Bride On The Run

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Author Note (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue

St. Joseph, Missouri

January 4, 1889

“Love, oh, love, oh careless love,

Love, oh, love, oh careless love,

Love, oh, love, oh careless love,

Just see what careless love has done….”

Anna DeCarlo sat on the edge of the tiny stage in a cross-legged pose that offered her audience a tantalizing glimpse of silk-stockinged ankle. Lamplight gleamed on her tawny, upswept hair and glittered on the paste-diamond choker that encircled her creamy throat. Her low, velvety voice flowed like dark honey through the smoky haze that filled the grand salon of the Jack of Diamonds, rising above the piano to mingle with the clink of crystal, the whir of roulette wheels and the low murmur of men’s voices.

From the ring of tables that surrounded the stage, she could feel hungry eyes on her, feel them devouring her small, voluptuous body through the clinging peacock satin gown. Go ahead and look, Anna thought fiercely. You’ll never get another chance!

“Love, oh, love, oh, careless love…”

Did she love Harry Solomon? Anna was not prepared to answer that question. She had stopped believing in love a long time ago. But she liked the dapper, silver-haired owner of the Jack of Diamonds. He was kind and generous and treated her like the lady she had always longed to be. Last week he had asked her to be his wife. Tonight he would get his answer. It would be yes.

“Just see what careless love has done…”

Anna lowered her gaze as the song ended, letting her head fall forward like a wilted blossom. For a long moment silence filled the lamplit circle. Then, as she lifted her face the audience burst into cheers. Smiling radiantly now, she took her bows. It was all over—the smoke-filled rooms, the leering eyes and pawing hands, the haggling over contracts and payment, the endless packing and unpacking. As Mrs. Harry Solomon, she would have a home. She would have the respect and security she had hungered for all her life.

As the applause died away she slipped backstage, pausing only to take up her white merino shawl from its hook on the wall. Wrapping the shawl around her bare shoulders, she hurried through the draughty corridor and up the back stairs. Harry would be in his sumptuous second-floor office now, waiting for her answer. She had kept him on tenterhooks long enough.

For all Anna’s resolve, doubts gnawed at her as she mounted the dark stairway. Harry Solomon was old enough to be her father. Was she doing the right thing by him and by herself? Could she be a loving wife to him? Share his bed? Even give him children?

But she was being foolish now, Anna lectured herself. Harry was the best thing that had ever come into her rough, miserable life. He had offered her the world of her dreams, and she would be generous with her gratitude. She would make him proud, and she would make him happy. Harry Solomon would never be sorry he had married her.

Lost in thought, Anna climbed upward. From the salon, the lusty chords of the grand piano, playing “Beautiful Dreamer,” echoed eerily up the stairwell. Above her, on the landing, she could see the thin crack of light beneath Harry’s door. He would be waiting for her, she knew, with iced champagne and two crystal goblets on the sideboard. Minutes from now they would be toasting their future together.

She was a half dozen steps short of the top when the door flew open and two dark figures burst out onto the landing. They were cloaked against the winter night, their low-brimmed hats shadowing their faces, but she recognized them both. The shorter of the two was Louis Caswell, chief of police in the riverfront precinct and a frequent patron of the Jack of Diamonds. Yes—she could see the black high-heeled boots he wore, custom-made to increase his height. The taller, darker man was little more than a stranger, a shadowy man known to her only as The Russian.

What business would Caswell have with Harry at this hour of the night? Anna was weighing the wisdom of asking when the two men pushed past her without a word and hurried on. Only the startled flash of Caswell’s eyes in his sharp little weasel face indicated that he had seen her at all.

Partway down the stairs she saw The Russian hesitate, glancing up at her. For an instant the light from the open doorway fell on his long, pockmarked face, and Anna felt her heart contract with a sudden, nameless fear. He turned, as if to start back toward her, but then Caswell seized his arm, said something in a low voice, and the two of them vanished into the dark corridor.

“Harry?” Anna’s elegant kidskin boots clicked across the landing as she hurried toward the open door. “Harry, what on earth—”

The words died in her throat as she stepped into the room. Harry Solomon was lying facedown in a spreading pool of blood, among the papers that had spilled from his open safe. A large, bone-handled butcher knife protruded from his back, right over the spot where his heart would be.

Chapter One

Arizona Territory, May, 1889

They would never find her here.

Anna’s lips moved in silent reassurance of that fact as the buckboard creaked down the narrow dugway that had been blasted into the sun-colored sandstone cliff. The silent man who sat beside her, his massive fists keeping a tight rein on the mules, probably thought she was praying. She wasn’t. Anna had given up on God at roughly the same time God had given up on her. By what she judged to be mutual consent, she no longer asked heaven for favors. Not even at times like this.

Above the towering canyon walls, the sky was a blinding turquoise gash. Two great, dark birds, which Anna guessed to be vultures, drifted back and forth, circling and descending on the hot spirals of air. Infinitely patient, they seemed to be waiting for a misstep. For the man. For the mules. For her.

The man glanced coldly at Anna. His name was Malachi, like the last book in the Old Testament. Malachi Stone—a hard-hewn, righteous-sounding name if she’d ever heard one. Malachi’s lead-colored eyes flickered upward in the direction of her gaze. “Ravens,” he said. “You’ll see a lot of them here.”

Anna nodded, twisting the unfamiliar gold band that encircled her left ring finger. This was nothing but a bizarre and frightening dream, she told herself. Any minute now, she would wake up in St. Joseph, warm and secure in her cozy hotel suite. Harry would still be alive, and she would be planning their wedding, not fleeing from town to town in a constant state of terror.

Louis Caswell had known what he was doing that January night when he’d stopped his sinister cohort from killing her. By the time she’d realized her mistake, her clothes, shoes and hands were streaked with Harry’s blood. She had left bloody footprints all over the Persian rug, bloody fingerprints on the knife handle and on Harry’s once immaculate pearl-gray suit. She had wiped her hands on the papers that lay scattered on the rug. She had even left her bloodstained merino shawl at the scene as she fled, panic-stricken, from the room. No jury on earth, she knew, would believe her version of what had happened. She’d had no choice except to run or hang.

Anna had snatched up what little money and valuables she could lay her hands on, packed a few necessities and hired a driver to take her to the railway station. Omaha…Denver…no place was safe for more than a few weeks. She had planned to head for California or perhaps Mexico where no one had ever heard of Anna DeCarlo. But in Salt Lake City her money had run out. She’d been scanning the Salt Lake Tribune, looking for any kind of employment she could find, when she’d spotted the advertisement one Mr. Stuart Wilkinson, Attorney at Law, had placed on behalf of his widowed cousin: “Wife Wanted: Remote ferry location on Colorado River. Must get on well with children and be accustomed to hard work….”

The front wheel of the buckboard lurched over a rock, jarring Anna’s thoughts back to the present. From hundreds of feet below, hidden by rocky ledges, she could hear the rushing sound of the Colorado. Spring was high-water time. Malachi Stone had told her that while they were still trying to make polite conversation. Swollen with runoff from melting mountain snows, the current was too dangerous for any kind of crossing. Having planned for such a time, he had lashed the ferry to the bank, hitched up the mules and turned the buckboard toward the ranch where his nearest neighbors lived. All night he had hunched over the reins, arriving at dawn to meet the stranger who, by virtue of proxy marriage, was already his legal wife.

Anna studied him furtively from under her parasol. Malachi Stone was a big man. Big shoulders, big arms, hands like sledgehammers and, beneath the dusty felt hat, a face that could have been hewn from hickory with the blade of an ax. She liked big men. Always had. Not that it made any difference in this case. The contract she’d signed in Salt Lake City did not include marital duties. She was hired help, plain and simple. The so-called marriage existed only to suit Malachi Stone’s rigid sense of propriety.

That arrangement was fine with her, Anna reminded herself as the buckboard swayed around a stomach-twisting curve. She was not looking for love or permanence, only safety. And Malachi Stone looked as if he could fend off an army of Caswell’s thugs with his big, bare fists.

She ran the tip of her tongue across her front teeth, tasting gritty sand. “How much farther?”

“Not far.” He did not look at her.

“You left your children alone at the ferry?”

His hard gaze flickered in her direction, then returned to the road. “Didn’t have much choice. Not that they can’t look after themselves if need be. Carrie’s eleven, old enough to see to the boy for a couple of days. And the dog’s with them. Good protection in case a cougar or bobcat comes sniffing around. All the same, it’ll be a relief to get home.”

“How long has it been since their mother passed away?”

The silence that followed Anna’s question was broken only by the sound of plodding hooves and the low hiss of the river far below. “A year come this summer,” he said in a flat voice. “We’ve gotten by as well as you might expect. But the two young ones need more care than I can give them on my own. That’s why you’re here.”

“Of course.” Anna gazed past him toward the next bend in the road, where the long, thorny spears of an ocotillo, each one tipped with a bloodred blossom, rose from behind a clump of prickly pear.