Lorraine Heath (3 page)

Dallas had his first sense of foreboding. “She’s what?”

“Frail, delicate, like her mother.” He lifted his gaze. “I honest to God don’t know if she could survive being married to you.”

“I’d never hurt her. I give you my word on that.”

Angus walked to the window. Beyond the paned glass, the land stretched into eternity. “You’ll pull your fence back?”

“The morning after we’re married.”

Angus nodded slowly. “Deed the land that runs for twenty-five miles along both sides of the river to me, and I’ll have her on your doorstep tomorrow afternoon.”

Damn! Dallas wondered if Angus had read the desperation in his voice or in his eyes. Either way, Dallas had lost his edge, and staring at the cocky tilt of his neighbor’s chin and the gleam in his eyes, he knew that Angus understood he had the upper hand. “When she gives my a son, I’ll deed the land over to you.”

Angus pointed a shaking finger at him. “All the land that I thought I owned when I came here.”

“Every acre.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Houston roared.

Fighting not to squirm, Dallas stared into the writhing flames burning low in the hearth. Houston of all people should understand his brother’s desire to have a wife. Hell, he’d taken Dallas’s wife from him. Houston could at least support Dallas in his quest to find a replacement.

“Maybe I am, but the town we’re building hasn’t done a whole hell of a lot to get women out here. Eligible women, anyway.”

“You don’t even know her!”

Dallas spun around and met his brother’s gaze. “I didn’t know Amelia either when I married her.”

“You knew her a lot better than you know Angus’s daughter. At least you wrote letters to each other. What in the hell do you know about this woman?”

“She’s twenty-six … and delicate.”

“From what I hear, I don’t imagine she’s much to look at either.”

Dallas snapped his head around to stare at Austin. He sat in a chair rubbing his shoulder, his face still masked with pain.

“What have you heard?” Dallas asked.

“Cameron McQueen told me she doesn’t have a nose.”

“What do you mean she doesn’t have a nose?”

Austin lifted his uninjured shoulder. “He said Indians cut it off. Nearly broke her heart so her pa fashioned her one out of wax. He took the wire off some spectacles and hooked it to the wax so she has a nose to wear … like someone might wear spectacles.”

Dallas’s stomach roiled over. Why hadn’t Angus revealed that little flaw in his daughter? Because he hadn’t wanted to lose the chance to obtain the water and the land. He imagined the McQueen men were having a good laugh right about now.

“Call it off,” Houston said.

“No. I gave my word, and by God, I’m gonna keep my word.”

“At least go meet her—”

Dallas slashed his hand through the air. “It makes no difference to me. I want a son, goddammit! She doesn’t need a nose to give me a son.”

Houston picked his hat off a nearby table and settled it low over his brow. “You know, until this moment, I always felt guilty for taking Amelia from you. Now, I’m damn glad that I did. She was a gift you never would have learned to appreciate.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Dallas asked.

“It means for all your empire building, big brother, you’ll never be a wealthy man.”

It was a woman’s lot in life to live within the shadows cast by men.

Cordelia McQueen knew that unfortunate truth and understood its ramifications only too well.

With her hands folded primly within her lap, she gazed out the window toward the horizon where the sun boldly retreated. She had never blamed her mother for wanting to run toward the majestic blues and lavenders that unfurled across the sky. Her mother had called it an adventure, but even at the age of twelve, Cordelia had recognized it for what it was: an escape.

Her mother packed one carpetbag and told Cordelia and Cameron to bundle up their most precious possessions. She explained that Boyd and Duncan were too old to go on the journey, Cordelia and Cameron too young to stay behind.

They were walking down the hallway when her father trudged up the stairs, his face flushed with fury.

Cordelia pulled Cameron into a far corner, hiding his face within the crook of her shoulder while her father ranted and raved that Joe Armstrong wouldn’t be taking his wife—his property—anywhere.

Horror swept over her mother’s face. She turned for the stairs, and her father jerked her back. “That’s right! I know! I know everything!” He backhanded her across the face and sent her tumbling down the stairs.

Her mother’s scream echoed clearly through Cordelia’s mind as though she had heard it this afternoon. For ten long years she had cared for the woman who had once cared for her. The accidental fall—as her father referred to it—had left her mother an invalid, with woeful eyes housed within an immobile body, her thoughts trapped by a mouth that could no longer speak. Only when her mother’s eyes had welled with tears, did Cordelia know for certain that her mother lived within the withering shell that held her prisoner.

Her mother had simply exchanged one prison for another, and now it seemed as though Cordelia would do the same.

“Goddammit, Pa! There are other ways to get the water we need,” Cameron said. Six years younger than she was, Cameron had always been her champion. Often his blond hair and pale blue eyes reminded her of the foreman who had disappeared the day her mother was injured. “You don’t have to give Cordelia to that man!”

That
man. Cordelia had only seen Dallas Leigh once, and then only from a distance. He was taller than she was, broader than she was, and when he’d announced that the land he’d roped off was to be used for a town, the wind had been gracious enough to carry his deep voice to everyone who had gathered around him. She didn’t think he was a man who would have accepted less.

Now he was demanding that she become his wife. The thought terrified her.

“This matter isn’t open to discussion, Cameron,” Boyd said. A tall dark sentinel, he stood behind his father’s chair. Since they had moved to Texas from Kansas following her mother’s death, her father’s health had diminished considerably. Within the family, Boyd blatantly wielded the power. Only his love and respect for his father allowed him to let outsiders think his father remained in charge.

“When I want your opinion on a matter, Cameron, I’ll ask for it,” her father said.

“I’m only saying—”

“I know what you’re saying, and I’m not interested in hearing it. I’ve already given him my word.”

“Well now, you won’t be breaking your word if he happens to die tonight, and we can certainly arrange that,” Duncan said.

Cordelia kept her gaze focused on the pink hues sweeping across the horizon. She had no desire to see the depth of their hatred for this one man. She had seen hatred that deep once before: when her father had confronted her mother. She knew of no way to stop it. As a child, she’d hidden from it in a shadowed corner.

As a woman she had a strong desire to hide again, in her room, deep within one of her books. She feared Duncan was not in a mood to jest. As her father continued to hold his silence, she became concerned that he thought murder might have some merit.

“Killing him won’t get us the water!” her father finally bellowed. “That’s what this is all about. The water!”

“Leigh will treat her no better than a whore!” Duncan roared.

Flinching, Cordelia clenched her hands in her lap. She hated the anger and rage, hated the way it distorted faces that she loved—for she did love her brothers—into faces that she feared.

“Cordelia, go to your room. Your brothers and I obviously have a few details to work out,” her father barked.

She rose to her feet, her hands aching as her fingers tightened around them. She had considered weeping. She had considered dropping to her knees and begging, but she had learned long ago that when her father and Boyd set upon a path, nothing would deter them. She salvaged what little pride remained, angled her chin, and met her father’s glare. “Father, I’m not opposed to this marriage.”

Cameron looked as though she’d just pulled a gun on him. “You can’t be serious.”

She took a tentative step forward. “Try and understand. Father’s dream is to raise cattle, and you have always been part of it. I’ve only ever been able to watch from the window. Now, I have an opportunity to be part of his dream. I am the means by which he can gain the water he needs.”

“You’ve no idea what goes on between a man and woman, Cordelia,” Cameron said, his voice low. He abhorred violence as much as she did, and she knew he followed Boyd’s orders so his brothers would never question his manhood.

She looked at her father, remembering when she had been six and a nightmare had sent her scurrying to her parents’ room. Her mother had been weeping. Her father had sounded like a hog grunting as slop was poured into the trough. He had called her mother a damn cold bitch, and although Cordelia had not known what the words had meant at the time, the force with which her father had spat them had seared them within her mind. “I do know, Cameron,” she said quietly.

“Then you should understand why Duncan and I are opposed to this. Dallas Leigh hates us all, and he’ll show you no mercy.”

“Surely, he’s not that unkind.”

“Then why did his first wife leave him within a week of their marriage?” Duncan asked.

He stood like a pillar of strength, watching her as though he truly expected her to know that answer. Dark hair, dark eyes, it was only his usually sedate temperament that distinguished him from Boyd.

“I want to do this,” she lied, for Cameron’s benefit and peace of mind if for no one else’s.

Her father slapped his hand down on the table. “Then, by God, it will be done.”

For as long as she could remember, Cordelia had wanted to be a man, to enjoy the freedoms that men took for granted. She pulled the curtain away from the small window of her traveling coach and gazed at the barren, flat land. How anyone could deem this desolate place a paradise was beyond her. Why men would fight to own it was incomprehensible to her.

But fight they had. Boyd’s broken arm served as a testament to one of the battles, and tonight the man who had harmed her brother would come to her bed. She prayed for the fortitude to suffer through his touch in silence, without tears.

A huge adobe house came into view. She could only stare at the massive rectangular structure. A balcony surrounded each window that she could see on the second floor. The crenellated design of the roof reminded her of a castle she’d once read about.

Riding on his horse beside the coach, Cameron leaned down and tipped his hat off his brow. “That’s where you’ll be living, Dee.”

“Are those turrets on the corners?”

“Yep. Hear tell Leigh designed the house himself.”

“Maybe after today, you and Austin can be a bit more open with your friendship.”

Cameron shook his head. “Not for a while yet. Be grateful you’re not riding out here, Dee. The hatred is thick enough to slice with a knife.”

“I thought today was supposed to make the hatred go away.”

“What you’re doing today is like the waves of the ocean washing over the shore. No matter how strong it is, it only takes a little of the sand away at a time.”

She smiled shyly. “You’re such a poet, Cameron.”

He blushed as he always did when she complimented him.

“Listen, Dee, Dallas scares the holy hell out of me—I won’t deny that—but I’ll try and find a moment alone with him to ask him to show you some gentleness tonight.”

She reached through the window and laid her hand over his where it rested on his thigh. “He’ll either be gentle or he won’t be, Cameron, and I don’t think your words will change him, so spare yourself the confrontation. I’ll be fine.”

She settled back against the seat of the coach and drew the veil forward to cover her face.

Standing on the front veranda, with his brothers flanking him on either side, Dallas watched the approaching procession. It looked like the cavalry, as though McQueen had every man who worked for him coming for the ceremony.

Good. Dallas had all his men here as well as everyone from town. He wanted witnesses, plenty of witnesses.

He’d even managed to locate the circuit preacher. Fate was on his side.

He squinted at the red coach traveling in the center of the procession. He’d seen it once before: the day he had set aside the land upon which he planned to build Leighton.

“Do you think she’s inside that red coach?” he asked.

Austin leaned against the beam. “Yeah, that’s what she travels in when she’s allowed to travel, which isn’t often, according to Cameron.”

“If you know so much about her why didn’t you tell me she was in the area?” Dallas asked.

Austin shrugged. “Didn’t figure you’d want a woman who didn’t have a nose.”

Dallas pointed his finger at each of his brothers. “Don’t go gaping at her. Dr. Freeman said she was shy. That’s probably why, so don’t stare at her.”

“I’m hardly in a position to gape at anyone with a disfigurement,” Houston said, scraping his thumb over the heavy scars that trailed along his cheek below his eye patch.

Dallas nodded and turned his attention back toward the caravan. “A nose isn’t important.” Eyes. Eyes were important. God, he hoped she had pretty eyes.

The horses and coach came to a halt. All the men sat in their saddles, glaring, not a smile to be seen.

“Where’s your father?” Dallas asked Boyd McQueen.

“He was feeling poorly this afternoon, so I’ll be acting in his stead, and I’ll be wanting a word with you in private before the ceremony.”

“Fine.”

Dallas watched as Cameron dismounted and opened the door of the coach. A white gloved hand slipped into Cameron’s tanned one. A slender hand. Long fingers. A white slipper-covered foot came into view, followed by a white silk skirt, a silk and lace bodice, and a white veil. The veil covered her face, but beyond it, Dallas could see she had swept up her black hair.

“Stop gaping,” Houston whispered beside him, but Dallas couldn’t help himself.