The Widow's Little Secret
Autore
Judith Stacy
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Chapter One
Nevada, 1887
It just wasn’t right, being envious of a dead man. Still, that’s how Jared McQuaid felt sitting on the hotel porch, watching the funeral procession roll by.
He glanced down at the Stanford Gazette on his lap. The headline announced the untimely death of Del Ingram, and the front page article extolled the man’s many virtues.
A knot formed in Jared’s stomach. What were the chances? He’d showed up in this town just today and read the obituary of a man he’d grown up with miles and miles from here. A man he hadn’t thought of in years.
According to the newspaper, Ingram had died from a fall. Jared had figured ol’ Del was more likely to have been killed by a jealous husband, an irate wife or a poker player with an eye for cheaters.
Not so, according to the newspaper. Del had made something of himself here in Stanford. Owner of a restaurant, a solid citizen with a sterling reputation, he’d had a life any man would envy.
Jared touched his hand to the U.S. Marshal’s badge pinned to his vest beneath his coat. Seemed he and his boyhood friend had taken very different roads when they’d parted company some fifteen years ago. This wasn’t the man Jared remembered. But maybe Del had changed.
Jared sure as hell had.
The rocker creaked as Jared leaned back and watched from beneath the brim of his black Stetson as the funeral procession passed by. Matched sorrels pulled the wagon bearing the coffin, their hoofs stirring up little swirls of dust. Two dozen mourners followed, all dressed in black, their somber faces flushed red from the raw March wind.
Jared glanced west. Charcoal clouds hung over the Sierra Nevadas, blocking out what was left of the day’s sunlight. He had nothing to do, no place to go, no one to talk to until morning when he would relieve Stanford’s sheriff of his two prisoners and head to Carson City. Jared may as well pay his respects to Del Ingram, even though he’d never especially liked him.
A few people glanced at Jared as he fell into step behind the mourners. One woman eyed the Colt .45 strapped to his hip and the badge on his chest when the wind whipped open his coat. She chanced a look at his face, then turned away, wondering, he was sure, who he was and why he was here.
Jared found himself on the receiving end of a hundred such looks nearly every time he came to a town like this. Not that he blamed anyone, of course. He’d arrive one day, eat supper alone in some restaurant, sleep in a nameless hotel, then take custody of his prisoners the following morning and disappear.
And those were his good days. Most of the time he was on the trail, sleeping in the saddle, eating jerky and cold beans, hunting down some rabble-rouser who’d broken the law.
He was used to both—the life and the looks he got. Jared had been a marshal for nearly ten years now.
At the cemetery on the edge of town, six men unloaded the coffin from the wagon. Del Ingram’s final resting place was deep; freshly turned earth lay beside it.
Reverend Harris stepped to the foot of the grave, yanked his black, wide-brimmed hat over the tufts of his gray hair and struggled to hold open the fluttering pages of his Bible. The townsfolk gathered in a close knot, straining to hear the reverend’s words. Jared moved off to one side, uncomfortable among the mourners.
As was his custom, Jared’s gaze moved from face to face, sizing up each person assembled there. He was good at it. It had saved his life a time or two.
From all appearances, everyone who was anyone in the town of Stanford was assembled to mourn Del’s passing. They all looked prosperous, in dress and in manner. Jared spotted the mayor and his wife; he’d met the man earlier in the sheriff’s office. Sheriff Hickert wasn’t present, but Jared hadn’t expected him to be. He was nursing a nasty leg wound from the shoot-out that had garnered the two prisoners Jared was transporting tomorrow.
The gathering shifted as Reverend Harris reached for the woman standing in front of him. Jared’s stomach bottomed out.
“Damn…”
The widow. Del’s widow. Jared felt like he’d been sucker-punched in the gut.
He didn’t know how Ingram had acquired a prosperous business, a good home, a sterling reputation—and he sure as hell couldn’t imagine how he’d found himself such a fine-looking wife.
Even in her mourning dress she looked fit and shapely. She’d draped a black lace scarf over her head, but tendrils of her brown hair escaped in the wind and blew across her pale cheeks. She stood stiff and straight, her full lips pressed tightly together as she gazed past the reverend to some point on the distant horizon.
Jared thought she looked brave, determined not to break down. He wondered if she’d fully accepted the sudden loss of her husband, dead not quite two days now. He’d seen that happen before, where a long time passed before reality set in—and only then did loved ones fall to pieces.
Who would be there to hold Mrs. Del Ingram when that happened? Jared wondered. He wondered, too, why the thought bothered him so much.
He recalled the newspaper article he’d read, and remembered no mention of Ingram having any children. Indeed, no little ones hung on Mrs. Ingram’s skirt, sniffling, reaching up to her. Jared found that troubling. The widow was truly alone now, it seemed, without even a child to comfort her.
“Let us pray,” Reverend Harris called.
As heads bowed, Jared pulled out the newspaper, which he’d crammed into his pocket, and searched for the widow’s name. Matilda. “Mattie,” the mayor’s wife had called her in a quote.
He turned to her again. His breath caught. Mattie Ingram hadn’t bowed her head for the prayer. She was looking straight at him.
Their gazes met and held. She didn’t blink, didn’t falter, didn’t hesitate, just looked at him long and hard, with the biggest, brownest eyes he’d ever seen.
Heat flared in Jared’s belly, spreading outward, weakening his knees and making his heart thump harder in his chest.
“Amen,” the reverend intoned.
“Amen,” the gathering echoed.
Only then did Mattie turn away. Flushed, Jared pushed back his coat to welcome the chilly wind.
He watched her, silently willing her to turn toward him again. But she didn’t. Rigid, restrained, Mattie accepted condolences, then headed back toward town, with the other mourners crowded around her.
Standing beside the mound of dirt at Ingram’s grave, Jared followed her with his gaze, the bustle under her dark dress swaying, the vision of her deep brown eyes still boring into him. Finally, she disappeared from sight. Jared headed for the closest saloon.
Almost nobody was inside the Lady Luck when Jared passed through the bat-wing doors. Two men stood at the bar; the gaming tables were empty.
“Pretty quiet in here,” Jared said to the bartender.
“Everybody’s paying their respects,” he said, and nodded outside, “down at Mrs. Ingram’s place.”
Jared should have known that. The mourners would gather at the widow’s house, eat the food they’d brought, and talk one final time about the departed.
Jared leaned his elbow on the bar. Had he been on the trail so long he’d forgotten how civilized people acted?
Over the next few hours the saloon filled with men, drinks flowed and the noise level rose. Everybody who came in had something to say about Del Ingram. Jared stood at the bar sipping his drink, trying to block it out. By the time he’d finished his fourth beer he’d heard all the tributes he could stand to hear about the man he remembered to be a first-rate scalawag, the man these townsfolk admired so much.
Outside, the cold wind whipped around Jared as he headed down the boardwalk toward the hotel. It was dark now. The town had closed up for the night.
But when he reached the hotel, Jared kept walking. He didn’t stop until he got to the edge of town, to the sturdy house with the picket fence he’d read about in the newspaper. The Ingram home.
And a fine home it was. Neat, clean, well built. A house fit for one of Stanford’s most prosperous citizens.
The front door opened and a woman stepped onto the porch, outlined by the glowing lamplight behind her. Jared’s heart lurched. Was it her? Was it Mattie?
The woman pulled two small children out of the house behind her and shut the door. Disappointment caused Jared’s shoulders to sag a little. He nodded politely to the woman when she passed him on her way back to town.
Minutes dragged by while Jared stood at the end of the boardwalk, looking at the Ingram home. He didn’t want to go inside and hear anyone else talk about what a fine man Del was; Jared had had his fill of that already.
He muttered a little curse directed at himself. What kind of man was he, thinking ill of the dead? Had he forgotten all the good manners he’d once prided himself on?
Slowly, he nodded in the darkness. His solitary life on the trail, hunting down criminals, hauling them in for trial, had taken its toll.
The decent thing to do was go pay his respects to the widow of the man he’d grown up with. Del had made something of his life and he deserved all the things being said about him. Jared would go into that house and say something nice about him. It was the right thing to do.
And he’d get to see Mattie Ingram again.
Jared crossed the road, passed through the little gate outside the house and stepped up onto the porch. He paused for a moment before he knocked and brushed off his trousers, then took off his hat and smoothed down his dark hair, glad he’d taken a bath and gotten a haircut this afternoon.
He rapped his knuckles against the door, then waited, waited and waited some more before it opened. He’d expected to find the reverend’s wife greeting mourners, but instead Jared found himself face-to-face with the widow herself. A long moment dragged by while he just looked at her. When Jared finally came to his senses, he clasped his hat against his chest and tried to think of something to say.
“Mrs. Ingram? My name is Jared McQuaid. I’m—I’m real sorry about your husband.”
She stepped back without really looking at him, and opened the door wider. “Won’t you come in?”
He followed her down the little hallway, past a neat parlor, to the kitchen at the rear of the house. The room was warm and comfortable. A cookstove and cupboards were at one end, a sideboard and a table and chairs at the other. All manner of food—or what was left of it—covered the table. Jared’s steps slowed. No one else was in the house. Had he intruded, when he’d intended to comfort?
“Is it too late to come calling?” he asked.
“No,” she said simply, and turned toward the cupboard. “I’ll get you something to eat.”
Jared watched her skirt swirl, and glimpsed her white ruffled petticoat, then studied her backside as she stretched up and retrieved a plate from the top shelf of the cupboard.
He muttered a silent curse at himself for admiring Del’s widow.
“Your husband and I grew up together,” Jared said, as he shrugged out of his coat and laid his hat aside.
Mattie didn’t answer, just turned again and began filling the plate from the dishes on the table.
“We went to school together,” Jared said, feeling the need to say something. He took a step closer. “I’m a U.S. Marshal, just in town for today. I’m leaving in the morning. I read about Del in the newspaper.”
Silence filled the house as Mattie heaped food on the plate, and Jared pulled on the back of his neck.
“So, while I was here I wanted to tell you how sorry I am that Del’s passed on,” he said. “He was a good man. Everybody in town speaks highly of him.”
Though Jared didn’t understand it, it was true. And regardless of what he thought about Del Ingram, this was his wife, the woman who loved him. She’d married him, lain with him, walked through life with him. The least Jared could do was think of something nice to say.
“Fact is,” Jared said, “I never heard so many kind things said about one man before. I was down at the Lady Luck just now and Del was all anybody talked about.”
A little gasp echoed in the kitchen, and Jared saw Mattie press a hand against her lips. Damn it, what was he thinking, mentioning that he’d been at the saloon? That wasn’t what women liked to hear from strangers in their home.
Jared pushed his fingers through his hair. “The mayor…the mayor had nice things to say, too.”
She dropped the plate she’d been preparing and leaned forward, bracing her hand on the table. Little sniffles filled the room.
Good Lord, he’d made her cry. Jared stared at her slumping shoulders as she tried bravely to stand upright. He wanted to go to her, take her in his arms, comfort her. But should he? He didn’t even know her.
He wasn’t sure what to do but keep talking.
“The newspaper article about Del was just about the most glowing report I’d ever read. And that eulogy, that was something, all right.”
A sob tore from her lips and her whole body quivered. Jared stepped closer until he stood mere inches away.
He wanted to hold her. Oh, he wanted to hold her like he’d never wanted to hold another thing in his life. She looked so frail and helpless; her sobs sounded so pitiful. He wanted to press her against his chest and let her cry, keep her in his arms until her tears stopped.
“Your husband was a good man. He was well respected, and honest, and hardworking,” Jared said softly. “You’ve every right to be upset, Mrs. Ingram.”
“Don’t call me that!”
Mattie swung around, hot anger boiling inside her. She drew back her fist and struck Jared in the chest.
“Don’t ever call me by that name again!” she screamed. “He was a bastard! A lying, conniving bastard!”
Mattie braced one hand against the table to keep herself up, unable to hold the words inside any longer. She’d done that for nearly two days now, and she couldn’t contain them another minute.
“I’ve had to pretend since he died—pretend that he was a good man, pretend that everything said about him was the truth.” A sob tore from her lips. “But none of it is true. None of it!”
“Mrs. Ingram—Mattie—maybe you should—”
She batted away Jared’s hand when he reached for her. “It was all a lie. Right from the beginning. Del never loved me.”
Jared eased closer. “Things might seem that way now because you’re upset, but—”
“He told me! Just before he died!” Another wave of tears poured down Mattie’s cheeks.
Jared frowned. “He told you he never loved you?”
Mattie nodded, the hurt and humiliation throbbing in her chest. “He fell off the roof and was injured badly. He knew he was going to die. So he told me. He told me everything. How he followed another woman here to Stanford because he was in love with her. How he couldn’t have her because she was marrying someone else. How he married me because I had a restaurant, a good home, a good reputation, money.”
“Son of a…”
Mattie gulped, her strength draining away. She latched on to Jared’s arms, gazing up at him. “He just used me,” she whispered.
Mattie fell against him, sobbing, the pain too great to bear alone. She felt big arms close around her. She snuggled deeper against his hard chest.
With a sharp, ragged breath she lifted her head and gazed up at Jared. “I went by the bank today. My account was nearly empty. He’d taken my money, gambled it away, most likely. Lord knows he never worked a day since I married him. I had to use the last dollar I have in this world to bury him!”
She fell into racking sobs again and slumped against Jared’s chest. Gently, he stroked his fingers down her back, fearing Mattie was on the verge of all-out hysteria.
“You need the doctor,” he said. “He can—”
“No!” Mattie pulled away. “No, don’t get the doctor. Don’t get anyone. I don’t want people to know how stupid I was, how I let myself be swept off my feet by a man I hardly knew. Everyone said I shouldn’t marry him, but I wouldn’t listen. I believed that he loved me. I don’t want the whole town to know what a fool I was.”
Jared shook his head. “Mattie, you’re too upset. You need—”
“—to forget,” she said, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. “I need to forget.”
Jared froze as she gazed up at him. The look on her face sent a warm tremor through him.
“Make me forget,” she whispered.
Mattie came fully against him and rose on her toes, pressing her lips to his throat. “Please…make me forget.”
“Now, just a minute.” Jared caught her arms and tried to ease her away. “You’re not thinking clear.”
“I don’t want to think clear. I don’t want to think at all,” she said, and slid her palm across his chest.
He backed up, but she moved with him. “You don’t mean that.”
She meant it. With all her heart and soul she meant it. She ached deep inside. She wanted it to go away. She wanted to feel something different.
And who better to do that with than this stranger, who’d be gone in the morning?
Mattie circled her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his. He pulled away.
“We were married for nearly a year, but he hadn’t touched me in months—months!” she said. “Please, I can’t lie alone in that bed tonight. I just can’t.”
Jared hesitated, studying her in the dim light.
“You can do it, can’t you?” she asked. “You can make me forget?”
“Damn right I can,” he said. “But that’s not the point.”
“What’s wrong with it?” she asked. “I’m not a married woman…not anymore.”
“I know, but—”
“I want this,” she whispered. “Don’t make me plead with you.”
“But…”
Mattie stepped away and held out her hand to him. “Please, just make me forget.”
He didn’t move, not for a long minute. Then, finally, Jared reached for her hand.
