* * *
'Why, Ma—Sloan!' Iris called out to him as he entered the saloon. She never would get accustomed to calling him by another name.
He nodded her way and walked up to the bar, tossing down a coin. 'Whiskey, Matey, if you would, sir. Whiskey, and lots of it'
Iris, pretty as a picture in a quiet gray dress and blue shawl, hurried over to him. She slipped her arm through his. 'I was about to leave. I'm going to take the buggy and head for Sparks and see what I might find out about your sister-in-law. Is it still safe for me to leave? What's happened?'
He looked at Iris, at the concern naked in her eyes. He felt her soft touch on his arm, and some of the anger eased out of him.
'It's safe.' He caught her to him and tenderly kissed her forehead. 'You're a fine woman, Iris. Funny, ain't it? You really are such a fine damned woman no matter what your vocation. And her…'
'Your…traveling companion?'
'The little darlin'…yes. Shannon.' He grimaced, staring at the ceiling, then he laughed bitterly. 'My traveling companion. The curse of my life! The sweet little—hellcat!'
'What did she do now?'
'Damned little witch. I should have let you floor her yesterday, Iris. Hell.' Matey put the whiskey bottle in front of him and he took a long, long swallow, gasping as the liquor sizzled its way down his throat to his stomach. He looked at the bottle reflectively. 'I should have floored her myself.'
'Malachi…' Iris realized that she had used his name, and she looked quickly around. The saloon was nearly empty. Only Matey might have heard her, and Matey minded his own business. 'Let's go to my room, Mr. Gabriel,' she said softly.
Malachi looked at her speculatively and picked up the whiskey bottle. 'Yes, Iris, let's go to your room.'
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.
