The Devil She Knows - By Diane Whiteside Page 0,75
to place an ambush.”
“The sheriff was involved?”
“We always called him Robin Redbreast for his fancy waistcoats. I had no doubt who led the butchers, not that I didn’t know who our enemies were.”
“You could see him.” Ice flowed through her veins, dragging her back to the moment when his heart had stopped beating.
“We needed food but didn’t have many cartridges so I’d been sent fishing. I could see our cabin but couldn’t successfully intervene, since I was too far away.”
“You must have been frantic.” My poor darling.
“I ran until my legs knotted and my stomach heaved. But I couldn’t reach them in time to stop the sheriff from shooting my father and brother down when they went to tend the fields. That’s when everyone else barricaded themselves inside the cabin.”
“And the lead started flying.”
“Yup. But our old enemy Gunnison was never the patient type so he threw some lighted brands onto the roof. It had been a hot, dry year—”
“The cabin caught fire quickly.”
“Too damn fast. The bastards refused to shoot our hogs, saying they were valuable. But they were lying in wait to gun down everyone who tried to make a break out of the door or windows.”
She bowed her head, wishing she were an angel to heal his heart. “What happened next?”
“The womenfolk came out first and were butchered before they could make it onto the porch.”
Grief, for Gareth and his family, tore through her throat.
“The remaining men used their last shots for themselves. The only reason I could tell the women apart was their heavy calico skirts—because I had to dig their graves.”
“Oh, my poor darling.” She caught his face and rained little kisses on his jaw, cheek, everywhere she could reach.
“Did you hear everything I said yesterday?” He shackled her wrists with his hands, his grip like hot iron. “I killed Gunnison and all the other men involved. I ended the blood feud before I turned fourteen.”
“Good.” She stopped struggling to free herself in order to give another consoling salute to that twitching muscle in his cheek. “I hope you shot them down like dogs, the murdering heathens. They shouldn’t have burned your family.”
She glared at him, almost vibrating with rage and sympathy. To lay such a burden on a young boy was monstrous.
“Portia, I was nothing more than a savage animal myself. I forgot how to plow and tend cattle. All I thought of was death and killing.”
“Those men would have slain you, too, if they’d known you were alive.”
“I could have walked away.” He shrugged impatiently. “By the time I was fourteen, I had more notches on my gun than years under my belt.”
Agony staggered her knees for the first time, for all the men he’d killed—and the isolated fourteen-year-old kid who’d done a man’s job but paid more than a man’s price.
“That doesn’t matter to me.” Except for the strong desire to burn some ghosts in Hades, the way an ancient Greek would. She rubbed the knotted muscles at the back of his neck for several minutes before she could speak again. “Please, let’s go to bed and hold each other, husband.”
“Portia!” His bellow almost staggered her and he removed himself from her clasp. “How can you say that, when you know what I am? I will never free myself from the blood on my hands.”
Was that what his nightmares were about, all those times he woke up during the night?
“Gareth, please—”
“Do you think I haven’t tried? Even the wildest games and the greatest charities haven’t helped. I can still see all the men I destroyed.” He stopped, his chest heaving.
“You deserve better,” he whispered.
But you are mine. The unspoken words echoed through her heart, as they had when she was twelve, the first time she’d seen him. His hair had been windswept and dusted with snow from an early winter storm. He’d looked like an angel—a very special, rugged angel.
She’d fight with every weapon she had to claim her love, no matter what the cost.
“When I was twelve, some coals popped out of the fireplace and landed on my mother’s train, catching it on fire.” Try as she might, her lips didn’t work very well on these sentences. Of course, this was only the first time she’d tried to tell anybody the full story.
“I screamed and tried to put it out with water. But Mother ran and ran as soon as she felt the flames on her legs and back.”
“Dear God, Portia.” Gareth took a step toward her, linked by the same