Marry Me (12 page)

“Me? You’ll have to be more specific, I’m afraid.”

He studied her face, trying to look past the features that carefully guarded her thoughts. “You were the one that wanted me to come out here. Your husband insisted, but I think that was at your prompting.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “You weren’t raised here.” “No. Sacramento.”

“So Runt was a stranger to you, not someone you grew up seeing in town, or on the stage, or getting underfoot.”

“That’s right.” She waited expectantly, a faint smile playing about her generous mouth. “You have a point, I take it.”

“You saw it right away, didn’t you? Whether it was because you were a stranger to the community or whether it was because your business is the female form, you knew Rhyne was a girl from the first.”

“I’m impressed, Dr. Monroe.”

“And what about the rest?” he asked.

“The rest?”

Cole couldn’t say it. Confidentiality stayed his tongue.

“I suppose you mean, did I know she was pregnant?” She removed her arm from under his and this time laid her fingers on his sleeve. She didn’t make him respond to her question. “The last time I saw her was shortly before you arrived. I knew then. Don’t ask me how I knew; I’m not certain I could explain it. I just did.” Her voice fell to an even softer whisper. “She lost the baby, didn’t she? No one shot her like Will said.”

“Ask her.”

Rachel breathed deeply, girding herself. She nodded once. “I will. Excuse me.” She paused a few steps away and turned back. “I never kept my suspicions from Wyatt. You should know that.”

“I didn’t expect that you would, Mrs. Cooper, but thank you for telling me just the same.”

Rhyne considered pretending to be asleep when Rachel Cooper came in, but she couldn’t dismiss the notion that it was a cowardly act. There was a time that she’d have rather faced down the Wickham boys or maybe three or four of Sid Walker’s grandsons than carry her end of a conversation with someone like Mrs. Cooper. The hard truth was that she didn’t think she wanted to meet up with the Wickhams or the Walkers again.

It had always been her preference to be left alone. Rhyne winced as the front door banged shut. She heard Johnny chattering and the sheriff asking what was for dinner. Closing her eyes, she let her head fall back against the iron rails. If any more people showed up she was going to charge for the sideshow.

“It’s getting crowded, isn’t it?” Rachel said, closing the door behind her. She leaned against it as Rhyne’s head snapped up. “I imagine you’d like all of us to leave.”

“I can’t pretend otherwise.”

“You could,” Rachel said, not unkindly. “You’re an excellent actor.” She pushed away from the door and approached the bed. “Still, I’d rather you didn’t pretend at all. I would like it if we could proceed with honesty.”

Rhyne was certain she didn’t like the sound of that. “You can’t make me go back with you. The sheriff, neither.”

“Well, that’s honest.” Rachel’s gentle smile didn’t waver. She pointed to the chair at the bedside. “May I?” Rhyne shrugged. “Suit yourself.” “I will, thank you.” She could not have been more polite if Rhyne had offered her tea and tarts. She lowered herself and settled back, resting her arms on the curved arms of the chair. “Is this where Dr. Monroe sits when he’s with you?”

“When he’s not pushing his thermometer at me or listening to my heart sounds.” Rhyne knew her recalcitrant tone made her sound like a child. Her mood was not improved for the self-awareness.

Rachel pointed to the sling. “What’s that for?”

“Will told you I was shot, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said. “He told me.” Rachel did not allow Rhyne to escape her gaze; she followed her, ducking her head to keep the contact when she had to. “Honesty, remember?”

Rhyne took umbrage. “I haven’t lied.”

“No, but you haven’t really answered my question.”

Swearing softly, Rhyne yanked the sling from her arm and tore at the bandages that Cole had finally wrapped around her shoulder. “I told Cole no one was going to believe I let myself get shot.”

“I’m
not going to believe it, Rhyne, and neither is Wyatt, but you’ll have to put that all back on for Johnny. He doesn’t know what happened, and he doesn’t need to know.”

Rhyne snorted. “I’ve heard that before.”

Rachel took a deep breath and forged ahead. “Did you lose the baby?”

Stricken, Rhyne’s hands curled into white-knuckled fists. Sheer effort of will kept them at her side when what she wanted to do was hit something … or someone. “How did you know?”

“No one told me,” Rachel said. “If that’s what you’re thinking, put it out of your mind. The truth is that it wasn’t long after Wyatt introduced us that I realized you weren’t a boy. Minutes, Rhyne. Not hours or days later. I couldn’t understand why Wyatt had never seen it. Or anyone else, for that matter. It’s not important now. My husband came around to my way of thinking, although it was a struggle for him. You were very good.”

“Not so good that you didn’t see through me.”

“Yes, well, Dr. Monroe has a theory about how I was able to do it, and I’m inclined to think he’s right.”

“Then tell me how.”

Rachel understood that Rhyne needed the answer as much for her own protection as out of straightforward curiosity. “It’s because of who I am and what I do. I was a stranger in town, you know that, and I’m a dressmaker. The first made me open to forming my own opinion about the people I was meeting, and the second made me something of an expert on the female form.”

Rhyne remained suspicious, but she relaxed her bloodless fists.

Watching some of the tension seep from Rhyne’s shoulders, Rachel felt as though she was finally making herself heard. It was not so different than going head-to-head with Wyatt when he dug in his heels. “As for the baby, I noticed the change in you when I was here a couple of months ago.”

“You couldn’t have. I didn’t know it myself.”

That didn’t surprise Rachel, but she refrained from saying so. “It’s not unusual to misread the signs. Indigestion. Nausea, but not only in the morning. I’ve been told there might even be some bleeding in the first and second months.” Rachel wished she could report these things from personal experience, but after more than a year of marriage, it remained a disappointment that she had not yet been able to conceive. “There are naturally changes in a woman’s profile, but that comes later. The glow, though, can begin at any time.”

“The glow?”

Rachel shrugged helplessly. “Perhaps Dr. Monroe will explain it to me, but not understanding it doesn’t mean that I discount its existence. A woman’s physical appearance is altered by subtle changes in her skin, her nails, and her hair.”

Self-conscious, Rhyne plowed one hand through her raggedly cropped hair. Unable to help herself, she glanced at the back of her hand then gave a cursory look at her nails. “I guess I noticed all that.” So had Judah, she realized. Here was the explanation for why he’d begun watching her so closely that she could hardly stand to be around him.

“Well, I noticed it,” said Rachel. “I convinced Wyatt that he had to send Dr. Monroe out here. I hope you’ll believe me, Rhyne, but the first inkling I had that you’d probably lost the baby was when that no-account Beatty boy came back to town with Judah and that ridiculous story about you being shot. Since he wasn’t saying that it was Judah who shot you, I got it in my head that something else had happened.”

“So you were right.”

“There’s no satisfaction in it for me.” Rachel leaned forward. She set her forearms on her knees and threaded her fingers together. “You should know that Dr. Monroe wouldn’t answer my questions. He kept your confidences, Rhyne, and told me to ask you. Doc Diggins wouldn’t have been so respectful.”

“I wouldn’t have let Doc Diggins get this close.”

Rachel smiled appreciatively. “I don’t doubt it. It rather begs the question, though, of how Dr. Monroe was able to manage it. I know you ran him off the first time.”

“I would have run him off again, but he showed up with Will. I had it in my mind to leave until they were gone, but Will came looking for me.” She lowered her head a moment, closed her eyes. “I was scared,” she said, the confession offered most reluctantly. From beneath her black, stubby lashes, she glanced sideways at Rachel. “Don’t let me ever hear you told anyone that.”

Rachel pressed two fingers to her lips, promising silence.

Reassured, Rhyne’s gaze returned to her hands. “I thought I was going to die,” she said on a thread of sound. “That’s what scared me. It was nothing but pure soulshattering fear that I was dying that made me walk out to meet Will, and nothing but hard-nosed pride that kept me from telling him anything was wrong. As it happened, I didn’t have to say a word.” She fingered the edge of the sheet. “One moment I was standing, then I wasn’t. There was so much blood. I couldn’t stop Will from going for help, and I couldn’t get away.”

“I’m so sorry, Runt. I know how much you wanted to protect your secret.”

“You
don’t
know,” Rhyne said. “And you can’t guess. You don’t have the imagination for that. No one does.”

The scorn edging Rhyne’s husky voice pushed Rachel back in her chair. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said at last.

“I didn’t want the baby.”

Rachel felt Rhyne studying her for a reaction, determinedly hoping to put her off with defiance and misdirection. “No,” she said after a long moment. “But I did.”

Rhyne’s head jerked up. Her lips parted, then closed.

“It’s all right,” Rachel said. “I hardly know what to say myself. It was probably selfish of me to tell you. I didn’t plan it.”

“I provoked you.”

“You did, but that doesn’t excuse me.” Rachel pulled her long braid forward and fingered it absently. “It came to me slowly after I realized you were pregnant, but I thought we might come to some agreement that would benefit both of us. I worked it out in my mind that you would allow Wyatt and me to raise your child. No one would have had to know where our baby came from. No one except you and Judah and Dr. Monroe would have known the truth about you. You could have kept your secret, and I could have kept your child.”

Rhyne glimpsed a thin film of tears in Rachel’s dark eyes before they were quickly blinked away. Rhyne wanted to say that it was right and proper that someone was crying for her baby, but the words stayed lodged in her throat. She hadn’t been able to shed a single tear on the baby’s behalf and didn’t know if she ever would.

“Judah would have wanted money,” Rhyne said because she didn’t want to think anymore about what might have been.

“Wyatt thought he might. We agreed we would pay. Not because he had any right to it, but because we believed it would make things easier for you.”

Rhyne frowned. A small vertical crease appeared between her eyebrows. “It’s not so bad here. Things could be harder. Plenty of folks have it hard.”

It was the opening Rachel had been hoping for. “No one else has Judah Abbot for a father. I’ve only had a short acquaintance with the man, but I know he’s so full of himself, and so full of meanness, that he can’t see past his own nose to what he has in you. Maybe he was different with your brothers or before your mother died–there are some who say that he was–but what he is now is all I’ve known. I don’t mind who knows that he scares me, or that I’ve been afraid for you long before I knew you were pregnant.”

“Is that why you think I should live in town? Because you’re scared?”

Rachel laughed. “If only that carried some weight with you. No, Runt, I think you should live in town because you’ve only ever known this one thing. You should make your decision about where you live after you’ve given yourself a real choice. The way I see it, you’ve been denied your nature. If you don’t at least learn something about being a woman, then you’ll be the one denying it.”

“I guess I know a thing or two about being a woman,” Rhyne said tightly. “What I learned, I didn’t much like.”

One of her fears confirmed, Rachel nodded slowly. The question of paternity hovered on her lips, but she didn’t give it voice.

“It wasn’t Judah,” Rhyne said. “The doc asked me. Guess that makes him brave or stupid.”

“So I’m a coward.”

“Or smart,” Rhyne reminded her.

“Do you want to tell me who raped you?”

“I haven’t wanted to tell you anything, but you have a way about you.” To be certain Rachel didn’t mistake it for a compliment, Rhyne added dryly, “Puts me in mind of a bloodsucker.”

Rachel grinned, unoffended. “Wyatt will appreciate that.”

Rhyne pulled out the pillow that was supporting her back and smoothed it on her lap. “I’m kind of tired, Mrs. Cooper.”

Getting to her feet, Rachel took the pillow from Rhyne and plumped it for her. “It would have been more convincing if you’d looked me in the eye.” She handed back the pillow and left.

“Well?” Wyatt asked when Rachel came up behind him and set her hands on his shoulders. He twisted his head to look up at her. Seeing her face, he had answers to questions he hadn’t asked. He reached back and laid a hand over hers, then addressed Johnny who was sitting across the table from him. “Would you mind giving us a few minutes?”

Johnny jumped to his feet. “Sure. Stir the pot, will you, though? Don’t let the taters burn. Comin’, Doc?”

Cole was already rising but stopped when Wyatt shook his head.

“I need him here,” said Wyatt. “If you’d gone to medical school, I’d need you, too.”

“Medical school,” Johnny repeated, grinning. “Sheriff,

you know Mr. Cassidy passed me out of the eighth grade as a mercy to himself.”

Chuckling, Wyatt jerked his thumb toward the door. “Get out of here, and close the door behind you.”

The silence in the room lasted until Cole saw Johnny pass across the yard on his way to the privy. He turned to Rachel. “Are you all right? You look a little pale.”

Rachel waved that aside. She released her husband’s shoulders and pulled a chair beside him. “It was a disappointment, that’s all. For Rhyne, too, I think. Not that she said it in plain words, but it seemed as if she wanted to.”

Wyatt took Rachel’s hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m sorry, Rachel.” He spoke to the question in Cole’s eyes. “We were prepared to raise Runt’s baby if she would have agreed.”