“That was your condition, remember? She wasn’t to know.”
“Nathan?” Lydia asked again. Her legs felt weak and she realized she was leaning more heavily against him. She closed her eyes briefly.
“There’s no easy way to explain, Liddy,” he said quietly, staring hard at Mad Irish. “This fellow is being a stiff, rude bastard right now because he doesn’t know what to say to you, and that’s the truth of it. So it’s up to me to make the introductions.” And pay the consequences, he added silently, for surely he would be made to pay. “Mad Irish, this is Lydia Chadwick Hunter, my wife. Lydia, this is—”
“Your da,” Irish interrupted. “I’m your father, Lydia.”
Lydia stared at him blankly. There was a blinding white light behind her eyes. “Marcus O’Malley.” Someone said the name aloud but she wasn’t certain if it was her own voice or Nathan’s or Marcus himself. Lydia’s hands went to her head and she held them there, trying to keep back the pain, trying to force back the memories.
Nathan caught her as she slipped to the floor in a dead faint.
SanFrancisco
Brigham Moore found his trousers at the foot of the bed and put them on. He eased into his shirt, careful not to pull at the bandages that still swathed his chest. Compounded by Brig’s battle with pneumonia, his bullet wound had been slow to heal.
“You’ve got some of your color back,” Madeline said. She slipped into her silk wrapper and belted it securely around her slim waist. “Dare I hope that I put a little of it there?”
He despised her coyness, her constant need for reassurance. He answered as expected. “You know you did. You, my dear Madeline, have the most amazing mouth.” His eyes grazed her and settled briefly on her lips, letting her know that he was thinking of the things she had just done to him. “Shouldn’t you be getting dressed?” he asked, glancing at the clock on the mantel. “Samuel will be here soon.”
Madeline sashayed to the window and looked out. “He’s coming up from the stables now,” she said casually. “Better hurry if you don’t want him to find you with me.”
“Bitch!” Brigham’s fingers flew over the buttons of his shirt. He yanked his suspenders over his shoulders. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? It’s what you’ve been trying to accomplish all along.”
“Yes.” Madeline swiveled her head like a striking cobra. “Yes, if it means keeping you here. Why do you have to go after Lydia? She chose her own path. Let her suffer for it—the way I did.”
“I don’t have time to argue this now,” he said tiredly. “We’ve been over it before. Let me handle Samuel first, then we’ll see.” He ducked into the hallway carrying his shoes, shutting the door on the glass figurine Madeline hurled at his head. He hurried to the guest bedroom he had been using since the beginning of his recuperation and finished dressing. He brushed his hair quickly and took a last critical look at himself in the mirror. He couldn’t tell he’d spent the last hour in Madeline’s bed, how could her husband?
God, but the jealous bitch was going to ruin everything for him. Brig started downstairs. He’d have to think seriously about what he was going to do with her.
Brig was waiting for Samuel in the study. He had a tumbler of Scotch poured for each of them. “I thought you might want this,” he said as Samuel entered. The older man was looking preoccupied and careworn of late. His hair had grown remarkably grayer since Lydia’s disappearance. Brigham knew that, like Madeline, Samuel did not trust him entirely. Unlike his wife, however, he suffered Brig’s presence in the house as a means to an end. In Madeline’s view Brig was an end to himself. She was miserable when she thought about him leaving.
Samuel took the tumbler, thanked Brig shortly, and sat down. “George Campbell tells me that he’s booked passage for both of you on theFalworth.”
“Yes, sir. Just this afternoon. We’ll be leaving in two days time.” Brigham sipped his drink. “You know, it’s not strictly necessary that George accompany me. I could do this just as well on my own.”
“It’s more to the point that you’re accompanying my man,” Samuel said, speaking his mind plainly. “If it weren’t for the fact that you know precisely how to find Nathan Hunter, I would be sending George on his own. I don’t know where your truths end and your lies begin, or where you mix the two, but I do believe you’re telling the truth when you say no one will give Nathan Hunter up. You see, I knew a few of the Sydney Ducks from the old days, and I remember what a tight gang they were, quite willing to cut one another’s throats but just as unwilling to give up any one of their number.”
“No, sir. You’re right. We’re not a very trusting lot.”
A gross understatement, Samuel thought. He put down his drink and picked up his pipe. Opening a tin of sweet, dark tobacco, he began to pack the bowl. “Which is why you will be going with George Campbell. I don’t criticize George when I say honestly that he would meet a dozen brick walls in his search for Nathan and my daughter. If I thought differently I would have dispatched him weeks ago, long before you were well enough to travel. I didn’t—for one reason. I expect you to find Lydia and George to bring her home.”
“I know what your expectations are,” Brigham said. “I share them.”
“Yes,” Samuel said, giving Brig a hard look, unconvinced of the other man’s sincerity. “See that you do.”
Brigham finished off his drink and sat down opposite Samuel, his long legs stretched in front of him. His handsome features were relaxed and a smile played at the corners of his mouth. “I have a score to settle with Nathan.”
“Just so you don’t have one to settle with my daughter.”
“She was an innocent pawn.”
Samuel nodded. “O’Malley’s plotting again. Nathan’s bullet would have been better spent in Marcus’s chest than in yours.”
“There were times I felt the same way. Like when that doctor brought me here from the hotel in his carriage. I swear Franklin found every blessed rut in the road between the Silver Lady and here.”
“You were fortunate that Nathan sent Franklin to you at all. You could have bled to death in the room. It’s always intrigued me, though, that Franklin was instructed to bring you here.”
“I suppose, since I saved your wife’s life in that quake, Nathan thought I’d get the best care here.”
