Her Dearest Enemy
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What was the woman doing here at this hour? Had she changed her mind about his offer? Not a chance of that, Brandon thought, remembering her fiery pride. More likely, her damn-fool brother had just given her the same news Jenny had given him and she’d come for her pound of flesh.
A dizzying tide of rage swept through him. For one blinding moment, it was all he could do not to seize her in his two hands, jerk her off her feet and fling her back into the storm. After all, didn’t she share the blame for what had happened? Hadn’t she reared the young hooligan who’d impregnated his daughter? Hadn’t her coming to Dutchman’s Creek set the whole ugly chain of events in motion?
With near-superhuman effort, Brandon willed his impulses under control. When he spoke, his voice emerged as a hoarse croak. “What is it? Are you all right?”
She shook her head, her mouth working in a futile effort to speak. Specks of ice clung to her thick black eyelashes. They glowed in the lamplight like miniature jewels. Below them, her eyes watched him guardedly, emotions he could not read swimming in their coppery depths.
Only one thing seemed clear—if he wanted the woman to talk, he would have to get her warm first. Shaking off the paralysis of surprise, Brandon set the lantern on a table and forced himself to move toward her.
His hands pried her stiffened fingers loose from the edges of her cloak. The soggy garment fell to the floor, revealing beneath it a faded gingham dress, so hastily donned that the buttons down the front were misaligned with their buttonholes. The resulting gaps allowed glimpses of the creamy skin beneath—far more of it than any lady would want a gentleman to see.
Brandon averted his eyes, but not swiftly enough. She glanced down, to where his gaze had rested an instant before. With a horrified gasp, she jerked her arms across her breasts. Color flamed in her bloodless cheeks.
Without a word, Brandon whipped off his woolen robe and wrapped it around her trembling body. She huddled into its warmth, her eyes downcast, her teeth still chattering.
Suddenly her gaze jerked upward. Her color deepened. Brandon bit back a curse as he realized what had caught her eye. The hem of his gray flannel nightshirt hung just past his knees, revealing the lower part of his bare legs and ankles—more naked flesh than any proper lady would be fit to see.
Well, to hell with her, he thought. If the sight of his hairy calves offended Harriet Smith’s sense of propriety, that was her problem. It wasn’t as if he’d sent her an engraved invitation to come calling tonight. She could damned well take him as he was or come back when he was dressed for company.
It was chilly in the front hall. Gripping her upper arm through the robe, he steered her into the parlor, where a few dying embers still flickered in the fireplace. Two comfortable leather armchairs faced the hearth. Thrusting her firmly into one of them, he gathered some kindling sticks from the wood box and began feeding them into the embers. Little by little, small orange tongues of flame began to lick at the splintered pitch pine. The crackling sound was warm and welcome.
“Will’s gone.” Harriet’s low voice, rising from the shadows of the chair, startled him. “I think he’s run away.”
Brandon bit back a sigh of relief. It would hurt Jenny’s pride to know that Will had deserted her, but in the long run it would make everything easier. Now, surely, she would stop fighting his plan to send her to Baltimore.
He glanced up at Harriet, his expression deliberately cynical. “So the young rooster’s flown the coop, has he? Somehow I can’t say I’m surprised. I would have wagered he wasn’t man enough to own up to his responsibility.”
She surged forward, her eyes suddenly angry. “I don’t know what responsibility you’re talking about, Mr. C-Calhoun,” she said, her teeth still chattering with cold. “But I didn’t fight my way through the storm to sit here and listen to you disparage my brother! I only came to ask you if you’d seen Will, or if you had any idea where he might be. If you can’t tell me, I’ll be on my way….”
Her voice trailed off, catching at the end as if she were stifling a sob. Brandon stared at her in amazement. Lord, didn’t she know? Hadn’t the young fool told her what he’d done to Jenny?
Turning away from the fire, he seized her icy hands—not out of affection or sympathy but in an effort to hold her captive while he pummeled her with the truth. Her thin, cold fingers were all but lost in his big fists. Instinctively they sought the warmth of his flesh, pressing into the hollows of his palms, even as her eyes blazed resistance.
Heat and emotion had brought the color back to her face. With the wind-tossed mane of her hair framing her aquiline features, she reminded Brandon of some wild, mythical bird goddess, held to earth only by his determined grip. Let her go and she would fly away, back into the storm that had brought her here.
Lowering his eyes, he forced his mind back to reality. When he looked at her again it was dowdy, stubborn Harriet Smith he saw. Harriet Smith, his enemy, dressed in his own robe and a pauper’s gown that gapped between the buttons.
He pressed her hands so hard that she winced. “Didn’t your brother talk to you?” he rasped. “Didn’t he tell you about the ungodly thing he’d done to my Jenny?”
“What?” She stared at him, caught off guard. “Will told me he’d changed his mind about going to college. We quarreled…” Her voice trailed off. Her eyes widened in horror as the realization struck her.
“Yes!” Brandon crushed her hands in his, wanting her to feel the kind of pain he was feeling. “Your no-account brother has gotten Jenny with child. She gave him the news yesterday, and now he’s skipped out on her, slunk off like the filthy coward he is!”
He watched her crumble then, like a mud figure in a deluge—first her face, then her head and shoulders. Even her fingers seemed to dissolve in his hands.
“No,” she murmured dazedly. “Will’s always been such a good boy, so upright and honorable. He wouldn’t do such a thing, especially to someone he cared about!”
“He would and he did,” Brandon snapped, releasing her hands. “I’m only thankful that he’s finally out of Jenny’s life for good. The young scapegrace has caused her enough grief.”
“No!” Harriet was sitting straight now, leaning forward, her eyes like twin flames in the darkness. “Tonight at supper, Will said he wouldn’t leave her— that he would never leave her. He must have been trying to tell me about the baby, but I refused to listen. I just—”
She halted in midsentence, the color draining from her face. When she spoke again, her voice was taut and strained. “Where is your daughter?”
“In her room where she belongs,” Brandon growled impatiently. “I checked on her before I went to bed. She was sleeping like an angel.”
It was only a half truth. Jenny had cried herself into silence behind the closed door of her room. Later, when Brandon had passed her door on his way to bed, she had not answered his discreet knock. He had left her in peace, resolving to settle things in the morning.
Only now, as he gazed into Harriet’s stricken face, did the truth leap like chain lightning from her mind to his.
Not that! Dear God, anything but that!
Knocking over a footstool in his haste, Brandon dashed for the entry and seized the lantern from the table. Harriet sprang to her feet and plunged after him, clutching her skirts as they pounded up the stairs.
Brandon was not a religious man, but he found himself silently praying as they reached the door of Jenny’s room. Please let her be here. Let her be safe….
But it was too late for prayers. Even as he fumbled with the knob and flung the door open, he knew what he would find.
Chapter Four
As the door to Jenny’s room swung open, light from the upraised lantern cast Brandon’s features into craggy relief. Harriet watched from the shadows as waves of raw emotion swept across his face—first disbelief, then despair, then a tide of helpless fury, as if he were biting back a howl. She had never seen a man look so angry, or so wretched.
Harriet braced herself for a tirade against her brother, but it did not come. He only stood in rigid silence, one white-knuckled hand gripping the lantern, one taut muscle twitching in his cheek.
No words were needed. His expression made it clear that when Brandon caught up with Will, there would be hell to pay.
Tearing her eyes away, Harriet stared past him into the silent room. The pretty little bedchamber was in perfect order, as if young Jenny had given it a farewell tidying before she’d vanished into the stormy night. The pink satin coverlet had been carefully smoothed over the canopied bed, with ruffled pillows arranged against a headboard of inlaid mahogany. A lacy afghan, crocheted in shades of rose and mauve, was draped over the back of a carved wooden rocker. Its colors matched those of the oval rug, hooked in an intricate pattern of cabbage roses, that lay on the polished wooden floor.
It was the kind of room Harriet had dreamed of as a child, and never possessed. The kind of room a father would want to provide for a little girl he loved.
Two exquisite French dolls, with mohair curls and bisque porcelain faces, decorated the top of a bookshelf. A third doll, with golden ringlets like Jenny’s, sat in a miniature copy of the rocking chair, dressed in a gauzy pink princess gown and holding a tiny doll of her own. Harriet had never seen such elegant dolls. The cost of any one of them would probably be enough to keep a poor family in beans and bacon for an entire winter. Now they sat like abandoned children, their glass eyes wide and vacant, silent witnesses to everything that had taken place in this child-woman’s bedroom.
From the far side of the room, a flutter of movement caught Harriet’s eye. Her taut nerves jumped— but it was only a lace curtain, blown by a sliver of wind that whistled through a crack beneath the sash. Jenny, it appeared, had not quite managed to close the window when she’d climbed out into the darkness.
Crossing the floor, Brandon shoved the window down with a snap that rang like a gunshot in the room. Harriet saw him turn, then hesitate abruptly as his gaze fell on a sheet of notepaper that lay on the dresser, anchored in place by the weight of a silver- framed looking glass.
Still gripping the lantern, he snatched up the paper with his free hand. A lock of sleep-tousled hair tumbled over his brow, casting his face in shadow as he scanned the page.
“What does it say?” Harriet’s question broke the tense silence.
He flashed her a contemptuous glance, then deliberately crumpled the paper in his fist and flung it to the floor. “Read it yourself if you’re so damned curious!”
Harriet bent forward, then checked herself. Brandon Calhoun’s insufferable pride demanded that she grovel at his feet. But even now, while her whole being screamed with the urgent need to know what Jenny had written, she could not afford to give him that satisfaction.
Straightening, she took his measure with emboldened eyes. Any other man would have looked ridiculous facing her down in his nightshirt and slippers. But Brandon Calhoun was as fierce as a mythological giant roused from sleep. The sight of his bloodshot eyes, tousled hair and whisker-shadowed jaw triggered a leaden sensation somewhere below Harriet’s stomach. She willed herself to ignore it.
“Stop behaving like a peevish child,” she ordered in her sternest schoolteacher voice. “I’m just as upset about this situation as you are. What makes you think I want my promising eighteen-year-old brother saddled with a wife and baby?”
He glowered down at her, his lips pressed into a thin, hard line.
“Blaming me is only going to make matters worse!” she declared, thrusting out her chin. “Right now, nothing matters except those two foolish youngsters, their safety and their happiness. Either you accept that and we work together, or, heaven help me, I’ll walk out of here and leave you to unravel this mess by yourself!”
Brandon’s countenance was icy. Harriet searched his face for any sign that his resolve was crumbling. But she could detect no change in him. Like a wounded animal, he was masking his pain with tightly reined fury. The pain was real; but so, Harriet sensed, was the danger.
The ticking of the tiny porcelain clock on Jenny’s nightstand echoed in the stillness of the room. From outside, Harriet could hear the rubbing of a bare sycamore branch against the window—a nerve-grating sound, like the scrape of fingernails against a blackboard. Her damp clothes felt clammy beneath Brandon’s robe—the heavy, satin-lined robe that had enfolded his naked body countless times and carried his essence in every fiber. Its richly masculine aroma surrounded her, swimming in her senses, filling her mind with forbidden images and unnamable yearnings. Suddenly the little room seemed too warm, his looming, male presence much too close.
Harriet tried to swallow, but her throat was as dry as chalk dust. Her lips parted but the power of speech had fled. At the very time when she should be defending her brother, she stood like a tongue- tied schoolgirl, riveted by the raw power in those cobalt eyes.
She willed herself not to avert her gaze or to back away. Brandon Calhoun was the enemy. If need be, for Will’s sake, she would fight him like a tigress.
“The…note.” She forced the words out with the effort of a six-year-old writing them on a slate.
His eyes darkened in the lamplight. Then, with a weary exhalation, he bent, scooped up the crumpled note and shoved it toward her. “Here. Go ahead and read the damned thing. It won’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”
Still numb with cold, Harriet’s fingers fumbled with the crinkled folds. Tilting the paper to the light, she scanned Jenny Calhoun’s round, girlish script. As she read, her hands trembled, blurring the letters on the page.
Dearest Papa,
By the time you read this, I will be Mrs. William Smith. Please forgive me. I tried to make you understand, but you wouldn’t listen. Will and I love each other. We want to be a family and raise our baby together. This is the only way. I know you’ll be angry, but Will is a good man. In time, you will come to like and respect him. Please know how much I love you.
Your Jenny
The paper slipped from Harriet’s fingers and fluttered to the rose-patterned rug. When she looked up at Brandon, his narrowed eyes were the color of gathering storm clouds, grim and dark and angry.
“The county line’s about fifteen miles north of here.” His voice was drained of emotion now. “Johnson City’s just the other side of it. On the way into town, there’s a justice of the peace who’d marry a coyote to a mule if they had the money to pay him. That’s where your brother will likely take Jenny—unless I can put a stop to this foolishness once and for all.”
“What are you thinking?” Harriet stared at him, alarmed by his cold resolve.
Brandon picked up the note and crumpled it in his fist. “Jenny didn’t expect me to come in here and find this until morning. If I leave now and travel fast, I might be able to catch up with them.”
“And then what?” Harriet clutched at his sleeve as he turned to leave the room. “What do you intend to do?”
“Whatever I have to.” He shot her a threatening glance, then jerked away from her and strode out into the hall. Harriet plunged after him, the danger screaming in every nerve. If he caught Will alone on the road with his daughter, Brandon, in his present condition, was capable of killing him.
“I’m going with you!” Catching up with him outside his bedroom door, she seized his arm. “This is as much my problem as yours! I need to be there when you find them!”
“Don’t be a fool! You’ll only slow me down!” He tried to pull out of her grip but only succeeded in dragging her along the hallway, over the threshold and into his dimly shadowed bedroom.
Harriet struggled to ignore the massive, rumpled four-poster bed, its covers flung back to reveal a slight depression where his body had been lying when her knock had roused him from sleep. “I won’t slow you down,” she argued. “I can ride as well as any man, and I’m as anxious to find them as you are!”
He twisted away, strode to the hulking wardrobe and flung open the doors. “You’re already half-frozen. You can wait here, if you like, but I don’t want a whining, shivering woman on my hands, and I won’t be responsible for your catching your death of cold.”
“I’ll be fine. Lend me a warm coat, or even a blanket, and you won’t hear a word of complaint from me.”
He glanced back at her, his dark brows knit into a scowl. “And if I say no?”
Harriet drew herself tall, clutching his robe around her still-shivering body. “Then, so help me, I’ll trail you on foot, in the clothes that brought me here! Either way, you’re not leaving me behind, Brandon Calhoun!”
Brandon swore under his breath as he set the lantern on the nightstand and jerked a pair of heavy woolen trousers out of the wardrobe. “If the sight of a man getting dressed shocks your modesty, you’re welcome to wait in the hall,” he said, scuffing off his slippers to reveal long, pale, elegant feet.
Harriet felt the hot color rise in her face. She took a step backward, then hesitated. Brandon would welcome any chance to get away without her. She could not afford to leave him alone to slip out the back window as his daughter had done.
She shook her head, praying the darkness would hide her furious blush. “Just hurry,” she said. “I raised my brother alone. Seeing a man dress is nothing new to me.”
It was only a half lie. She and Will had been decorously modest in their years together. Harriet had not seen her brother unclothed below the waist since his early childhood. And this gruff, looming man was definitely not her brother.
“Suit yourself.” Turning away from her, he tossed the trousers on the bed and seized a set of long johns that lay over the back of a wooden chair. In a series of quick motions he thrust his feet into the legs and jerked them up beneath his nightshirt. Harriet felt her chilled flesh growing warm beneath her clothes. So far he had not given her so much as an indecent glimpse of his body. But the air of intimacy lay thick and heavy in the shadowed room, dizzying in its power. She fought the urge to avert her eyes, unmasking the falsehood she had told him, leaving herself exposed and vulnerable.
“Hurry,” she whispered, and was startled by the husky timbre of her own voice.
The trousers came up next, then hastily donned wool stockings and a pair of heavy brogans before he stripped off the flannel nightshirt. For the space of a breath he stood bare above the waist, his skin glinting gold in the lamplight, his body spare and rock hard, as subtly powerful as a puma’s. A crisp dusting of chestnut hair formed a dark inverted triangle between the mauve-brown beads of his nipples. Harriet battled the urge to let her eyes trace the shadowed line downward over his flat belly, to where it disappeared beneath the bunched long johns at his waist. Her mouth, she realized, had gone dry.
He moved swiftly, yanking the top portion of the long underwear onto his arms and over his shoulders. With scarcely a pause, he bunched the discarded flannel nightshirt in his hand and flung it toward Harriet.
“Pull it on over your clothes,” he said. “You’ll need an extra layer of warmth, and there’s not much in this house that will fit you.” When she hesitated he added, “It was clean when I put it on tonight. This is no time to be fussy.”
Ignoring the jibe, Harriet slipped out of Brandon’s robe, found the hem of the nightshirt and pulled it over her head. The velvety flannel smelled of lye soap and clean male flesh. Lingering warmth from Brandon’s body surrounded her as she pulled it downward over her frame. He was right about there being little to fit her in this house. Jenny was a fairy creature, as dainty as the dolls that decorated her room. And the length of Brandon’s trousers would dwarf even Harriet’s Amazonian height. As for their German housekeeper, whom Harriet had seen at church, she was as solid as an onion, no higher than Harriet’s shoulder and almost as round as she was tall.
Brandon had flung on a thick woolen shirt and was tucking it into the waist of his pants. He glanced up from fastening his belt, his eyes troubled.
“I’ve thought on it,” he said, “and I’m not taking you with me after all. It’s a miserable night, and I’ll make better time on my own.”
Harriet slipped the robe on over his nightshirt, jerking the sash tight around her slim waist. “If you catch up with them, you’ll need me there. Things could get out of hand—”
“Out of hand?” His black eyebrows slithered upward. “Don’t be a silly goose! I’m a civilized man.”
Turning away, he reached into the depths of the wardrobe and pulled out a cartridge belt with a long leather holster attached. Harriet felt the color drain from her face as he buckled the belt around his hips.
“No.” The word emerged as a hoarse whisper.
“No?” He shot her a contemptuous look as he opened a hidden drawer in the nightstand and pulled out a hefty Colt revolver.
“You’re not going after my brother with a gun!” she insisted, taking a step toward him. “I won’t have it!”
“You think I’m going to shoot him?” Brandon swore under his breath. “After what he’s done, your fool brother isn’t worth the price of a bullet. All I want is to get my daughter back, safe and sound, so we can salvage the mess he’s made of her life.”
“And if Will has a gun, too?” Fear rose like cold black sludge in Harriet’s throat. Her brother didn’t own a firearm, but he had friends who did. It would be easy enough to borrow a weapon for the night.
Even now, the awful scenario took shape in her mind—the confrontation, the threats, one man drawing on the other, then a gunshot shattering the snowy night…
“No!” Harriet flung herself at him with a desperate fury she had not known she possessed. Her momentum struck his arm, knocking the pistol out of his hand and sending the weapon spinning across the floor. Her fists pummeled his chest in impotent rage, doing no more damage than the fluttering wings of a bird. “No! You can’t—I won’t let you—”
“Stop it!” He seized her wrists, his brute strength holding her at bay. His stormy cobalt eyes drilled into hers. “Damn it, Harriet, this isn’t helping anything!”
His use of her given name startled and sobered her. She glared back at him, her face inches from his own. “Don’t you see? This is a tragedy in the making. You with a gun, angry and upset—anything could happen out there. You’ve got to take me with you!”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I’ll rip my clothes and go to the sheriff.” Harriet could scarcely believe her own wild words. “I’ll tell him that I came here looking for my brother, and you dragged me up to your room and tried to have your way with me!”
“Oh, good Lord!” Brandon’s hands released her wrists and dropped to his sides. A muscle twitched at the corner of his grimly drawn mouth. “You’d be a fool to try it. Nobody in his right mind would believe you.”
The implication of his words was all too obvious. Only a depraved man would make indecent advances to a priggish old-maid schoolteacher like herself, and Brandon Calhoun was one of the town’s most respected citizens. His arrogance stung Harriet like lye in a cut, but she masked the hurt with defiance.
“Wouldn’t they?” She hurled the words, wanting to shock him, to hurt him. “Maybe the story wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, but I have your nightshirt, and I can describe your bedroom down to the last detail. That should be enough to smear your precious reputation with mud.”