B000XUBEHA EBOK (9 page)

He shouldn’t have come here. He should have posted the packet to Two Creeks. He could have told her the story of Clarence’s death in a letter.

Could’ves and should’ves were a waste of time. Honor demanded that he face her, and here he was. So why in the hell couldn’t he speak the words? What difference did it make if Della hated him? Once he rode out of Two Creeks, he’d never see her again. They shared a common point in the past, but even at his most fanciful he’d never imagined he would establish anything ongoing with the girl in the photograph, or the woman she’d become. The outcome had always been inevitable.

He looked at her, trusting and pink with heat, and his resolve shattered. Tomorrow. He would tell her tomorrow. One more day wouldn’t make any difference. He’d have one more day of conversation and perhaps a smile, one more day of looking at her and being near her.

And there was one more question he had to ask.

“I’ll be leaving before you do another wash,” he stated abruptly. He couldn’t change that she’d already washed his clothing and would iron it, but he could by God make sure that she didn’t spend any more of her labor on him.

Her lips twitched with a hint of disappointment. That he was leaving? Or that he hadn’t yet explained his unfinished business?

“I suppose you need to get on with the business of hunting outlaws.” She ran her fingers over the collar of his shirt, then smoothed the iron along the curve of muslin. “Are you searching for anyone special?”

Cameron shrugged, watching the back-and-forth movement of the iron. “There are a couple of bank robbers reported to be between here and Santa Fe. If I don’t catch them, some other bounty hunter will.”

“Would that bother you?”

“Hell, no.”

Turning his shirt, she ironed the yoke, then glanced at him quizzically. “Do you care about anything? Does anything matter to you?”

She asked the damnedest questions, questions no one else would dare put to him. And he felt obligated to answer because she’d been so open with him. And because she was who she was.

“I care about evening the score,” he said finally. Before she could insist that wasn’t possible, he added, “And a few other things. Right now I care about filling the rain barrel and greasing the buckboard’s axle.”

He left the house as riled inside as he’d been in a long time. Seeing her ironing his shirts had shocked him, had brought him face-to-face with the one weakness in his life—Della Ward.

Once he told her, she’d think back to washing and ironing his clothes, and she’d detest him for letting her do it. Well, she couldn’t hate him any more than he hated himself for not noticing earlier and stopping her.

He had to tell her before she did him any further kindnesses.

Since the night they’d dangled their feet in the creek, Della had sensed that Cameron held back something he wanted to say to her. Initially, she’d guessed it must have something to do with Clarence, but they had discussed Clarence often, and she’d offered him ample opportunity to speak. Perhaps he wanted to tell her about his mysterious unfinished business. She wished he would. Curiosity was getting the better of her.

Most of all she wished she’d known James Cameron before the war did its damage. Had his blue eyes sparkled and twinkled as they did so rarely now? Had he laughed easily? Had words come quickly, or had he always been a reticent, solitary man?

“You’re quiet tonight,” he said, placing his fork and knife across the top of his plate.

“I guess I still don’t understand why you were so angry about me doing your laundry.”

Anyone else would have taken her comment as an invitation to explain, but he just nodded. There were things about James Cameron that could drive a woman crazy.

And there were things about him that would make a woman forgive just about anything. He always wet down and combed his hair before he came to the table, for example. And his hair dried in soft loose curls just above his collar. He had strong, sure hands that didn’t waste a movement that wasn’t necessary.

But the thing that gave her a fluttery feeling inside was the way he looked at her. As if he really saw her, as if he saw all she had been and all she might ever be. No one before had looked at her in that way.

“I’d rather you hadn’t done it, but thank you.”

“It was my pleasure,” she said, meaning it. The novelty of doing up a man’s wash had made an onerous chore speed by.

“You were whistling when I came inside . . .”

His comment made her smile. “See how far my manners have deteriorated? Would you like more coffee?”

“Please. Where did you learn to whistle?”

“A neighbor boy taught me. My mother was appalled.” Lord, she’d smiled more since Cameron arrived than she had in a decade. “I’ve never regretted learning. It’s nice to have music whenever I like.”

“Mrs. Ward, I’ll be leaving soon . . .”

The words hung between them, spoiling a pleasant mood. Della turned toward the pool of darkness gathering in the yard beyond the reach of the porch lamp.

She would miss him. It shocked her to realize how quickly they had established habits and routines. After he left, she wouldn’t dress the table on the porch. She’d eat her meals standing at the sink. She’d return to not speaking for days on end. The dream would return to haunt her. And the loneliness would seem worse for having been interrupted.

“Before I go, there’s a question . . . something I’ve wondered about for years.”

Here it came. The question she had expected and dreaded. Dropping her head, she looked at her hands twisting across her lap. “I know what you want to ask.”

“What happened to your child?”

All the pleasure of the evening vanished with her next breath as if a tight band squeezed her chest. As always when she thought of Claire, her eyes felt hot and scratchy and the back of her throat went dry as if she’d swallowed sand.

Cameron must have seen the color drain from her face because his voice was gentle when he spoke again. “I figure the child died. If you can bear to confirm it, we’ll leave it at that.”

“Her name is Claire. After my mother.”

He hesitated. “Did she die recently?”

“I guess by now you know I can’t answer without explaining.” She drank the last of her coffee to moisten her throat. “After my last letter to Clarence, Clarence died, we fled to Atlanta after the plantation was burned, and I gave birth to my daughter.”

She couldn’t sit still while she told the story. Standing, she moved to the rail and walked back and forth across the porch. “Mrs. Ward lost her home, all her belongings, and her servants. Then she lost her son. The Yankees did this to her. The Yankees destroyed everything she valued. And there I was, every time she turned around. After Clarence was killed, Mrs. Ward started attacking me verbally. This wasn’t new, but it got a lot worse. When I didn’t go away, she shut herself in the bedroom of the Peachside house rather than look at me or talk to me. She didn’t come out of her room until the night Claire was born.”

Della hadn’t seen her mother-in-law during her long difficult labor, but she’d heard Mrs. Ward in the hallway issuing orders to the midwife. And Mrs. Ward had taken charge of the nursery after Claire’s birth.

“This part is hard,” she said, drawing a deep breath. She gripped the railing and stared blindly into the darkness.

“A week or so after Claire’s birth, I went to fetch her to feed her. She wasn’t in the nursery. I looked everywhere. Finally I ran into the parlor where Mr. Ward liked to sit in the mornings and read the day’s news.”

Nothing in her voice conveyed how frantic she had been, how terrified that something unthinkable had happened. Her voice was flat, unemotional, the words tumbling out in a rush to reach the end of the story.

“I told him that Claire was missing. And Mr. Ward said no she was not. He had a speech prepared. It was a long speech, which said, in essence, that Claire was all the Wards had left of their son, and the Wards would raise her. But I had to leave at once. Mrs. Ward would never recover her health as long as I was present.”

The words scraped her throat and the hot evening air choked her.

“The Wards had money and I didn’t. The Wards could give Claire a comfortable life while I couldn’t. Leaving her with the Wards was the best course for everyone.” She drew a long breath and pressed her fingertips to her lips. “I took the deed that Mr. Ward gave me, and enough money to get here.”

Cameron cleared his throat. “The bonnet on the hook? And the primer and the growth marks on the doorjamb?”

“Only pretend things. I imagine she’s here, just out of sight. Sometimes I call her for supper and wait for her to come running up the porch steps.” She couldn’t believe she was telling him of her private madness. “I picture her in my mind. How tall she’d be now. What she would be learning in school and what Mrs. Ward is teaching her about managing a household. I’d like to think she knows how to whistle.”

She hadn’t heard Cameron stand, but suddenly his arms came around her waist. For an instant she stiffened, then sagged against the warm hard length of him, hoping to absorb his strength as memories flooded her mind and she thought her knees would buckle.

“She smelled so good,” she whispered. “Her hair was like corn silk. And her little mouth reminded me of a rosebud.”

“I’m sorry,” Cameron murmured against her hair.

“What hurts the most, what I can’t stand to think about, is that they’ve probably told her I’m dead.” Now her voice broke and she turned to bury her face against his chest. She didn’t cry, but her eyes burned and her hands trembled. “She’s so real and alive to me, but to her, I must be . . .”

Cameron held her, inhaling the lemon scent of her hair. He’d guessed that her daughter was dead, but the truth was worse. Because of him, Della had lost her husband, a way of life, and her baby. Because of him, a little girl was growing up without either of her parents.

He could continue killing outlaws and cleaning up corrupt towns for the rest of his life, and it would never atone for what he had done to this woman and her child.

Chapter 6

Cameron tilted his chair against the back wall of the Silver Garter. From this position he could observe the room and who entered and exited the saloon doors. Placing one’s back to the wall had become a cliché in the West, but necessary for men like him.

Sheriff Cowdry refilled their glasses from the whisky bottle on the table. “Joe Hasker won’t be a problem. After I finished with him, his daddy took over. I heard yesterday that Hasker Senior is sending young Joe to a military school back east.”

It took Cameron a second to recall who Joe Hasker was, then he nodded.

The sheriff turned the shot glass between his thick fingers. “For the most part this is a quiet town. But young Hasker has friends who are as hotheaded as he is.”

“I’ll be leaving in a few days.”

“You know how it is; you’ve worn the badge. A name comes to town and everyone wants to shake his hand and buy him a drink. Then the speculation starts. How fast is he? Sooner or later some misguided pup decides to find out, and people get killed.”

The sheriff continued talking, but Cameron let the words flow over him, only half listening. His gaze followed one of the bar girls, watching her deftly fend off hands that reached for places they shouldn’t. On her return to the bar, she leaned in and said something in the piano player’s ear. The piano man shook his head and shrugged as if to say that’s how things were.

Years ago Cameron had sat in this same chair and watched Della slip away from grasping hands and murmur something to a piano man. He’d made the right decision that day in not telling her why he’d come, but he hadn’t taken his decision far enough. Earlier today he’d corrected his mistake by sending his banker a telegram, worded so his instructions would be clear but meaningless to the Two Creek’s telegraph operator.

His attention sharpened and refocused when he heard the sheriff mention names he recognized.

“I’d have taken those boys myself, except I didn’t learn they were in town until after they’d gone,” the sheriff said uncomfortably. “They only stayed the one night.”

The sheriff was talking about the bank robbers that Cameron Fort Worth?”

“Looked that way.”

If he lived to be a hundred, Cameron would never understand the criminal mind. The bank robbers were heading exactly where he expected them to go.

“What are the chances that someone mentioned I was nearby?”

Sheriff Cowdry shrugged. “Pretty good, I’d say. You’re about the only thing folks have been talking about for two weeks. How many people have been out to the Ward place to shake your hand? A hundred?” The sheriff gave him a long look. “You’re going after them, right?”

“Not this time.” Cameron’s priorities had changed yesterday evening. Even so, he hadn’t realized until now that he’d already made the decision, probably before Della finished telling him about her daughter.

“Well,” Cowdry said eventually, “I suppose you can’t go after them all.” Clearly he wanted to ask what could be more important than capturing a pair of notorious robbers, but he glanced at Cameron’s face and remained silent.

“It’s time I headed back to the Ward place.” He brought the chair legs to the floor and stood. “Thank you for the drinks.”