B000XUBEHA EBOK (10 page)

Cowdry also wanted to satisfy his curiosity about Cameron’s connection to Della Ward and why he was staying out at her place, but he didn’t ask that question, either. A prudent man.

As Cameron was also prudent, he chose to ride across the range. He doubted an ambush waited by the roadside, but a man couldn’t be too careful. And he had things he wanted to ponder aside from shadows along a road.

It was late when he arrived at the barn, but he suspected Della hadn’t been sleeping any better than he was. After he turned Bold in to the corral, he walked up to the house and stood beside her bedroom window, listening for sounds inside.

“Are you awake?” he called softly when he thought he heard a rustle of movement.

“Mr. Cameron?” She didn’t sound as if she’d been asleep. “What time is it?”

The moon was waning, but the stars were still bright. “I don’t know. Late.”

The curtains twitched and he inhaled a faint lemon scent, but she stood in the shadows and he couldn’t make out more than a silhouette. “What’s wrong? Did something happen in town?”

“I’ve thought about everything, and I’ve decided to go to Atlanta and fetch your daughter. You can come with me or wait here.”

A gasp came from deep in her throat, then she stepped directly in front of the open window and stared at him. He still couldn’t see her face, only a pale starlit oval.

“What . . . I . . .”

“This is the right thing to do.”

“Mr. Cameron.” Her hands fluttered near her breast. “I don’t know what to say. This goes far beyond . . .”

“Can you be ready to leave by the day after tomorrow?”

She was silent for so long, he peered in the window to see if she was still there. “Mrs. Ward?”

“It appears neither of us is going to sleep tonight, so you might as well come inside. I’ll heat up the coffee.”

By the time he’d walked around the house, she’d lit a lantern in the kitchen and fired up the stove beneath the coffeepot. One of his questions was answered—she didn’t wear her hair loose for sleeping. A long, dark braid swung down the back of a light wrapper.

“I suppose this could have waited until tomorrow,” he said uncomfortably. It wasn’t proper or seemly for him to see her in her nightclothes. He hadn’t considered that, before calling at her window. And he hadn’t anticipated the powerful effect of seeing her in a state of undress.

Men didn’t see women with their hair down and wearing a wrapper unless the women were wives or intimate relations. If someone were to discover them in this state, Della Ward would be irretrievably ruined.

Cameron backed toward the door. “I apologize, Mrs. Ward. We’ll talk in the morning.”

“No, Mr. Cameron,” she said firmly. “We’ll talk now. No one is going to come to the door at this hour. At least I hope not.” Gathering the collar of the wrapper at her throat, she glanced at the coffeepot. “Sit down.” They didn’t speak again until the coffee was brewed and poured. “Now. Tell me why you want to fetch Claire.” Her shock was wearing off, but her reaction wasn’t what he’d expected.

“Your husband wouldn’t have wanted Claire to grow up without her mother.”

“Given the circumstances, I’m not sure that I agree,” she said, speaking slowly and thinking about it. Cradling her cup between her hands, she studied a pair of moths batting against the lantern glass. “The reasons I agreed to leave Claire with the Wards still apply.” Finally she met his gaze. “Look around you, Mr. Cameron. Is this any life for a little girl? I can’t give her the things the Wards can.”

He returned her steady look and said nothing, trying to figure her out.

“There’s no second bedroom here, but I imagine Claire has her own room where she is. I doubt she has a list of chores to accomplish before she goes to school or when she returns. Undoubtedly there are servants to do her laundry, prepare her meals, clean her room. I assume she has friends and goes calling with Mrs. Ward. I take as a given that she has an armoire filled with dresses and cloaks and trimmed bonnets. Do you really believe Clarence would want his daughter to exchange that life for . . . this?” She spread her hands.

“You’re her mother. She should be with you.”

“Most of the people in Two Creeks don’t have that high an opinion of me. Maybe they don’t believe I’m an outright whore, but they don’t consider me respectable, either. Would Clarence want that taint to fall on his daughter, as well? I don’t think so. Would he want his daughter to grow up with no friends and no place to wear a pretty party dress? With none of the refinements, like piano lessons, and dance and singing lessons, or time to learn how to embroider? Would Clarence want his daughter to go to bed lonely and exhausted from chores? Do you really believe that’s what Clarence would have wanted?”

“You don’t have to stay here, Della. You and Claire could make a fresh start somewhere else.”

She looked at him as if he’d lost his senses. “If I could afford to leave and start over anywhere else, don’t you suppose I would have done so?” She shook her head. “Claire is better off where she is than she ever would be with me.”

She was so hard on herself, never flinching from hard truths. “None of your arguments stand against the fact that a daughter should be with her mother.”

“Living on a crumbling farm on the edge of a crude little Texas town? Doing without things she takes for granted now?” Her eyes were tired and defeated, dark with pain. “I love my daughter. I want her to have nice things and a comfortable childhood. I like to think of her laughing with friends and going to parties wearing pretty dresses.”

“You said you pretended that Claire lived here with you.” God help him, did any man understand a woman’s mind? He had believed she would burst into tears and embarrass him with gratitude. Instead he was beginning to grasp that she didn’t want him to fetch Claire home to her. He didn’t understand it.

“I’m not crazy,” she said sharply. “I know the difference between pretending and what’s real. When I call Claire to supper, I know damned well that she isn’t going to appear in the doorway. That’s when I imagine her sitting down to real silver and real china and real damask. That steadies me, Mr. Cameron.”

“You can drop the mister.”

“I like knowing she’s learning good manners and living with people who use them. I’m glad she has the opportunities she has. I’d give up everything I have, if it meant she could keep the life she has now.”

Frustrated, he reached out and grabbed the moths, crushed them in his fist. Three more appeared, and he ground his teeth. “Let me ask you something. Are you in regular contact with the Wards?”

“No.” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why would I be?”

“Then you don’t really know what kind of life Claire is living. Do you?”

She stared. “What are you saying?”

He leaned forward. “Do you know for certain that Mr. Ward’s fortune survived the war?”

“Well . . . he sends me money every month . . .”

“Or are you making assumptions that might not be true? About servants and lessons and expensive dresses. All of it. Do you know that Claire is hale and hearty? Do you know if she’s even alive?”

Della started violently and spilled coffee across her wrapper. “Of course she’s hale and of course she’s alive!”

“But you don’t know it for a fact.”

“All right, damn it. I don’t know it for a fact! Is that what you want to hear?” Upset, she went to the door and kept her back to him. “If something terrible had happened, the Wards would have informed me.”

“Would they?”

“Why are you doing this? Why are you putting these terrible images in my mind?”

He wasn’t ready to tell her that he needed to put together two lives that he’d torn apart. “Reuniting you and Claire is right, and it’s important.”

“Did Clarence ask you to look after us? Did you make him some kind of promise?”

“Della, what are you afraid of?”

Her braid twitched as a ripple traveled down her spine. Finally she returned to the table, her face expressionless. “This is a moot discussion because I can’t afford a trip back east.”

“I can.”

“That goes beyond friendship. You don’t owe this to Clarence, he wouldn’t expect it. Mr. Cameron . . . I appreciate what you want to do, truly. But it’s too much. I couldn’t possibly repay you for the expenses of the journey you suggest.”

“My reward would be knowing you and Claire are together.”

For a long time she sat silently, gripping her coffee cup and studying him with a skeptical expression.

“I want to do this,” he said stubbornly.

When she finally spoke, he had to lean forward to hear. “What if Claire refuses to see me?”

Cameron had no answer. But now he grasped an inkling of why she was so resistant to the notion of fetching her daughter. “That’s a bridge to cross when you reach it,” he said eventually, knowing the comment was no help.

“She’s only nine years old. A child. She’ll never understand why I left her. Very likely she’s been told that I’m dead. It would be a shock to discover that I’m alive.”

His instinct was to take her into his arms and comfort her. Before he weakened, he stood and reached for his hat. “Think about it.”

She gazed up at him, her eyes golden and confused in the lamplight. “You’re turning my life upside down.”

Never in all his days had he wanted to hold a woman this badly. Just to fold his arms around her and inhale the scent of her and move mountains to make her happy. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

She glanced toward the band of pale color rimming the eastern horizon. “Tomorrow is rushing toward us,” she said quietly. She didn’t sound happy like he’d thought she would be.

There was no point going back to bed. Della knew she wouldn’t sleep, her mind was spinning like a tornado.

Because it was easier than thinking about Claire, she asked herself again and again, why had James Cameron made this astonishing offer? What was in it for him?

The question was cynical and made her feel ashamed of herself. But nothing in life came free. There had to be a cost that she wasn’t seeing. And surely Cameron’s motivation had to be something stronger than uniting a mother and daughter whom he didn’t know.

Or was that fair? She and Cameron were no longer strangers. Last night she had leaned back in his arms and found comfort in his scent and the hard strength of his body. Later she’d spent a restless night battling thoughts she had certainly never directed toward a stranger. They knew each other’s habits. But still . . . to interrupt his life to help her—and pay for the inconvenience—she didn’t understand why he would do that.

As the sun popped above the horizon, she drank yet another cup of coffee and forced her mind to Claire. Her darling, sweet-smelling baby. Not a day passed that she didn’t think about her daughter and wonder how tall she was and what color her hair had become. Had her eyes remained blue? Did she resemble Clarence or Della’s side of the family? How did she spend her days? What was her favorite color and flower and holiday and song and, and, and.

These thoughts hurt. But it eased her some to imagine Claire safe and protected and living in comfort.

Now Cameron had shaken that image. Maybe Claire was a sickly child. Maybe she’d been felled by a childhood disease. Or maybe Mrs. Ward was still queer in the head, maybe she treated Claire badly. Maybe money was scarce and Claire lived in penury.

She didn’t know.

That was the thought digging at her mind as she went about her morning chores. She didn’t know what Claire’s life was like. And now she had doubts about her previous assumptions.

When Cameron came to the house for breakfast, she slammed a plate in front of him and sat down hard.

“Aren’t you eating?” he asked.

“I’m too angry to have an appetite.”

“All right.” He put down his knife and fork. “Why are you angry?”

“I’m glad you asked,” she said, speaking between her teeth. “I can’t figure out if you’re some kind of fairy God-father sent here to work magic, or if you’re a devil in disguise, here to destroy any peace of mind I might have had.”

“I’m just a man who’s spent a third of his life trying to do right.”

“Right by whom, Mr. Cameron? Maybe your idea of right isn’t the same as my idea of right. Have you ever thought about that when you’re making decisions about other people’s lives?”

“Why in the hell are you so upset about this?” The flat look in his eyes stated that her reaction was a far cry from what he had expected and had hoped to receive.

She shoved back a wave of hair and glared at him with flashing eyes. “How dare you just announce that you’re going to fetch my daughter! What gives you the right to disrupt her life and mine? Exactly what is your plan, anyway? You kidnap her from her grandparents—you, a stranger—and then drag a frightened little girl a thousand miles west, and set her on my doorstep before you wave good-bye?”

The more she talked, the angrier she got. The gall of him. Jumping from her seat at the table, she paced in front of the stove, waving her hands.

“And then what happens, Mr. Cameron? Do you imagine that Claire and I will fall on each other with joy and happiness? Or do you picture a woman who knows nothing about children, and a shocked child who believed her mother was dead? Do you picture a child missing the people who have raised her, and her own room and belongings, and her friends? Do you picture a woman bowed with guilt because she can’t give that child a comfortable life?”