SHE WAS BEING followed.
Either that or her imagination was working on her again. No, she didn’t believe that. Someone was following her. Two someones, in fact. Or could it be mere coincidence that the stout man with the mustache shaped like longhorns and the scrawny man who hunched over happened to appear nearby whenever she stopped walking? It was a very small town. But this much coincidence?
Or . . . perhaps . . .
Just perhaps it had something to do with the man she was following.
Yes, she’d found him. Jacob Ross. Guilty as charged, she had been . . . all right, following him. Whether she liked it or not, and truly she didn’t, she had generally drifted along his same path once she spied him exiting The Brotherhood at almost the same moment she came out of the hat store. With every step she tried to justify this force that nudged her to follow after him every time he rounded a corner, but no matter how she tried to excuse it, she had to chalk it up to curiosity. Nothing but curiosity. No better reason. Yet, she had exchanged something ephemeral with this man earlier today, and that something drove her, admittedly without reason, to “casually” meander in the same direction. Moses!—was it only today? Still Tuesday, and so much had happened to her already!
And now someone was tracking her just as she was tracking Jacob Ross. Had she angered the wrong people when she reacted to the slave’s capture on the wharf? She’d heard of such things in eastern ports—stories of folk being shanghaied, stuffed into some little rowboat, paddled out to a bigger boat, and never seen again.
But those were only stories. Weren’t they?
Abbey shook herself. “Don’t be a silly toad,” she said aloud, and turned her concentration back to not looking at Jacob Ross. She was making a skill of this not-looking business. Not looking at Ross, not looking at the two men who seemed to be following her, herself keeping up with Ross while always being ready to not look at a moment’s notice.
His moss green jacket and black cap over that flicker of blond became as familiar to her as her own reflection. But she saw only the back of him—arranged it that way, in fact.
Goose brain, she thought as she ducked behind a pile of empty apple barrels to avoid his glance. What did she intend to do? Follow him all the way to Great Point for no reason? Suddenly she was glad the Nash children weren’t officially in her charge yet, for they would probably have been with her, and then what would she say about her actions? That she liked to follow men around port towns?
She ducked again as Jacob Ross paused at a water pump for a drink, and pressed her hand to her mouth, holding back a giggle. What an odd governess she’d be if she thought that was a good answer to tell children. The boys would grow up wondering why women didn’t follow them, and Luella would grow up thinking it was all right to follow strangers.
A moment later she peeked out from behind the tree that hid her. Ross was striding away.
“Moses,” she breathed, “what long legs!” She hadn’t remembered his being all that tall a man, but he cut an appealing figure as he strode, hands pocketed, around the side of a building.
Taking her chances, Abbey struck out across the street in his direction, bothering to pick up her skirts and skip down the boardwalk at a painfully obvious pace. A few townsfolk glanced at her curiously, but their curiosity couldn’t match hers.
It was an alley of sorts, a narrow space between two buildings. With a peek for good measure, she started down it, holding her skirts up as she stepped into the mud.
Then, in shock, she felt someone grab her by the shoulders.
She gasped. A tingle shot down her spine.
“Why are you following me?” a stern voice barked.
She blinked, and there he was, inches away—inches near—with his hands clamped on her upper arms, his eyes making the demand over and over.
“You aren’t very good at tracking, are you?” he said, not giving her time to think. His brown eyes frothed with contained anger. His hands tightened on her arms.
Abbey’s mouth hung open for several seconds while she overcame her surprise. Then at once she wrenched free of his grip and backed up the whole extra foot allowed by the narrow alley. “Holy Moses, man, turn loose of me!”
He stepped out of the niche he had ducked into and put an extra two steps between them. The double-breasted sea jacket, unbuttoned now, revealed a simple sweater of undyed wool, and it gave off a muted scent of flowers and meadow grasses when he moved. “Why,” he began again, “are you following me?”
Abbey gathered herself, clutching her packages close to her ribs. “I . . .”
She needed an excuse, and needed it fast. If only her heart would stop thudding.
“I wanted . . .”
“What?”
She stomped her heel in the mud. “If you’ll give me a moment! You startled me.”
“I startled you!” he huffed. “You’re tracking me, and I startled you?”
Abbey cleared her throat. “Yes,” she began, stalling, “yes, well, I only wanted to . . . apologize. Yes, apologize for the way I treated you on the dock.”
Oh, that wasn’t too bad! Now, if only she could say it and sound as if she meant it!
“You should,” he said flatly. “Is that all?”
He seemed to be stepping away, as though he were about to turn and leave her.
She couldn’t let him go. Not yet.
“No,” she blurted, closing the space between them with a tentative step. She gripped her packages tighter. “No, it’s not all. I also want to apologize for . . . for calling you a coward. It was . . . presumptuous.”
Jacob Ross’s hardened features turned a little softer, though the anger remained in his eyes. He shifted his feet. “It was that,” he agreed.
“Do you accept?”
His brown eyes narrowed and pale brows drew over them. He didn’t blink, but gazed at her in a long, unbroken, provocative way—as though he didn’t understand . . . but deeply wanted to. Odd . . . he actually bothered to think about it, which worried her. After a moment, though, he gave her an unconvincing nod.
“Suppose so,” he said.
She stuck out her gloved hand—not as smooth a motion as she had intended—and said, “I’m Abbey Sutton.”
For some unimaginable reason, he hesitated. He stared at her hand for a disturbingly long pause, as though he didn’t want the burden of knowing her, of having her know him. Just when she was about to withdraw the hand, though, he took it. His grip was firm and warm in spite of his hesitation.
“Jake Ross.”
Abbey bit back the urge to blurt “I know!” and managed to keep him from seeing her relief.
“I just arrived today,” she said instead.
His mouth twisted into a grin of irony. “I remember, believe me.”
She flushed. “I’m from Wyoming Territory.”
“Where’s that?”
This caught her by surprise, and she licked her lips while thinking of a way to explain. “You know where California is?”
“Sure do.”
“It’s . . . before there.”
“If you’re going westward, I assume.”
“Of course. What other way—”
“There’s the sea route,” he reminded her.
“I thought you weren’t a sailor,” she said. As soon as she let it slip, she knew it was too late to correct the error.
He stepped ominously nearer. “How’d you know I’m not a sailor?”
Damn! Now what?
She bit her lip and stammered, “Umm . . . I . . . you . . . you smell wrong.”
No, no, she didn’t say that—not that! Perhaps there was a way to crawl into one of her packages. Certainly she was small enough to fit by now.
Jake Ross peeled his cap off, and his appealing face crumpled in total confusion. “Lady . . . I think you’re crazy.”
Well, there was no crawling out of this stew, so she might as well swim in it.
“You do,” she insisted. “You don’t smell like a boat and you do smell like land . . . and . . . it was just a guess.”
“Mighty too good of a guess, Miss Sutton,” he said. His tone told her she’d failed to fool him.
She squared her shoulders. “Mrs. Sutton.”
Ross’s straight lips parted. A touch of . . . disappointment?
“You’re married.”
“A widow,” she corrected, and looked for the relief in his eyes.
There was none. None whatsoever.
“Why’d you come to the island?” he asked instead.
“I’m in the employ of the magistrate.”
Once again, perhaps even more coldly this time, he stepped back away from her. “Are you, now?”
“Yes. Why do you say it that way?”
He flopped his black cap back on and stepped even farther down the alley. “I don’t say it any way. Best I say good day to you now . . . missus.” He touched the brim of his cap and dipped his head in tense politeness, then tried to make a clean getaway.
“Wait!” Abbey called, unsure why she did it.
Ross never quite completed his turn away. “Yes, missus?”
“I . . .”
“Yes?” he prodded impatiently.
“I’d like to . . . to thank you.”
His brows tightened in perplexity. “Thank me now? What for?”
“For coming to my aid when that slaver—”
“When he fought back after you attacked him, you mean?”
“Well . . . yes.”
“Pity’s sake, missus, we’re on the verge of overdoing this, don’t you think? The thanks is getting bigger than the deed.” He held out his hands to illustrate the empty point, swung around, and headed down the alley again.
“You hated it, didn’t you?” Abbey called, following him.
He stopped in his tracks, his back to her.
Somehow she knew—he understood. Something in his posture as he halted there in midstep said that he did indeed know what she was talking about.
Even so, she approached him from behind and hammered at the truth.
“You wanted to act just as much as I did, but something held you back. What? Why didn’t you help me? I know you wanted to. I could see it in your eyes just as plainly as if you’d stepped out and said, ‘I hate what I’m seeing more than pain itself.’ I’m a good reader of eyes, Mr. Ross, and that’s what yours said to me on the wharf today.” She moved closer to him. And closer again. She spoke to the tense set of his shoulders as he stood with his back to her. She spoke, and he listened. “You wanted to pull that slaver’s skin off, didn’t you? But you wouldn’t admit it. You wouldn’t help me. And there’s a reason why not. Such a man as you doesn’t hold back without a reason.”
She might as well have etched the words in his back with a branding iron, so stiffly did he stand there, smoldering. As she waited, hardly daring to move, he took a long breath—then another. Actively keeping control, it seemed, just as he had on the wharf.
He turned slowly, his eyes catching her in their glare even before he was completely around. Two creases formed at the corners of his mouth as he fought to keep from turning loose the rage she saw in his eyes.
Now he was all the way around, facing her again. Two long, measured steps brought him threateningly close.
“Lady,” he began, his tone a menace in itself. “you know nothing at all. You don’t know what kind of man I am. Turn around and walk back out this alley and don’t come around me anymore.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t what?”
“I can’t go back out the alley that way.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m being followed.”
He froze for a telling instant. She expected him to laugh in her face, but he didn’t. His dark eyes widened, then abruptly narrowed with concern, and he pushed past her and stepped to the edge of the building. The manner with which he peeked out told her she wasn’t imagining things at all. He believed it could be so.
“What did he look like?” Ross asked, keeping his body pressed up against the building as he peered out.
“They. A chunky fellow with a mustache like longhorns, and a smaller one who’s hunched over. Are they still there?”
For a few seconds he didn’t answer. Then he came back inside the alley and asked, “Why would anyone be following you?”
“I can’t imagine,” she said. “Except . . . after what I did on Straight Wharf this morning—”
“That’d be a reason,” he acknowledged roughly. “But not enough of one.” He clamped his hand around her arm, leading her quickly between the buildings. “We’ll come out onto Cambridge Street. You turn left, and you’ll get back to Main. Turn right there, and you’ll lose them.”
Somewhat stunned that she hadn’t been wrong, Abbey stared at him as he hustled her along. Ignoring the ache where he gripped her arm, she asked, “What if they keep following me?”
“They won’t.”
“But what if they do?”
He turned to her. He seemed caught between apathy and gallantry—seemed to notice that she was worried, perhaps even frightened. She wasn’t frightened, not yet anyway, but she was worried. Slavery was an unscrupulous business and those who engaged in recapturing escaped slaves were unscrupulous enough to have a woman followed and threatened if she got in their way. She saw the truth of that in Jake Ross’s eyes. According to the simplest of courtesies, he certainly couldn’t stride away and leave her to her own resources. At the moment, though, she didn’t bother to tell him that her resources were in good shape. She could take care of herself, but that wouldn’t get her anywhere.
“All right,” he sighed. “This way. Let’s see if they follow.”
With a grip on her elbow he led her across the street and around a corner. He stopped once they’d rounded the side of a dry goods store and looked behind them at the way they’d come.
A few seconds later he spoke. “There they are, for sure. Not very bright fellows, either.”
“Why do you say that?” Abbey asked, trying to get a peek around his shoulder at the pursuers.
Ross nudged her back, and she was warmed by the protectiveness in his touch. “It’s plain that we’re trying to get away from them,” he said. “They’re making themselves obvious by trying so hard to follow us. Good trackers wouldn’t do that. Here they come.”
He turned and ushered her down the street. Abbey could tell that he was deliberately keeping his pace slow because he thought she couldn’t keep up. She could also tell, by his glances behind them, that he wanted to hurry. So she hiked up her skirts and stepped up her pace, even to a point where Ross had to jog to keep up with her. She caught an accommodating smirk on his lips as they ducked down an alley behind a tailor shop and flattened themselves up against the wall.
“Still coming?” she asked as Jake peeked around the corner.
“Gaining on us,” he said. “Come on. This way.”
He gestured her along the narrow lane behind the row of shops. Just when she was getting into a good run, he drew up short and said, “Here!” He disappeared between two tightly wedged buildings.
Abbey swung around, panting. “Where?” Doubling back, she ducked between the buildings where she’d seen him go. Just as she pulled the hem of her skirt in behind her, she caught a glimpse of Longhorn Mustache and Hunch coming around the last shop after them.
“They’re coming!” she hissed to Jake, staring at him.
Jake was bending over a little herb garden next to a clapboard wall. His hand disappeared into the bundles of plants.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “They’re almost here!”
He continued to feel around in the clumps of plants. Just as their pursuers’ footfalls could be heard in the mud down the alley, Jake suddenly hauled back and to Abbey’s surprise up came a hidden hatchway. The top, like a small cellar door, was hidden completely by the little garden on top of it, but swung away neatly and left a gaping hole in the ground. Abbey’s lips fell open and she rushed over to look down the hole. Sure enough, there was a stairway. Well, less a stairway than a ladder, really—very steep and very dark. And Jake was halfway down already, gesturing up at her.
“Step in! Hurry!” he called in an urgent whisper, reaching for her. “This’ll confound ’em.”
Abbey was jarred by the sound of the trackers’ footsteps coming closer and closer—running. She shook herself out of her surprise, twisted her skirts into her left arm, and stepped into the hole. She barely made it down two step rungs before Jake got his arms about her and lifted her bodily down into the tight hatchway beside him. He reached up immediately and closed the false garden over them. Just as he got it down to his shoulder level, keeping it from clapping shut, they heard their trackers’ footsteps come round the edge of the shop.
In the dark space Abbey’s lungs screamed to take a deep breath but she willed herself not to gasp or pant. Her legs were shaking, but she wedged herself between the moist wall and Jake’s side and fought for balance on the steep ladder.
Through a little crack between the foundation and the hatch, light seeped into the darkness. Above, she could make out the ankles of the two men who had followed them. The men had stopped just outside the hatch, confused about where their quarry could have escaped to. Neither could imagine, just as Abbey hadn’t, that there might be a secret place under the innocuous little backdoor garden.
“What is this—” she started to ask in a whisper.
“Shh!” he ordered, and they both fell silent.
Abbey could only hear muffled snatches of conversation between the two men. Most of their words were lost in the layer of soil and plants between the two trackers and the cellar shaft. But even when the sounds failed to trickle down into the hiding place, the sense of danger certainly did.
A moment later the sounds moved away from the secret hatch.
“They’re going,” Jake whispered.
“Are they?” Abbey muttered as she caught her breath. Suddenly a surge of anger rose in her. What was she doing? She had no reason to hide! “This is absurd,” she said spontaneously. “We’ve done nothing. They’ve no business following us. Step aside. I’m going up.”
She pushed against him, her foot searching for the next step on the ladder, and she pressed her hand against the bottom of the hatch. It started to creak open.
Jake grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back down. “No!”
“Let go of me,” she insisted, trying to squeeze out of his grip. She found it was impossible in this tight space. “No one follows me without a good reason!”
“Lady!” Jake hissed, wrestling with her. “Abbey! Stop it!”
She started wriggling, fighting him in earnest, forcing him to clap a hand over her mouth and wrap the other arm about her rib cage to pull her back down into the hatchway.
She struggled against him, her feet slipping on the mildewed wood of the ladder.
“Stop fighting!” Jake insisted, careful to keep his voice down.
He held her hard against the soil wall of the hatchway and pressed his body tightly against her, trapping her there. Moisture from the wall seeped through the back of her dress and chilled her skin, and Jake’s firm body pressed the air from her lungs so that she couldn’t have cried out if she had wanted to. His hand still pressed her mouth closed, and she whined through her nose with a sudden gust of anger at what he was doing. If she wanted to confront those men, it was bloody well her own business! Her brows drew together in rage and she glared at him through the dimness.
Again she writhed against him, but the sensation of a strong man’s body against hers took her by surprise. A thin shaft of light fell across Jake’s eyes, and the universe was suddenly caught in his glare. Darkness above, darkness below, all except for that band of light from the crack at the top of the ladder. And in the band, his eyes. Such eyes—like the full, round, determined eyes of a longhorn bull just at the moment of utmost anger. At that instant, just as he pushed his body against hers and his eyes fell into that shaft of light, Abbey was clutched by a single great throb of submission. It took her—yes—by surprise. Had it been so long?
She felt foolish. And the foolishness made her fight harder.
To no avail, though. This time he was ready for her struggle and countered easily with sheer muscle, for he had the advantage in this narrow passageway. He held her efficiently, if not easily against the wall, but it took the whole length of his body to do it.
From above, boot soles scraped on the ground, growing more and more faint. The two trackers were leaving. Or were they?
Jake twisted around, trying to keep a grip on her while getting a glimpse through the crack. He looked up, listening past her muffled commentary. Finally he let his hand slip away from her mouth.
“You bit me,” he muttered, examining his fingers in that rogue shaft of light.
“Why did you do that?” she demanded.
“Because,” he said firmly, “it’s not wise to face down two men in a blind alley, Mrs. Sutton, that’s why.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong that they should be following me, and I don’t mean to be haunted during my whole time on this island,” she insisted, “and I’ll take up the lash against slavery or anything else as I please to!”
She tried to wedge past him again, and again he stopped her. “That had nothing to do with it,” he said.
“Then I mean to ask why they’re following me.”
She raised an arm to find the hatchway over her head, but by now Jacob Ross had apparently had enough. He got one arm firmly about her waist again and lifted her right off the ladder. Fighting for balance, he carried her to the bottom of this strange narrow shaft and plunked her down on muddy ground in the darkness.
“They’re not following you,” he said sharply. Then he paused, as though he regretted giving her that answer, or any answer. When he spoke it was as though his feelings of protectiveness had opened a whole new pathway into his mind. “I . . . don’t want you to be afraid.”
Abbey waited, letting her silence voice her question.
After a moment, in a different tone of voice, Jake confessed, “They were following me.”
Folding her arms, Abbey gazed at the lock of blond hair that shone in a single thready patch of light from high above. “About time you admitted it,” she told him.
She felt his glare, even in the near darkness.
“You knew?” he asked.
“Even if they had been following me, Mr. Ross, they only started doing it after I started following you,” she pointed out, realizing the logic. “You are the common denominator. What have you done that you should be followed?”
He paced the one step allowed by the tight quarters they shared. “I had some . . . trouble on the mainland before coming to Nantucket. Could be that.”
“What kind of trouble?”
He stopped moving, and again Abbey felt that cutting glare through the blackness. “Private trouble,”he said indignantly. “Some business dealings went bad.”
“Do these men mean to hurt you, Mr. Ross?”
“Jake,” he corrected.
“Jake, then.”
“I doubt it. Probably they only mean to find out what I’m involved in these days. And they’ll be sorely disappointed.”
“Why is that?” she prodded, unable to keep from sounding anxious to get to the bottom of this mystery.
“Because,” he told her flatly and firmly, “it’s trouble to get involved in other folks’ business, and I don’t mean to. I just run the lighthouse now, nothing else.”
“That’s all you do?”
“Yes . . . why?”
“Don’t you also help run that pub you came out of?”
His silence this time was heavy and ominous. Perhaps she’d admit, ted too much. She was letting him see her curiosity, but she had no excuse for it—unless she were to tell him the truth: that he aroused her as wind arouses a meadow.
“How do you know about that?” he asked her, his tone this time laced with suspicion.
She hesitated. “I . . . heard.”
“You mean you found out,” he said sharply.
Abbey nodded. “All right, I found out. You don’t seem like a man who keeps a lighthouse. And if you’re at risk because of your past, why don’t you leave the island?”
“I would,” he began.
“But?”
“But I . . . can’t get off.”
“You can’t? What do you mean, can’t?”
“I’d . . . uh . . .”
She let the pause ride, forcing his own hesitation to squeeze an answer out of him, and sure enough it did.
“I’d . . . have to get on a boat,” he said. The statement embarrassed him, she could tell.
She actually laughed at him. “Of course you would! How else?”
Sarcastically he said, “I could get killed, that’d be a way off.”
“What are you talking about?”
But evidently she’d pushed ahead just an inch too far into his privacy. Jake stiffened. “I don’t understand your interest in my business, but I don’t get involved in yours, so you don’t get involved in mine. That’s my policy, and I’ve found it works. No matter how hard I have to hit or shake or twist to make it work.”
The threat was clear as a bell’s knell in the cramped cellar shaft, but Abbey wasn’t so easily intimidated.
“Is that why you didn’t get involved with the slaver on the wharf?” she pressed.
Jake Ross heaved a frustrated sigh. “That’s why. All right, Mrs. Sutton?”
“Abbey.”
He paused. His foot struck the ladder’s bottom rung. “I think we’ll leave it at Mrs. Sutton.”
Without allowing another pause to tempt him, he mounted the steep steps and climbed to the top, pushing open the hatch a crack and looking around until he was sure they were alone once again. Then he quietly opened the false garden all the way and climbed out, stepping aside for Abbey to come out after him. He seemed tempted to reach for her and help her out, yet, as he said he would, he also was forcing himself not to do that, not to touch her again. With some difficulty—which she made sure he saw—she managed to get out on her own.
He closed the hatch, also closing the issue.
They came out into the sunlight, and Jake Ross was a slightly different man than when he and a woman he scarcely knew had huddled together in a damp cellar shaft. As he looked at her now, there was a tinge of regret in his eyes. Even sadness. Perhaps she hadn’t been mistaken at all. Perhaps he, too, sensed the fellowship between them, this odd attraction that had dragged her toward him all day. He paused, his gaze hanging upon her, catching all the hopefulness in her face that she couldn’t contain.
For a long moment they gazed at each other, both caught up in a trance that Abbey thought she had only imagined.
Then Jake Ross took a sudden and deliberate step away from her.
“I know you don’t understand,” he said. Suddenly his voice was soft. “Better that you don’t.”
She stepped toward him, gain drawn by this unexplained feeling, and there was a question in her eyes that perhaps even she was unsure how to put into words.
But Jake Ross backed away.
“No,” he said. As though to shut her out, he wrapped his jacket tightly around his body and buttoned it. He paced backward a step, and before he turned he took the time to say the awful words lurking behind his expression. “Don’t come around me anymore,” he told her. With a sadness that shone in his eyes, he added, “I’m dangerous.”
“The children are in bed, Mr. Nash.”
Dominic Nash looked up from the dinner table and his copy of the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror to look at Abbey over the top his spectacles. “As quickly as that?”
Abbey started to answer, then caught her breath at the sight of him there, with the lamplight reflecting in the spectacles. She must have paled a little. He noticed.
“Is something wrong, Mrs. Sutton?”
“No . . . It’s just that you look somewhat like my husband with those spectacles on, Mr. Nash. I’m sorry. You took me by surprise.”
Nash politely removed the spectacles. In spite of his outer layer of harshness, he was obviously trying to make her comfortable. He gestured toward a chair at the dinner table. “Attacked by a rogue memory, I see. Please, sit down. I’d forgotten the judge wore spectacles for reading. Forgive me.”
Abbey nodded and stood by the seat he offered, but didn’t sit. “It isn’t your fault, Mr. Nash, nor mine either. Many people wear spectacles. I reckon I can’t let them disturb me.”
“Sit down, please,” he offered again.
“I hear Mrs. Goodes doing the dinner dishes,” Abbey said. “Perhaps I could help her.”
“Mrs. Sutton, I pay Mrs. Goodes to do a particular job. She does hers, and you do yours, not the cross-pattern.”
Abbey paused, then saw that he wasn’t making a joke. “Oh,” she said. “I see.”
“I run an orderly household, Mrs. Sutton,” he told her as she sat down. “I run an orderly island. Ships come and ships go, men come and go, strangers, friends, more folk passing through than in your usual town. Certainly more than you ever saw in Wyoming Territory, I dare guess.”
“Many more even in a single day, Mr. Nash,” she told him.
He nodded. “Allow me,” he said then, picking up a bottle of wine and filling a goblet for himself and one for her. “Please share an evening drink with me—unless you are a teetotaler . . .”
“Thank you, I will have the wine, Mr. Nash.”
“I’m relieved, Mrs. Sutton. I run an orderly household, but not a monastery.”
Lanternlight made the room eerie and warm, casting light to parts of the room and leaving the corners dark. It was a notch above candlelight in its effect, of course, with that extra measure of civility.
“I’m glad . . . nay, amazed, really, that you handle my children so well. They haven’t been in bed on time for nearly a year,” he told her, gently placing the goblet before her on the tatted tablecloth. “How did you do it?”
“I told them a story,” she said, and she couldn’t help smiling.
“What story?”
“Well . . . not precisely a story. I told them what it’s like to ride a cattle drive.”
Nash frowned, his red brows tugging together. “Is that not rather a rough story for little children?”
Abbey tipped her head. “Your boys aren’t so little, Mr. Nash. Many a lad their age rides roundup. We in the West can’t afford to be short a good ranch hand because that hand is only ten years old. At any rate,” she said with a fatigued sigh, “I withheld the bitter details.”
“I’m gratified for that,” Nash said. “I confess to you that the judge never seemed a ranching sort of man, Mrs. Sutton. At least, not when I knew him at law college.”
“Alas, he wasn’t. Here I am in debt to you, after all,” Abbey conceded.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Mrs. Sutton, I’ve been pondering our arrangement.”
Abbey leaned forward. “You haven’t changed your mind—”
“No, rest assured, no. You have a place here as long as you need it. However, I mean to pay you a wage for your services as governess.”
“But, Mr. Nash, that leaves the debt still outstanding. I can’t have it that way.”
“We will consider the debt relaxed if you remain in my employ for one year, at a salary.”
“No, sir, I refuse.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I refuse to accept salary and still be in debt to you.”
“But I’ve said—”
“Yes, sir, I know what you said. I take no charity.”
Nash fell silent, staring at her through the golden lamplight. He sipped his wine then, contemplatively, and began again. “Of course, I have no wish to insult you. Charity is not my intent.”
“Then what is your intent? I plan to work off my debt to you. We’ve made that agreement.”
He placed his elbow on the burnished wood of the table and looked squarely at her now. His reflection shone clearly in the wood as he spoke. “Yes, of course. But where will that leave you at such a time as we decide the debt is satisfied?”
Abbey bit her lip thoughtfully. “I beg your pardon?”
Nash seemed frustrated at not getting across what he’d hoped to communicate. “Mrs. Sutton . . . you may well work off the debt, that’s all well and good. But where will you be then? You’ll have no cash on hand, no investment, no ranch, nothing. As a gentleman, I cannot allow you to work off a debt to me, only to be left a pauper. I owe the judge more than that for his widow.”
“The judge was my husband, sir, not my keeper,” Abbey told him, trying to sound both capable and at ease with her fate. “My parents homesteaded when I was hardly older than Luella. I’ve worked hard since I was that age and could always take care of myself. I still can. When he was on the county judicial circuit, I ran the ranch myself. I was foreman, in fact. Be assured, you’ll not be leaving me indigent. I shall see to myself.”
Nash sat back and gazed at her, apparently impressed with what he saw and heard. For many moments he remained silent. Then finally his cheeks grew round as he grinned solemnly. “Lowell Sutton made a wise choice for his wife.”
Her cheeks warmed by a sudden blush, Abbey could only nod and allow herself to grin slightly.
“I remember our long talks over whiskey,” Nash said. “He used to speak of migrating westward and founding a town.”
“He spoke of that to me also,” Abbey said, suddenly finding a common ground with this properly stiff gentleman. “He thought a foundation of cattle and sheep ranching in the area would provide a hub in the county. He bought up land and meant to sell homestead property to those who would work the ranch—vaqueros, Indians, Negroes . . . sadly, he was too kind a man for his own good. There wasn’t the ruthlessness in him it takes to roust civilization out of the western plains. He had little head for business, and too much head for giving away things he should have been selling. Unfortunately, that only leaves everybody with a little bit of something, instead of everybody with the potential to have lots of something. The people there were willing to work for their gain. Preferred it, in fact. Even the Indians and homesteaders puzzled over Lowell’s tendency to give things away. They wanted to work, Mr. Nash, not to be given things.” Careful not to insult him with her tone, she added, “As do I.”
Nash sighed, bobbed his brows once in subtle understanding of what she was trying to say, and took another sip. “I understand. I would not wish you to compromise your scruples. However, lest I sacrifice my own . . . I should like to arrange an allowance for your personal expenses.”
“Mr. Nash—”
“Mrs. Sutton, please let me do this.”
She stopped short in the midst of arguing, and stared at him. In his eyes she saw absolute desire to do what he spoke of doing, to give her something to live on above and beyond satisfying the debt she was here to work off. His eyes spoke not of guilt at all, but rather of generosity. Could she deny him that? Even a strong woman shouldn’t count stubbornness among her strengths, to the sacrifice of other folks’ feelings.
She sat back, grasped her wine goblet in acceptance both of drink and gallantry, and said, “Lowell may indeed have chosen his wife well enough, but I see he also chose his friends well. Mr. Nash,” she said, raising the goblet, “I accept.”
He smiled, showing a true smile for the first time, and raised his goblet as well. Together, they drank to the new arrangement.
“Thank you, Mrs. Sutton,” Nash said sincerely. He sipped the wine again and swallowed slowly. “I’ll sleep better at night knowing I won’t be leaving you destitute at the end of your stay.”
“I’ve only just begun here,” Abbey pointed out.
“Yes, but a year and a-half goes quickly, you’ll discover. You’re a young woman, Mrs. Sutton. I don’t delude myself that you’ll be content to stay here tending my children when a whole world lies out there to be conquered. I’ve already seen you’re not the kind of woman who settles for the mundane.”
“Your children are far from mundane, sir,” Abbey said, smiling.
He chuckled. “That’s exquisitely true. They’re very lively. I’ve had difficulty handling them on my own.”
“Are they much like your wife?”
Nash’s smile fell away and his eyes lost their focus. The change was startling and sad. “No . . . they’re not like either of us. She was . . . she was gentle as a songbird, Mrs. Sutton. Those children were her melodies. I think they understood the joy their mother found in them, for they seemed almost to perform for her . . . to take energy from life because they sensed the pleasure it gave her to see them frolic and play and be . . . what did you call them? Precocious?”
“They are,” she said with a smile.
He sighed, this time very deeply, and dropped his eyes to gaze unseeing into his wine. “She took the melody with her, Mrs. Sutton. I have been a silent soul ever since.”
A chord of sympathy ran deep within Abbey as she watched Dominic Nash. He was so like her husband—the same age, the same profession, the same background. She felt herself attracted to him—she wanted to touch him, to soothe him.
She shifted her feet, preparing to move, but then he spoke.
“I commend you,” he said, unable to meet her eyes yet. “You’re very strong to accept the death of your husband so staunchly. I have . . . no such strength.”
Abbey reached out with a single hand and cupped her fingers over his arm. “Mr. Nash—”
“Quite true,” he said. “She might as well have died yesterday as last year, for all the success I’ve had in recovering from it.”
“Mr. Nash,” she said again, more quietly.
Now he looked up. “Dominic. Please call me Dominic. Might you do that for me?”
Abbey nodded, smiling gently. “I shall . . . Dominic.”
The aroma of wine drifted between them. Perhaps she was fatigued after so long a week of travel, after the excitement in town with Jacob Ross, after the trying days that lay behind her like a trail of dried leaves. Whatever was playing on her, she was drawn to Dominic Nash in this unexplainable moment during which they both shared a need. So sudden . . . yet they had a common past and seemed to know each other because of that.
As she felt Dominic’s lips against hers, felt the tickle of his mustache and the intense loneliness of her husband’s old friend, Abbey felt affection rise again within her.
Not for Nash . . . not really. Once again she felt her husband’s touch. The flickering memory of dreams they’d followed together on the wild Wyoming plains. The low, drowsy, aching desire for a man’s hot touch—
Her mind fell away from sense into sensation—
And the face she was kissing changed. In her foggy mind, the mustache changed to rough stubble. The aroma of wine became the scent of wildflowers clinging to moist wool. The red locks of Dominic Nash paled to wheat blond, blue eyes darkening to the brown of almond shells.
Jake . . .
She gasped and drew back.
Dominic drew back almost as quickly, grasping the arms of his expensive leather chair so tightly that his knuckles went white. “Dear Lord—” he choked. “Forgive me!”
He got to his feet, almost stumbling.
Abbey pressed her cheeks with both hands, forcing her mind back to the present, and bolted from her chair. She managed to catch Dominic at the foot of the stairs.
“Dominic, wait.”
He whirled around, backing off to arm’s length. “No—please. What you must think of me! It was ungentlemanly—”
“But—”
“I would die a thousand times before I’d have you think I was taking advantage of my position as your employer,” he said, speaking so fast he was actually stumbling over his words. “This is not the arrangement I was trying to propose, please believe me!”
“I believe you,” she said sharply, catching his arm before he escaped up the stairs. “Dominic—”
“That was ill-advised. Improper . . .”
“Nonsense,” she assured him. “What the future might bring can’t be foretold. But for a moment, we helped each other through a patch of loneliness. Is that a sin?”
“Mrs. Sutton, please—I must say good night.”
He tugged loose from her grip, and she let him go. A moment later, the door on the master bedroom clapped shut, and Abbey was once again alone.
She stared at an empty stairway. “Poor man,” she murmured.
Feeling her failure rather acutely, considering she hadn’t seen the whole episode coming at all, she let her hands drop to her sides—and found they were moist with perspimtion. She touched her collar—it too was moist, tight.
Her whole body . . . quivering with needs she thought she had forgotten. Or hoped to have forgotten.
She spun around and wrenched open the big front door.
The Nantucket night spread out before her, cool and crisp, scented with rambling roses and sea breeze. She stepped out into it and tugged the door shut.
The town was quiet. Was it so late?
Windows glowed with lanternlight, but there was no one on the street. The night was quiet and comforting, but even that couldn’t quell the shuddering breaths that pulled through her body. She brought a hand to her chest and found it pounding. She drew the other hand along her forehead and down her face to her throat, and inhaled deeply, trying to drown out the throb of need that rose in her like a reawakened myth.
And something moved.
Her eyes darted. Over there. Under the trellis.
Abbey pressed her back against the little picket fence, peering through the darkness. The starless sky offered her no help.
“Who is it?” she called boldly. Foolish, probably. But she wasn’t about to be under siege in her own place of residence. She’d get to the bottom of this. If Jacob Ross said those men were following him rather than her, then who was lurking around under the trellis? She took a step in that direction, but not too big a step. “Come out of there, coward.”
The trellis rustled, sending a bolt of terrible confirmation through her. Now she’d done it. She couldn’t retreat back into the house like a scared mouse . . . could she? No, of course not. Could she?
Then a voice spoke out, a much bolder voice than that of a person caught in subterfuge.
“You like that word, don’t you?”
Abbey gasped. “Jacob!”