Lady Lavender Read online

  Jeanne followed his gaze as it skimmed over her lavender crop. “It is beautiful in the afternoon light, is it not?”

  He nodded without lifting his eyes from the fields.

  “This valley, it reminds me of the land near Narbonne, where I grew up. My mother grew lavender to sell at the market. And now I do, as well.”

  “I can see that, ma’am. You have a fine crop here.”

  “I let it grow as it will, and each summer the ground is covered in purple. I leave some of the stalks uncut until they go to seed.”

  The air was sharp with the spicy fragrance. Each year her lilac-tinted sea had pushed farther and farther up the canyon sides. “It makes a small income for Manette and me. I feel safe here.” Up until now.

  For an instant Wash closed his eyes. He sure understood safe. “It’s almost dusk, ma’am. I’ve got to get back to town, but before I go, could you show me your deed for the place?”

  She could not answer.

  “Ma’am?”

  “I can show you, yes. But not today. The deed is at the bank in Smoke River.”

  He turned his face toward her. His eyes were nice, gray like her grandfather Rougalle’s, with fine sun lines crinkling the corners. Her heart stuttered at the expression in their depths. Such sadness. She did not like that look.

  Liar! You like it very much, even if it is sad.

  Something about this man’s eyes made her chest hurt. She wished he would smile once more.

  “How about meeting me at the bank tomorrow morning?”

  She looked at him so long he wondered if she’d heard him.

  She turned her head and looked into his eyes, saying nothing for a good two minutes. At last she dipped her kerchief-swathed head in the slightest of nods.

  “Very well. Tomorrow.”

  Wash unfolded his long legs, stood up and stepped down off the porch. “Eleven o’clock.” He touched the brim of his brown Stetson, then turned away and strode toward General where he patiently waited at the end of the footpath. His hip hurt like hell from squatting on the porch, but he worked to keep his gait smooth.

  The eleven o’clock sunlight on a midsummer morning in Smoke River revealed a number of town folk briskly crisscrossing the dusty main street on their way to buy feed or pick up their mail. The grocer, Carl Ness, was sweeping the board walkway in front of his displayed bushel baskets of ripe peaches and bloodred tomatoes. He hummed a tune as he worked his broom down as far as the barbershop where he stopped abruptly, leaving an obvious contrast between the barber’s dirty, leaf-strewn frontage and the grocer’s clean expanse of walkway.

  To the left of the grocer’s sat the Golden Partridge, quiet at this hour but not empty. The minute Carl stashed his broom, he ambled toward the saloon where Wash knew he’d sit nursing a beer and glowering at Whitey Kincaid.

  Whitey Kincaid was the barber. Watching Carl from the sheriff’s office across the street, Wash laughed out loud. What was known as the “Boardwalk Battle” had been waged since he’d been a boy attending the one-room schoolhouse twenty-some years ago.

  The struggle between the two men had started years ago, when Whitey’s prize mare had stumbled into Carl’s carefully stacked boxes of potatoes and fresh-picked corn and broken its leg. Whitey had put the horse out of its misery and then come gunning for the grocer. The sheriff arrested both of them, Wash recalled, and three days in the same cell at the jerry-rigged jailhouse had fanned the animosity into an unspoken war both were determined to win.

  Wash gazed at the saloon and ran his tongue over his dry lips. No time for a drink; Miz Nicolet should be riding into town any minute and he had to keep his head clear. He sure didn’t relish telling the French lady how easy it was to get the wool pulled over a foreigner’s eyes out here in the West.

  The sound of hooves pulled his attention to the far end of the street; sure enough, it was the lavender lady herself. Her young daughter rode in front, holding a sheaf of dried lavender fronds on her lap.

  The woman rode astride, her sky-blue skirt rucked up revealing black leather boots, an expanse of ruffled white petticoat, and the flash of one bare calf. His mouth went dry as a dustbin.

  He strode up the street to meet her. “Morning, Miz Nicolet.”

  “Bon jour, Monsieur Washington.” She drew the skinny mare up in front of the redbrick bank building next to the hotel.

  Wash plucked Manette off the horse and carefully set her on the ground, then reached up for her mother. No stirrup, he noted. How the hell did she mount, anyway?

  He closed his hands around her waist and felt a jolt of heat dance up both arms. When she laid her hands lightly on his shoulders, the warmth swirled into his chest. He lifted her down and found he couldn’t bring himself to release her. Her high-collared white shirtwaist swelled over her breasts and nipped into the waistband of her skirt.

  She glanced at him from under the wide brim of a straw hat banded with a blue ribbon. He didn’t see her eyes for more than a half second, but her mouth had gone white and tense.

  “Manette, take the lavender over to Monsieur Ness.”

  But Manette was absorbed by a scraggly dandelion poking up between the wood planks of the boardwalk and the grasshopper clinging to the flower head.

  “I’ll take it,” Wash volunteered. He needed to be away from her to regain his equilibrium. “Meet you at the bank.”

  Jeanne scarcely stammered out her thanks before he had gathered up the sheaf, bound in twine, and started for Ness’s Mercantile & Sundries.

  She turned to her daughter. “Manette?” But just now Manette was looking for bugs under the walkway. She would probably eat one or two, as she was insatiable in her curiosity, and very often hungry, as well. She squinted at something cradled in her tiny palm, a grasshopper. And then whoop! It was gone.

  Like life, Jeanne thought. Like youth. You blinked and it was over.

  Inside the bank the air was cool, the light dim. Jeanne stepped up to the teller’s window. “I wish to see my safe box, if you please.”

  The blond youth behind the iron grate glanced up at her, then focused on Wash, who was suddenly standing at her shoulder. “Sure thing, Mrs. Nicolet. Just step this way.”

  Manette settled herself on a bench to wait, and Wash followed Jeanne through the grille and toward a private room.

  “I heard all about you, Colonel Halliday,” the boy said as he led the way. “About gettin’ shot and being in prison and—”

  “Take my advice, Will. Don’t join the army.”

  “Pa wouldn’t let me anyway. Says I have to be a banker, like him.”

  “Not a bad life,” Wash said.

  “Not very much excitement, bein’ stuck in a bank all day.”

  Wash grinned. “Excitement is highly overrated.”

  Jeanne’s breath stopped. When he smiled, the perpetual frown on his face lifted. He was not so frightening, now. Alors, he was almost handsome. Or would be if his smile ever reached his eyes. Surreptitiously she studied his profile while the boy returned and plunked the small steel box onto the polished desktop.

  “Merci, William.”

  The boy unlocked the box. At the click, she leaned forward, plunged her hand inside the receptacle and drew out a rolled-up parchment tied with ribbon.

  “Here is my deed,” she said with a note of triumph. “See for yourself.”

  Wash unrolled the document and scanned the words. He’d known it all along, but his heart sank anyway. “It’s like I said, ma’am. You’ve been swindled. This deed is fake.”

  Her face turned white as cheese. “How do you know this?”

  “Well, look here, ma’am.” She stepped up beside him and studied the document he held out.

  “There’s supposed to be two signatures, buyer and seller. Only got one here. Yours. Doesn’t prove a thing.”

  She stared up at him. “You mean it is false?”

  “’Fraid so, ma’am.” He breathed in her scent and his fists clenched.

  Her whole body w
ent rigid. “You mean I do not own my farm? My lavender?”

  Wash wished he could drop through the floor. “The Oregon Central Railroad owns it.”

  “But I paid money to Monsieur Lavery. I paid him all the money I had!”

  “I’m real sorry, Miz Nicolet. You’re not the first person to get taken in like this, but I know that doesn’t help much.”

  “You mean I have nothing? Nowhere to live? No land? No lavender to sell to Monsieur Ness at the mercantile?”

  He nodded.

  Tears shimmered in her eyes. “But what will I do? I must care for Manette.”

  His fists opened and closed. “Maybe I could get your money back. I work for the railroad, see, and—” He broke off at the look on her face.

  Her tears overflowed, spilling down her pale cheeks like fat droplets of dew. Wash’s throat ached. Dammit, watching her cry ripped up his insides. He closed his hand about her elbow.

  “Come on, Miz Nicolet. You need some coffee.” He folded the deed into her hand and ushered her out past the teller’s window. Manette scrambled off the bench where she’d been waiting, took one look at her mother’s face and flung her small arms around her skirts. “Don’t cry, Maman. Please don’t cry. It makes me feel bumpy inside.”

  Absently Jeanne smoothed her hand over her daughter’s red-gold hair. “C’est rien, chou-chou.” The words sounded choked.

  Manette tipped her head up and pinned him with a furious look. “Did you hurt my mother?”

  Wash flinched at the question. Of course he’d hurt her mother. He’d yanked every bit of security out from under this woman in less than three minutes. He released Jeanne’s elbow and knelt before the girl.

  “If I did hurt your mama, it was not on purpose.”

  “Make her stop crying, then.”

  “I would if I could, honey. I think maybe some coffee might help.” He gestured toward the hotel across the street. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “Yes. And some ice cream, too?” She was out the door like a nectar-hungry bee.

  Wash rose to his feet with a grimace, fighting the urge to wrap the sobbing woman in his arms. Gently he took Jeanne’s elbow. Her entire body trembled like wind-whipped aspen leaves.

  “Oh, hell, I’m sorry.” He grasped Jeanne’s upper arm and guided her out onto the boardwalk and across the street to the hotel dining room.

  She gave no sign that she had heard his words.

  Chapter Four

  A plump older woman in a checked apron glanced up as Wash and Jeanne entered the River Hotel dining room with Manette dancing after them.

  “Morning, Rita. Got any coffee?” The woman’s face darkened at the sight of Jeanne. “Always got coffee for you, Colonel. Made fresh, too.”

  The waitress shot another look at Jeanne, instantly dug a handkerchief out of her pocket and pressed it into her hand. “Here, dearie. You just cry it all out of your system.”

  Wash settled Jeanne at a corner table and lifted Manette onto the chair between them. The girl leaned toward him. “Why is Maman crying?” she whispered.

  Wash flinched. “Because…well, because she’s just had some bad news.”

  “Can you make it go away?”

  “I wish I could.” Never in his life had he felt this helpless. He didn’t like the feeling one bit.

  The waitress sailed off to the kitchen and returned with two delicate cups of steaming coffee. One she placed before Jeanne; the other she brought around the table to Wash and leaned in close to his ear.

  “What’d you do to her, anyway?” she muttered.

  “Railroad wants her land,” he explained, keeping his voice low.

  “And I hear you’re workin’ for the railroad.” Rita sent a speculative glance at Jeanne. “A man’s always at the root of a woman’s troubles,” she sniffed.

  Wash waited until Rita had retreated into the kitchen. “It’s almost noon. Are you hungry?”

  She shook her head, blotting at her eyes with the damp handkerchief.

  “She is hungry,” Manette whispered. “She let me eat all of her breakfast.”

  “Well, then, perhaps you both would join me for lunch?”

  “Oh, non,” Jeanne protested.

  “Oh, yes! Manette’s bright-eyed grin made Wash chuckle. He’d order a steak—two steaks—and a big bowl of chocolate ice cream; maybe it would ease the sick, guilty feeling in his gut.

  Jeanne spoke not one word during the meal, but he noticed she ate every ounce of her steak, right down to the bits of gristle. Wash cut up half his meat for Manette, but found he couldn’t swallow even his own portion.

  After a tense quarter of an hour, Jeanne quietly laid her fork across the empty plate and looked up at him. “I came from a small village in France to marry my husband,” she said, her voice near a whisper. “It was a mistake.”

  Wash blinked. “You mean he was the wrong man?”

  “I mean he was killed in the War when Manette was a year old. He had no family and no land. I could not survive in New Orleans, so I left. I came out to Oregon to buy a farm where I could grow lavender. It is all Manette and I have.”

  “Your husband was a Southerner, then? Confederate Army?”

  She nodded, then lifted her china coffee cup and cradled it in her hands.

  “I fought for the North,” Wash said. “Union Army. I grew up out here in Smoke River but I’d gone back East to school when the War broke out. I volunteered right before Manassas.”

  Again she nodded. The rivulets of tears had stopped, he noted with relief. Talking seemed to help.

  “When my father died,” he continued, “Ma couldn’t wait to get back to Connecticut. Some women aren’t cut out for life on the frontier.”

  She held his eyes in a long, questioning look. “What is required for a life on the frontier?”

  He blew out his breath. “Horse sense, for one. Hide like a tanned buffalo. Temperament like a rattlesnake. And grit.”

  “Grit? What is ‘grit’?”

  He studied her work-worn hands, the sunburned patch on her nose, and the unwavering look of resolve in her eyes.

  “Grit is being strong when the going gets tough. It’s what you had when you packed up your things and came out here on your own and started your farm.”

  She pursed her lips and his groin tightened. Lord, but she got to him easy. Was it because her body swelled in and out in just the right places? Or because he’d been without a woman for so long he’d forgotten the pleasures female company brought?

  Or was it because he just plain liked her?

  That thought sent a cold thread of fear coiling up his spine.

  “I know this has been a hard thing to come to grips with, Miz Nicolet, but do you have any idea what you plan to do?”

  She folded her napkin and laid it over the wadded-up handkerchief next to her plate. “Do?”

  She reached up to straighten her hat, and tried to smile.

  “I will go home to my farm. I will feed my chickens and I will harvest my lavender when it is ready.”

  “I mean what’re you gonna do about the land the railroad owns?”

  Her smile faded and her eyes suddenly looked distant. “About the land and the railroad I will do nothing.”

  “Nothing! You’ve gotta do something, ma’am. My survey crew will be here day after tomorrow.”

  She stood up slowly. “That may be, Monsieur Washington. But no matter who comes, I do not intend to leave.”

  Wash shot out of his chair. “Wait a minute! You can’t just—”

  “But yes,” she interrupted in a soft but determined voice. “Yes, I can. Come, Manette. We will go home now.”

  Five minutes later he watched the woman and her daughter clop back down the street atop the scrawny gray mare. Sure was a sorry excuse for a horse.

  Sure is one stubborn woman!

  And maybe he was a sorry excuse for a railroad lawyer. He’d ended up doing the wrong thing for the right reason and his insides felt like they
were splitting in two. One half of him wanted to bundle Jeanne and her daughter up and drag them off that scanty plot she called a farm. The other half wanted to help her fight off the railroad, like David and Goliath.

  There was a third part somewhere in there, too—a part of him that wanted to hold her close and smell her hair.

  The horse disappeared in a puff of gray dust and Wash headed for the Golden Partridge. He had a headache that felt like the town blacksmith was hammering on his temples.

  Rooney stood, his back to the bar, his boots casually crossed at the ankle. “Been waitin’ for ya, Wash.”

  “Yeah?” Wash positioned himself next to his friend and hooked one heel over the bar rail.

  “One reason is that French lady. That’s a mighty weak-looking horse for carrying all her household baggage out of that canyon.”

  “It’s all she’s got. What’s the other reason?”

  Rooney turned around so they stood shoulder to shoulder and hunkered over the shiny mahogany bar top. “Don’t rush me, Wash. I’m thinkin’ how to say what I got to say.”

  Wash dropped his forehead onto his hand. “I’m dead tired, Rooney. Just spit it out.”

  Rooney lowered his voice. “You see those gents over there by the window?”

  Wash turned his head to glance at the men. Mean-looking types. One was paunchy, with a ragged canvas shirt and shifty black eyes; the other was well-built, dark-skinned and silent. He had a crescent-shaped scar under one eye. Both wore double holsters.

  A third man sat near the other two. This one looked young and fresh-faced, with a hat so new it didn’t yet have creases in it.

  “That kid looks so clean he’d squeak,” Wash said under his breath. “The other two look like a couple of hired guns.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” Rooney muttered.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Rooney raised his thick, salt-and-pepper eyebrows. “That’s your new railroad survey crew.”

  Wash’s hand froze around his shot glass. Those grungy-looking men would be hanging around Miz Nicolet’s farm all day? Watching her feed her chickens? Watching her hang up her laund—

  “Oh, God,” he murmured.