Mountain Laurel

  There was a loud crash from the cabin and a corresponding shout of triumph from the miners.

  Laurel looked at her book. “Fell off the piano for the sixth time,” she read. “Caleb Rice.”

  Caleb grinned as Laurel weighed the gold dust, poured it into a bag, and gave it to him.

  “That was your bet,” Laurel said to Toby. “I told you not to take it.”

  “Who woulda thought they was dumb enough to fall off the piana six times,” he snapped at her.

  “Caleb Rice did,” Laurel answered calmly.

  Jamie got up and left after that, and he vowed that should he ever do what his brother was doing, he would do it in the utmost privacy. He walked to one of the many tents that served the miners as a saloon. Of course, for the last three days the tents had been empty. The men hadn’t stopped drinking, but now they bought their bottles of watered-down whiskey and took them back to the campfire where Laurel and Toby sat taking bets.

  The man Jamie wanted to see was in the saloon tent. After all, Jamie had given orders that the man was to be given as much whiskey as he could drink. With years and years of experience behind him, Sleb could drink a great deal. He was starting on his third bottle.

  “How’re they doing?” Sleb asked as he looked up at Jamie. His words weren’t slurred, but his eyelids were nearly closed.

  “All right,” Jamie answered, taking a seat. “They just fell off the piano for the sixth time.”

  Sleb nodded gravely. “I remember one time backstage in Philadelphia with a pretty little mezzo…” His voice trailed off and he shut his eyes in memory.

  For a moment Jamie thought that perhaps he’d gone to sleep. “Anything more you have to tell me?” he asked softly.

  Sleb opened his bloodshot eyes. “Not a thing. I’ve told you everything I know.” He picked up the whiskey bottle and looked at it. “In fact, I don’t guess my life is going to be worth much after what I’ve told you.” He gave a derisive snort. “But then, I don’t guess it was worth much before I ever met you.” He held up the bottle. “Drink?”

  “No, thank you.” Jamie stood. “I guess I better get back. They might decide to come out of that shack, and I want to be there to talk to my brother when he does. Of course, they’re going to need sleep sometime or other.”

  Sleb gave a dreamy sort of smile. “That time in Philadelphia I went four days without sleep. I was younger then and I thought I was going to be the greatest singer who ever lived.” He reached for the bottle again.

  Jamie bit his tongue to keep from speaking. He’d never yet met a drunk who didn’t think that he was the only one to ever have suffered in his life. Deliver me from the self-pity of drunks, he thought, and left the tent.

  ’Ring idly ran his hand over Maddie’s bare stomach. For three and a half days now his body and its needs had been his only concern. It was as though he’d had no mind at all, like he was an animal and was driven only by lust and longing.

  He grinned.

  “Share that with me?” Maddie asked, trying to ease her back. They had hit the floor rather hard a few times.

  “I was thinking of my father. He’d be proud of me.”

  “You? Ha! What have you done? I am the one who has had to work. I am the one who has had to…” She trailed off. She was too tired to even argue. “Yeah, I guess he would be proud of you. I’m not sure my father would be proud of me, though.” She yawned, then put her hand on his chest. “This has been wonderful but…”

  “But what? You’re not giving up, are you? Why, we’ve just started. There are several more things I’d like to try.” He said this, but he didn’t make a move to pounce on her as he would have a day ago.

  “I wonder if Jamie has found out anything from your little sister,” ’Ring said, looking at the ceiling.

  She smiled. “If you’re thinking of your brother, then I guess the honeymoon is over. And too bad, because I was thinking of a few more tries at that piano.” Even as she said the words, her back began to ache.

  Neither of them commented on the other’s bragging. They just lay there in each other’s arms, now comfortable and familiar with each other’s bare skin, and knowing intimately every inch of the other’s body.

  “You think we should get dressed?” Maddie asked after a while. “Maybe I should see about Laurel. Maybe you should talk to Jamie. Maybe—”

  He rolled over so he could look down at her. “Yes, I think it’s time we left. Are you all right? Not too bruised and battered? Too sore?”

  “There isn’t any part of me that isn’t sore,” she said, looking up at him. “There isn’t any part of me that isn’t bruised, but it’s been a wonderful few days.” Her eyes sparkled. “I think I learned as much in these three days as I did in the first three years with Madame Branchini.” She ran her fingertips down his unshaven cheek. “I got to see your upper lip too.”

  He kissed her softly. “Maddie, I—”

  She didn’t allow him to finish. She didn’t feel there was a need for words. They were two people who had needed each other, needed each other physically and emotionally, and they’d found each other. “I know the way you feel, for I feel the same way. You were right when you said that we had been looking for each other.”

  He looked down at her bare breasts. “I had certainly been looking for you,” he said with a leer.

  She laughed and pushed at him. “Help me dress—if there’s anything left to my poor dress—and let’s go see what’s happened to the others.”

  She was shaky when she stood up, and ’Ring had to steady her. Now that she could think again, she was a little embarrassed as she looked at him, and remembered all the things they had done in the last few days. But they had each felt possessed, and nothing on earth could have stopped them.

  He kissed the tip of her nose. “Don’t look at me like that. This is just the first of many times together. Turn around and let me tie this contraption of yours.”

  Smiling, she faced the wall while he pulled her corset strings tight.

  It was an hour later that Maddie and ’Ring sat with Toby, Laurel, and Jamie around the campfire. When they had left the shack, Maddie had been embarrassed, knowing that all the people in her camp were going to know what she and ’Ring had been doing for the past few days. But when she opened the door, she saw a perfectly normal camp, with Edith bent over the fire, stirring a pot, Toby and Jamie lounging by the fire, and Laurel writing something in a little notebook. Maddie smiled. If Maddie was a singer and her sister Gemma was a painter, maybe Laurel was going to be a writer.

  “Good evening,” Maddie said softly, and they all looked up at her.

  “Oh, hello,” Laurel said, beaming up at her older sister. “Have you two had a nice vacation?”

  Maddie was glad for the growing darkness that hid her red face. “Yes, thank you, and have you been well cared for?”

  “Oh, yes,” Laurel said, eyes wide. “Toby helped me pick wild flowers. I’m pressing them into a book.”

  “And selling them for a thousand dollars each,” Jamie muttered.

  “What’s that?” ’Ring asked.

  Laurel glared at Jamie. “He thinks I should sell my pictures.”

  “Or take over the management of Warbrooke Shipping,” Jamie said under his breath, then, “Ow!” as Laurel leaned over and pinched him.

  Laurel smiled at her sister. “You want some coffee?”

  Maddie took the cup that Toby handed her, then handed a cup to ’Ring, but ’Ring’s attention was fully on his brother.

  “Out with it,” ’Ring said, taking a seat on a log that had been pulled up near the fire. He didn’t notice that the bark was already getting shiny from the many behinds that had used it in the last few days. Maddie took a seat next to him, trying not to grimace with the pain she felt. There were unmentionable parts of her body that were very, very sore. ’Ring felt her stiffen and turned to give her a knowing little smile. She ignored him and looked at Jamie.

  “What makes you think your bro
ther has anything to say?” she asked ’Ring, but not looking at him.

  “I know him and he’s bursting with it. Can’t you tell?” ’Ring answered. “Well?”

  Jamie couldn’t contain his smile any longer. He wanted—and planned—to tell his brother about the wagering that had been going on the past few days, but now he had something much more important to tell him.

  “I found out everything.”

  Maddie drew in her breath. What did he know?

  Jamie looked at her and seemed to enjoy her embarrassment. “I found out about the letters and your General Yovington.”

  Maddie’s cup stopped on the way to her lips. Laurel was safe and, what with her preoccupation of the last few days, she hadn’t thought of the kidnapping. Now all she wanted to do was get out of this country and go back east, where she could sing. After she visited her family and returned Laurel to them, she planned to do just that.

  “What about him?” ’Ring asked. “How did you find out? What did you find out?”

  “While you were, ah…otherwise occupied, I had a chance to talk to the brat here.” He gave Laurel a look that ’Ring couldn’t interrupt. “Her answers to my questions led me to a man called Sleb.”

  “The man who sang with you,” ’Ring said, looking at Maddie.

  “Right,” Jamie said. “He used to be a pretty good tenor, at least to hear him tell it. But in the last few years he’s fallen on hard times.”

  “A bottle.”

  “Right.”

  “So what does this old drunk have to do with Maddie and Laurel?” ’Ring smiled at Laurel. She was such a sweet-looking child. She could be an illustration for an angel, but he knew all too well what a mouth she had on her. He just hoped that Maddie didn’t hear her.

  “Sleb worked for General Yovington’s brother in a town named Desperate.”

  “Heard of that place,” Toby said, and the way he said it made ’Ring look at him.

  “So’s half the baser element of society,” Jamie said. “The two Yovington brothers own most of the town and the big gold mine at one end of it.”

  Maddie hadn’t said anything up to this point, but now she spoke. “General Yovington helped me find Laurel.”

  “The reason he could help you was he was the one who arranged her kidnapping.”

  Maddie put down her coffee cup and stared at Jamie.

  “It seems that the two brothers had invested their life savings in that gold mine, but it yielded nothing.”

  “Maybe that’s why they called the place Desperate,” Laurel said, and Toby nodded at her.

  “Maybe. I guess their lives did look desperate. They’re both in their fifties, with nothing waiting for them to comfort them in their old age. So, a few months ago the brothers got together…” He looked at Maddie. “Your general was out here to look over some forts and he got with his brother and heard the news that their gold mine was empty. They decided that if they couldn’t get the money legally, they’d get it illegally. For the last couple of years there’s been a lot of gold mined out of these mountains and they decided to take that.”

  “Stealing!” Maddie said. “They meant to take the gold these poor men have worked so hard to get?”

  “That they did. The only problem was getting it out of the mountains without arousing suspicion. Gold is heavy, and the miners might, well, notice somebody riding around with hundred-pound saddlebags.”

  “So they used me to go from town to town.”

  “Exactly. That big ol’ Concord of yours can hold a lot, especially if it’s been fitted out with a false bottom as yours has.” Jamie paused while the others absorbed this information. He was rather proud of himself for having found out what he had.

  “And the letters?” ’Ring asked.

  “Blank. The objective was to get Maddie away from the wagon, that’s all. The letters were a ruse.”

  “Money,” Maddie said with feeling. “All of this had to do with money. I thought I was doing something, I don’t know, political. I thought I was at least being used to help a cause that someone believed in. But all I was was a common, everyday thief.”

  ’Ring looked at his brother. “Which one of Maddie’s people were in on it? They had to have someone inside.”

  “Frank,” Jamie said softly, “but he won’t bother us again.”

  ’Ring nodded, but he didn’t ask what had been done to Frank. “Why did they choose Maddie?” he asked. “Any singer, or magician, for that matter would have done just as well. They just needed someone who could travel freely from camp to camp without arousing suspicion.”

  Jamie grinned. “It seems that the general’s brother loves opera. Apparently, opera is his major interest in life.” He looked at Maddie in wonder.

  She nodded at him. She had often met people like the general’s brother. Men with stars in their eyes when they looked at her.

  Jamie shook his head in disbelief. “You should hear about this town Desperate. It’s full of criminals. It’s backed up against a mountain and there’s only one way in and one way out, across a narrow land bridge. And Yovington’s brother runs the place like his own little fiefdom, hangs any man who crosses him. Men say they’d rather be hung than—”

  “Hanged,” Maddie and ’Ring said in unison.

  Jamie rolled his eyes as though to say Spare me from lovers. “Whatever. Nobody in his right mind wants to go there.”

  Jamie smiled. “But the oddest thing in the town is this man Yovington’s love of opera. He heard that Sleb was once a singer onstage and that he’d been an opera teacher before the drink got him, so Yovington shanghaied Sleb to train singers for him. Pays ol’ Sleb in whiskey.”

  “I’ve never heard of another singer in this part of the country.”

  “None whose name you remember anyway,” ’Ring said just so she could hear.

  Jamie laughed. “There are none, but Yovington gets ol’ Sleb to train…” He glanced at Laurel. “Sleb trains ladies of the evening.”

  “Oh, whores,” Laurel said, nodding.

  All three men looked at Maddie as though in condemnation. Maddie shrugged. “Bailey.” She looked back at Jamie. “These women couldn’t have been very good.”

  “Horrible. Dreadful. Sleb says that cats have better voices than these women.”

  Maddie ignored ’Ring’s knowing smile.

  Jamie continued. “But Yovington said he had a real good imagination, so he had these women following him around wherever he went. Sleb said the men could stand Yovington’s hangings and they could stand the cold and the loneliness, but they could not stand the singing of those women. Every three months or so the men would run the woman off and that would give them some peace before Sleb could train another one.”

  “And that’s why he kidnapped Laurel?”

  “I guess he thought he could kill two birds with one stone, one golden stone, that is. Sleb thinks that when you got to the end and had sung in all six towns and the kidnappers hadn’t returned your sister, Yovington was going to send you a message saying that he’d found your little sister and would you please come to Desperate and get her.” Jamie looked at Maddie. “I’m not sure he meant to release you after he had you. Sleb thinks he meant to return Laurel to you only if you married him.”

  “Marriage?” Maddie said, horror in her voice.

  ’Ring smiled at her. “I’ve heard of worse ideas.”

  Maddie looked away, hiding her red face.

  “We’ll leave in the morning,” ’Ring said to his brother, and Jamie nodded.

  “Leave for where?” Laurel asked.

  “It’s my guess they mean to make heroes of themselves,” Toby said, and his tone told what he thought of the idea.

  Neither Jamie nor ’Ring said a word.

  “ ’Ring,” Maddie said softly. “Where are you going?”

  “To Desperate, of course.”

  Immediately, her heart began to pound, but then she tried to calm herself. Her mother had always said that there was nothing so
unreasonable as a man who had his mind made up. “Why are you going to Desperate?”

  “Unfinished business.”

  She started to raise her cup to her lips, but her hands were shaking too badly. “Guns,” she whispered. “You mean to go in there with guns. You mean to do some killing. You mean to get yourself killed.”

  “I have no such intention,” he said indignantly. “I mean to take Yovington off his mountain and see that he’s brought to trial for what he’s done.”

  “It isn’t any of your business. You should leave this to…to people in authority.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “I don’t know. The army. Yes, that’s it, take your army up there.”

  He gave her one of those indulgent smiles that men seem born knowing how to do. “This has nothing to do with the army, and, besides, the army assigned me the job of taking care of you and it’s you who Yovington has hurt the most.”

  She stood up and looked down at him. “Yes, it’s me who the man has hurt the most, and it seems that it’s my right to say what I want. I have Laurel back now, and that’s all I want. Tomorrow you can take me back to my father’s house, and we’ll leave Laurel there.”

  He looked up at her. “I have to go after Yovington.”

  “You have to have revenge, that’s what. That’s all this is, revenge, nothing else.”

  He caught her hand in his. “No, it’s not revenge, it’s something that I have to do.”

  She looked down at him and knew that there was nothing that she could say that was going to change his mind, and she suddenly saw what love really was, that it was accepting a person as he was. Not trying to change him into what you wanted him to be, but accepting him just as he was. He was a man who took his responsibilities seriously, a man of honor who would do whatever he thought needed to be done, regardless of any danger to himself.

  She blinked back tears of fear as she looked down at him and squeezed his hand in hers.