Forget Me Not (42 page)

How could the man not love her? J.D. wondered. How could he live with her and not see that she was worthy of affection?

Despair laced her words as she continued. “The only reason he gave me for the party was to celebrate his own success. On the day I turned twenty-one, my trust fund was given to me. I didn't know it at the time, but it was four million dollars—”

“Good God,” J.D. blurted before he could stop himself. He'd never imagined that amount.

Josephine seemed oddly embarrassed by the sum. “I should have gone to my father sooner and asked him. But I didn't.” A tear fell from the curve of her
cheek to spot the front of her shirt. “I was being dutiful to my husband. My whole life was a chain of dutiful obligations I neither questioned nor disobeyed. My thoughts stayed within me, and the passions I idolized”—her voice broke into a whisper—“from the Beadle's were kept in the secrecy of my room.”

J.D. couldn't believe that she was speaking about the Jo he knew. The Josephine Whittaker who had hired on as a cook wasn't subservient. She had her own thoughts and ideals, and he'd heard her vocalize them. On more than one occasion.

“Everything came crumbling in when the stock market crashed. I went to see my father immediately. He looked in poor health with his unshaven face and disheveled hair. He had remained unmarried, and our house at Madison Square lacked loving arms to embrace him.” Her gaze grew distant. “At that moment, I forgave him for not loving me the way I had hoped. He, like the rest of us, was a victim of society, brought up within its tight walls of decorum where showing emotion meant weakness.

“But I felt he did love me that day. He put his head on his desk and mumbled his regrets . . . his apologies. At the time, I didn't understand why he kept saying he was sorry. But then I learned. Only it was too late.

“His death . . . it hit me hard.” Fresh tears fell.

J.D. sensed there was more to the circumstances surrounding her father's death, but he remained quiet.

“I went through the motions of the funeral, numb and empty. Hugh didn't even have the decency to show up. Something inside me gave way.” A wistfulness filled her tone. “I could never gain my freedom honorably, but I could gain a degree of independence through financial security.

“I sought my father's attorney and asked him the conditions of my funds and assets. It was then I found
out that Hugh had gone through the entire four million on our—
his
—estate. My income from my father was gone the moment the market crashed.

“When I confronted Hugh about his duplicity, he said that life was made up of compromises and that he was no longer going to compromise himself. I didn't know what he meant until the following morning when I was delivered a term of divorce sent by his solicitor. The grounds were adultery. A lie.”

She stopped crying, her face stoic. “Though I had not found passion in my husband's bed, I had
not
sought it elsewhere.”

Her admission wasn't spoken to him, rather to herself. For she didn't look at him when she talked. “There were names. Not just
a
name listed. But
names
in the suit against me. I didn't know a single one of them. They had to have been made up. But nobody would question Hugh's accusation. He was a man. I was a woman. I was human property at his disposal. He used me. He took away my virtue and my self-worth.” Her tone grew bitter. “I'll never forgive him for that.”

The handkerchief in her fingers was wadded into a ball, then twisted. “I confronted him on his falsities. He was so cruel, it pains me to recollect his hateful words. He said he'd only married me for my money and that I was useless to him. I had never given him an heir, and I had no more income.”

“What did you do?” J.D. hadn't been able to ask her anything until now. Now his anger at this man Hugh surfaced and simmered at his waning self-control. Had Hugh Whittaker been in this room, J.D. would have taken a whip to his hide until he bled the injustices that Josephine had endured under his roof.

“I moved into an apartment with a friend. The divorce decree was granted two months ago. At first, I retreated from everything and everyone. Even my own anger. But after weeks of solitude, I came to the conclusion that my divorce was a source of self-revelation.
I was free of social pressures and prejudices. I was at last my own self.

“There was a party at the Beauchamps'. I'd thought it would be a fitting place to show my newly found independence. But I was shunned. I was so humiliated that I left rather quickly and made a blind decision to come out West.

“Actually, it wasn't blind. I'd been thinking about it for a while. Only I hadn't had the courage to actually come. I had no money. What clothing and jewelry I had taken from my home I sold for train fare.” She undid the handkerchief and wiped her nose. “I don't need the confines to dictate to me. I can survive on my own.”

J.D. admired her mettle, but by the same token her resolve left him out in the cold. “So you don't need a husband because you can take care of yourself.”

She shook her head. “I didn't mean that. I would like a husband . . . perhaps . . . one day. But now I can't. I've been a daughter and a wife. I've never been a woman until I met you. I'm afraid . . . I'm afraid if I marry you, I won't keep what I've gained. I can't risk losing the distance I've come.” Her gaze searched his. “Can you understand that?”

J.D. slowly pushed away from the door, weighed down with a heaviness on his chest. He had no right to make her feel worse than she did, but he went ahead and said what was on his mind anyway. He guessed it was because he was still a son-of-a-bitch after all. “About all I understand is, you don't love me enough, or at all, to trust me not to crush you, Jo.”

With that, he turned. He had to leave. He couldn't stay and face her anymore. Not when the only things left to say were the raw stings of an aching heart.

22

J
osephine stood next to the corral where Freckles was kept. The calf trotted to her and vocally complained about Josephine not bringing a bottle.

She rubbed the calf's head between her ears, staring through eyes clouded with tears.

She'd been worthless at breakfast, scorching the bottom of the cornmeal mush pot until the mixture lumped together like a clump of half-cooked beans, and the salt pork had been fried to the tenderness of rawhide.

Her concentration had constantly strayed from the kitchen and had fallen on J.D. She hadn't seen him this morning. He'd gotten up earlier than she, and she hadn't heard him in the kitchen. She didn't think he'd eaten anything or had a cup of the coffee that the cowboys lived for.

His chair at the table had been empty, but she didn't dare question his whereabouts with Boots's gaze blazing on her at every move she made.

Boots hadn't come into the kitchen to give her his usual tidbits of advice. The first she'd seen him was at the breakfast table, and his eyes had never left her as she made her rounds with the coffeepot. His constant
staring had been unnerving. It was like he knew what had happened between her and J.D.

After J.D. left her room, she put away her cards and left the ticket on her washstand. There was no sense hiding it. Although she'd bought it because of a misunderstanding, that didn't mean she didn't intend to use it this Thursday. She had made her intentions clear, and there was no going back.

Freckles nudged Josephine's hand when she quit stroking her fingers across the wiry hair on the calf's head.

“Y'all are spoiling that cow,” came Boots's crotchety commentary from behind her. “When I eat her, she's going to taste like sugar and not beef.”

Josephine turned her head but didn't cease her swirling scratches on Freckles's ear. “You aren't going to eat Freckles.”

“The hell I ain't. I can eat any cow on this place if I take a mind to. Give me an ax, and I'll kill every last one of them. They aren't pets.” The fringe on Boots's buckskin shirt dangled as he put an arm over the railing and tweaked Freckles's fuzzy ear. The calf bawled and went scampering away.

“I wish you wouldn't do that.”

“Do what?”

“Be so mean.”

“Y'all have never seen me mean.”

She gave him a sideways glance, wanting to differ with him but remaining silent.

“How come you turned J.D. down?” Boots asked with a thread of harsh accusation.

Momentarily startled by his words, Josephine didn't say anything. Why had J.D. discussed what had happened between them last night with Boots? Inasmuch as she wanted them to mend their rift, she was dazed with dread over Boots's confrontation.

“J.D. told you?” she gasped, still in disbelief.

“He didn't have to tell me anything. I heard y'all say no to him.” His eyes pierced the space between
them. “I came into the house to get my cigars on the mantel when I heard y'all in the kitchen. I stood behind the door and listened. Then y'all ran off into your bedroom, and I couldn't hear anymore.”

She had no time to be appalled, as Boots continued without a breath.

“But what I overheard . . .” He ruefully shook his head. “I have never heard J.D. talk to someone the way he talked to y'all. He got things out in the open, which is a lot more than I can say for me and him. He's not good at expressing his feelings, just like me. I guess that's why we don't know each other.” Boots's scratchy voice sounded old. “I didn't think he had it in him to talk that way. I reckon I've misjudged him. I wasn't exactly what he needed when he was growing up . . .”

His fingers, bent and scarred and with craggy nails, rubbed the underside of his nose. He sniffed, as if he were capable of crying. “So why did y'all turn him down? He loves you.”

Josephine was sick with the struggle within her. She didn't want to have to go into her past with Boots. If all he'd heard was her refusal, then none of that was necessary. But how could she make him understand by generalizations? Boots, in spite of his expandable moods, was a detail person. He picked up on anything that needed attention.

And obviously, he felt that what had transpired between her and J.D. needed his attention.

“My reasons are private,” Josephine finally offered on her behalf.

“Bullshit,” Boots snorted, making her flinch. “Y'all are in love with him. Have been since y'all got back from Bircher. I noticed right off. Y'all were moon-eyed over him.”

She couldn't deny that. “I do care for your son,” she said, pushing her hat farther back on her head. “But I'm going to San Francisco.”

“What for?”

“To start my life over.”

“What for?” he badgered.

Frustrated, Josephine balled her hand into a fist. “Because I can't return to where I came from.”

“Everybody has something they look back on with bitterness and regret. It doesn't have to ruin your life. Life marches on, or so it should.” He pointed a finger at her. “I suggest y'all get on with it. Right here. With J.D.”

“I can't.”

“Y'all can, but don't want to.”

The wind picked up the brim of her Stetson—a leftover article of her men's clothing that she couldn't part with because J.D. had given it to her—and blew the crown high, right into Freckles's corral. Rather than stay and argue with Boots, Josephine lifted the latch and let herself inside to retrieve the tumbling Stetson. In her haste, she didn't close the gate. The hat swirled and tripped toward Freckles; the calf caught a glimpse of it and raised its tail before running through the open gateway.

“Freckles!” Josephine called to the retreating calf.

Boots made a lunge for Freckles, but he missed her and fell onto his knees. “Good gawd,” he moaned as he swayed to get back on his feet. His hands pushed at the ground, but he could barely get up.