McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [90]
The padre had joined Holt and Mr. Cavanagh, watching benignly as the chickens were made ready for the skillet. “Brother Lawrence will be sorely disappointed,” he said. “He was planning on venison stew for supper.”
Lorelei glanced toward the building where the kitchen was housed. There was no smoke coming from the chimney, and the windows were shuttered. She took a faltering step in that direction.
“We don’t want to impose on your good will,” Mr. Cavanagh said, smiling. “It would be a favor if you’d join us for fried chicken, here in a little bit. We’re gonna have spuds, too. Soon as Holt builds me a fire, I’ll put it all on to cook.”
Holt looked exasperated, as well as worried, and Lorelei wondered how much Mr. Cavanagh had told him about Tillie’s troubling state of mind. “Where do you want this fire?” he ground out.
“Maybe Brother Lawrence wouldn’t mind if we used his cookstove,” Mr. Cavanagh speculated companionably, looking at the padre.
“Why, he’d be honored, I’m sure,” the padre said. “You go right ahead into the kitchen. Tell him I sent you.”
Holt grabbed Lorelei’s arm as he passed. “You can help,” he said, dragging her along.
She stumbled to keep up, baffled. “What are you—”
He propelled her along, but when they reached the door of the kitchen, he stepped in front of her and entered first.
She took a deep breath on the threshold, then stepped in after him.
No Brother Lawrence. No venison stew.
Holt strode over to the stove, touched it. “Stone-cold,” he said, and wrenched open the door, started stuffing kindling inside. At least there was a supply of that.
Lorelei put a hand to her throat. “What’s going on around here?” she asked, in a voice that was smaller than she would have liked.
“Hell if I know,” Holt answered. He took a match from the metal box fixed to the adobe wall next to the stove and struck it against the floor before putting it to the kindling. “If I had to hazard a guess, though, I’d say that old friar is crazier than a tick.”
“You think he’s here alone?”
In her mind, Lorelei heard Tillie’s voice. They’re all dead…I can see through them…I don’t like dead people.
“Have you seen anybody else?” Holt asked, rather snappishly.
“Well, no, but—”
“Or maybe you think there are ghosts everywhere, like Tillie does?”
Lorelei frowned and put her hands on her hips. “Now just a minute—”
He stood and faced her, and his shoulders, usually so straight, slackened a little. “There aren’t many things that spook me,” he said, “but this does.”
Lorelei was taken aback. “You’re afraid?”
“I didn’t say that.” He looked away, then met her gaze again, with some effort, it seemed to her.
“If the padre is cr—insane,” Lorelei said, “it doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s dangerous. He seems kindly to me. And pretty lonely, too.”
“We oughtn’t to leave him here,” Holt told her, or maybe he was telling himself, because he sounded distracted. “He wouldn’t have a chance against a pack of Comanches.”
Lorelei’s throat ached. She wanted to weep, thinking of the padre wandering around the compound alone after they’d gone, talking to a lot of invisible monks. “You’re right,” she said. “About leaving him behind, I mean. But I don’t think he’d go willingly, and it wouldn’t be right to force him.”
Holt opened the stove door again and threw in a few chunks of wood. “No,” he admitted, but grudgingly, “it wouldn’t.”
Mr. Cavanagh came in, carrying four plucked chickens in one hand, with the padre right behind him.
“Brother Lawrence must have stepped out,” the latter said.
“I reckon he’s with the others,” Mr. Cavanagh replied easily.
CHAPTER 27
HOLT TOOK the midnight watch, climbing the ladder into the bell tower above the chapel to survey the moonlit landscape. Rafe, claiming he couldn’t sleep, soon joined him. Below, all was quiet—John slumbered under the wagon, the women took their rest in the small adobe chamber the friar had set aside for the purpose and the rest of the crew had bedded down in the orchard, spreading their bedrolls under the fruit-laden trees.