B000XUBEHA EBOK (16 page)

“Della, wait.”

Skirts sweeping the mud, she spun and pointed a shaking finger at him. “I swear if you come out here, I’ll rip you apart with my teeth and nails!” She ran into the rain.

“What in the hell just happened here?”

Luke shrugged and adjusted his blanket. “Damned if I know. Traveling ain’t easy for white women.”

“Did you say something that upset her?”

“Not that I know.”

At the farm, Cameron had felt her sadness, but out here on the range her sadness had hardened into anger. He’d decided a little anger was beneficial, it erected a barrier between them, and that wasn’t such a bad thing. But what was the cause? At first he’d wondered if it was him. Now the answer seemed obvious. Knowing she would see her daughter had triggered powerful memories and emotions.

Reaching for her towel, he blotted the rainwater on his face and throat, then swallowed the last of the coffee she’d left behind.

“You’re a married man. You must know about women,” he said to Luke. “What would you advise? Should I find her and try to offer comfort? Or did she mean what she said?”

Luke puckered his lips and considered. “Well . . . usually when a woman says she’ll tear you apart with her teeth, she’s mad enough to mean it.”

“She could get lost out there.”

“She’s been lost for a long time, son.”

He stared at Luke, remembering why he cared about this old man, then he pulled down the brim of his hat and stood.

The rain had settled into a steady downpour with no indication of ending. He could see about ten feet before the slant formed a gray wall.

Where would she have gone? He checked the fire first, and discovered the flames had gone out. The grass was too thick to hold prints. He couldn’t tell if she’d come here. There was no sign of her anywhere near the lean-to. Water poured off his hat brim as he faced the range, wondering how far she’d gotten.

Ducking his head, he walked toward the horses. If it took all night, he’d find her.

“I told you not to come after me!”

She was leaning against Rebecca, rain running off her oilskin in sheets, wet hair streaming down her back. As he came closer, he saw that her eyes were wet, but that might be only rain. She’d bitten her lips. Her bare hands were red with cold.

Christ. He had no idea what to say to a wet, angry woman. “If you want to make the coffee and take over the cooking, I have no objection.” She turned away and leaned against Rebecca’s flank. “In fact, I’d be obliged.”

“Just go away.”

“The truth is, I don’t much like to cook, but you’re good at it.”

“I don’t know anything about cooking over an open fire.”

“I’ll teach you.”

She stood away from Rebecca and shook her head. “I know you mean well, and I’m sorry I said I’d tear you apart if you came out here. But please. I need to be alone.”

He moved closer, running his hand along Rebecca’s back. “I’m not good at this. Tell me how I can help you.”

“No one can help me.” She pushed away from Rebecca and dug her fists against her eyes. “I should have stood up to her. I should have said this, I should have said that. I talk to the Wards in my head. Most of the time I don’t even realize I’m doing it.” She dropped her hands. “I replay the scenes and make them come out differently. I’m strong and in control, and they can’t do or say anything to hurt me.” Anguish hunched her shoulders. “And you know the worst of it? Even if I could go back and live that time again, I’d do it the same way. I wouldn’t stand up to her.” She struck her thighs with her fists. “Because they were Clarence’s parents! So I didn’t talk back, I wasn’t rude, I let them use me and say hurtful things, and finally I let them take Claire!”

He brushed his fingertips across her cold cheek. “It’s over. You can’t change what happened.”

She drew back as if he’d slapped her. “You have no right to tell me to forget the past. Not when you live there, too! Not when you’ve spent ten years trying to atone for an imagined wrong.”

“You think I imagined killing good men?”

“When you killed a Yankee, Cameron, he wasn’t a good man. Not at that moment. He was a man who was trying to kill you.”

“I didn’t come out here to talk about me.”

She wiped at the rain on her face. “It’s the same thing, isn’t it? You? Me? We’re both trapped in the past like flies in a spider web.”

He stared at her hair, black in the rain and gathering darkness. She hadn’t said anything that he hadn’t pondered before, but hearing it aloud drove home a truth he didn’t like to examine.

“Listen to me,” he said, cupping her shoulders between his hands. “We’re going to fix your past. We can’t turn back the clock and change what happened with Claire, but we can change what happens in the future. Della? This time you can make that scene end differently.”

She shuddered beneath his hands. “Don’t ask that of me. All I want to do is look at her. I just want to see her. Please.” She gazed up at him with panicked, pleading eyes. “It’s done. I wish to God that I hadn’t left her behind, but I did and I’ll never forgive myself for that. But, Cameron, if she’s happy, if she’s safe and comfortable and happy, then I can’t punish her by taking her away from the only life she’s known. I won’t.”

Now was not the time to argue. They were a long way from Atlanta. There would be other chances.

“Come back to the lean-to and get out of the rain.”

“I know how crazy I sound.” She gripped his arms, wanting him to understand. “I’m wild and raging because she stole my baby, but I want to leave everything as it is and let her continue to have Claire.”

It wasn’t so hard to grasp. Bitterness choked him when he let himself realize that he could never settle down like an ordinary man. Yet he was proud of what he’d accomplished in the last ten years.

Dropping an arm around her shoulders, he gently led her back to the lean-to. The instant they ducked inside, Cameron felt the warmth.

Luke’s saddle and blanket were gone, but he’d dug a fire pit inside the lean-to and started a pot of beans and fresh coffee. Cameron peered into the rain, but he saw no sign of the old man, didn’t sense his presence.

“Should we look for him?” Della asked. Worry deepened her gaze. “Where would he go?”

“He’s gone home.”

“At night? In the rain?”

“Luke’s lived his life on the range. He’ll make camp if he feels like it.”

The rain muffled sound, but it annoyed him that he hadn’t heard Luke ride out. That would have pleased the old man.

“I didn’t say good-bye! I didn’t tell him that I like him more than I was mad at him.”

“I suspect he knows.” Now he noticed that Luke had brought in Cameron’s saddle and bags, had laid out the towels. The sly old devil. He almost smiled, guessing what the old man had imagined.

With the fire pit inside the shelter, it was warm enough that Della removed her duster and shook off the rain near the lean-to’s opening. She hesitated, then wrapped her long hair in one of the towels.

“I don’t know what came over me,” she said, sinking to the ground next to her saddle. She didn’t look at him. “I feel like a fool. We were just talking, and suddenly I was furious for no good reason. Just . . . so angry I couldn’t hold it in.”

After removing his oilskin and hat, he poured them coffee and added sugar to hers.

“I wasn’t like this at the farm.” She sipped the coffee, closed her eyes and murmured a word of thanks. “At least, not often. Do you get angry?”

“Sometimes I want to shoot some vicious son of a bitch instead of taking him in to stand trial.”

“Have you ever done it?”

“Came close a couple of times. Are you hungry?”

They ate Luke’s beans, then placed the bowls outside to be washed by the rain. The beans were a bit too salty, and some biscuits would have sat right, but all in all Luke had done well by them.

Now what?

He and Della were alone, listening to the rain on the canvas of a small lean-to. They would sleep not three feet apart. Conversation died in his throat. Luke had provided a buffer between them, had made conversation easy and natural. He wished the old man were still there.

Uneasy, he glanced at Della. She’d loosened the towel around her head and was drying her hair. Firelight softened her expression and for a moment he saw the girl in the photograph.

Never had he let himself imagine that he would be alone with her like this. Close enough to smell her rain-fresh scent, to reach out and touch her if he’d had that right.

And now he understood that the girl in the photograph had been ephemeral, a construction of his imagination. In truth, the girl was the seed which had produced the rose in front of him, a complex combination of beauty and thorns.

“Talk to me,” she said when their silence became uncomfortable. She reached for her comb. “Talk about something not connected to the past.”

Not since childhood had he seen a woman comb wet hair, hadn’t guessed at the patience required to unravel tangles left from toweling. The intimacy of watching her perform a private toilette made his stomach tighten.

“Would you like whisky in your coffee?” He needed a task that required him to look away from her. “It’ll help you sleep.” More likely, he was the one who would need help sleeping. “What would you like to talk about?”

“I don’t know, anything. What do you do for pleasure?”

“Read, mostly. When I’m staying in town, I attend lectures, lyceums, and community events. I don’t mind working with my hands when there’s an opportunity. I enjoy chess.”

“What do you read?”

“Law books, usually. Sometimes fiction.” Now the comb slid smoothly through her hair. The shorter strands around her face were drying in soft curls. “I like Mark Twain. I enjoyed
Through the Looking-Glass
by Lewis Carroll.” A fact he would have admitted to very few people.

She looked up with one of her rare smiles. “I read that. It wasn’t really a children’s tale, was it?”

“What do you do for pleasure?” Fascinated, he watched her tilt her head and nimbly plait her hair into a long, glossy braid.

“About five years ago, Mrs. Linsey turned her old chicken coop into a library. Everyone donated books. The books I like best are those where someone has underlined passages. I try to imagine why that passage was important to someone. Sometimes I think I can guess, other times I can’t.”

“Do you underline passages?”

“Never,” she said, smiling again. “And I’ll wager that you don’t, either.”

“What else do you enjoy?”

She tied off the braid with a twist of twine. “My garden is a chore, except I like growing the stupid pumpkins. Cooking is a pleasure when there’s someone to cook for.” She lowered her gaze and brushed the end of the braid across her palm. “I used to enjoy playing the piano, although I wasn’t particularly talented at it. Do you like to dance?”

He pulled his legs up and rested his wrists on his knees. If the journalist who’d written
James Cameron, An American Hero
had overheard this conversation, he might have written a very different book. The thought made him smile.

“As a matter of fact, I did enjoy dancing. Can’t say I’ve done much of it in recent years, though.”

“I used to love to dance.” Her eyes shone in the firelight. “I loved the music and the big ballrooms. The ladies in beautiful gowns whirling around the room like pale, fragrant flowers. And the men all in black with their hair slicked down. Remember how it smelled? The candles and the perfume and the scent of the powder on the floor?”

She would have worn her hair up with a jeweled ornament in her curls. He imagined her with sparkling eyes, flirting with a silk fan and tapping her foot beneath a satin hem.

“That’s a nice memory.” Raising a hand, she covered a yawn, then tossed her braid over her shoulder. “I think I’m dry enough to try to sleep. You were right about the whisky. I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

“It’s been a long day.”

“Are you going to sleep now?” A rush of color brightened her cheeks and she busied herself opening her bedroll and plumping up a thin pillow.

“I’ll sit up a while. Wait until the fire burns down.”

She looked relieved. Interested, he watched her climb into the bedroll, amazed that she managed to do it gracefully and without exposing a flash of ankle. Her boots were neatly placed beside her saddle, although he hadn’t seen her remove them.

“I made a spectacle of myself. I’m sorry.”

“I’ve done the same.”

“I doubt that.” She smiled and held his gaze until they both looked away. “Well. Good night, then.”

“Good night, Della.”

Turning inside the bedroll, she arranged herself on her stomach and cradled the pillow in her arms. How could she breathe with her face in the pillow?

“You’re certain we don’t need to worry about Mr. Apple?”

“Luke’s fine.”

“Mmm. I like the sound of the rain.”

There was a finger of whisky left in the bottle, and he poured it into his cup, then faced the dark opening. If Luke had stayed, they would have had a problem with the sleeping arrangements. Cameron couldn’t visualize himself agreeing to put Della between them, not in close quarters like these, where it would be easy to offend by accidently brushing against her. Neither could he visualize placing himself in the middle, where it would be awkward to rise swiftly if the necessity arose.