Autumn Sage Read online

  Immediately after, her throat had been too bruised to allow her to speak. When her throat had healed, she’d gone downstairs to meet everyone, to prove that nothing had changed. To prove that she was still Isabel Moreno—intelligent, composed, accomplished—that the assault had left her unmarked.

  Her resolve had not been enough to stem the whispers. Eyes wide with pity and prurience, their neighbors had pressed her for details she’d refused to give. She’d seen the sidelong glances, the whispers behind cupped hands.

  She could well imagine what they whispered. That Isabel Moreno. Thought she was higher in the instep than all of us. Not so high now, is she?

  The sheriff’s questioning had been worst of all. Over and over he’d asked if she’d suffered the ultimate violation at the outlaw’s hands. And over and over she’d said no, each and every repetition unheard. It was as if he wanted her to have been raped.

  Remembering his eager harassment made her stomach roll. Hadn’t she suffered enough? How much more blood should she have shed?

  “Of course we’ll all remain silent about Mama,” Catarina answered rather waspishly. She went to peer out the window.

  Flickers of panic flashed through Isabel as an ache echoed through her skull.

  He’s not out there. She’s looking at something else.

  “The marshal is coming,” Catarina announced, the afternoon sunlight falling across her face as she leaned in for a closer inspection.

  Isabel remained where she was. She’d face him soon enough.

  Her stomach continued to roll in time with the sharply rising throb between her temples.

  Dear Lord. Of all the times for a headache to come upon her… Since McCade had attempted to knock her wits out with a pistol butt to her temple, she suffered from the most vicious headaches. Nasty, nauseating things that incapacitated her for hours at a time.

  Paralytic fear, debilitating headaches—sometimes it felt as if her very body was betraying her.

  “Well, then,” she answered resolvedly, “he’ll want to speak with me, won’t he?”

  She shoved away the fear, the pain, and straightened her shoulders. The mirror showed her spectacles firmly in place, her hair tucked into the twist at her nape. She looked as she always had—rather stern, perhaps too severe for her age.

  But she was stern and severe. That hadn’t changed in all this. She would meet this still, menacing marshal measure for measure—and he would not best her.

  They’d all been correct, Sebastian reflected—Miss Isabel Moreno was difficult. And frigid. And angry.

  With her sensible gray dress wrapped around her thin form, polished spectacles shielding her black eyes, and pins trapping her dark hair, she was a painting come to life—Portrait of a Schoolmistress.

  The Moreno family parlor was quite ordinary, with portraits of venerated ancestors staring from the papered walls, along with overstuffed chairs, a table, and a mirrored side table, all likely ordered from the more expensive pages of a catalogue. Fine indeed for the small mountain town of Cabrillo—which wasn’t very fine at all.

  Sebastian preferred the stark severity of his own furnishings in Los Angeles. Miss Moreno wouldn’t be out of place in his parlor, not as she was in this one.

  Thin and sharp, she should have brought to mind something pinched and mean, but instead he was reminded of a saber: slim, shining, keen-edged. If he set his will against hers, as he wanted to, she might leave him torn and bloodied.

  This interrogation was to be a battle of wills—and he had the unsettling thought that his will might not prevail.

  “Miss Moreno,” he began after the introductions, greetings that each member of the family—mother, sister, and Miss Moreno herself—had returned with distinct chill. “You understand why I am here.”

  He let the silence stretch after that, wanting her to reassure him that yes, she understood. Wanting her to flutter or fidget and then yield. As a normal lady would.

  Instead, she sent him a look of icy rage. And waited.

  So the battle began. Well, he knew how to wait.

  He sipped from his cup, the tea leaving an ashy residue on his tongue.

  The silence went on, her fierce expression never easing. Her sister, Mrs. Merrill, began to fidget, her gaze bounding between Miss Moreno and their mother—who was as still as her younger daughter. For every glance Mrs. Merrill flicked toward her sister, she sent two toward her mother, the dots and dashes of her gaze coding a deep unease.

  Interesting. Perhaps there was more at play here than simply one loose outlaw.

  The clock on the mantel ticked off fifteen more seconds, and still this witness would not open her mouth.

  Very well. He would concede this round. But only the one—he hadn’t the time to humor her endlessly.

  “Of course you know why I’m here,” he said. “To find this fugitive, I need to hear your story. From your own lips.”

  Those same lips compressed further. If not for the anger coming off her like heat from a stove, she might have been striking. Certainly the fierceness of her intrigued him.

  “I understand that it’s distressing to speak of,” he offered.

  “Do you?” Miss Moreno gave him an assessing look, one that crept along his skin, before turning her face back to the weak sunlight filtering in through the lace curtains.

  If this was how she was going to behave on the witness stand, the trial would not go well. This lady would evoke no sympathy in a jury.

  His own sense of justice demanded he do his utmost to capture McCade—but if the man went free because this woman wouldn’t open her mouth…

  Sebastian wouldn’t feel a thing. Not a single blessed thing.

  “What do you wish to know?”

  A grudging concession, but one he’d take.

  “All of it,” he ordered. “From the very beginning.”

  Her pulse ticked hard where her jaw met her throat, the only indication she wasn’t as stone-like as she pretended.

  Excellent. There might yet be a way to pry her open, if he could exploit that unease.

  “Sheriff Obregon and I were going for a Sunday drive.” Some of the anger left her voice, but it remained blade thin.

  “Sheriff Obregon is your fiancé?” he asked, wanting to probe her feelings for the man.

  “He was.”

  The back of his neck tingled. “I see.”

  A broken engagement was not a wrinkle Sebastian wanted to deal with. It spoke of deep emotions that had turned on themselves. He loathed such things.

  “Did you often go that way?” he prodded.

  “Yes.”

  Good God, the woman could best a Spartan at being laconic.

  “But you didn’t make it to town that day.”

  Her dark eyes and thin face were unreadable. “No.”

  He’d meant the statement to lead her to elaborate on the story—he didn’t need a stark confirmation of what he already knew.

  She’d only answer direct inquiries? Very well, he’d be as blunt as a rusty blade. “Where did the attack happen?”

  “On the road to town. Two to three miles from the rancho.”

  “Would you recognize the place?”

  “Of course.” A cold sneer, that. “Perhaps you should be writing down some of this?” As if he were a schoolboy who’d forgotten his slate.

  “No need to.” He placed one finger to his temple. “I couldn’t forget if I tried.”

  “How… interesting.” The way an insect might be interesting.

  “We’ll visit the site tomorrow,” he bit off. If visiting the place where she’d been assaulted didn’t knock her out of her stony facade, nothing would.

  “I don’t think—” her mother cut in.

  Miss Moreno raised a slim, imperial hand. “It’s quite all right. If Mr. Spencer wants to see the scene of the crime, I can certainly show him.”

  The pulse beat hard in her throat.

  “It’s Marshal Spencer.” He showed his teeth, releasing a fraction
of the frustration building within him.

  “Of course.” She showed hers. “After all, Judge Bannister sent you all this way to hear and see exactly what happened.”

  His frustration turned cold. That was much too sharp for a woman who ought to know nothing of why Judge Bannister had really sent Sebastian.

  “Thirteen years with no word from his son,” Miss Moreno mused, “a son who changed his name to hide from him, and he immediately sends a marshal at his request?”

  Another lady would have made the question sticky with sarcasm, but not her. The words were bone dry.

  Her mother flinched before smoothing herself back to impassivity. Mrs. Merrill went a deep shade of red.

  Interesting.

  The judge might have had hidden motives for sending Sebastian, but there was something hidden between these three. Had it only been Miss Moreno and her mother, he’d have missed it. Mrs. Merrill was a poor prevaricator, thank the Lord.

  With every turn in this, he came upon a new wrinkle, a perhaps deeper game here than he’d anticipated.

  Just so long as none of it interfered with apprehending McCade.

  “Judge Bannister cares about justice,” he told Miss Moreno. “Especially when a lawman has been injured.” Even if it was a Mexican lawman. And the judge did care about justice—but he cared about embarrassing Cole McCade’s father more. “Please finish your account.”

  Miss Moreno studied him for a long moment and he prepared himself to deflect more questions he shouldn’t answer.

  But luck—and the lady’s difficult nature—were with Sebastian this time, and she continued her story.

  “As we drew up,” she went on, “they came out from behind the trees.” She spoke as if reciting a poem she’d been forced to memorize.

  “Who was there?”

  “The two Carey boys—Billy and Thomas—and another man.” Her expression slipped into bleakness for half a moment. “McCade. Sheriff Obregon had been keeping a close eye on him. There were rumors in the valley that he’d killed a man. They started a fight at a dance, and Señor Obregon broke it up.”

  Finally, several complete sentences of exposition. The bit about the dance hadn’t been in the sheriff’s report. That gave McCade and the Careys a motive for attacking Obregon.

  Although Cole McCade wouldn’t need an excuse for harming someone he’d consider a lesser member of society.

  He tapped a forefinger once, hard, against the arm of his chair. Enough to allow himself to focus back on the matter at hand.

  Miss Moreno caught that movement, her face hardening as she did. “You know this man, the one who attacked us?”

  “I know of him.” He glanced away from her accusing gaze, saw his cuff was a hair out of place, and tugged at it, the fabric scraping the skin of his wrist.

  So she hadn’t connected Cole with his father, Edwin. “Perhaps you might have heard of his father?” he asked her.

  Realization chased the accusation from her expression. From all three of their expressions.

  “His father is Edwin McCade?” That bit of incredulousness came from Mrs. Merrill.

  “He is,” Sebastian admitted.

  “So that’s why you were sent after him.” Miss Moreno’s contained rage had returned.

  She was hitting too close to the truth. “I told you why I came.” He put ice on that. “Your story?” he prompted. “What happened after they came out of hiding?”

  She turned her gaze back to the window, as if she expected someone to come down the drive.

  “They raised their pistols at Señor Obregon.” Her hands began to twist in the gray fabric of her skirt while she looked out at nothing. “Then he—McCade—said, ‘We’re going to teach you a lesson, Sheriff.’”

  The silence stretched between them.

  “What happened next?” He gave the command force, urging her onward, not wanting to lose this forward motion.

  She blinked, staring at something only she could see. Finally, she took a shaky breath. “Then the shooting began.”

  She looked at him then, her eyes saying, What more is there to know?

  But there was more, a thousand painful details that she leapt over, to keep from falling into the crevasse.

  He needed to have those details.

  “Who shot first?” The key point, and they were finally getting to it. His fingers wanted to tap on the chair arms, but he commanded them to stillness, smothering his eagerness.

  “McCade.” Her hands began to twist in her skirt again. “Señor Obregon then drew his pistol and shot both the Carey brothers.”

  The flatness of her recitation made it sound as if he’d been shooting bottles, not men.

  “Just like that?” he asked. “No one else got another shot off?”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Señor Obregon was quite good.”

  Sebastian swallowed the whistle that wanted to sneak past his lips. Obregon hadn’t been confused, then.

  “She screamed. She never screams.”

  He could well believe that, now that he’d tangled with her.

  He retraced the story in his mind—the fight at the dance, the Sunday drive, the ambush on the road. The killings.

  “The sheriff shoots both the Carey brothers,” he mused half to himself. “McCade shoots the sheriff.” He let the moment draw out as he stared at her. “When did you shoot McCade?”

  Her hand rose, hovered near her throat, then settled below her collarbone. She was agitated, that succession of tiny movements betraying her internal state.

  She was cracking. He had her. But there was no glory in the victory.

  “At the very end,” she answered. “There’s… there’s more before that.”

  He took a moment to study her mother and her sister. They were watching Miss Moreno intently, waiting for the rest of her tale. They didn’t appear as though they’d object to the question he had to ask. Not that their objections would stop him, but he wanted to be prepared for an outburst of indignation.

  “Tell me the rest.” Gentler, in light of her agitation.

  “After Sheriff Obregon fell, I fired at McCade from the buggy seat. The shot went wide.” Her lips put on a mocking twist. “My hands, you see, were shaking quite badly.”

  “Anyone’s would have shaken,” he said. “Even mine.”

  Her look was pure contempt. “I very much doubt that.”

  Of course she would spurn his attempt at comfort. Very well, they’d go on as they had before.

  “What did he do after you fired at him?”

  “He threw me into the brush. I couldn’t hold onto the rifle.” Self-blame dripped through the words. “Must I expose every detail?”

  He almost regretted what he was about to do, but he squelched the urge before it bloomed into a full-fledged emotion. “If he violated you, Miss Moreno—”

  Her face twisted in disgust. “Of course he didn’t violate me.”

  If he were a man who cursed, he might have done so, silently. She likely understood what he’d meant by violated… but he had to be certain. “Miss Moreno, I’m speaking of rape. Did he rape you?”

  “No.” She drew the word out to three times its length. “I understand what you meant. I understood it all six times the sheriff asked that same question.”

  Her mother and sister had dropped their gazes to their laps, Mrs. Merrill red as a ripe tomato and her mother’s cheeks heading for that same shade.

  Miss Moreno showed no embarrassment—just that icy rage of hers.

  “I found a rifle lying next me,” she went on. “This time I hit him. Only in the shoulder, but he was bleeding.”

  Merrill had mentioned a trail of blood, as had the sheriff’s report. She’d marked him, and McCade had trailed the evidence of it behind him as he’d escaped. Was likely wearing that badge of hers even now.

  “I can’t imagine he was too pleased.” An admiring understatement, but he was impressed.

  “No, he was not.” A gleam entered her eyes, lightened her voice.
Oh, she liked telling this part. She’d drawn blood and she’d enjoyed it.

  He’d understood that sensation. Once. But never again.

  There were consequences for drawing blood, terrible ones. Now he must force her to describe the consequences she’d suffered.

  “The marks on your throat. Did that happen after you shot him?”

  She turned away, stone once more. “Before. He did that before.”

  He’d lost her again. “And the wound on your head?”

  The final piece of her story—or at least this half-story he was getting from her.

  “He struck me with his pistol. After that, I only recall waking in my own bedroom.”

  The set of her jaw indicated that as far as she was concerned, her tale was finished.

  Sebastian allowed his forefinger one more tap to focus himself as he reviewed what she’d told him. It sounded plausible—yet it was so free of particulars, it likely bore no more resemblance to the memories trapped in her mind than a child’s scribbles did to a Rembrandt.

  There was nothing about McCade’s demeanor, Obregon’s reaction to the first shot, her own response to any of it.

  The most powerfully altering experience of her life, and she’d told it with an almost complete lack of passion.

  He sensed more hiding behind her reserve, perhaps that same something that had sparked Mrs. Merrill’s uneasy glances.

  He wanted to know what it was. But she’d give him nothing more here.

  No matter. Tomorrow he’d have her out at the site itself. Alone with him, the physical presence of her memories impossible to ignore—she was certain to crack.

  “Thank you, Miss Moreno,” he said. “I appreciate your honesty.” Thin though it was. He remained in his chair, waiting for the inevitable offer. As an old Spanish family, they were certain to hold to the old ways of hospitality. In fact, he was surprised they hadn’t offered him a place to stay earlier. It would have been the very first thing his mother would have done.

  Mrs. Moreno and Mrs. Merrill exchanged a quick glance. Miss Moreno continued to ignore him.

  “You’ll want to return with Mrs. Merrill,” Mrs. Moreno said firmly. “My daughter is happy to share her hospitality with you.”

  She didn’t look like it. And it wasn’t her hospitality he needed to share. It appeared Mrs. Moreno didn’t hold with the old traditions.