“We can’t leave them here like this,” Chris said.
He seemed to want to protest, but he stopped, then went to the man’s body, and carried it up the bank.
Chris went to the woman, smoothed her hair, crossed her hands over her breast. Even in the darkness, she could see how young the woman was, that her hair, under the blood that stained it, was the color of wheat. She was much too young to have died, especially to have been murdered.
Standing, Chris looked at the bundles around her, a meager lot of women’s clothing in a carpet bag, another little sewing bag, one bag of the man’s clothes. These had scattered across the ground when the wagon had tumbled down the side of the hill. Something shining in the moonlight caught Chris’s eye. When she went to it, she saw that it was a little leather bound book with a brass clasp.
Quickly searching the man’s bag, she found a box of matches, lit one and scanned a page of the book. As she hoped, it was a diary and, before Asher saw her, she made out the words, “We must help him” and “Lionel’s life may be in danger. He’s only a child and he has no one but us.”
When she heard Asher behind her, she slammed the book shut and slipped it into the pocket of her habit.
They left the wagon and the bundles where they were for the sheriff to examine, mounted their horses and rode south.
They got to the inn, and, vaguely she heard Asher murmuring complaints and apologies about the food and the dirt of the place, but Chris wasn’t really listening. Over a dinner of burned beans, all she could think of was the diary.
When Chris was finally alone in her room, she sat in the bed and began to read the diary. It started three years ago when Diana Hamilton had married the man she’d thought was the wisest, cleverest man on earth, Whitman Eskridge. It hadn’t taken her but a few months to find out that he’d married her for her money. Within six months he’d spent everything she brought to the marriage and wanted more.
Chris read how this man had wheedled his way into the Hamilton business—and it wasn’t until after Diana’s father’s suicide that she found out that Whitman had been embezzling funds.
The company went bankrupt, but Diana stood by her husband through all the scandal and the public auction of their belongings. When he said he wanted to go live with her rich relatives in Washington Territory, Diana had reluctantly agreed. She wrote her cousin, Owen Hamilton, a man she’d never met, and begged him for mercy and kindness—and for a roof over their heads.
There were several days when Diana didn’t write in the diary, then she took it up again with the news that Whitman had told her that Owen was stealing from Lionel. Chris found this confusing until she’d read a few pages more. As far as she could tell, Lionel was really the owner of the Hamilton holdings in Washington. He was a boy of about eleven, and everything had been left to him in care of his uncle, the man who was Diana’s cousin. And Whitman Eskridge had produced some type of proof that Owen Hamilton was cheating his nephew out of his inheritance. Unfortunately, the diary didn’t tell what that proof was.
It was hours later when she finished reading and fell asleep, the book across her lap. She had a dream that she was Diana Eskridge.
“Chris, wake up,” Asher was saying, shaking her awake. “I pounded on the door but no one answered. Did you stay awake all night reading that book?”
Yawning, Chris nodded.
“Well, whatever it is, I hope it was worth it. I just rode in and I wanted to tell you that the sheriff has the bodies. I’m going to sleep now. I’ll see you at dinner.”
Chris was tired but she could sleep only fitfully. She kept thinking and dreaming about what she’d read. It was so unfair that the pretty young woman had had such a terrible life. And what would happen now to that poor little boy whose inheritance she was trying to save? Lionel now had no other relatives except his dishonest uncle.
By evening, she was convinced that she should do something about this young woman who had died. She couldn’t let her die in vain, couldn’t let her agony and pain be for nothing.
At dinner, she asked Asher many questions about the looks of the young woman who’d died.
“Chris, how can you be so morbid?”
“Do you think she was built like me? Was she anything like me at all?”
When he saw she wasn’t going to cease, he began to answer her. “Why don’t you tell me what you have on your mind,” he said softly.
Chris nearly choked from trying to tell too much too quickly. When she’d calmed herself, she began again. First, she told him about the diary and Diana Eskridge’s miserable marriage. “She never had a chance for happiness. And she was on her way to do something very good. She was going to save her cousin whose estate was being stolen from him by a wicked uncle when she was killed.”
Asher looked at his plate of food. “Did it ever occur to you that the wicked uncle might have been the one who killed her?”
“Of course it did. But her dying request was that I help by protecting Lionel.”
“And just how do you propose to do that? Walk up to this uncle and say, ‘Excuse me, but are you stealing from your nephew? If so, would you please turn yourself in and go to jail for the rest of your life?’ Really, Chris! This is too absurd.”
Chris took a deep breath. “I thought that since this man has never seen his cousin, I might be able to pose as her.”
Asher’s jaw dropped as he gaped at her. “But if he’s the one who has had her killed, don’t you think he’ll be a little suspicious when you walk in the door?”
“I don’t guess he can say that he thought I was dead, can he?”
“Not you, Chris, Diana Eskridge. You couldn’t possibly get away with this. There’s too much that you don’t know about her. How are the two of them related? Maybe this Diana has a birthmark that’s a family trait. There are a thousand things that you don’t know. Why has she never met this man before? No, you couldn’t possibly do it.”
Chris looked down at her plate and she tried to control herself but she felt the tears coming.
“What’s the matter, Chris?” Asher asked, reaching for her hand.
“Tynan,” was all Chris could sob. She heard Asher’s sharp intake of breath and she realized it was the first time she’d admitted that there was actually anything between her and the guide. But right now, secrecy didn’t matter to her. All she thought about was Tynan.
Asher kept holding her hand. “If you went to visit Diana Eskridge’s cousin, what about her husband? Surely Owen Hamilton would be expecting the two of them? You can’t exactly say that you lost him on the way out west.”
“I hadn’t thought about him,” Chris said, wiping her eyes with her hand. “Maybe I could appear as a widow. Smallpox got him or a rabid dog or maybe Indians on the plains or—”
“What if you appeared with him?” Asher interrupted. “What if you came with your husband?”
“You mean get Tynan to pretend to be my husband? After the things he said to me about marriage? He’d probably take after Owen with a gun the first day. He’d no doubt—”
“Could you get that man out of your mind for a moment?” Asher asked angrily. “I was thinking about myself.”
“You as my husband?” Chris asked, her mouth open in disbelief.
Asher gave her a look of disgust for a moment. “Do you really want to help Lionel or not?”
“I do but…besides, Mr. Prescott, you can’t do this. I’m sure you have somewhere else you have to be and the last place you want to be is risking your life to save someone you don’t even know. No, I’ll just have to do this by myself. I’ll say that my husband was killed under a stampede of horses when the train stopped for water. Or maybe the water pipe fell on him, knocked him unconscious and he drowned in the middle of the desert. I’d like something awful to have happened to Mr. Whitman Eskridge. He deserves it for the way he treated Diana.”
“Chris, if I don’t go along on this to take care of you, I’ll tell your father where you are and what you’re up
to this time.”
“You wouldn’t,” Chris gasped.
“Try me,” he answered, narrowing his eyes at her.
Chris leaned away from him and suddenly felt his intensity. He’d made several attempts at showing how much he liked her, but now she felt that he sincerely wanted to help her.
Asher smiled at her. “Of course I’ll have to read the diary before we go to see just what kind of a son of a—oh, excuse me.” He grinned. “Think you can play the dutiful little wife who agrees with her husband no matter what he does?”
Chris’s lips tightened into a line. “I can play whatever role is needed. How would Owen Hamilton know what I was like?”
“I’m sure that if he’s a man like you think he is, to take away a child’s inheritance, to have his relatives killed, then he’s the type who would investigate a person. Surely he knows about Diana’s father’s suicide and he must have heard about the funds I”—he winked at her—“was embezzling.”
“You’re willing to risk your life for something that’s none of your business?” She still couldn’t believe he wanted to do this. Did he like her that much? Or was it her father’s money?
“If you hadn’t risked your life so many times as Nola Dallas, there would be fewer reforms in our laws. Chris, I’d be honored to be your husband whether for a night or forever.”
“Oh,” Chris said, blinking.
“Now, shall we start making plans?” Asher asked. “I think we should stay here today and maybe tomorrow, and read that diary aloud and find out everything we can about Diana Eskridge and her husband. You’ll walk into this as prepared as you can be. Agreed?”
Chris looked up from under her lashes at Asher who was smiling as if he were extremely pleased about something. This time tomorrow this man would be her husband—sort of.
When he turned and looked at her, she noticed for the first time how thick his lashes were and now he was looking at her in a way that was decidedly making her uncomfortable. She shifted in her chair while listening to him make plans.
Chapter Twelve
Owen Hamilton’s house was a three-story mansion not far from the sea on Washington’s west coast. It had taken them three days of preparing for the trip, before Chris and Asher had climbed into a buggy that had to be fifteen years old and ridden west.
Asher and she hadn’t spoken a great deal on the way to the Hamilton house, both of them going over what they needed to know to carry off this escapade. They spent the night at an inn, taking separate rooms, and started in the early morning.
They were within a few miles of the house when Asher turned to her. “This is your last chance, Chris,” he said. “If you want to back out, now’s the time.”
“Not unless you do.”
Ash chuckled. “This is a man’s dream. I get to spend nights and days with a beautiful young lady, I get to do something constructive with my time besides beg banks for loans they won’t give and I might get some of the satisfaction you get from helping people. What more can I ask?” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “By the way, Chris, I mean to use this time to win you over. By the time we leave here, I plan to have you in love with me.”
“Me or my money?” she asked, one eyebrow cocked.
“Did your gunslinger tell you that?”
“No,” she said honestly. “But isn’t it true that my father sent you on the rescue mission in the hopes that I’d fall in love with you? My father badly wants me to marry, stay home and have babies.”
He smiled at her, snapping the reins to make the horse go faster. “It started out that way. I think I was to the point that I would have married a three-headed ostrich if I thought I could have a chance at getting my self-respect back. But the truth is, Chris, it’s come to mean more to me. You’re the most courageous woman I’ve ever met. You’re the most…most interesting woman I’ve ever met. If we lived together for ninety years, I don’t think I’d get bored with you.”
Chris had to laugh. “I think that may be one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received.”
“And now that that strutting criminal is out of the way, I think I’ll have a chance. I’ll never understand why you ladies fall for that type.”
As Chris watched, he shrugged. Was Tynan just a type? she wondered. Was that all he was and nothing more? He had seemed so special, so unique. Maybe she’d been blinded by his extraordinary exterior beauty. A horse pounding along the road beside them made her heart nearly skip a beat, but it was just a cowboy. She relaxed against the back of the seat—relaxed as much as she could in the springless carriage. “You have my permission to try, Mr. Prescott,” she said. “You may try.”
Two hours later, they arrived at the Hamilton house.
“Now remember that you are Diana Eskridge, a meek, mild-mannered woman and not the notorious Nola Dallas. If you step out of place, I may have to reprimand you.”
Chris, with eyes wide, looked up at him and started to speak, but the front door was opened by a fat, aproned woman and Chris put her head down. She’d chosen clothes she thought Diana would wear, simple little calicos, all insipid colors, all hint of stylishness gone. They were the clothes of a woman who’d allow her husband to make her life miserable.
“You must be the Eskridges,” the heavy woman with the broad face said. “We’ve been expecting you for days. Was beginnin’ to worry about you. Just set those bags down and I’ll get Mr. Owen.” She went straight ahead, up some stairs. “By the way, I’m Unity,” she called over her shoulder.
Chris stepped farther into the room. They were standing in an entryway, with a music room to the right, a parlor to the left, and to the right, farther down the hall a dining room. She looked up as a man came down the stairs. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a small mustache over full lips. The last thing in the world that he looked like was anyone’s idea of a villain. He was smiling in such a pleasant way that Chris wanted to tell him the truth of who she was.
“You must be Diana,” he said and he had a deep voice that instantly made a person relax. “We meet at last.”
She offered him her hand. “Yes, finally,” she murmured. “May I introduce my husband, Whitman? We can’t thank you enough for inviting us to your lovely home.”
He smiled at both of them with genuine warmth. “Think nothing of it. I’ll be glad for the company and Unity will be pleased to have someone to fuss over. Now, you must be tired. Let me take you to your room. We’ll eat in about an hour and until then I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me as I have mountains of paperwork to do. Quite unexpectedly, I have a buyer coming in from the East day after tomorrow and I have to be ready for him. Make yourself at home. There’s a garden in back that you might like. Here we are.” He opened the door to a large, spacious room with a big, double, four-postered bed, a closet and a little bay-window seat in the corner. Chris was grateful to see a fainting couch along one wall. Ash followed her eyes and winked at her, making her face turn pink.
“This is more than adequate,” Ash said. “Thank you very much.”
“If you need anything, just let out a holler. We’re not formal here. Unity is usually in the kitchen below or sometimes you can find me upstairs. I have a billiards table up there and a complete bar. One of my great luxuries in life. I’ll see you in the dining room at twelve-thirty.” He closed the door behind him and was gone.
Asher sat on the bed, bouncing a bit to test the springs. “I wouldn’t want this to squeak. More marriages are ruined by loud mattresses than any other—”
“He didn’t say a word about Lionel,” Chris said, cutting Ash off. “Do you think he’s here? You don’t think he’s already done something to him, do you?”
“Buried him in the rosebushes? Owen doesn’t look like a man who’d do anyone a bad turn. I never met anyone who welcomed his destitute relatives with such open arms before. How about a nap before dinner?”
“I sincerely hope that you aren’t going to persist in talking of the…the intimacies of married coupl
es. I think I’ll see this garden Owen mentioned. An eleven-year-old boy might be there playing.”
Chris went down the stairs to the kitchen. Unity wasn’t in the room but the smells of the food cooking were delicious. She felt as if it had been years since she’d had a decent meal.
The garden outside was beautiful, full of azaleas, wildflowers from the mountains, bulb plants. It was obviously the great love of someone and she guessed it was Owen Hamilton. There was a curved stone bench under a big Douglas fir and she sat on it, leaning back against the tree and closing her eyes. At the moment she’d never been so homesick in her life. Her mother used to have a garden like this but since she’d died, her father had not taken care of it. Now, when she visited, she almost cried to see the weeds overtaking it. “You should stay home and see to it yourself,” her father kept saying to her.
“You will not be allowed to sit there. That is my bench.”
Chris opened her eyes to see a boy standing in front of her. He looked a little like Owen except where Owen’s face was pleasant, this boy’s was scowling.
“You must be Lionel,” she said, smiling. “I’m—”
“I know who you are. You’re the poor relatives who’ve come to live off me. Now get up and go away.”
Chris just sat there looking at him.
Lionel’s face began to turn red. “I told you to get up. That is my seat. This is my garden. This is my house. Do I have to call my uncle to get rid of you?”
“Why, yes, I do believe you’ll have to do just that,” she said, wondering what Owen would do if he were summoned away from his paperwork to tell a guest to give her seat to a rude little boy.
Lionel’s face began to lose its redness but she could see that his anger was just beneath the surface. “You have to obey me.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I own everything here and you are at my mercy.”
Chris smiled at him, repressing a laugh. “It doesn’t look like you own this seat at the moment. Nor do you seem to own any manners. Shall we begin again? I’m your cousin, Diana Eskridge.”