B000XUBEHA EBOK (29 page)

“Unless you’re starving, I’d like to walk for a while. Stretch our legs and enjoy the fresh air.” Della pulled on her gloves and straightened her hat. “This is a treat.” Ordinarily the train didn’t stop for much longer than thirty or forty minutes.

She took Cameron’s arm and they turned downhill toward the river. Immediately Della’s heart lifted. It was lovely to be in the fresh cold air and free to speak without the people around them overhearing. They were almost to the docks before it dawned on her that the folks they passed paid them no attention.

“No one recognizes you,” she said, looking up at Cameron. By now she knew the signs. That sudden surprise of recognition, followed by an effort not to be obvious, which was usually overwhelmed by the urge to speak to Cameron and shake his hand. But sometimes the look of recognition was followed by a measured study, and she could almost see the man calculating his chances if he drew his gun. “I also don’t see many guns.”

Cameron led her to a bench overlooking the activity swarming around the wharf and a good-sized cargo steamer. “There aren’t as many pistols worn here as in the West. But there are probably more than you think. Still, a man can relax a little.” He went to a vendor and returned with steaming cups of hot chocolate. “You’ve been quiet. Are you thinking about your daughter?”

“Actually I’ve been trying not to.” When she thought about Claire, her stomach lurched and she felt sick. What could she possibly say to the child she’d left behind?
Hello, I’m the mother who abandoned you and
left you with a vile-tempered grandmother and a controlling, sickly grandfather.
Della lowered her face over the hot chocolate and closed her eyes.

Increasingly the dread came over her in waves, knocking the strength out of her spine and knees and making her hands shake. She had terrible visions of being unable to stop herself from revealing her identity to Claire. And Claire would spit her contempt. All the accusations and hurtful words that Della had said to herself for ten years would come out of Claire’s mouth, carrying a hundred times the power to wound.

Cameron stood slightly before her, drinking his chocolate, his gaze on the river.

“Cameron?” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Do you think less of me for leaving my baby with the Wards?”

“No.”

“Mrs. Ward is a poisonous woman. If Claire reminds her of me—maybe the Wards have treated her badly. Mrs. Ward has a tongue like a razor, and Mr. Ward never stood up to her. He wouldn’t interfere if she mistreated Claire. I knew that, but I left my baby, anyway.”

“Don’t do this, Della. You had no choice.”

“I had a choice about what I wrote in that last letter to Clarence. I wasn’t a good and loving wife.”

He turned with a frown. “You were seventeen, pregnant, forced to live with people who didn’t like you or welcome you. You were frightened and alone and struggling with responsibilities you weren’t prepared for.”

Cameron understood.

With blinding clarity Della realized that if she had written that last terrible letter to James Cameron, he would have understood the reasons and the impulse behind it. He would not have surrendered to her pleas for him to come home any more than Clarence had, but he wouldn’t have been angry at her for wanting his help and protection. He would have known she didn’t mean half the words written in that letter, because Cameron knew her better than Clarence ever had. Cameron knew her heart.

And Della would have understood that. There would have been no blame and no need for forgiveness. No letter, no flash of pique could have changed their belief in each other.

Concentrating on what she was discovering, she fixed her gaze on the stevedores loading the river steamer, but she didn’t see them.

Cameron should have blamed her for writing that bitter letter and for leaving Claire with the Wards. He should have, but instead somehow he understood.

She blinked back tears of gratitude. Thank heaven Cameron did not see her demons in the same monstrous way that she did.

Was she testing him? Honestly, she didn’t know. She preferred to think that she was checking the truth of the assumptions she’d made.

As a general rule, men did not excel at picking up hints, and Cameron seemed worse than most in this regard. Della understood this meant that she would have to speak frankly, but not so frankly as to embarrass either of them. Unfortunately she was out of practice at this sort of thing.

She wet her lips, glanced at Cameron, then back at the river. “You know, since we visited the gypsy camp, I’ve been asking myself what Clarence would think if I were ever to . . .”

She almost said “remarry,” but stopped when she realized that might alarm him.

“. . . were ever to start seeing another man.” A glance revealed that Cameron was paying close attention. “I’ve concluded that Clarence probably wouldn’t mind if the man were someone he approved of. Like a close friend.”

There. She’d said it and demolished Cameron’s reticence to pursue a courtship of his friend’s widow. Had she spoken the truth? She had no idea. Probably not. As recently as a few days ago she’d dreamed about the hearse and, as crazy as it sounded, she had attributed the dream to Clarence and interpreted it to mean that she’d done wrong by kissing Cameron in the hotel corridor.

When Cameron didn’t comment, she sighed. “What do you think?” she asked, speaking to his stiff back.

“I think we should walk to town, find a good restaurant, and have an early supper.”

That wasn’t what she wanted him to say.

Embarrassment flamed on her face. She had all but begged Cameron to court her and he was changing the subject. And the change was abrupt, even for a man who didn’t easily discuss personal matters.

Della didn’t speak a word between the docks and the dining room at the Saratoga Hotel. Neither did Cameron. By the time they were seated and considering menus, they were both in a bad mood.

“I’ll have a whisky,” Cameron said to the waiter.

Della looked at him. “It’s early for whisky, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“I’ll have a glass of Madeira.” Wines had never appealed to her, especially Madeira, but it was the only wine she could remember on the spur of the moment.

“A friend once told me that women can put you in a corner where, no matter what a man says or how he says it, he’ll cause pain where he didn’t intend to.”

Della lifted her chin. “I apologize for placing you in a corner.” Why didn’t he drop this topic and spare them both? She had asked him to court her and he had said no thank you by abruptly changing the subject. The issue was closed.

“I want you to know that I respect you and hold you in the highest esteem.” Cameron spoke quietly and earnestly, but his face was flushed and clearly each word emerged with great effort. “It must be evident that I’m powerfully drawn to you. If I could, I’d . . .” He waved a hand. “But I can’t. There are reasons that you don’t understand.”

Her shoulders moved with a tiny motion of relief. She hadn’t misjudged him after all, and she hadn’t made a fool of herself.

“Maybe I do understand,” she said, hoping the softness in her eyes apologized for her sharpness. “I’d like to hear your reasons. Perhaps they aren’t as insurmountable as you think.”

She watched his eyes narrow and felt his gaze like a caress on her lips. Something moved deep inside and she marveled that one special man’s gaze could fill her with such longing.

“You’ll hear the reasons. But not now.”

Knowing him made her forget sometimes that he was dangerous. Plus, she’d never considered him dangerous to her. But now she looked into his cool eyes, heard the warning in his voice, and felt a sudden shiver go down her spine.

Tilting her head, she tried to see him as others did. Hard. Coldly handsome. Ruthless. A legendary man who left death and destruction in his wake. Solitary and untouchable.

“Cameron . . .” Her voice sank to a whisper. “What is it that you want to tell me?” Something had been there from the beginning. Whatever it was hadn’t diminished but had grown in power and importance. “Tell me now.”

He shook his head. “Soon. But not yet.”

The expression in the depth of his eyes frightened her. She saw hopelessness, sadness, and fury gathering force like a storm.

Later that evening, Della leaned her forehead against the cold window glass and peered outside, half expecting to see lightning flash ahead of the train. The feeling of dread returned, depressing her thoughts and making her wish that she could turn around and go no further.

Reaching blindly, she felt for Cameron’s hand and released a breath when his fingers twined through hers.

He had admitted that he was powerfully drawn to her, and heaven knew that she went weak inside when he looked at her. Whatever he had to tell her, whatever lay ahead, they could work it out.

Chapter 16

The ride across Missouri to the depot at St. Louis seemed endless. Cameron didn’t have much to say and neither did Della. He assumed her thoughts had turned toward seeing her daughter. Maybe she pondered what she could say to Mr. and Mrs. Ward, or perhaps she wondered if it was possible to see Claire without having to speak to the Wards.

His thoughts turned backward, stuck near the docks in St. Joseph. In all the years that he’d carried her photograph and dreamed and pretended, he’d never dared imagine that Della would seize the initiative and invite him to court her.

If the past had been different, and he wished to God that it were, he would have seized the opportunity to live his fantasy. Instead, knowing that Della favored him and would welcome his attentions was like a bayonet in the gut.

It shouldn’t have gone this far. Because he was weak and wanted her, he’d let things get out of hand. Folding his arms across his chest, he stared toward the front of the train and mentally flogged himself. He’d behaved badly in Santa Fe when he’d lost control and kissed her in the hotel corridor. He succumbed to weakness every time he fed his spirit with her smiles or shining eyes or the electric touch of her fingertips on his sleeve.

Because he was a lonely man stockpiling memories, he’d let her assume that he kept his distance because she’d been the wife of a friend. Since he’d done nothing to correct that impression, he’d hurt her there on the docks in St. Joe.

Tomorrow the train would roll into the station at St. Louis. The next morning, they would head south toward Atlanta on one of the new fast trains that didn’t make many stops.

“Cameron?”

He looked down into her upturned face.

“Are you all right?”

“Why would you ask?”

“I don’t think I’ve heard you sigh before.”

He’d sighed? That surprised him as much as it seemed to surprise Della. “You must be mistaken.”

She arched an eyebrow then turned her face to the neat farms slipping past the train windows. Cameron tugged at his collar and wondered why the boy who tended the stove still had the job. Inside the car it felt like an August afternoon, not conducive to rehearsing the most important and the most devastating speech of his life.

Once he’d been articulate and nimble with words, a natural-born attorney according to his father, the judge. Then came the war. Long before he’d encountered Clarence Ward, the words had begun to dry up in his throat. After Clarence Ward and after he went west, there wasn’t much that seemed worth saying. A man got out of the habit of conversation.

I’ve deceived you. I was not your husband’s friend.
I’m the Yankee who killed Clarence, then went through
his pockets and stole his personal effects.

Once, he’d believed there wasn’t a jury that he could not persuade to his way of thinking. Arrogant, yes. But ten years ago words had come easily and convincingly.

Everything you think you know about me is a lie. I
didn’t know Clarence Ward, didn’t serve beside him, was
not his friend.

There was no easy way to say it. No way to soften the death of a loved one, even ten years later. And no hope for forgiveness for having killed her husband and having caused the loss of her daughter and home. How could she forgive him when he’d never been able to forgive himself?

When the conductor came down the aisle announcing that the dining car was open, Cameron shook his head and pulled out his watch. The day had passed with little conversation between himself and Della. Both were wandering in an unforgiven past.

The train yard at St. Louis swarmed with tracks, sidecars, and men clad in sooty uniforms from half a dozen lines. The depot was large, ornate, crowded, and confusing. Della clung to Cameron’s arm, struggling to keep their porter in sight as people flowed past them, rushing toward boarding platforms or hurrying toward the street. She didn’t recall ever seeing so many people in one place.

Most were well dressed in fashions that made Della realize how provincial she and Cameron appeared. The thought made her smile. The traveling suit that had been the height of fashion in Two Creeks, Texas, was hopelessly dated in St. Louis, and her winter hat was simply deplorable. She decided that Cameron fared better than she since styles for men changed slowly, but his boots and the width of his lapels set him outside the present mode.