The Touch of Fire Read online

  “We’ll get to the bed tonight,” he promised.

  Noah Atwater, U.S. marshal, stood rigidly by her side, all cleaned up and slicked down, and gave her into the protection and care of her new husband. Annie was a little bemused by it. Rafe had mentioned marriage once, she had lain down to take a nap, and woke a couple of hours later to the news that the wedding would take place in only a couple of more hours. She was wearing a new blue dress, plainly made but it fit well enough. Beneath it, her body still throbbed from his lovemaking. Six weeks’ abstinence had made him . . . hungry.

  His close-cropped black beard suited him. She stole admiring glances at him all during the short ceremony. She wished that her father were alive for this moment, wished that Rafe didn’t have a murder charge hanging over his head and an army of assassins looking for him, but even so she was happy. She remembered her terror when Rafe had kidnapped her from Silver Mesa, and marveled at how much the situation had changed during the few short months since then.

  Then the ceremony was over, the preacher and his wife were beaming at them, Atwater was surreptitiously wiping his eyes, and Rafe was turning her face up for a warm, hard kiss. She was briefly astonished: why, she was a married woman now! How remarkably simple it had been.

  When they reached Austin two weeks later, they checked into another hotel under assumed names. Rafe put Annie to bed again and immediately sought out Atwater. The two weeks since their marriage had seen her strength fade rapidly as morning sickness began to plague her. The trouble was it wasn’t limited to the mornings, with the result that she was managing to keep very little food down, and not even the ground ginger powder she’d been taking could settle her stomach.

  “We’ll have to go the rest of the way by train,” he told Atwater. “She can’t make it on horseback.”

  “I know. I been right worried about her myself. She’s a doctor; what does she say?”

  “She says that she’s never again going to pat an expectant mother and tell her that being sick is just part of having a baby.” Annie had kept a sense of humor about it. Rafe hadn’t. She had been growing thinner by the day.

  Atwater scratched his head. “You could leave her here, you know, and we could go on to New Orleans by ourselves.”

  “No.” Rafe was adamant about that. “If anyone heard that I got married and investigates, she’ll be in as much danger as I am. More, because she doesn’t know how to protect herself.”

  Atwater glanced down at the gun belt buckled low on Rafe’s hips. He had returned Rafe’s weapons to him on the theory that two armed men were twice as good as one. If anyone could protect Annie, it was this man.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll go by train.”

  Perhaps it had been the physical exertion of riding that had made Annie so ill, for she began to feel better the next day despite the rocking motion of the train. She had protested the new mode of travel, knowing that Rafe had elected to continue by train because of her, but as usual he’d been as unmovable as a granite wall. Atwater bought some face powder (“Damn humiliatin’ thing for a man to be buyin’. Pardon me, ma’am.”) and Rafe used it to make his beard gray. With a bit of the powder dabbed at his temples, he looked very distinguished. Annie was much taken with his appearance, for she thought that was how he would look in twenty years’ time.

  She had never been to New Orleans before, but she was too tense to appreciate the varied charms of the Crescent City. They checked into another hotel, but it was too late for Rafe to go to the bank and retrieve the documents. Even train travel was tiring, so they ate dinner in the hotel and then retired to their rooms.

  “Is Atwater going with you tomorrow?” she asked when they were lying in bed. She had been worrying about it all day.

  “No, “I’m going alone.”

  “You’ll be careful, won’t you?”

  He lifted her hand and kissed it. “I’m the most careful man you’ve ever known.”

  “Maybe we should make your hair completely gray tomorrow.”

  “If you want.” He was willing to have his entire body powdered if it would relieve her anxiety any. He kissed her fingertips again, and felt the warm tingle that was evidently for him and him alone. No one else felt this from Annie. He figured it was from her response to him. “I’m glad we’re married.”

  “Are you? I seem to be nothing but a nuisance lately.”

  “You’re my wife, and you’re pregnant. You aren’t a nuisance.”

  “I’ve been scared to even think about the baby,” she confessed. “So much depends on what happens the next few days. What if something happens to you? What if the papers are gone?”

  “I’ll be all right. They haven’t caught me in four years, they aren’t going to catch me now. And if the papers are gone . . . well, I don’t know what we’ll do about Atwater, and I don’t know what we can do even if the papers are there. Atwater might balk at blackmail.”

  “I won’t,” she said, and Rafe heard the determination in her voice.

  He left his gun belt at the hotel, though he did carry his spare tucked into his belt at the small of his back. Atwater had come up with a coat of more eastern cut for him to wear, as well as another hat. Annie powdered his hair and beard. Deciding he was as disguised as it was possible for him to be, he walked the seven blocks to the bank where he had left the documents. It wasn’t likely that anyone would notice him, but he carefully watched everyone around him. No one seemed to be displaying any interest in the tall, gray-haired man who moved with pantherish grace.

  He knew that it wasn’t likely Vanderbilt’s men had any inkling of where he’d left the papers; if it had been suspected the documents were in New Orleans, Vanderbilt would have had an army searching the city, including the bank vaults, which weren’t proof against influence. And if the documents had been found, the hunt for Rafe wouldn’t have been so intense. After all, without the documents to back him up, he had no proof of anything, and who was likely to take his word? Vanderbilt certainly didn’t seem to be worrying about Mr. Davis confessing. The ex-Confederate president’s word wouldn’t carry any weight outside the South, where it might cause a lynching; no, Vanderbilt had nothing to worry about from Mr. Davis.

  The easy way out would be to arrange for the documents to be given to Vanderbilt in exchange for the murder charges being dropped, but Rafe didn’t like that idea. He didn’t want Vanderbilt to walk away unscathed. He wanted the man to pay. He wanted Jefferson Davis to pay. The only thing that bothered him about making certain Mr. Davis suffered for his betrayal was that, all over the South, hundreds of thousands of people had survived because, despite defeat, they had kept their pride intact. He knew his fellow Southerners, knew that fiercely independent pride, and knew also that news of Mr. Davis’s betrayal would shatter the pride that was both regional and personal. It wasn’t just Mr. Davis who would suffer, it was every man who had fought in the war, every family who had lost a loved one. The folks in the North would have a revenge, for Vanderbilt would be tried for treason and probably shot, but for the Southerners there would be nothing.

  When he reached the bank he took out the key to the vault and turned it in his hand. He had kept that key with him for four years, inside his boot. He hoped he would never have to see it again.

  He had the key, and he had the name on the bank-vault records. There wasn’t any trouble in retrieving the package. He didn’t unwrap the oilskin there in the bank, just tucked it under his coat and walked back to the hotel.

  He knocked on Atwater’s door when he passed it. It opened immediately, and Atwater entered their room with him. Annie was standing rigidly at the foot of the bed, her face white. She relaxed visibly when she saw him, and flew into his arms.

  “Any trouble?” Atwater asked.

  “Nothing.” Rafe took the package from beneath his coat and gave it to the marshal.

  Atwater sat down on the bed and carefully unwrapped the oilskin. The sheaf of papers inside was several inches thick, and it took some time to go