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“Thank you, Marshal,” she said, then stripped off the filthy rags that passed for clothes.
She glided off the rock slowly, submerging her knees then savoring the tickle of the warm water where it kissed away the cold air pebbling her thighs. Her nipples puckered with the chill but she didn’t hurry.
This was a moment to savor. Inch by inch she slipped under, the warm water touching her like a pair of tender hands. It slid over her bottom and up her hips; it rushed up her ribs and washed over her back. She felt the tingle in her breasts, which meant that her milk was letting down. She pressed her forearms across her chest to stop it, then went down, down and down, until every last strand of her hair went under.
She held her breath, feeling the grime lift from her skin. She rubbed her arms and her belly before she broke the surface of the water for air.
Her toes touched the smooth stones at the bottom of the pool. She lifted her legs then floated for a moment, nearly euphoric at the sense of weightlessness.
She filled her lungs and ducked under again.
This time she swished her hair and rubbed her scalp, watching while the strands floated back and forth before her face in the moonlit water.
She pushed up for another breath then sank down until her bottom rested on the warm stones. Water pulsed against her gently, wiping away all traces of the Broken Brand.
In her mind she imagined every place that Ram had handled her. The water erased the residue of his touch...washed him from her body and her mind.
Her husband was dead. He had no power over her.
She pushed up slowly, feeling energy pulse through her thighs. Hattie Travers was gone, left at the bottom of the pool to dissolve along with Ram.
She broke the surface, grinning.
Marshal Prentis didn’t pivot, even though he must have heard the water. The sway of his hips and his shoulders rocking Seth didn’t falter.
Perhaps she shouldn’t compare all men to her dead husband. It seemed that, maybe, Marshal Prentis was a man to be trusted.
It wasn’t his fault that her judging ability was faulty where the male species was concerned.
As soon as the warmth of the pool faded from her skin she began to shiver.
This was a predicament. She couldn’t put on her dress until she dried off.
All of a sudden the marshal flung out his arm. A blanket hung from his fist. Still, he held true to his word and didn’t turn, even though he knew she stood only feet behind him, wet, naked and utterly vulnerable.
“Dry off with this, Mrs. Travers.”
She took the blanket, wiped off then hurried into her underclothes and her dress. She hated to put the rags back on, but for now, she would have to.
Even though he wasn’t looking, he must have been listening. As soon as she slipped the last button of her bodice into place he turned and handed Seth to her.
His eyes blinked wide, almost as though he were startled.
She knew she looked different. She could feel that she did, from the inside out. New hope coursed through her and it had to show.
The spring had cleansed her, washed away the ugliness of the outlaw ranch.
Home was only days away. For the first time in three years she looked forward to the future.
Only time would tell what it would be, but whatever it was, it would be what she chose.
She took Seth from the marshal’s arms, glancing up at his face as she did.
He smiled and she returned the gesture. It had been a long time since she felt her heart light up, but she felt it now, as fragile as a candle flame.
“My name is Melody, Marshal Prentis...Melody Irene Dawson.”
Chapter Two (#ulink_7402280d-7270-5861-ad1c-042b57c6bd5b)
A pair of lovely, amber-colored eyes gazed up at him in the moonlight. He felt as dumb as a tree stump, with no more knowledge of how to respond than a dried-out piece of wood.
A helpless sparrow of a woman had gone into the water, but someone else had stepped out.
She even had another name.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Dawson.” He reckoned Miss was the right way to address her. Chances are she had gone back to her maiden name.
And a good thing, too, in his estimation. The lady taking her child from his arms had a smile prettier than the bright full moon. She resembled a “Hattie” as much a songbird resembled a mud hen.
“Won’t you call me Melody?”
It would change things, being on a first-name basis. As it stood now, bringing her home was a part of his job, his obligation as a US marshal.
Ordinarily, he transported criminals whose first names he didn’t care to know. His only duty was to see them safely to trial and then a jail cell.
Miss Dawson was offering friendship. It would make the trip more pleasant, no denying that. But once he delivered her to Cottonwood Grove, he’d never see her or the children again.
Keeping an emotional distance would be proper.
“I’m Reeve,” he said, and by the blazes, he was smiling when he said it.
He followed her to the campfire and then sat down beside her, a comfortable enough distance to allow for conversation without things seeming too intimate.
The evening was cold but with no sign of snow. It felt good to have a fire burning from the branches he’d found scattered among the trees. Nothing was better than a true wood fire. It glowed hot enough so that the part of one’s body presented to the flames grew toasty and made it easier to ignore the chilly side facing the dark.
While he considered how to bring up the Broken Brand without discouraging the new confidence brewing in her, she settled the baby on her lap then drew her wet hair over her shoulders. She fanned it through her fingers.
Even damp, her hair wasn’t the dull brown color he had assumed it was. Far from dull, it caught the warmth of the flames and reflected shots of honey gold.
He knew he shouldn’t, but he looked forward to seeing dawn sunshine glinting in those long silky strands.
Too bad they couldn’t have an easy fireside chat about nothing of great importance, but there were some things he needed to know. Things that would keep the Travers family in jail for a very long time.
“I don’t like to bring it up,” he said, deciding that the only way to approach the subject was straight on. “But I need to know what went on at the ranch. Colt’s lady, Holly Jane, told me that you had been kidnapped.”
“That’s true. It’s what they called The Travers Way. It was required of a man to go out and pluck a bride out from under her family’s nose. It was a little different in my case, though.”
“How was it different? I wouldn’t ask, but I don’t want some fancy lawyer twisting the truth and setting those—” he cleared his throat of the cussword he had been ready to blurt out “—those criminals free.”
“I understand,” she answered.
Her smile faded, but the defeated expression she used to have did not come back. In fact, she squared her shoulders and looked directly at him. The dusky beauty of her dark-lashed eyes nearly made him forget what he had been talking about.
“I don’t regret anything, mind you, because of my babies, but the day I saw Ramsey Travers walk into the Cottonwood Grove General Store was the worst day of my life.” She shrugged her shoulders and cast a glance at the wagon, where Flynn slept. “I didn’t know it was, at the time...I thought it was the best. That day, watching Ram from across the street, I told my friends that I had fallen in love. They said I was silly—I couldn’t know that with just one glance. Well...until that point in my life I had been a cherished only child... What I knew about the world outside of Cottonwood Grove wouldn’t fill a thimble.”
She turned Seth around on her lap, facing the other side of his blanket toward the flames.
This close to winter, the woods were bare and silent. Still, there was a symphony in the air, with the crackle of the flames, the bubble of the spring and the branches overhead rustling against each other. And there was Joe, already snoring like a full-grown man.
“I left my friends and crossed the street, pretending to need something—a ribbon or a gewgaw—I can’t recall, but it was something frivolous. Quite truthfully, Reeve, I was a frivolous girl. I flirted with Ram and he promised me the moon if only I’d sneak away with him. He filled my head with romance. He told me I was the first girl he’d ever kissed and the last one he ever wanted to. Fool I was to believe him.”
“You were young. Besides, I’m the last person to judge youthful foolishness. I only want to see those folks stay where they belong.”
“That would suit me fine.”
The baby began to fuss. Seth turned his head toward his mother’s breast and gnawed at the blanket where it covered his cheek.
“Looks like he wants a feeding.”
Reeve got up and walked over to his saddle. He took a blanket out of his pack then carried it back and settled it over Melody’s shoulders.
“Let me know when he’s settled.” He walked to the other side of the fire to check on the sleeping children. The deputy’s large coat had slipped from Pansy’s shoulder where it covered her and her sister like a blanket. He tugged it over the curve of her round, pink cheek.
“You seem to know a thing about babies, Reeve.”
His name sounded nice, the way she said it. It was hard to recall when someone had uttered it quite that way.
“I have nieces. I know when it’s time to hand one back to her mother.”
“Seth is settled in. Sit beside me so I can get this sorry tale over with.”
He sat down a few inches closer than he had been before, but somehow it seemed the right distance.
“We were to be married, be gone for only a day, he’d promised. We were to return and spring the grand and romantic news on my parents. I was so full of the dreams he’d spun I didn’t give anyone else’s feelings a thought. I left my folks without a word or a kiss, only a note that I later found among Ram’s things.
“I was wretched to them when all they had ever been to me was devoted. Until Ram, the three of us had been each other’s world.”
“Girls do grow up.” Way too fast. He thought about the little ones who hugged his thighs whenever he visited his sister. His heart twisted.
“Most not so thoughtlessly,” she answered, staring at the flames. “I’ve told the children my folks will welcome me back, and them, as well. I only hope that’s true.”
“Would you welcome Flynn or Seth in the same situation?”
“I see your point, Reeve, but for all I know they might think I’m dead.”
Reeve. Every time she said his name it sounded special. He gave himself a mental shake. It was time to wrangle his thoughts back to business.
“They’ll be that much more relieved to see you, then. So, are you saying you weren’t kidnapped?”
“Oh, I was...” She looked away from the fire and straight at him. “Half a day out of Cottonwood Grove we rode right past the Justice of the Peace where we were to be married. I told Ram that I’d changed my mind. I wanted to go home, to be married with my parents by my side. That gave him a good laugh and me a good cry.
“We kept on riding, avoiding towns so I couldn’t tell anyone that he was taking me against my will, because by then he was. I tried to escape once and he tied me to the saddle until we got to the Badlands, where I wouldn’t dare try to run. Once we reached the Broken Brand, Pappy Travers married us. I had to say I do. They were going to punish Libby if I didn’t.”
“I wonder if your marriage was legal?”
“I signed a license that looked real. They say Pappy Travers became ordained, just so he could perform weddings at the ranch.”
Another crime came to mind. One he had to ask about, but damn, he didn’t want to.
“I’m asking this as a lawman, because I have to.” He took a breath. Questioning a criminal was a hell of a lot easier than questioning a witness. “Before you got to the Broken Brand, did Trav—”
“No.” Silence stretched for a moment, broken by Seth’s contented sighs. “It wasn’t allowed. Pappy Travers had decreed—and what Pappy Travers decreed was law—that the men had to wait until the vows were spoken and the paper signed. They broke every other kind of law. I don’t know why they drew the line at rape.
“After Pappy pronounced a marriage binding, that was another thing. It didn’t matter if the bride was unwilling, she was now her husband’s property, to be treated as he saw fit.”
He nodded, clasped his hands around his knees and tried very hard not to erupt into anger. There were two more things he needed to ask, one much harder than the other.
“Were there others like you?”
She was silent for a long moment, and then she nodded.
“I’ve heard the stories of how some adapted, became no better than their husbands. Some didn’t. Joe’s mother died giving birth to him. His daddy is in jail—no one remembers where, though. Libby and Pansy’s mother went crazy. She walked away one day. That happened the year before I came, and Pansy was an infant. Libby said they looked for her, but not for long.”
“It’s hard to accept that they got away with it as long as they did.”
“The ranch is remote...and not all of the Traverses got away. Some got caught, some shot. Ram and his brother were both killed robbing a bank. They were buried where they committed their crime.” She looked at him straight on again, her eyes welling with moisture. “I’d like to say that I grieved the loss, but when word came...well, my tears weren’t sorrowful ones. All I could think of was that he wouldn’t be a poisonous influence on Flynn or the coming baby.”
As much as he’d told her that his questions were not personal, only what he was required to ask, her answers cut him to the quick. The few Traverses out there walking free wouldn’t be for long.
This brought him to the final question, the one he dreaded asking more than the others.
“Will you testify against the ones we have in custody when it comes to the trial?”
She bowed her head, closed her eyes. He thought she was not going to answer, but she nodded her head.
“Yes, Reeve,” she whispered. “As long as you’ll be there.”
“I’ll be there.”
It was his job to be there. Even if it weren’t, he’d be there. Somewhere during this conversation, he had changed from lawman to friend.
Where Melody Dawson was concerned, things were no longer strictly business.
* * *
“I can’t believe it,” Reeve heard Libby exclaim while she and Melody sat on the back of the buckboard with their legs dangling over the edge. “Your name is really Melody Irene? Why did you tell us it was Hattie?”
Reeve drove the wagon team while Joe took turns giving Pansy and Flynn rides on his horse. He didn’t worry about his mount. The horse was good with children, having been exposed to his sister’s brood.
