Sean stood straight and put on an offended look that probably would have fooled most of the folks he liked to impress. “Why should I be anything but pleased that my uncle has found happiness with a woman?”
“You was never interested in anyone’s happiness but your own.”
“Amusing that you of all people should say that, Renshaw. You’ve been manipulating my uncle since you first arrived.”
Hitching his thumbs in his gun belt, Heath half closed his eyes. “That’ll always stick in your craw, won’t it? That he chose me over you to run Dog Creek?”
Sean sneered. “He made a serious mistake. There’s always been something wrong about you, Renshaw. Eventually I’ll find out what it is.”
If Sean had been anything more than a weak, puling shadow of a man, full of empty bluster, Heath might have taken his threat seriously. He hadn’t forgotten the risk of his being here, but Sean didn’t know just how much things had changed, and he sure as hell wouldn’t do anything that would push Jed into taking Heath’s side over his.
Heath didn’t know that Jed had chosen against both of them.
Heath glanced back at the house, where Apache was still waiting patiently. “Look on your own time, McCarrick. Now you’re nothin’ but a hired hand, and you got work to do. See to my horse.”
“I’m not taking any more orders from you, Renshaw,” Sean spat. “Mrs. McCarrick’s in charge now. Once she realizes what a low-bred barbarian you are, she’ll have the sense to turn you out and hire someone more suitable.”
“Like you? That why you’re bowin’ and scrapin’ to her?”
“I am a gentleman, Renshaw. I have an excellent reputation in this county. The same can’t be said of you. In fact, I would think that the good people of Pecos County would be inclined to believe that you might be a danger to Mrs. McCarrick. A woman alone—”
Heath struck faster than any human eye could follow, clenching his fingers in the fabric of Sean’s coat and lifting him off his feet.
“You got a filthy mouth, McCarrick. Too filthy for the likes of Jed’s wife.” He let Sean drop, and the other man fell to his knees. “You got fifteen minutes to pack up your kit and clear out.”
Scrambling to his feet, Sean bunched his fists and crouched as if he was thinking about launching an attack of his own. He had just enough sense to think better of it.
“You can’t throw me off the ranch,” he said. “I am my uncle’s closest kin. You have no right—”
“This is my right,” Heath said, laying his hand on his gun. “Until Jed comes back, you won’t set foot on Dog Creek again.”
Sean’s hand hovered near his own shiny new gun with its fancy silver scrolling and ivory grip. “You aren’t the only one with—”
“Even if you knew how to use that fancy piece, you wouldn’t draw it. Not when you’d be the one left bleedin’.”
Sean opened and closed his mouth like a gasping fish. “You won’t get away with this, Renshaw. I swear you’ll live to regret it.”
Heath stepped around Sean as if he were no more than a pile of steaming cow dung and took Apache to the corral himself. Almost since he’d come to Dog Creek, he’d wanted to do what he’d just done. Jed had made that impossible. But there’d been nothing to stop him now, and even if Sean worked up the grit to try acting on his threats, Heath wouldn’t be around to deal with them.
Once he’d unsaddled the gelding, brushed him and given him a bag of oats, his thoughts quickly turned back to Mrs. McCarrick.
Rachel. He didn’t know what to make of her. He’d known a few females in his life, but she wasn’t much like any of them. Not like Polly or Frankie, hardened by a life of catering to the lusts of men. She talked like she had plenty of book learnin’, all fancy and proper with her words, looking down her nose at him. But she wasn’t soft, like the ladies in San Antonio with their fine airs and frilly dresses.
And she’d taken the baby right away. She’d held it like she cared about its welfare.
Because she didn’t know what it really was. And she never would. It didn’t really matter if she was lying about being Jed’s wife, or what would happen when she found out she never would be. For now, he had a use for Rachel Lyndon. The baby needed her. And as long as that was true, Heath had to try to forget how much he hated her.
SEAN DROVE HIS spurs into Ulysses’s heaving sides. His rage had gone beyond shock into a low-burning anger that only strengthened his determination.
“I am Mrs. McCarrick.” When the woman had spoken the words, Sean had believed at first that he’d heard her wrong. “Miss Rachel Lyndon,” Sweet had said when he’d introduced her. According to the drifter, who had fled as soon as he’d reported his failure to Sean, she had answered to that name in town.
It was a flat-out lie. “As soon as we’re married,” Jed had said. He wouldn’t have phrased it that way if they had already been wed. He’d wanted to make Sean suffer, so he wouldn’t have hesitated to announce that the deed was done and his worldly goods would be going to his wife upon his passing.
So Rachel Lyndon was a fraud. Sean could think of several reasons why she might prevaricate, among them her desire to go to Dog Creek in spite of Jed’s unexpected absence. She might see it as a way to protect her reputation in a strange place and assert her authority until Jed returned. Clearly she did not believe that he would resent her pretense.
Ulysses stumbled, and Sean sawed on the reins to bring the horse up again. Renshaw might have known that Jed intended to be married, but Sean was certain he hadn’t realized that Jed’s fiancée was on her way, or he wouldn’t have been gone when the stage was due. Renshaw had assumed that Sean hadn’t known, either, undoubtedly believing that Sean’s meeting with “Mrs. McCarrick” had been the merest chance.
It had been a blessing that Renshaw hadn’t believed Sean when he’d made the mistake of saying he’d expected Rachel’s arrival. If anyone ever found out what he’d told the drifter to do, or what Jed had said just before he died …
Sean laid his quirt to Ulysses’s flank, letting the wind burn his eyes. At least Renshaw didn’t know that Jed had intended to disinherit his nephew, or he would surely have rubbed it in Sean’s face long since.
But he had known Sean would be angry. As barbaric and uncouth as he was, he was not without a certain low animal cunning, and few in the county were inclined to cross him. Sean could still feel Renshaw’s hands clutching the lapels of his coat, feel that almost inhuman strength that could put even the most superior of men at a disadvantage.
The bastard would pay for that, of course. And that payment had been a long time coming. Too long. Renshaw had claimed Sean’s rightful place as Jed’s right hand and confidant. If Jed had done his duty and atoned for his brother’s sin of abandonment, it would have been different. But the money and education and petty privileges he had given his brother’s cast-off son had never been enough. They hadn’t filled the hole Sean had worked so hard to ignore.
If only Jed had loved—
Sean hit Ulysses again, pleased by the stallion’s grunt of pain. Those pitiful desires and the weakness that came with them were as dead as Jedediah McCarrick. Sean had set his own path, and it was as clear as daylight.
Renshaw’s bizarre rescue of an apparently abandoned infant might play into Sean’s hands in ways he couldn’t yet predict. Renshaw’s open hostility toward the Lyndon woman would certainly work to Sean’s benefit. And her apparent belief that Renshaw had tried to bribe her to leave, along with his brutish behavior, made it unlikely that she would ever regard Renshaw with any favor, no matter what she might think about the infant. Sean hadn’t lied when he’d told her