderment and delight?
This time, when he lowered his mouth, her lips opened without any coaxing. Damned if he could make himself lift his wind-worn mouth from her dewy one.
He might have gone on and on, and her going right along with him, if the marshal and the rest hadn’t started to hoot and holler.
Ending that kiss forced a groan clear to parts unseen. His wife’s mouth had done unholy things to his body, or maybe not unholy, after all, since they were now wed.
He looked at her face and, judging by the flush that crept from under her lace collar, she felt a call to the marriage bed as strongly as he did.
Before they set foot down that trail, he’d have to tell her that they couldn’t cleave to one another as Mrs. Sizeloff had bound them to do.
There were things about him that she didn’t know. Things wives had a right to know before the “I do’s.” Not the least of which was that a killer with revenge on his mind was getting out of prison.
Come summer’s end, Angus Hawker would be a threat to everyone that Matt held dear.
Emma frowned at Matthew Jonathan Suede, sitting beside her on the wagon bench as if he were king of the prairie. He drove her rented team, holding the reins loose in his fingers while they rattled off toward the sunset and her new home. Apparently the man misunderstood the nature of their marriage.
Right after he’d filed her claim, she’d thanked him and bid him goodbye. She’d fairly skipped toward the livery and her new life, only to hear his boots thumping down the boardwalk after her. She’d offered him the ten dollars she had been willing to give the drunk, but he’d looked at her as though she had become suddenly feebleminded.
To her dismay, he’d followed her into the livery. The name she’d called him was probably uncalled for, but really, he’d tied poor blind Pearl and his own horse behind the wagon, then tossed her onto the plank seat as though she were no more than a stick of straw! He’d then climbed aboard, taken control of the driving and remained silent for the best part of an hour.
Silence was best. She took pleasure in watching the prairie grass roll past. She found joy in simply listening to the birds sing to the parting day. Way off in the west the sun slipped toward the long horizon like a ball of orange fire.
What a wide, wonderful land! Mercy, she didn’t think she could breathe and smell and hear enough of it. If she lived on her little spot of paradise for a hundred years it wouldn’t be long enough.
Evidently Mr. Suede couldn’t resist the evening’s beauty any more than she could. His shoulders went soft and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. His eyes, gazing out at the big empty land, became a mirror for the golden grass stretching out forever.
Then, with the birds chirruping out their last and the crickets just tuning up, Matt Suede began to sing.
He had a clear, low voice that shot straight to a person’s heart. With the harness creaking and the horses’ hooves keeping time, he sang a story about a man who got caught up in a stampede and died saving the life of his boss’s daughter.
The soul-deep melody echoing over the twilight prairie was enough to make Emma want to weep … and forgive him. A cow, so far off that she couldn’t see it, bawled out long and low, as though it, too, had been touched by the teary tale.
Emma shook herself. Mr. Suede was a bank robber. The roof of it, Mr. Suede’s ghostly apparel, lay hidden beneath the extra corset stored in her trunk.
But mercy be! How could such a heavenly sound come out of a criminal? And there was that kiss! Surely she wouldn’t have felt like a hot noodle under the lips of a villain. To be fair, he had acted gallantly when he’d shooed away the drunk she’d been about to marry. Thinking back on it, she realized the man might have been a problem.
At the very instant he quit singing, the sun passed below the horizon. Behind them a fat full moon swelled into the sky to light the dusk.
“I’m sorry I called you that name back at the livery.” Her voice sounded like pebbles grinding together compared to the notes that had come from Matt Suede’s throat. “It’s just that I expected you to go on your way. I never meant that you really had to be my husband.”
“Well, now, ma’am, I accept your apology.” Matt clicked to the rented team when one of the horses decided to stop and munch on a tuft of grass. “And I thank you for saving my neck, but that was a real preacher and that marriage certificate does make us legally bound.”
Emma’s heart took a dive. What if her husband leaned more to thievery than gallantry? If a body wanted to look at things strictly legally, whose name was on that claim?
Emma Laurel Parker … Suede, to be sure, but before hers was Matthew Jonathan Suede. She might be no better off than she had been sitting on the bench in front of the land office.
“I never meant for us to be bound, Mr. Suede. I only needed a husband so that I could file on my land and … well, to be honest, I knew you couldn’t turn me down. But now I don’t hold you to it. You’re free to take your horse and ride off.”
Emma gazed sidelong at him. He had slipped the hat back from his head. It hung down his back from a pair of strings that pulled across a red bandanna tied around his neck. His shoulder-length hair was a shade more golden than the rich soil they rolled over. Moon glow cast shifting light over him, gilding those golden-brown waves in shadow and sparkle.
If a woman did want to take on the care of a husband, Matt Suede would be a fine one to look at over the years. But the last thing Emma wanted was someone to take care of. In her new life, the only one wanting something from her would be her, and naturally, Pearl.
“You are a free man, Mr. Suede. I’ll do just fine on my own.”
“I see a pair of problems with your logic, ma’am. First problem is, I’m only a free man so long as the marshal believes that I didn’t just meet you in the livery.”
That’s something she should have considered when she’d hitched her star to an outlaw cowboy.
“Looks like you’ve got yourself a loving husband for the time being.”
“What’s the other problem with my logic?”
“I can’t quite figure out what a pretty little thing like you is going to do with a hundred and sixty acres of stubborn prairie sod. You don’t look like any farmer I ever saw.”
“I’ll admit I look small, but I’m tough. If I had a mind to bust up sod, I would.” Emma sat up taller, even though the lurching wagon made her rock back and forth as stiffly as a metronome. “As it happens, I intend to simply live on the land, just let it be mine.”
“Back at the land office, you seemed to be set on that particular piece of ground. What is it about the old Harkins place that makes you want it so bad? Have you even seen the homestead?”
“Not with my own eyes—I was in such a hurry to file that I didn’t make it out here. But I know just what it looks like. You see, I used to be employed by the Harkins family, doing chores and acting as nanny for their daughter, Louise Rose, until they moved west.” Emma relaxed her posture. Talking about her heart’s home made her just plain wistful inside.
“I used to get letters from Mrs. Harkins. Lands, how she loved her beautiful wood-framed house. It was like a palace compared to her neighbors’ dugouts and soddies. She says the yard is full of flowers and a creek runs close by. She planted a hundred trees, which have got to have three or four seasons’ growth on them by now.
“There’s a well in the yard, and a barn for Pearl. It broke Mrs. Harkins’s heart to quit the claim, but Louise Rose was a wild one. To think of the nights I stayed up watching to see that she didn’t sneak out her window to take up with some low ‘count!
“Anyway, Mrs. Harkins wrote to say they had to move on. No doubt it had to do with Louise Rose, but the prime spot they were leaving behind was free for the taking if I could get here in time to be the first to claim it. So here I am, Mr. Suede, bound for paradise.”
“Hell in a basket, ma’am. Hell in a basket.” Matt Suede sighed deeply, then didn’t say another word for the rest of the trip.
From a quarter mile off, Matt saw the very thing he knew to be true. The Harkins place was no better than any other struggling homestead. Maybe it was worse, having been abandoned. There was no trace of a fine wood house gleaming in the moonlight, no barn, no half-grown trees, no trace of Emma Parker’s dream.
Any second now he would have to tell her that they had passed over the boundaries of her land. He’d rather have a steer stomp on his foot than see the high spirits making her strain forward in the seat turn to slump-shouldered sorrow.
How did a man find the words to break a person’s dream? Especially the person who had so recently saved his neck from a noose.
“Whoa!” he called to the team. Emma Parker looked up at him with moonlight caught in the glow of her eyes. “We’re here, ma’am. This is the old Harkins place.”
Emma climbed over the side of the wagon before he had a chance to help her down. She walked about thirty yards, then turned and glanced all about. She hadn’t taken the time to change out of her fancy gown before they’d headed out of town, so now, standing out in the moonlight, she looked like an angel who’d lost her wings and was searching high and low for them.