Wildwood. Lynna Banning

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СКАЧАТЬ Miss Jessamyn. Weren’t any use, though. I saw it had to be done. Otherwise, it’d have the gangrene in it.”

      Jessamyn’s appetite vanished. “Oh, how awful.”

      “Yes’m, it was.”

      “You were there, Jeremiah? But why? Surely you could have gone back to your home on the plantation?”

      “I stayed,” Jeremiah replied quietly. “The colonel, he tried to get me to leave him when he saw the Yankee boys comin’ over the hill at Vicksburg. I wouldn’t budge, though. So, in the end they took us both.”

      “Oh, Jeremiah! How courageous that was!”

      The deputy flushed under his tan. “’Tweren’t no such thing, Miss Jessamyn. Ben and me been friends from the cradle, you might say. We grew up together, fishin’ and ridin’—even some schoolin’ afore his pappy sent him off to the academy. Besides, I promised Miss Lorena I’d watch out for him. A body couldn’t refuse Miss Lorena nothin’, so I stuck with him.”

      “Miss Lorena?” The question slipped out before Jessamyn could stop herself.

      “Good thing, too,” Jeremiah continued, purposely ignoring her query. “After the surgeon cut Ben’s chest open, he like to bled to death till I poulticed him like my momma taught me.”

      Jessamyn found her hand shaking so violently she couldn’t hold her fork steady. She laid it down on the desk. “No wonder he’s so brusque,” she said half to herself. “He must hate all Northerners.”

      “Oh, no, ma’am,” Jeremiah offered with a chuckle. “Not just Northerners. Part of him hates most everybody, ‘cept your pappy—Mr. Whittaker—and me. And sometimes I think he even—”

      Something in the man’s raspy voice struck a nerve. Sometimes, she supposed, the sheriff acted as if he even hated his faithful companion, Jeremiah. A resonant chord of understanding tolled in her heart. She knew from her own experience how devastating it was to be abandoned. She also knew how healing it could be to find a friend.

      She had nothing in common with Sheriff Ben Kearney. He was a rich Southern plantation owner, she a poor Northern working girl. Ben Kearney was a man of few words, a loner, unfathomable and unyielding as an iron strongbox. Jessamyn relished every waking moment of watching the fascinating parade of people that made up day-to-day life.

      No, sir, she had nothing in common with Sheriff Ben Kearney. But she shared an unspoken bond with thoughtful, soft-spoken Jeremiah. Then and there she resolved she would be the deputy’s friend.

      “Come on, Jeremiah,” Jessamyn announced. “Let’s have some of Cora’s applesauce cake, then get back to work!”

      She unwrapped the square of cinnamon-scented cake, cut it in two pieces with the paring knife Cora had provided, and handed one to Jeremiah. Just as she opened her mouth to take a bite, the door banged open.

      Sheriff Ben Kearney leaned his tall form against the door frame, the rowels on his spurs chinging. With slow, deliberate motions he pushed his hat up off his forehead and crossed one black boot over the other.

      “Evening,” he said, his voice lazy.

      The look in his hard gray-blue eyes sent Jessamyn’s heart skittering into her throat.

      “Smells like a Carolina stump whiskey still in here,” the sheriff remarked, his voice ominously soft.

      Jessamyn bristled. “We were—I was cleaning my printing press, Sheriff.”

      “With whiskey?”

      “Yes, with whiskey. The mercantile had no kerosene. Your deputy here—” She glanced toward Jeremiah and gasped. The solidly built man had vanished out the back door.

      “Jeremiah came to my aid at the Red Fox,” she finished lamely.

      Ben’s dark eyebrows rose. “The Red Fox,” he echoed. “A saloon is no place for a woman. Miss Whittaker. I thought I made that clear yesterday.” Flinty blue eyes bored into hers as he waited, arms folded across his chest, for her response.

      “You did. But, you see, without kerosene, I had no choice but—”

      “You had a choice,” the sheriff said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “A choice that didn’t involve my deputy in your difficulties. No doubt Jeremiah ‘came to your aid,’ as you naively put it, because he’s an intelligent man and he saw that your presence at the Red Fox spelled trouble. In the future—”

      “Now, just one minute, Sheriff,” Jessamyn interrupted. “You don’t own this town. You’ve no right to come barging in here and tell me how to live my life!”

      “I’ve got the right,” Ben said. His tone hardened. “You’re a damn menace traipsing into a saloon in your petticoats and lace. When you Yankees mess with things you know nothing about, mistakes come easy. It’s a wonder you didn’t start a hell-fired hullabaloo.”

      A heated silence fell. Jessamyn felt her cheeks flame. She rose to her feet, twitched her apron into place with short, jerky movements and turned her back on the man lounging in her doorway.

      “Excuse me, Sheriff. I have work to do.” She snatched up her rag and the bottle of Child’s.

      A hand closed like an iron band about her upper arm. “Put that down and listen to me.” He gave her a little shake and pulled her about to face him. The whiskey sloshed back and forth in the container.

      Jessamyn sucked in a breath.

      His mouth thinned into a fine, straight line with no hint of a smile. “Put that down,” he repeated. “Now.”

      His voice, Jessamyn thought irrationally, became oddly quiet when he was angry. The timbre of it sent a current of unease dancing up her spine.

      She lowered the bottle to the floor, dipping her knees to settle it with care on the plank surface. “Take your hands off me,” she said evenly, keeping her eyes on his.

      A flicker of pain surfaced in the smoky depths of his gaze, masked at once by a careful shuttering. Jessamyn cringed at the unfathomable expression in his eyes.

      He lifted his hands, dropped them to his sides. For a long minute their gazes locked.

      Across the street the piano plunked out a ragged snatch of “The Blue Tail Fly.” A moth batted against the windowpane, and the slow tick-tock-tick of her father’s clock on the wall contrasted with her heart’s erratic beating beneath the starched white waist.

      Ben breathed in, out, in again, the air pulling raggedly through his nostrils. Jessamyn blanched at the carefully expressionless face of the man before her. It was plain as day he was furious at her. She had challenged his professional judgment as sheriff.

      When, she moaned inwardly, will I ever learn to keep my mouth shut? What was he thinking? Worse, what was he going to do?

      At last his low, quiet voice broke the stillness.

      “Let me explain something about life out here in the West, Miss Whittaker.” He held her attention riveted to his face by the sheer force of his steady blue СКАЧАТЬ