Summer Moon (9 page)

The older woman closed her eyes and sighed. “Your father forged your signature.
That
I would not do.”

Reed shook his head in disbelief. “This just keeps getting better and better.” He pinned Kate again with his stare. “What will it take to get you out of my life? How much, Miss Whittington?”

Insulted beyond belief, Kate thought of the child down the hall. Daniel was the only thing that kept her from walking out the door and waiting for the stage to pass by. She wasn’t about to abandon that child to this man yet.

She drew herself up, took a deep breath, and asked him, “How much is a woman’s innocence worth these days?”

Finally, he reacted with something beyond anger. He shifted uncomfortably and went very still. He lowered his voice and avoided glancing at Sofia. “What are you talking about?” he asked softly.

Kate could see by the heat that flared in his eyes that he knew very well what she was talking about.

“You weren’t trying to be rid of me last night when you begged me to make love with you.”

“You’re lying.”

“Unfortunately, I am not.”

Sofia drew their attention when she said, “I was troubled during the night and went downstairs for some water. Your door was not closed, Reed. I saw you asleep with Kate in your arms.”

Reed’s heart nearly stopped, but somehow he overcame his shock enough not to let it show. He knew Sofia well enough to know that she was not lying.

So, his hallucination about Becky had not been a dream. He
had
slept with Kate Whittington. He and the spinster had consummated the sham marriage. If that wasn’t his bloodstain in the center of the bed, then it had to be hers. His father had bought him a virgin.

Reed shot his splayed fingers through his hair and cursed under his breath. He must have been only half conscious last night, and somehow the past had become enmeshed with the present if he had mistaken the woman for Becky, his dear, darling late wife. The woman who had not only betrayed him, but who had given up without a fight and abandoned Daniel to the Comanche.

12

The place where they kept him now was not the wooden lodge for horses. Fast Pony rubbed his eyes and pulled himself up until he was sitting in the middle of the big, too soft bed. Silly, thin coverings filled with tiny holes that let sunlight pour through hung at the glass-filled openings around the walls.

He faced the sun and prayed for his mother, Painted White Feather, prayed that she was still alive and that his father, Many Horses, was, too.

Last night in the dark, before he tried to escape, he had cried for them, for all his friends and family and everything they had lost when the camp was burned—all the meat his mother had stripped and dried, precious, woolly robes that would keep them from freezing in winter, beaded clothes and shoes, painted shields and feathered lances. Years of his mother’s hard work had gone up in flames, destroyed in less than a morning.

Twenty scraped and cured hides had made up their tepee, the only home he had ever known. Now even that fine shelter was gone. So was the story of Many Horses’ life that Painted White Feather had drawn around the outside. Fast Pony had fallen asleep trying to remember every bit of that story, every colorful event, so that he would never, ever forget.

As the sun gained strength, he vowed he would cry no more. Babies cried. Not strong boys like him.

He would find another way to escape. His ankle was still swollen, but the pain was not as bad this morning. It was time to begin to fool the white woman with hands as soft as new spring grass.

Today he would stop fighting them, even Hairy Face. He would eat and grow strong. And he would heal.

As soon as he could walk, he would steal a horse, maybe two, and leave this land of white devils behind. He would get away this time and go back to the Comancheria, find his clan’s new camp, and return like a great warrior, like his father, Many Horses.

For many moons to come the Nermernuh would talk about his triumphant return around their campfires.

It felt good to have a plan.

He smiled to himself—a secret smile.

For the first time since the Ranger attack, he began to feel better, but then the silence was broken by the sound of voices raised in argument.

He recognized one as that of the tall Ranger with hate in his eyes, and he shivered. Maybe the man would kill him before his ankle had a chance to heal. Maybe they had been waiting to take him outside and torture him.

Tall Ranger was speaking in anger. The boy heard the women, too, and recognized Soft Grass Hands’ low voice.

Had he been fooled into thinking he saw kindness in her eyes? Was she arguing for his life or his death? Maybe she was angry that Tall Ranger had brought him to this cold dwelling where even he, a stranger, could feel the loneliness.

It would be foolish to wait and see if Soft Grass Hands won the argument. Fast Pony tried to untangle himself from the thin cloth covers and to untie the bonds that held him. He used his teeth and struggled with the knots in the cloth. Finally free, he scooted over to the edge of the bed. It creaked and groaned beneath him in the way a fierce storm wind whines through the branches of tired trees.

He looked over the edge. It was a very long way to the floor.

Kate was the first to hear Daniel’s cry. She turned her back on Reed Benton, determined to run out of his room with a purpose and leave Sofia and him behind. As she walked away, she felt his stare.

“Whatever you were led to believe, it’s all been a lie.”

“... a sanctimonious spinster ... so desperate for a
man that she agreed to marry one sight unseen.”

Sofia had written the letters. Sofia!

The documents were forged. I am not Reed’s wife.

Blinded by tears, Kate nearly stumbled as she hurried down the hall. She forced herself to think only of the boy.

Daniel needs me.

She struggled to gather the tattered remnants of her self-respect. Daniel was as lost here as she. Caring for him would give her steady ground on which to stand.

She opened the door, gasped when she saw him sprawled on the floor beside the bed. The too-big shirt had bunched up, revealing his thin, sun-browned legs and thighs. He levered himself onto his hands and elbows, slowly turned his face toward her.

She could see one eye peering at her through his long dark hair. In that blue, icy stare she immediately recognized his father. More than that, she glimpsed his deep hatred of her and of this place.

Like father, like son.

She reminded herself that he was small but strong, and if he had a mind to, he would take advantage of any carelessness on her part.

She stopped halfway to the bed and took a deep breath, tried to put what had just happened in Reed’s room behind her for a few minutes, hoping an answer would come if she concentrated on something else.

“Good morning, Daniel. I certainly hope you haven’t made your ankle any worse. It will never heal if you keep this up.” She stepped within inches of him. “Let me put you back into bed.”

With a quick turn of his head, he whipped his long hair back off his face. Although he was watching her with unflinching wariness, he did not move to strike.

Kate cautiously lowered herself until she was hunkered down beside him.

“Daniel, I’m going to pick you up now. It would be best if you cooperated.”

Trying not to show fear, she reached for him with measured slowness. First touching him lightly on the shoulder, she brushed his long hair back. He supported himself with his hands, pushing the upper half of his body away from the floor.

Kate gingerly slipped her hands around him and lifted as she rose until he was standing on his good leg. Then with one hand she steadied him and used the other to draw back the sheet and coverlet and plump up his pillow.

“Very good, Daniel,” she told him. “That’s very, very good. Now, I’ll help you up again.” Carefully, half expecting him to bite or scratch or fight back, she lifted him onto the bed and arranged the bedclothes around him as he stared at the wall beyond her. She released the useless strips of cloth from which he had escaped and laid them aside. When she straightened away from him, she heard his little stomach growl.

“Are you ready to eat?” She kept smiling, but he refused to turn her way, so she reached for his chin and gently forced him to look at her.

“Daniel,”
she touched his chest lightly and then she moved her hand to rest over her own heart. “I am
Kate
.” Then she added, “I’m going to help you get better.”

She longed to see him healed in mind and body, see him adjust to his new life. Surely that is what his mother would have wanted for him.

Helping this wild, lost little soul, even for an hour more, might keep her sane. She would help him for Becky, the mother who was no longer here.

What she didn’t know was how to help herself out of the predicament she was in, how to make her heart stop loving a man who did not even exist.

13

Reed waited to hear something, anything that made sense from the woman who had helped usher him from boyhood to manhood after his mother died. Sofia had taught him how to dance, how to dress, and apparently, she had also helped his father bait a trap.

“What were you thinking, Sofia?”

“Only of your father. Of you and the future of Lone Star.” Her eyes lowered; she shrugged. “I became caught up in it. I thought perhaps it would work, that if you came to love Katherine Whittington, your heart would finally heal.”

Talk of healing a heart he no longer possessed made Reed uncomfortable. He looked down at his hands, scarred and callused from a life spent outdoors—riding, fighting, killing.

“I used to think of you as my friend, Sofia. I would never have seen this coming.”

“You say you thought of me as your friend, yet you have not been home in five years. You have not written to me once. Sometimes people would speak of you when I went into town, and I knew you had been close by, yet you never came to see me.”

He looked up, surprised when he heard her voice break. “I couldn’t come back,” he said quietly.

“Why not?”

The reasons were deep seated and obvious to him. Pride had forced him to keep them secret from everyone else, including her. “Because
he
was here.”

“This hatred of your father is irrational, Reed.”

“You know
nothing
of my hatred
or
where it comes from.”

“I know you blame him for your mother’s death.”

He heard her sigh, saw her straighten and wipe a tear from the corner of her eye. She was hurting terribly. He was not surprised to see what losing his father had done to her. She had always looked at the old man as if she thought the sun rose and set in him.

Had his father ever even noticed?

Brisk, purposeful footsteps echoed in the hall. The spinster was heading downstairs. Sofia had not moved. Her unwavering, judgmental stare made him want to walk out.

“Does anyone else know about this? That she came out here as my wife?”

“Only Scrappy. We told everyone at the funeral she was visiting from the East.”

“Seems you thought of everything. What are you going to do about her?” Reed asked.

“Nothing. I am leaving this afternoon when the stage comes by,” Sofia said softly. “I cannot give any more years to you Bentons.”

“What do you mean, you’re
leaving
?”

Her eyes were so full of sadness that her pain threatened to reach him. He hated her for that more than all the rest put together. He didn’t want to feel.

“I am going back to Santa Fe. To my family’s rancho. After what I have done, you should fire me anyway.”

“New Mexico?”

He had almost forgotten that Sofia once had a life beyond the boundaries of Lone Star, before she had been swept into the whirlwind of his father’s life. He could not blame her. If he wasn’t weak as a newborn foal, he’d be heading out, too. But Sofia had been instrumental in bringing the spinster here. He was not about to get stuck with her.

He shifted, trying to relieve the ache in his throbbing shoulder. “Before you go, do me one favor and send that woman packing, would you?”

Her eyes narrowed. Her expression darkened with anger she no longer tried to hide. “Katherine is the innocent one in all of this. A pawn, just as you were.” Then she eyed him with a pointed, knowing look. “After last night, she is no longer my concern. She is yours.”

“She can’t stay here.”

“Why not? What are you afraid of?”

Afraid of feeling. Afraid that if half of what he remembered from last night had really come to pass, that he was in danger of wanting the woman again, perhaps in danger of much more.

“Have you no heart left at all?” Sofia prodded.

“None.” He wanted to keep it that way.

“You need a housekeeper, Reed. Someone to care for the boy. She was a teacher at a girls’ orphanage. She knows how to deal with children. She can look after Daniel until you are able. Perhaps she can even cook.”

Daniel.
He had tried to forget.

“I don’t want her here.”
A girl’s orphanage?
“I don’t want him mollycoddled, either.”

Truth be told, he wasn’t sure he wanted anything to do with Daniel. Now that his father was gone, he didn’t know what he was going to do with him.

Sofia slowly stood. In that one graceful movement, the years seemed to roll away. He caught a whiff of lemon balm, heard the rustle of starched fabric. She had come into their lives so long ago, a servant with far too much quiet elegance and pride. Born a Spanish don’s daughter, she had overcome adversity and loss when her young husband died bankrupt. She had taken work that was beneath her after she met his father in Santa Fe, and Reed Senior had somehow convinced her that she would never be looked down upon at Lone Star.

Reed could tell by her stance she was not going to change her mind about leaving Kate Whittington’s fate up to him.

“Before you send her away, you should know that the proxy papers were filed and that she has nowhere else to go, Reed. I believe that you are still legally married unless you protest the forgery.”

“Seems to me that should be your problem more than mine,” he grumbled.

She smiled, but the expression failed to reach her eyes.

“Kate is a problem I will leave to you to solve. You are a man long grown, Reed. Now you have a son to raise again and you cannot do it alone. She is intelligent and capable. She came here in hopes of having a home and family. Good marriages have been built on much less. I suggest you think about making this union legal, especially since you have already slept with her. Your son needs a mother. You could do far worse.” One hand rested on the back of the rocker as she let him mull over all she had said.

“When are you coming back? I need you here.”

She shook her head. There was enough pity on her face to make him squirm.

“You Benton men. It is always about you, no? About what
you
want. What you need. I do not know when or if I will ever return.”

The idea that this woman who had been such a part of his early life could turn her back and walk out and leave so easily, hit him harder than he would ever have guessed.

He thought he knew her, but that was just another lie that left him vulnerable to hurt. He should have remembered that she was a woman and that a woman would always betray a man to get what she wanted.

Determined to show indifference, to hide the hurt of betrayal, he kept his expression blank, his voice cool. “Will you send Scrappy up here? I need him to ride out to the Ranger camp and tell Jonah that I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Kate hid behind caring for Daniel as long as she could, but once the boy was fed, he ignored her and lay on his bed, staring out the window.

She left him alone and escaped to her own room, tiptoeing down the hall so that Reed would not hear her moving about. Numb, she sank to the edge of the bed and folded her hands in her lap. Where her heart had been, there was nothing but a yawning, empty space in her chest. Where her dreams had been, there was only a bottomless chasm in her soul.

The cold, hard realization of what had happened left her floundering. She could not even summon enough strength of will to offer an appeal to Saint Perpetua.

Kate started when she heard a soft tap at the door. Half afraid it might be Reed, she hesitated until she heard Sofia call out, “Katherine, I wish to speak to you.”

Anger returned. On her feet in an instant, Kate hurried to open the door. Sofia stood on the other side holding an old covered basket in her arms. Her face was expressionless. Drained of color, her olive skin appeared sallow. The woman’s misery did much to dampen Kate’s temper.

“Come in.” She stepped back to admit the housekeeper to her room and for a moment the two of them stood there in silence, the tension in the air so thick it stifled conversation.

“I am leaving for Santa Fe this afternoon,” Sofia said without preamble. “Before I go, I wanted to give you this.”

Kate stared at the timeworn basket.

“No, thank you.” She forced herself to meet Sofia’s eyes. In them, unspoken sadness and regret mingled with silent apology.

“I thought that perhaps these things might help you to help Daniel.”

“Help Daniel? I would like nothing more, but how do you expect me to help him when I’ll no doubt be leaving very shortly myself?”

Sofia forced the basket on her. “Until Reed is on his feet, there is no one else to care for the boy. Surely you won’t abandon him.”

Any other argument would never have moved her to stay one more hour, but how could she abandon the boy? She would just as soon take him with her as leave him here with Reed Benton.

“I’m sure Reed will object to my staying.”

“He has no choice at the moment but to let you stay.”

“He
said
that?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Then he still wants me out of here.” There was no question. He had said as much.

“He is a man. He doesn’t really know what he wants. The boy needs to be fed and tended to. So does Reed, for that matter.”

“Surely he could send to town for someone.”

“He may do just that, but Lone Star is a town of families. There are no single women there who would take the position, at least none of good stature. If you care about Daniel, you will find a way to stay.”

She hated the thought of walking out on Daniel as much as she did facing Reed again. What happened last night still made her cringe.

Kate sighed, the basket in her arms growing heavy.

Sofia gestured toward the bed. “Set that down, and I will explain the things inside.”

Kate sat and Sofia lifted the lid. On top was a small, neatly folded quilt made of calico fabric stars. Kate reached in and drew the piece out. Mostly navy and red, not much larger than an oversize towel, it was the perfect size for an infant. It was faded in places, well worn and puckered from many washings.

“That was Daniel’s. He took it with him everywhere. It was found near the burned out cabin the night his mother died.”

Holding the quilt close, Kate peered down at the rest of the basket’s contents as Sofia began to draw them out, one by one.

“This is a wooden horse that Scrappy carved for him.” She turned a fire-scorched and scarred toy over and over and then set it aside. “This silver cup is engraved with Daniel’s name.” The tarnished cup joined the wounded toy on the bed.

Kate realized she was hugging the quilt, and she quickly set it aside, too.

Finally Sofia withdrew a closed silver case that fit in the palm of her hand out of the bottom of the basket. She opened it. Inside was a photograph. Without a word of explanation, Sofia handed it to Kate, who found herself staring at the image of a young woman with long brown hair and dark, unreadable eyes. The similarity in size and coloring between Kate and the woman in the picture was undeniable.

“That is Rebecca Greene Benton, Daniel’s mother.”

“Reed’s wife.” Kate couldn’t take her eyes off the likeness.

“Yes.”

“This is why Reed Senior chose me.” Sorrow welled up inside Kate again. The deception came rushing back to her.

“He chose you out of all the others—”

“Because I looked like her.”

“Because you
reminded
him of her, but in truth, you are far lovelier. I only hope that when Daniel sees that picture, he will remember his mother.”

Kate doubted the boy would remember. He had been so young when he was captured; besides, he had most likely seen his mother die. What child’s mind would want to be awakened to such hideous memories? What adult’s would, for that matter?

“After Daniel was gone, I cleared out the extra nursery that was here. I stored these few things that Scrappy recovered without telling Reed or his father. This basket has been in the attic, waiting for the day Daniel returned.”

“You never gave up hope, Sofia?”

“I am foolish enough to believe in miracles. This is the first time one has ever come true.” The woman raised her chin, showing her determined willfulness. “What of you, Katherine? Do you believe in them?”

Kate set the silver case down alongside the other silent, poignant reminders of Daniel’s past.

Miracles? Sainthood was bestowed on those who worked proven miracles. There were more saints than anyone could name, but did she truly believe?

“I don’t know what I believe anymore. I let myself be taken in by your scheme because I
wanted
something so badly that I threw caution to the wind. The only thing I am certain of is that I can’t trust my own judgment anymore.”

Sofia reached for Kate’s hands and held on tight, even when Kate tried to pull away. “Everything you dreamed of having is still here for the taking, Katherine. If you are strong enough. If you are determined. Daniel needs you. Reed needs you, too, although he doesn’t see that right now. Here is a home for you, a family, everything you wanted, everything you believed you were getting when you signed those proxy papers.”

“
Forged
papers.” Kate felt her insides clench. “I believed a lie.”

“Make your own miracle. Make it all come true. You are a teacher. Teach Reed to love again. Teach him to love his little boy again. Bring him and Daniel together. Fight to stay. Who knows? Perhaps you will all find love.”

Kate thought of the cold detachment in Reed’s eyes and shook her head. “Why did he do it, Sofia? Why did he sleep with me?”

“He was feverish. He thought you were Becky.”

I love you, wife.
“What chance do I have with him now? He hates me. After what you and his father have done, how can he ever look at me and forget that deception?”

Sofia squeezed her fingers to get her point across. “I read your responses to those letters, remember? I know what is in your heart. I know how badly you want a home and family. How much you wanted this marriage to work—”