McKettrick's Choice

Lorelei shook her head, momentarily unable to speak.

“Then I guess I have no choice,” the judge said, with a dolorous shake of his own head. “If you persist in this foolishness, I will have to send you away. Perhaps even to an asylum.” He frowned, studying her pensively. “I fear you are not quite sane.”

Lorelei’s knees threatened to give out. Though she’d never heard this particular threat before, she knew it wasn’t an idle one. Her father had the power and the means to lock her up in some sanitarium; it would be a matter of signing a few documents. He’d sent Jim Mason’s troublesome wife off to one of those places with the air of a man doing a simple favor for a friend, and there had been others, too.

“I see I’ve gotten your attention,” the judge said, a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. Then, more gently, he added, “Go to Creighton now. Make things right. I shall expect you at the church at six o’clock, as planned, ready to go through with the wedding.”

Lorelei pushed away from the door, stiffening her spine once again. “Then you will be disappointed,” she said calmly. She turned the knob, pulled the great panel open.

“If you step over that threshold,” her father warned, “there will be no turning back. Just remember that.”

Lorelei hesitated a moment, then rushed out. She was so intent on packing her things and laying plans to escape before the judge sent her away to some madhouse that she didn’t see the man standing in the entryway until she collided with him.

“Lorelei!” her father roared, from inside his study.

“Looks like I came at a bad time,” said Holt Cavanagh.

HOLT STEADIED the hellcat by gripping her slender shoulders in his hands. She’d changed clothes since their encounter, as he had, but her ebony hair still smelled faintly of burning wedding dress.

“Holt McKettrick,” he said by way of introduction when she looked up at him, blinking cornflower-blue eyes in a vain effort to hide a sheen of tears. Her lashes were thick, even darker than her hair, and her lips…

Well, never mind her lips.

“I thought your name was Cavanagh,” she said.

“I didn’t say that, Gabe did. I went by it once.”

She raised a finely shaped eyebrow. “Neither here nor there,” she said crisply. Then, in a demanding tone of voice, “What do you want?”

She didn’t try to pull away, though. Nor, he reflected, with detached interest, was he particularly interested in releasing her. Curious, he thought.

“Actually,” Holt said, reluctantly letting his hands fall to his sides, “I came to see your father.”

“God help you,” Lorelei said, and, pushing past him, rushed up the broad, curving stairway.

This, Holt thought idly, was some hacienda.

“I don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance, Mr. McKettrick,” observed a masculine voice from somewhere on Holt’s right. “Are you a friend of my daughter’s? If so, perhaps you can reason with her.”

Judge Fellows stood in the doorway of what was probably his office. He was around sixty, with shrewd eyes, mutton-chop whiskers and a well-fitted suit. Somewhere upstairs a door slammed, and Fellows flinched.

Holt didn’t bother to put out his hand. “I never met your daughter before today,” he said forthrightly. “I’m here about Gabe Navarro.”

Fellows’s mouth tightened. “The Indian.”

Holt did some tightening of his own, but it was all inside, out of the judge’s sight. “The Texas Ranger,” he said.

The other man shrugged. “I’m afraid Mr. Navarro’s past glories, whatever they might be, were rendered meaningless by the murder of a settler and his wife. He butchered them with a Bowie knife and then stole their horses.”

“He didn’t kill anybody,” Holt maintained. “Or steal any horses.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion, Mr. McKettrick,” Fellows said, with false regret. “However, as I said, your friend has determined his own fate. The knife used to cut those poor souls to ribbons was his, and the horses were found penned up outside that lean-to he calls a home.”

Holt didn’t bother to argue. He knew conviction when he butted heads with it. Evidently, Judge Fellows was as unreasonable and ill-tempered as his daughter. “Who represented him? During the trial, I mean?”

“Creighton Bannings,” the judge said, nodding toward the front walk, visible through the long leaded-glass window beside the front door. “Here he is now.”

Holt turned, frowning thoughtfully. Bannings. Where had he heard that name before? The answer tugged at the edge of his mind, staying just out of reach.

There was a brief, obligatory knock, then Bannings strolled in, fidgeting with his tie. He was tall, as tall as Holt, but leaner, and his clothes, though expensive, were rumpled. The face, fine-boned and too pretty, was as familiar as the name, but Holt still couldn’t place the man.

“Holt McKettrick,” Holt said.

“I remember you as Cavanagh,” Bannings replied. He put out a hand, hail fellow well met, and Holt hesitated a moment before shaking it.

“I guess I ought to remember you, too,” Holt allowed, “but I can’t say as I do.”

Bannings smiled, showing white but crooked teeth. “We got into a fight once, at a dance, over a girl. I believe we were sixteen or seventeen at the time. John Cavanagh hauled you off me by the scruff of your neck.”

It all came back to Holt then, clear as high-country creek water. So did the enmity he’d felt that night, when he’d found Mary Sue Kenton crying behind her pa’s buckboard because Bannings, down from Austin to visit his country cousins, had torn her sky-blue party dress.

Holt felt a rush of primitive satisfaction, recalling the punch he’d landed in the middle of Bannings’s smug face five minutes after he’d turned Mary Sue over to the care of a rancher’s wife. For a reason he couldn’t define, he glanced toward the stairs, where he’d last seen Lorelei.

“I understand you defended Gabe Navarro,” he said, after wrenching his brain back to the business at hand.

Bannings grimaced, resigned. “I fear I wasn’t successful,” he admitted.

Holt’s gaze strayed to the judge, shot back to Bannings. “You a friend of the family?” he asked.

“I’m about to marry the judge’s daughter, Lorelei,” Bannings said.

Holt gave him credit for confidence. “Given the fact that she set fire to her wedding dress in a public square this afternoon,” he ventured, “it would seem there’s been a change in plans.”

Bannings looked pained, but the expression in his eyes was watchful. “Lorelei has a temper,” he admitted. “But she’ll come around.”

Having been a witness to the burning of all that lace and silk, Holt had his doubts, but he hadn’t come here to discuss what he considered a private matter. “Gabe Navarro,” he said, “is an old friend of mine. We were Rangers together. He’s innocent, and he’s being treated like a dog. Just now, I’m wondering why you didn’t file an appeal.”

“How do you know I didn’t?”

“I read the paperwork over at the courthouse,” Holt said. “Along with the clerk’s notes. Seems to me, you didn’t put up much of an argument.”

Bannings glanced questioningly at the judge, which confirmed a few suspicions on Holt’s part. Gabe’s trial had been a monkey show, as sorry as the case against him.

“I did my best,” Bannings said, a little defensively.

“I’m thinking your best is pretty sorry,” Holt replied.

Bannings flushed. Holt suspected the lawyer would have liked to land a haymaker, but apparently his memory was better than his ethics. He clearly remembered the set-to over Mary Sue and her torn dress well enough to think better of the idea, which showed he was prudent, as well as spineless.