A Wanted Man: A Stone Creek Novel. Linda Miller Lael

Morgan,” he replied easily.

      Lark reddened slightly under her high cheekbones. Lord, she was a beauty. Wasted as a small-town schoolmarm. She ought to be the queen of some country, he reckoned, or appear on a stage. “Lark is my name,” she argued.

      “Maybe so,” he answered. “But ‘Morgan’ isn’t. You’re running from something—or somebody—aren’t you?”

      She hesitated just long enough to convince Rowdy that his hunch was correct. “Why are you here, Mr. Rhodes?” she asked. “What brings you to a place like Stone Creek?”

      “Business,” he said.

      She stopped, right in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing Rowdy to stop, too, and look back at her. “Am I that business, Mr. Rhodes? If...if someone hired you to find me—”

      “Find you?” Rowdy asked, momentarily baffled. In the next moment it all came clear. “You think I came here looking for you?”

      She gazed at him, at once stricken and defiant. She had the look of a woman fixing to lift her skirts, spin on one dainty heel and run for her life. At the same time, her chin jutted out, bespeaking stubbornness and pride and a fierce desire to mark out some ground for herself and hold it against all comers. “Did you?”

      Rowdy shook his head. “No, ma’am,” he said quietly. “I did not.”

      Lark still didn’t move. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

      “You don’t,” Rowdy answered, keeping a little distance between them, so she wouldn’t spook. “But consider this. If I’d come to Stone Creek to fetch you away, Miss Morgan, you and me and Pardner, we’d be a ways down the trail by now, whether you wanted to go along or not.”

      Her eyes flashed with indignation, but the slackening in her shoulders and the slight lowering of her chin said she was relieved, too. “You are insufferably confident, Mr. Rhodes,” she said.

      He grinned, tugged at the brim of his hat. “Call me Rowdy,” he said. “I don’t commonly answer to ‘Mr. Rhodes.’”

      “I’d wager that you don’t,” Lark said. “Because it isn’t your name. I’m sure of that much, at least.”

      “You’re sure of a lot of things, I reckon,” Rowdy countered. “Miss Morgan.”

      “Very well,” she retorted. “I’ll address you as Rowdy. It probably suits you. You’ve fooled Mrs. Porter with your fine manners and your flattery, that’s obvious, but you do not fool me.”

      “You don’t fool me, either—Lark.” He waited for her to protest his use of her given name—it was a bold familiarity, according to convention—but she didn’t.

      She came to walk at his side, between him and Mrs. Porter’s next-door neighbor’s picket fence. The glow of the streetlamps fell softly over her, catching in her hair, resting in the graceful folds of her cloak, fading as they passed into the pools of darkness in between light posts.

      “Did your mother call you Rowdy?” she asked casually, while Pardner sniffed at a spot on the sidewalk.

      “Yes,” Rowdy said, remembering. Miranda Yarbro had always used his nickname—except when she was angry. On those rare occasions, her lips would tighten, and she’d address him as Robert. When she was proud of him, she’d call him Rob.

      “Bless my boy Rob,” she’d prayed, beside his bed, every night until he left home with his pa, at fourteen. “Make a godly man of him.”

      Guilt ambushed him. He reckoned the good Lord had attempted to answer that gentle woman’s prayer, but he, Rowdy, hadn’t cooperated.

      “Where do you hail from, Mr.—Rowdy?”

      Grateful for the reprieve from his regrets, Rowdy smiled. “A farm in Iowa,” he said. “Where do you hail from, Lark?”

      She didn’t reply right away.

      “Fair is fair,” Rowdy prompted. “You asked me a question and I gave you an answer.”

      “St. Louis,” she said. “I grew up in St. Louis.”

      And you’ve been a lot of places since, Rowdy thought, but he kept the observation to himself. After all, he’d covered considerable territory himself, in the years between here and that faraway farm.

      Pardner trotted back to them. Nuzzled Rowdy’s hand, then Lark’s.

      To his surprise she gave a soft laugh.

      “You are a dear,” she said fondly.

      Rowdy was both amused and disturbed to realize he wished she’d been talking to him instead of the dog.

      * * *

      LARK WATCHED FROM the steps of the schoolhouse that Monday morning as Maddie O’Ballivan, carrying her infant son in one arm and steering his reluctant older brother, Terran, forward with the other, marched through the gate. Ben Blackstone, the major’s adopted child, followed glumly, his blond hair shining in the morning sunlight.

      Behind the little procession sat a wagon with two familiar horses tied behind. It had been the sound of its approach that had caused Lark to interrupt the second-grade reading lesson and come out to investigate.

      Class had begun an hour earlier, promptly at eight o’clock.

      Lark had missed Ben and Terran right away, when she’d taken the daily attendance, and hoped they were merely late. It was a long ride in from the large cattle ranch Sam and Major Blackstone ran in partnership, and for all that those worthy men must have deemed the journey safe, there were perils that could befall a pair of youths along the way.

      Wolves, driven down out of the hills by hunger, for one.

      Outlaws and drifters for another.

      “Go inside, both of you,” Maddie told the boys when she reached the base of the steps. Samuel, the baby, had begun to fuss inside his thick blanket, and Maddie bounced him a little, smiling up at Lark when Terran and Ben had slipped past her, on either side, to take their seats in the schoolroom.

      “Rascals,” Maddie said, shaking her head and smiling a little. “They were planning to spend the day riding in the hills—I guess they didn’t figure on Sam and the major heading into town for a meeting half an hour after they left, and me following behind in the buckboard, meaning to lay in supplies at the mercantile.”

      Maddie was a pretty woman, probably near to Lark’s own age, with thick chestnut hair tending to unruliness and eyes almost exactly the same color as fine brandy. Until the winter before, according to Mrs. Porter, Maddie had run a general store and post office in a wild place down south called Haven. She’d married Sam O’Ballivan after the whole town burned to the ground, and borne him a son last summer. Lark’s landlady claimed the ranger’s bride could render notes from a spinet that would make an angel weep, but she’d politely refused to play on Sunday mornings at Stone Creek Congregational. Said it was too far to travel, and she had her own ways of honoring the Lord’s Day.

      Lark liked Maddie O’Ballivan, though they were little more than acquaintances, but she also envied her—envied her home, her obviously happy marriage and her children. Once, she’d fully expected to have all those things, too.

      What a naive little twit she’d been, with a head full of silly dreams and foolish hopes.

      “No harm done,” Lark said quietly, smiling back at Maddie. “I’ll give them each an essay to write.”

      Maddie laughed, a rich, quiet sound born of some profound and private joy, patting the baby with a gloved hand as she looked up at Lark, her eyes kind but thoughtful. “You’re cold, standing out here. I’ll just untie Ben and Terran’s horses, so they’ll have a way home after school, and be on about my business.”

      “I’ll send the boys out to do that,” Lark said, hugging herself against the chill. She hated to