She led him up a flight of stairs in the rear and opened the first door.
She had a real nice room for a working girl, Malachi thought. There was a big bed with four carved posters and a quilted spread, a braided rug on the floor, a handsome dresser and a full-length mirror on a stand.
"Nice," Malachi murmured. He drank more of the whiskey. He drank deeply, then he crashed down on the bed. He reached out for Iris with a slow smile curving into his lips. She sat down by his side, but watched him speculatively. He stroked her arm, and soft, feathery tendrils of desire swept along her flesh. She wanted to be touched by him. She had almost forgotten the feeling of wanting to be touched.
She pulled her arm away. He swallowed more whiskey, leaving one last slug in the bottle. Then he just lay there, staring at the ceiling.
"I want to kill her, Iris. I want to close my fingers right around her lovely white throat, and I want to squeeze until she chokes. I want to take my hand…" He raised his right hand as he spoke, studying the length of his fingers and the breadth of his palm, flexing his fingers. "I want to smack my hand against her flesh until it's raw…I want to shake her until her damned teeth crack!"
"Malachi, what happened?" Iris asked him softly.
His eyes fell upon her. His lip curved into a twisted, wry grin. "I married her. For real."
Iris lowered her eyes, swallowing. "Why?"
"They said they'd hang me if I didn't. They're convinced that she's a sweet young innocent and that I seduced her."
"Didn't you?"
"No. Yes. Hell, she's almost twenty now, she's as sweet as raw acid, and as to her innocence…"
"Yes?"
"She seduced me equally. No one innocent has a right to look the way she does…naked."
Iris would have laughed if she didn't feel such a peculiar hurt deep inside.
It wasn't that he had married the girl. It was the way he spoke about her.
"Now who is it who thought that you weren't married to begin with? Who thought that she was…seduced?"
"The Haywoods. They said they'd hang me."
"Of course they would want to hang you! You're worth a lot of money, dead or alive. There's a bounty on your head. If they know that you're not married, then they know—"
"They don't care who I am. They don't intend to let the knowledge go past themselves—and the reverend, of course," he added bitterly.
Iris exhaled softly. "Thank God for that!"
Malachi grimaced. "They weren't going to hang me for being a Confederate, a bushwhacker, or Cole's brother. They wanted to hang me because I seduced Shannon!"
Iris inhaled deeply. She couldn't believe that she was going to defend the other woman, that beautiful young woman with the sky-colored eyes, alabaster skin and the sun-drenched fall of long, curling hair.
But she was.
"Malachi, if the Haywoods forced you into a marriage, you can't really blame her." She paused, frowning. "Did she tell them…who you really are? Did she demand that you marry her? I mean, they are real God-fearing folk. Did they do it? Or did she force and coerce you?"
"What?" He stared at her blankly.
"Malachi, you can't hate her if they forced it. Maybe you can't even really hate her if she did make them force you into it. She isn't…well, she isn't my kind of woman. If you took advantage of her, maybe she had a right to force you—"
"She didn't force me."
"Then—"
"The bitch!" he exploded. "They're sitting there swearing up and down that they will hang me—and she's refusing! She's sitting there arguing with a shotgun. I was barely able to make her spit out the words! She would have made me hang."
"Then…"
"She's a witch, Iris," he said softly. He swallowed the last slug of whiskey. Iris hoped he wasn't heading for one heavy drunken stupor; even an experienced drinker like him would have trouble with the amount he had swallowed in the last ten minutes. "She's a witch," Malachi continued. "I mean to touch her, and I'm furious, and I want to hurt her. And I don't quite understand it, 'cause I'm hurting myself. I dream of her eyes. I dream of her reaching out to me. And then sometimes she touches me and I feel everything in me exploding just to touch her back, to feel her softness, to see her smile, to see her eyes glaze with wanting… She teases and she taunts, and she loves like a wildcat, like a pagan temptress, then she bares her claws and she swipes out and she draws blood, Iris, blood."
Iris smiled slowly. He still wasn't looking at her. He was staring at the ceiling. He turned around and suddenly grasped her hand. He kissed her fingers, and she shivered, feeling the sensual movement of his lips and beard against her flesh. "She's not like you, Iris. She's not like you at all. You can't ever talk to her, you can't reason with her. She's a witch…I've been fighting her forever and forever, Iris. Always fighting. She would have let me hang, can you believe that?"
"They wouldn't have hanged you," Iris said.
"She didn't know that."
"Maybe she did."
"She didn't, and that's a fact." He sat up. His eyes glittered. "Well, she has married me now. And she's going to pay for it!"
"Malachi, you were mad because she wouldn't marry you."
"She wanted them to shoot my kneecaps, the witch! But now, now she's mine…"
He fell back. His eyes closed.
Iris watched him for a minute. He was asleep. She smiled ruefully. "She may be a witch, but you're in love with her," Iris said softly.
She set the empty whiskey bottle on the dressing table, and decided to leave him where he was. Let him sleep off the bottle of whiskey he had swallowed in ten minutes, and maybe he'd go back to his tender young bride in a better state of mind.
She picked up her portmanteau and hat, walked to the door and blew him a kiss sadly. "I'll be back tomorrow, captain," she said softly. "Even if you do love her, I've got to help you."
She turned around and left him. If she hurried, she could make it to Sparks, spend plenty of time there and still be back in Haywood by the morning with all the information she could gather. She had friends in Sparks. Friends of the best variety for what she needed now. They were smart, beautiful women. And they knew the men of Sparks.
She looked back with a wistful smile.
Malachi slept peacefully.
Iris shrugged. He probably needed the rest.
She left, letting him sleep on.
And on…
Shannon changed and returned Martha Haywood's gown immediately, thanking her. She didn't want to wear Malachi's shirt any longer than she had to, so she determined to go into the mercantile and find another. Martha followed beside her, talking about her own early years of marriage.
"They were a hoot and a holler, I do tell you. Why, we were madder 'n wet hens at each other time and again, but then, I don't really remember what one of those arguments was about."
Shannon found a pretty soft blue blouse with teal embroidery along the bodice. She set it on the counter with boxes of ammunition. "First off," she told Martha Haywood softly, "we've got the same conflicts between us that just set a whole country to war."
"The war is over," Martha reminded her.
"Secondly, I knew a man once who was always gentle. He never had a temper about him."
"You'd have been miserable in a year."
Shannon gasped in horror. "That's not true! I was in love with him, I was deeply in love with him—"
"And you can't let it go. Still, it's true. You'd have been miserable in a year. Now, I don't think that you and Captain Slater will be getting along real well for a long time to come. But I think you'll come to realize that you have more in common than can be seen."
Shannon flushed. She set her hands on her hips. "He's been over at the saloon all day, Mrs. Haywood."
''Well, go on over and get him then. If you want him back, go on over and get him."