Read Online Two Brothers by Linda Lael Miller - Free Book Online Page B

of horse spit and rainwater. At that range, a bullet would shred his insides. He didn’t give a damn about that, either.
    “You ready to dance for the devil, Billy?” he asked, his thumb on the hammer.
    Billy gulped spasmodically and lowered the hogleg. “She was just a whore,” he whined.
    “Shut up,” Shay breathed. He jerked the iron out of Billy’s hand, flipped open the chamber, and let the shells fall into the mud surrounding the trough. “I’m talking to you. You lay a hand on a woman, whether she’s a whore or a saint, I’ll hurt you, Billy. Real bad.”
    With that, he shoved the confiscated pistol into his beltand strode off down the street, fury thrumming in his head like a drumbeat.
    “I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch!” Billy shrilled after him. “Do you hear me? I’ll kill you! ”
    Shay just kept walking, because he knew if he turned around, if he spoke at all, he’d wind up handing back Kyle’s gun and facing the little weasel down, right there in the middle of the street. And that would be nothing short of murder.
    The music rose through the floorboards of the hotel like sweet smoke, and Aislinn, usually content to spend such evenings writing to Thomas and Mark, or reading a book obtained from the small lending library at the general store, yearned to put on dancing slippers and lacy petticoats and a silken gown.
    She and Liza Sue were alone in the dormitory, since the other girls were either working or watching the dancers from the rear hallway, and Liza Sue was pacing. She kept going to the window, pushing the curtain aside, peering out into the sultry summer night.
    “What is the matter?” Aislinn asked, with some impatience, wondering at the same time if Shay McQuillan was downstairs, holding some woman in his arms. Wondering why she cared what he was doing in the first place.
    “He’ll find me,” she said. “He won’t stop until he finds me.”
    “Who?”
    “Billy Kyle, that’s who,” Liza Sue snapped. Her bruises were beginning to fade, turning pale green at the edges, but she looked very small and fragile in the black sateen dress Eugenie had given her, and even younger than Aislinn had feared she was.
    Aislinn set aside her half-finished letter, which gave yet another glowing account of what a wonderful life she and Thomas and Mark would have together, once the boys gotto Prominence. She felt shaken and sick. “How old are you?” she asked.
    Liza Sue was silent, gnawing at her lower lip. “What does it matter?”
    “It matters,” Aislinn insisted softly.
    “Fifteen,” Liza Sue confessed. “I was thirteen when I came to Prominence.”
    Aislinn thought, briefly, that she would be violently ill. “Dear God.”
    The girl’s eyes gleamed with desolate pride. “Don’t you go feeling sorry for me! I ain’t pretty like you, nor smart. I had to make my way as best I could.”
    “Of course,” Aislinn said gently. She wanted to embrace Liza Sue, hold her the way she might have held Thomas or Mark, when they were smaller, and frightened or hurt, but she didn’t dare.
    “I’d like to go down there and dance and dance until my feet were wore out,” Liza Sue burst out suddenly. “Wouldn’t you?”
    Aislinn sighed. “Yes,” she said. She felt like weeping, for a multitude of reasons—because her mother and father were dead, her brothers far away. Because her feet hurt from wearing shoes, and because now that she was up close to her dream, she could see the cracks in it. She wasn’t at all sure that she could fix up the homestead cabin and grow enough food to keep starvation at bay. Because there were young girls like Liza Sue in the world, lost souls who had to sell themselves to survive.
    “Let’s go down there and watch for a while.” Liza Sue spoke dreamily, as though being at the fringe of gaiety could appease their longings. “We can’t be sent away for just watching, can we?”
    “No,” Aislinn admitted, “probably not.”
    Five minutes later, she