Gabe was very close to going there, without her wishing it on him. And he was not unaware that goading her like this might doom him to that fate. She wasn’t likely to forgive him for this anytime soon, and he had only twenty-nine days left to make her fall in love with him. No matter. He’d been given a second chance down here to save Nan, not himself. Granted, a side benefit, if he was successful, would be salvation for himself, but he couldn’t allow that concern to cloud his thinking to the point that he tossed away chances to make Nan’s life less conflicted. If talking about Barclay’s attack could possibly set her free of the memory, he’d be a heartless, conscienceless skunk if he didn’t push her to do it. Even though she had one hell of a right hook.
“If what happened with Barclay was all that bad, explain it to me. From where I’m standing, it sounds fairly trivial.” He silently congratulated himself on the use of that word. It would push her right over the edge.
“Trivial? Why, you . . . you—” She broke off, but he had a feeling it wasn’t because she couldn’t find the right words. Rather, it was because the words she was finding weren’t ones that a lady would ever dream of using. “Being thrown to the dogs by your own father? He gave all the staff the evening off, which he’d never done before, to set me up! And then he left me in the sitting room to be raped!”
“But you weren’t raped. Barclay roughed you up a bit, and I’m sure the knitting-needle business must have shaken you up. Killing someone . . . Well, let’s just say I understand how you must have felt when you realized the fat bastard was dead, but all in all, he barely touched you before he cocked up his toes.”
“Barely touched me? Ha! When I tried to avoid his slobbery kisses, he made a fist in my hair and held me still.” Her throat worked as if she might gag at the memory. “He didn’t care if he ripped my hair out. His lips were as fat as the rest of him, hot and slimy with saliva. And then—” She gulped. “Then he shoved his tongue so far into my mouth, I swear he swabbed my tonsils. It was disgusting. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I thought I was going to throw up. It wasn’t so much his strength that overpowered me, but his breadth and weight. I couldn’t have set him off his feet if I’d dived at him in a full run, hitting him with everything I had.”
Gabe made a mental note to teach her a few tricks about how to take a man down. With proper training, she’d never be so defenseless again. The bigger the bastards were, the harder they fell. “If he was that fat and ungainly, why the hell didn’t you run? He never could have caught you.”
Indignant rage sparked in her eyes. “You think I wanted it to happen? I tried to run. Perhaps, with luck, I could have gotten around him, but I’ll never know, because I couldn’t move.” Her eyes went bright with tears again. “I froze. He set down the snifter of brandy my father had poured for him and smiled at me—an awful, leering, victorious grin. I knew then what he meant to do—what my father had given him permission to do. I knew, but for some reason, I couldn’t make my feet move. Even as he lumbered toward me, I just stood there, helpless to save myself.”
“Ah, honey.” Gabe winced. He was playing the evil inquisitor in this scene, and he couldn’t afford to slip out of character, no matter how sharply her words struck chords within him. Nevertheless, he understood how it felt to be frozen with fear. As a boy, he’d been so terrified a few times that it had felt as if bags of bricks were tied to his feet. Clearing his throat, he forced himself back into his role. “So you just stood there and did absolutely nothing to fend him off?”
As if her legs threatened to fold, she sank onto the edge of the bed, one hip angled so she still faced him. Tightly hugging her waist, she rasped, “I wanted to run. I tried. I don’t know why I just stood there.” Her voice lifted a notch. “But it wasn’t because I invited what came! And before I could collect my senses and get my feet to move, he was upon me. After forcing his disgusting tongue halfway down my throat, he ripped my dress open, baring me clear to the waist.”
Gabe settled back to listen. It was coming now, spewing out of her as if a small volcano inside her were erupting.
“He wasn’t out to merely deflower me,” she said in a cold, flat voice. “Oh, no, he was establishing his dominance over me, determined to train me up the way he wanted me to go, much as it says in the Bible, only his way was evil. I would be cowed. I would perform my wifely duties without complaint. If he wanted to beat me, I would accept it as my due. That was his aim, to put me in my proper place.” She dragged in a shaky breath and slowly exhaled. “I struggled, but he only laughed at my attempts to escape. He didn’t merely touch m-my feminine protrusions; he laid claim, digging in hard with his fingers to cause pain. Months later, I still had purple marks on my skin, left there by his fingernails cutting into my flesh.
“I don’t remember how I broke his hold. Maybe horror lent me strength. I only know that I somehow wiggled free, and because he stood between me and the door, my only choice was to find a weapon to hold him off. I ran for my yarn basket, snatched up a needle, and whirled to threaten him away with it.” She paused to swallow. “He only laughed. He wasn’t afraid of me and my pathetic weapon. As he came toward me, he said he would teach me a lesson I’d never forget, and I saw in his eyes—they were little and beady in his flabby face, as cold and unfeeling as a lizard’s—that he intended to punish me in private, personal ways that I would never forget or risk inviting again.”
Gabe’s heart twisted.
“Then, just when I thought he’d grab me again, he tripped. It happened so fast. I would have tossed away the needle, I swear. I never meant to kill him!” Her chest began to rise and fall rapidly, and by the cadence, Gabe knew she was no longer with him in the bedroom, but in the past, with Barclay nearly upon her. “He was so close when he tripped that he came down on top of me. I fell backward under his weight. When we hit the floor, my breath was knocked out of me. I couldn’t breathe. Every time I tried, it was as if cotton batting had been shoved down my throat. I panicked, felt like I was suffocating. I couldn’t see. Black spots bounced before my eyes.
“When I could finally drag in breaths again and my senses began to clear, I realized that the mountain of flesh on top of me was deathly still. It was then I f-felt the blood—sticky wetness all over my bared skin. I knew then. I knew. He was dead. Killed by my knitting needle. Who would believe that I hadn’t meant to stab him? Or that he had sexually assaulted me? He was Horace Barclay, a man of sterling character and reputation, a deacon at our church who kissed babies and sang baritone. He was big and jolly. Everyone who knew him loved him. My side of the story would never be believed.”
She turned a haunted gaze on Gabe. “The rest comes to me in nightmarish bits and snatches. Trying to roll his immense weight off. Praying for a miracle as I felt to see if his heart was beating—if he still breathed. And then the hysteria that came over me when I knew for certain he was dead. I remember huddling on the floor with my arms crossed over my nakedness, saying, ‘No, no, no. Don’t let him be dead. No, no, no.’ But God wasn’t hearing my prayer.” She closed her eyes and tipped her head back, treating him to an unimpeded view of her arched neck, which put him in mind of a swan’s. “I finally collected myself and had the presence of mind to know I had to run. Run and never look back. Only I couldn’t leave Laney. She presented nothing but complications for me, but I couldn’t abandon her. I knew my father would treat her just as badly as he had me. I had no choice but to make off with her.”
She’d gotten all of it out now. Gabe felt almost as exhausted and drained as she probably did. “Of course you couldn’t leave Laney. Your father would have had her on the auction block at thirteen, hoping to marry her off and form an empowering alliance with her husband’s family.”
“Yes, and then she would have been a victim. Perhaps her attacker wouldn’t have been Barclay, but sure as rain in March, it would have been someone. Growing up under my father’s rule, Laney would have come to hate men, just a
s I did, and she would have resisted any arranged marriage. My father does not countenance rebellion, not even a hint of it.”
Gabe had accomplished what he’d set out to do. She’d finally talked about the attack. Judging by the slump of her shoulders, she felt empty now, no longer buried under a mountain of unspoken horror. He’d aimed, fired, and hit the bull’s-eye. So, now what? If she hadn’t hated him before, she sure as hell did now. I’m no good at this, Gabriel, he thought, hoping the message would wing its way straight to the archangel. He needed some advice, and he needed it fast. Unfortunately, Gabe had told his namesake to scat, and apparently his request had been granted.
“Well,” Gabe ventured, “hate me though you might, at least now maybe you’ll no longer dread sleep.”
She jerked her head around to stare at him. “Pardon me?”
Gabe settled back with his folded arms under his head again. “You heard me. You’ve kept that bottled up and tightly corked for too many years. Talking about shit like that helps us turn loose of it and move on.”
Silence. It stretched between them, as taut as an archer’s bowstring. Then, in a shrill, squeaky voice, she asked, “Are you implying that you manipulated me into talking about it?”
“There’s a word I don’t use often, manipulated.”
“Answer the question!” she cried.
Gabe released a breath and slowly inhaled. “Do you honestly believe any man with a heart could believe what you endured at Barclay’s hands was inconsequential? Or trivial? Using that word was a stroke of genius. It pushed you right over the cliff.”
She leaped to her feet. “You, a man with a heart? Damn you!”
Gabe winced. She’d probably cursed more in the last half hour than she had in her whole life. “I knew you’d hate me for it, but it needed doing. Now it’s time for you to come back to bed and get some sleep.”
“I shan’t sleep a wink! Not on a bad-dream night. I told you that.”
“Care to make a wager on that?”
“Make your bet!” she flung back. “I’ll match you!”
“A hundred dollars.”
“You’re on!”
Gabe knew she couldn’t afford to lose a hundred dollars, so her willingness to put it on the table told him far more than she could know. For one, she was beside herself with anger—at him. And second, she believed, without a single doubt, that she wouldn’t sleep tonight.
“Good.” He patted the mattress. “Fair wagering obligates you to at least try to sleep. Get in bed.”
She huffed, did a turn in place that lifted her long hair to swirl around her, and then jerked the covers back. “Very well. But I swear to God, if you so much as breathe on me, Gabriel Valance, I’ll shoot you dead with one of your own guns.”
“Fair enough. I believe you. I probably have pumpkin breath anyway.”
She finally crawled into bed. Gabe didn’t look her way. He just closed his eyes and listened to her rain what he suspected were curses upon his head, but she muttered them into her pillow so he couldn’t make them out. Ah, well. He’d been cursed before; it was nothing new to him.
Once again, he pretended to fall asleep. Then he waited. He had to give Nan credit: She managed to stay wide-awake for at least thirty minutes. But in the end, he heard that cute little snuffle—not a snore. God forbid that he call it that!—that told him she’d given up the ghost.
He grinned into the moon-washed shadows. He was a hundred bucks richer, and she would slumber like a baby in its mother’s arms for the rest of the night. If she had another nightmare, he’d eat the socks he’d been wearing for two days straight.
All in all, not bad for one day’s work.
Chapter Ten
A warm glow of brightness disrupted the night. Nan squeezed her eyes shut. The irritating glare didn’t go away. She frowned and pulled the covers over her head. Then, slowly, as she inched toward awareness, she realized that a light in the middle of the night was usually a sign of distress. Had Laney come in with a candle, ill or needing her? She jerked upright and opened her eyes.
The harsh glare was no candle. It was sunlight, full sunlight, indicating a late morning hour. Her mind rejected what her eyes were telling her. It couldn’t be morning. Nan blinked. Squinted at her bedroom window. My stars! It had to be after nine. She twisted to peer at the windup alarm clock on her bedside table, which she rarely used to rouse herself but kept wound to be sure of the time. Sixteen after ten? No! It couldn’t be. She’d forgotten to wind it, and it had stopped last night. That was the only explanation.
Rattled and incredulous, Nan sprang from bed, noting as she did that Gabriel wasn’t in it. She hurried over to the armoire, shifting hangers back and forth on the rod to find the russet gown she’d worn yesterday. Her bodice watch would give her the correct time. It couldn’t possibly be sixteen after ten in the morning.
Seventeen after ten. Two timepieces couldn’t be wrong. She’d slept half the day away. What would Gabriel say? Worse, what would he think?
Snatching her wrapper, she shoved her arms through the sleeves in case Gabriel made an unannounced entry, then gathered her clothing and crept from the bedroom, up the mercifully empty hall, and into the water closet. After locking the door, she gazed with yearning at the metal bathtub—one of the plumbing luxuries she’d allowed herself when she redid the upstairs—which emptied through a hose into a pipe under the floor that ran across her apartment and connected with the drainage outlet under her kitchen sink. Other shop owners along Main Street had thought her mad when she’d asked Elbert Rasper to plumb her kitchen sink and tub. Indoor plumbing was, as yet, far from the norm in Random and possibly even in Denver. But Nan had ignored the gainsayers, paying Elbert a small fortune to do the work and then run a hollow drainage log from the building to a buried gravel pit at the back edge of the shop’s backyard.
Now she wished she could sneak to the kitchen in her nightclothes to pump some water and put it on to boil for a wonderful hot bath. Not. When she faced Gabriel Valance—gambler, drinker, blackmailer of women, and gunfighter—she wanted to be fully dressed and perfectly coiffed. She’d given him every reason to feel smug, sleeping all night without dreaming and snoozing until nearly noon. Manipulating her into speaking of Barclay’s attack on her had been cruel of him. She’d never spoken of it to anyone, and doing so last night had nothing to do with her deep, dreamless sleep. She’d been exhausted; that was all.
Oh, lands, she owed him a hundred dollars! A small fortune. What on earth had she been thinking when she made that wager? Nan filled the washbowl, hastily completed her morning ablutions, and got dressed. After putting away her gown and wrapper, she headed for the kitchen, nervously fiddling with her hairpins. Her husband and Laney were undoubtedly awake, hungry, and awaiting breakfast.
Still incredulous that she’d slept so deeply and for so long, Nan stepped briskly through the sitting room archway, saying, “Good heavens, why didn’t someone wake me? You both must be starv—”
She broke off to gape in startled amazement at Gabriel, who stood at the stove wearing a makeshift apron, a white kitchen towel tucked over the front of his gun belt. Laney hovered at his elbow, giggling.
“Good morning.” He left off stirring something in a pot to flash her a smile. “You’re just in time for the breakfast of the century: pumpkin pie oatmeal and cinnamon toast.”
Laney, her cheeks as red as September apples, turned a sparkling gaze on Nan. “It was Gabe’s idea. We had leftover pie filling, and oh, Mama, you should taste! It’s ever so good!”
Nan, who’d frozen in motion, collected herself and took another step toward them. The sight of a man, any man, turning a hand in the kitchen was so foreign to her that she feared she was gawking at him like an idiot. All she could manage was, “Laney, I see no tasting spoon.”
A flush crept up Gabriel’s dark neck. He darted a glance at Laney, quirked
an eyebrow, and sent the girl dashing over to the flatware drawer to get a utensil. This told Nan that they’d both been sampling with the stirring spoon. Nan did the same thing herself sometimes, but only on the sly when Laney wasn’t watching.
“Pumpkin oatmeal. Hmm.” Actually, it sounded delicious, and Nan couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t thought of it herself. “I’m amazed you know how to cook, Gabriel.”
“I don’t, really, at least not much. My experience runs only to an open fire. I can serve you up a tasty pot of beans, and my skillet corn bread isn’t too bad. I’m also a quick learner if someone takes the time to teach me.” He grinned and sniffed the pot’s contents. “That was a hint.”
He looked clean-shaven, his burnished jaw shiny in the light that came through the window over the sink. His black shirt, though slightly wrinkled, appeared crisp and clean. The memory of his bare chest, shoulders, and arms chose that moment to invade her mind, and she felt heat creeping up her throat.
“When our holiday food is all gone, perhaps you can treat us to one of your suppers.” Nan fetched an apron and tied the strings in a bow at the small of her back. She stepped over to a cupboard to collect dishes for the table. “It was thoughtful of you both to postpone breakfast until I woke up. You must be starving.”
“Actually, this’ll be our second breakfast. We had pie when we first got up.” His deep voice curled around Nan like warm smoke. “We controlled ourselves and left you a piece.”