The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,107

I’ve done you no harm.”

Beau took aim. “It weren’t me that you harmed. It was Charity Doone.”

Letty screamed.

Eulis wanted to throw up.

Just when he thought his life was over, another rider suddenly came out of the darkness. A young woman leaped from her horse, shouting aloud as she ran.

“No, Beau, don’t shoot! For God’s sake, don’t shoot! That’s not the right preacher! That’s not Randall Howe!”

Eulis sagged against the fence. It was over. They’d been found out. He looked at Letty. She was down on her knees in prayer. He frowned. Praying was good and all, but there was a time and a place for everything and right now he needed a gun and a horse to get out of town a lot worse than he needed a prayer.

Beau James froze, his finger just shy of pulling the trigger. Although Charity was tugging desperately on his arm, he wouldn’t budge.

“What the hell do you mean, he ain’t the one? I just asked him his name. He said it was Randall Howe.”

Charity swayed, near exhaustion from their frantic ride. She looked to her sister, Mehitable, who was in the act of dismounting.

“Tell him, Hetty. Tell him it’s so. I don’t know who this man is, but he’s not the man who came to our home. He’s not the one who shamed me.”

Eulis’s mouth dropped. If he was understanding this right, the preacher they’d buried hadn’t been that true blue. Somehow, just the knowing of that made their deception a little bit easier to bear.

Mehitable got down from her horse. She was dusty and tired and wanted a bath. But she wanted justice more. She stepped closer to the light, peering at Eulis with cold-eyed intent. Finally, she shook her head and stepped back.

“Sister’s right,” Mehitable said. “That ain’t Randall Howe.”

The tension slid out of Beau in one breath. “Then who the hell are you, mister? And what’s yore game?”

Eulis’s mouth was in gear, but his brain had yet to catch up. All he could manage was a flapping jaw.

It was Letty who saved the day. She’d given too much of herself and come too far today to lose it all now. She pulled herself up, mindful to keep the shawl over her state of undress.

“I don’t know what your trouble is, mister, but you need to back off.” Then she looked at Charity with a pitying gaze. “And I’m real sorry Miss, if you were lied to by some good-lookin’ man. It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened. But this man here is Reverend Randall Howe. Today he’s preached four weddings, had a burying, given a boy a Christian name, and baptized a whore. And the night isn’t over. Whoever did you wrong must have been an imposter.”

Mehitable hissed through her teeth and threw her arms in the air. “I should’a knowed,” she snarled. “He was too damned pretty for a preacher.” When she realized what she’d just said, she added. “No offense, Reverend Howe.”

Thinking how come he’d close to dying, Eulis shuddered. “None taken.”

Beau went limp. All the fury he’d been saving had nowhere to go.

“Then I’ll have to keep lookin’,” he said coldly, and holstered his pistol.

Charity threw herself into his arms. “No, Beau, no,” she cried. “No more. Wherever that man is, he can’t hurt me anymore.”

That’s for sure, Eulis thought, but wisely kept his mouth shut.

Beau was torn between wanting to please Charity and the need for revenge. He wrapped his arms around her, his face bearing witness to his internal agony of having suffered a defeat.

“I don’t know as how I can live with myself if I don’t make that man pay.”

Eulis cleared his throat. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”

Mehitable’s eyes squinted even more than usual as she considered Eulis’s words.

“He’s right, Beau. We’ve all done our share of takin’ Charity’s side. Leave the rest of it to the Lord.” She arched an eyebrow at the way Beau was holding her sister, and then back at the preacher. “From the looks of things, I’d say the trip wasn’t altogether wasted.”

Charity hugged Beau even tighter. The thought of losing him was more than she could bear.

Beau James crumbled. But it wasn’t so much what Eulis said that changed his mind, as it was the feel of Charity’s soft breasts pressed against his chest.

“Then that’s that,” he said softly, and laid his cheek against the crown of her hair.

Relieved that it was over, Mehitable shoved her hat to the back of her hair and frowned.

“While I