Dancing With the Devil (21 page)

Oh, Lord, what was she getting herself into here?

“Back then, women were expected to marry young and start a family. And sadly, love was not often a consideration for many of those girls.” Another glance at Mrs.
Hale confirmed her last statement. “Imagine how hard it would be to be married to a man you didn’t love.”

“But I do love Ernest.”

“I’m sure you do.” Rhea smiled at Polly, whose face glowed with hope, dreams and expectations. “But you must understand that love isn’t always enough to make a hard life easier, is it, Mrs. Hale?”

“No, it’s not.” Thankfully, the woman didn’t expound fur their.

“No mother in the world wants her child to go through the same hardships she has, and I’m sure your mother is just afraid that is what will happen if you stay here.”

“But I don’t care! I’m not afraid of hard work. I love Ernest and I want to marry him.”

Good Lord—what was worse: the howling mother or the sobbing child?

“Polly, please.” Mrs. Hale’s eyes welled with tears. “You have to trust me on this.”

“Miss Rhea, you’ve only been married a little while,” Polly hurried on, her voice growing stronger. “And you’ve had a horrible time of it already.”

Rhea laughed. “It’s certainly not been easy.”

“But you love Mr. Deacon, don’t you?”

“That’s different, Polly.”

“No, it’s not. You love him and that’s all that matters. You survived even after you thought he died, and surely there’s no worse hardship than that.”

“I…well, yes, but…”

Footsteps behind her warned of Deacon’s approach.

“Mrs. Hale, Polly.” He bobbed his head in a brief hello to both women. “I hope you’ll pardon my intrusion, but I couldn’t help overhearing.”

As mother and daughter stared back at him in silence,
Rhea offered up a silent prayer of thanks he’d taken a clean shirt from the rack.

“You’re right, Polly,” he said. “There is no worse hardship than what my Rhea went through, and as it was my fault entirely, I will spend the rest of our time together trying to make it up to her.”

It was Rhea’s turn to stare at him, completely speechless. What was he doing?

Deacon’s eyes warmed, but he kept talking to Polly. “She’s a strong woman, my Rhea. Are you ready to be that strong, too? You have to be willing to make sacrifices, even when you don’t want to.”

“Ernest is almost twenty. He can decide what’s best for both of us.”

Luckily for Deacon, he covered his smirk with his hand before Polly noticed it. But Rhea noticed and responded with a quick poke to his ribs.

“Don’t do that, Polly,” she said, trying not to sound like she was lecturing. “You have a perfectly good mind of your own, and it’s up to you to decide what
you
want. Don’t ever let anyone turn your life into something they want. In the end, it’ll only make you both miserable.”

Deacon coughed twice, then quickly recovered. “If it’s any consolation, Mrs. Hale, I’ve come to know the young man, and he seems to be a level headed sort. Hard worker, by all accounts, too.”

“Yes.” Rhea nodded.

“And so handsome.” Polly sighed over a smile, then realized what she’d said and blushed furiously.

“Enough of this nonsense,” Mrs. Hale said, her breathing sharp. “You are going to Houston, and that’s the end of it.”

Mrs. Hale dragged Polly back down the aisle and shoved past Kit, who was just coming in the door.

“That was not a happy customer,” Kit said, staring
after the woman and her daughter. “You didn’t let Deacon wait on them, did you?”

“What do you want, Kit?” Deacon’s smile, so easy and free a moment ago, vanished.

Kit didn’t answer him, just continued to watch the Hales hurry down the boardwalk.

“Just think, Rhea,” she muttered loudly. “If that girl gets her way and marries Ernest, you’ll have to invite her horrid mother to all your family gatherings.”

Rhea clicked her tongue and made to go back to the counter, but something made her stop.

“Get out of here, Kit.” Deacon’s warning came low and dark.

“No, wait.” Rhea shook her head. “Why would I invite the Hales to family gatherings?”

Kit shrugged indifferently. “Good question. I know I wouldn’t, even if she was part of the family. Who’d want to eat with that woman?”

“Kit…” Deacon’s warning went unheeded.

“I understand why you don’t invite crazy old lady Miller to your family dinners. I mean, after all that’s happened—”

“Mrs. Miller isn’t family.”

“I know
she’s
not,” Kit said, “but that doesn’t mean—”

“Kit!” Deacon started toward his sister, but she ducked out the door before he reached her.

“Colin knows the truth,” she called through the crack before shutting the door and hurrying away.

A slow tremble began in Rhea’s ankles and worked its way up her legs until she was helpless to stop it. Her heart quivered and goose bumps raced over her arms as the icy fingers of fear wound through her blood.

“What did she mean, Deacon? What does Colin know?”

He shook his head slowly, his mouth set in a grim line. “I don’t know, sweetheart.”

“But what she said…do you think she meant…?”

Her thoughts ran in a hundred different directions at once.

“I need to talk to Colin.” She was already at the door before Deacon caught up with her.

“Wait,” he said. “Just wait. You can’t go over there all fired up like this. For all we know Kit was just talking in circles like she usually does.”

“But why would she do that?”

“Because she can!”

Rhea pulled open the door, then turned back to Deacon. “Are you coming with me?”

He didn’t move, and Rhea wasn’t about to wait for him. She started down the walk but only made it half a dozen paces before he stopped her.

“Rhea, wait.”

She pulled the key out of her skirt pocket, tossed it to Deacon and waited impatiently while he locked the store.

A moment later they were inside the sheriff’s office with the door shut behind them.

The fear she’d begun to feel earlier now crept into her throat. What ever Kit had been talking about, Rhea had a feeling it wasn’t going to be good.

Colin looked up as they walked in, his expression flipping from hopeful to impatient in less than a heartbeat. But a moment later, it changed again.

Without Rhea saying a word, she could see by Colin’s expression that he knew something was wrong. Horribly wrong.

He licked his lips, swallowed, then folded his hands on top of his desk and sighed. “What?”

Deacon stood next to Rhea and wrapped his arm
around her waist. She chewed her bottom lip for a moment, then charged ahead. There was no point in being anything but direct.

“What do you know about the Millers?”

“What?” Every bit of color faded from Colin’s face. Not a good sign.

“Are they somehow related to us?”

He unfolded his hands, twisted them in his lap, then folded them on top of the desk again. “How did you…I mean, where did you…?”

“It’s true?” She stepped closer to his desk, but stopped when he pulled his hands back into his lap and stared down at them. “How?”

“It doesn’t make a lick of difference anymore, Rhea.”

“Then why won’t you look at me?”

He released an annoyed sigh, rolled his eyes at her and immediately looked away again.

“I know it’s not Mrs. Miller,” Rhea pressed. “Was it Mr. Miller?”

Colin’s jaw clenched, but when he looked up, he looked straight past her to Deacon.

“Oh my Lord,” she gasped. “It’s not Mr. Miller, is it?”

Colin shook his head slowly.

“Ernest?” Suddenly, she didn’t want to look at her brother, didn’t want to see the truth in his eyes, the truth he’d kept from her for God only knew how long.

“Shit.” Colin’s voice sounded a hundred miles away.

“Oh, for—” Deacon wrapped his arm around her shoulders and ushered her toward Colin’s chair. He scrambled to get out of it a moment before Rhea sank down on it in a heap.

“Ernest?” she repeated. “But how?”

“It’s complicated,” he said, his voice subdued, his face a sickly shade of gray.

“Does he know?”

“Yes.” He pulled a half-full bottle from his drawer and set it on top of the desk.

She made to lunge at him, but Deacon held her back. “And neither one of you thought to tell me?”

“Rhea, please.”

“No.” Her throat felt raw, her voice not her own. “He’s our…and you knew!”

The door opened and Donnelda Dietrich breezed in, looking more like spring than nature itself. Her blonde curls sat pinned beneath a soft pink bonnet, which tied beneath her chin with a huge satin bow.

Her dress, matching pink of course, was a simple yet elegant affair, with its modest neckline and fitted bodice. Lace trimmed the hem and wrists, and tiny bows adorned each shoulder.

A large basket, balanced carefully on her hip, slid from her grasp and would have hit the floor had Deacon not moved so quickly.

“Oh,” she gasped. “I’m sorry, Col…er, Sheriff. I didn’t know you were busy.”

“Excuse me.” Colin grabbed the basket away from Deacon and ushered Donnelda back outside. A moment later, he was back looking none-too-pleased, yet it took him a long time before he sighed and nodded.

“I knew,” he said slowly. “But it was so long ago…”

“Sweet mother of God, Colin,” Rhea cried. “I don’t care if it was yesterday afternoon—you should have told me!”

He didn’t say anything.

She twisted her fingers together as she paced the floor in front of him. “How did this happen?”

“Come on, Rhea.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “You know how babies are made.”

“Don’t you dare take that tone with me! If anyone
has the right to be angry here, it’s me. And if you don’t start telling me the truth, I swear to God—”

Deacon took her hand in his and squeezed gently.

“What’s to explain?” Colin cracked his knuckles and leaned back against the wall, his gaze fixed straight down at the floor. “Pa took up with Mrs. Miller, and now we have Ernest.”

“Pa…and Mrs….” Rhea shook her head. No. This couldn’t be. “But he loved Ma. He would never do that to her.”

Colin snorted. His shoulders shook, whether with rage or sadness, Rhea couldn’t be sure because he didn’t look up. “Well, he did.”

She sagged against Deacon for a moment, then forced herself upright. “Did…did Ma know?”

Silence. A long tortuous moment of silence that ended with a sharp, brief nod of his head.

“She knew?” Rhea cried. “But she never said anything…she never…she must have been devastated.”

Colin cracked his knuckles again, but at least she didn’t have to prod him for more information.

“Ma wasn’t exactly a saint either,” he muttered.

“No!” She would have collapsed right there if Deacon hadn’t grabbed her. “Ma?”

Pain ripped through Rhea’s heart. Not her mother…no. It couldn’t be true.

Colin cleared his throat quietly. “Why do you think Pa’s ‘good friend’ Judge Hicks came around so often?”

“No. Oh no.” He had to be lying. It just couldn’t be true. “Not him.”

“Him.”

Rhea leaned over, resting her elbows on her knees.

“How long have you known?” she asked, pushing each syllable from her tongue.

Colin uncorked the bottle, stared longingly at the amber liquid, then sighed and set it back down.

“Tell me.” She shouldn’t want the details; it was bad enough knowing the outcome. “How long?”

He pursed his lips for a second. “Long time.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” she cried.

“For God’s sake, Rhea, you were five! What was I supposed to say?”

Each breath was like swallowing a giant rock. “Five? But that means you were…you—”

“Ten,” he ground out. “Ten years old and I walked in on Pa and that woman, naked as jaybirds, and going at each other like—”

“Colin!” Deacon’s voice snapped like a whip.

“You should have told me.” It was all she could do not to reach for the whiskey herself.

“Why? What good would that have done?”

She was out of the chair in a heartbeat and standing right up in front of him.

“They were my parents, too.” Her throat burned with a pent-up sob. “And I should have been told. I don’t need you to protect me from the truth.”

“No? You prefer knowing Ernest is our father’s bastard son? Or that Ma lifted her skirts for the judge and God knows who else?”

“That’s enough,” Deacon warned, but Rhea ignored him. She didn’t need him protecting her from the truth, either.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Of course I don’t
want
to know that, but it would have been better than living this lie, wouldn’t it?”

Anger this deep was new to her. She didn’t know what do, where to look.

“I can still see Pa’s face when I found them.” Colin spat on the floor at his feet.

“Oh dear God.” The room began to spin around her, the light narrowing to a single point in front. She slumped back in the chair, bent over at the waist and hung her head down in front of her knees. “Did y-you say anything to them?”

She must have looked like a crazy woman bent over that way, but did it matter at this point?

“Hell no!” Colin barked. He slammed his fists down on the desk. “Wasn’t my place.”

None of this made sense. There must be some misunderstanding.

“But how did they…I mean…Ma and Pa spent all their time together, at the store during the day and home at night. When would they have time…oh my Lord.”

Colin shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”

No, she certainly didn’t. She didn’t want to know any of this, but she couldn’t get past this last question. Something told her it was the answer for more than just this question.

“Please, Colin,” she said quietly. “You have to tell me.”

Deacon crouched next to the chair and wrapped his arms around her.

“Rhea,” he murmured. “Are you sure you don’t want to go lie down for a while? You know the truth now; does anything else matter?”

“Y-yes,” she stammered. “Of course it matters. Every last detail matters.”

She rested her head in the crook of his shoulder but even the warmth of his embrace couldn’t stop her trembling.