Texas Moon TH4 (33 page)

"Like a little pig," Ellen declared proudly.

Janice felt her own breasts ache at the thought. That had been the only pleasure she had known when Betsy was a baby. She had loved holding the infant to her breast and feeling her suck. It had been a quiet time of fleeting contentment. It could be even better this time, with a husband to share her joy and to take away the worry.

She was having crazy notions. Peter would only now be arriving in Butte, if his luck was good and the tracks and trail were clear. It would be months, maybe years before he could see a profit, providing the gold was really there. They couldn't afford a child. There wouldn't be any joy, just worry. She couldn't live through that again.

Her monthly courses were just late. The upheaval of moving probably had that effect. She wasn't real regular. There wasn't a baby. She touched the infant in the cradle again and stood up.

"Is Mr. Holt going to let you go back to work for him?" Janice asked casually, as if she hadn't a worry in the world.

"I think Mr. Harding told him he'd better. He said I could take Mary Jane with me and keep her behind the counter. I know I can do it. I'll work twice as hard and prove it." Ellen's eyes gleamed defiantly.

"I know you will. He ought to be glad to have such a good worker. Maybe now that you've been away for a while, he'll have learned to appreciate how much you do for him. Have you heard anything from Bobby?" Janice took the stool Ellen offered and didn't object when she was given a cup of coffee without a saucer. She might use some of the wages Jason had offered her to buy a few dishes as a baby gift.

The militant light left Ellen's eyes. She took her seat on the bed beside the cradle. "I don't reckon I will. Bobby just wasn't cut out for married life, I guess. I should have thought about that when he was courting me."

That wasn't something most young women in love thought about, Janice knew from sad experience. She sighed and sipped the weak coffee. Every woman ought to be told to think what kind of father a man would make before they went to bed with him. Maybe that would cool their ardor some.

She tried to imagine what kind of father Peter would make, but she couldn't say. He'd got along well with the children at The Ridge. He seemed to be a responsible person. But she couldn't fathom how he would respond to the knowledge that he was about to become a father. He just might take it as his due and her problem and go on.

"Well, marriage takes some men that way," Janice responded. "It's better to know right off, before you start depending on them. You'll make a fine mother. And everyone hereabouts will look after you. I don't think you need to worry." Fine thing to tell a mother. Mothers always worried. But Ellen was smiling again and Janice didn't feel guilty for the lie.

"Were there any more fires after we left? Did they ever catch who did it?" She changed the subject before she was led any deeper into sin.

Ellen immediately looked worried again. She fretted at her apron strings and didn't look Janice directly in the eye. Finally, she admitted, "There wasn't a one after you left. They never did catch anyone. A stranger poked around town a few weeks after you left, asking questions, but there wasn't any fire."

Janice frowned, trying to determine what Ellen wasn't saying. It was obvious that people still thought Peter guilty, but there was more to it than that. "Questions? What kind of questions did the stranger ask?"

Ellen shrugged, then forced her gaze back to Janice. "You might as well know. He was asking after you and Mr. Mulloney. He talked to Bobby a whole bunch. He said he came from back East, that he knew you when you was a girl." She looked a little more nervous. "He said he knew about Mr. Mulloney too, said he wasn't to be trusted. He was kinda upset that you and him married. He was going to set out after you. I guess he didn't find you."

Janice felt fear grip her stomach and turn it inside out. "Did he say what his name was?"

"Stephen. Stephen Connor."

The blackness hit before Janice knew it was coming.

Chapter 27

"I'm all right. I'm quite all right." Janice was still protesting that evening. Ever since she had fainted and Ellen had screamed for help, there had been someone hovering and fussing. They didn't leave her time to think.

"I hear tell the ladies back East faint real regular, but you don't strike me as the type." Carmen's husband, Kyle, stood back upon command, but he was posed as if expecting her to fall off the couch at any moment.

"It was just the heat, and probably Ellen's terrible coffee," Janice insisted. "Now go away and let me get some work done."

Carmen tugged her husband's arm and pointed to the door. "We will call if we need you. Your fussing always made me dizzier."

Husband and wife exchanged significant glances, then nodding at Janice, Kyle left the room.

Carmen watched her husband go with a loving smile, then turned back to Janice. "Well, this changes everything. You cannot keep working so hard. And if that husband of yours does not come after you soon, you will have to stay here for the winter. There will be no traveling for you before long."

"I am not pregnant," Janice insisted, rising from the couch. "It was hot and Ellen gave me some shocking news. The sheriff still thinks Peter is guilty. I don't like the sound of that at all." She couldn't name the real source of her shock. There would be too many explanations demanded and too many lies she would have to repeat if she named the stranger in town as the source of her consternation. She hedged her story a little.

Carmen gave her a knowing look. "It is too soon, I know. But time will tell. In the meantime, you will rest. I will take a whip to that Jason if he drives you too hard. Now go and lie down until supper. Betsy is just fine where she is."

The children were in the orchard looking for the last of the summer peaches. Janice nodded agreement and went off to her room, but not to rest. She couldn't rest. Why had Stephen Connor stepped back into her life at this late date?

She hadn't heard a single word from him in all these years. She had thought him dead. There had been occasional rumors during those months of her pregnancy, but once she had left her hometown for Cutlerville, none knew of the association, and the rumors had stopped. In that first year she had corresponded erratically with a few friends from her former home, but they had never mentioned him. Work and marriage and children had gradually eroded even that fragile connection with the past. She hadn't heard from anyone in her prior hometown since Betsy was a toddler. No one in Cutlerville knew Stephen or Janice's history.

So she had thought him gone from her life. Had she been wrong? Had he actually been searching for her all these years, only to find her when she finally married? Fate couldn't be that cruel.

The Stephen she had known had been only twenty years old, whip thin, with eyes that alternately laughed and brooded. Even at twenty he had been tough and hard and ambitious. He had tried to form a union when the railroad had laid off all its old employees, but the new employees were too interested in keeping their jobs to listen. He had gone off in search of greener pastures with scarcely more than a farewell kiss a few weeks after he had taken Janice to his bed. She had been devastated at the time, but even more so a few months later.

She didn't want to know a man who could do that to a young girl. She despised his memory. With sudden conviction, Janice changed her course and went to Jason's office for pen and ink. She would write Evie and Tyler and tell them not to reveal her whereabouts.

That was easier said than done. She would have to explain about Stephen before she could warn them about him. She could try to tie him in with the fires and make it seem as if he was after Peter. That would worry the Monteignes, which would worry Daniel and Georgina.

Janice sat at her desk and stared at the blank paper. It might already be too late. Stephen had plenty of time to travel to Natchez and talk to Tyler. She just couldn't believe he would do it. She couldn't believe he was actually looking for her. Ellen knowing his name convinced her that Stephen had actually been here, but she would be willing to wager a month's wages that Stephen had just accidentally stumbled across the town and heard someone mention her name. The rest was all talk, and probably half Bobby's. He wasn't looking for her.

Just as a precaution, she wrote a long chatty letter to Evie and mentioned the fact that someone had been in town asking after Peter. She added that she didn't like the kind of people he asked, and women's intuition told her that it would be better if he didn't know their whereabouts. Peter preferred to be secretive about his gold.

Janice read this last over with satisfaction. That would make them think twice about talking to strangers without worrying them excessively. Tyler and Evie were past experts at telling tall tales. If by any strange chance Stephen should show up in Natchez, they would lead him all around the bush and send him packing to the North Pole.

After the letter went out the next day, she wondered if keeping Betsy from her real father was the wrong thing to do. Did Stephen even know he had a child? Surely he must if he'd gone back to look for her. Everyone she knew in their hometown had known about Betsy and had guessed the father. He might be looking for her to make amends to his child.

It was too late now. Betsy thought her father had died. For all intents and purposes, he had. Janice's father had been more father to her than Stephen ever had. And now they had Peter. Peter could be the father Betsy had never known. There was a bond between them already. Betsy asked after him constantly, and Peter had displayed immense patience with Betsy's imagination and curiosity. He didn't even seem to mind that Betsy was sickly and couldn't help much around the house. Not many men in this world had patience with invalids.

So it was better if Stephen got lost and never found them.

Janice fretted at the slowness of the days as August dragged on. The heat was too intolerable to go outside. Betsy set up her easel in the doorway to Jason's office and spent hours between the shade of the porch and the house, catching what little breeze came along while painting things only she could see. Janice liked having her near. It kept some of the fears at bay.

Nighttimes were the worst. She lay in her empty bed trying not to remember how it had felt to have Peter next to her. But there were nights when she couldn't make herself stop thinking how it felt to have him inside her. With Betsy in the bed, she couldn't tear off her gown, and her skin seemed to swell and heat beneath the friction of the linen. She remembered the pounding of his heart, the flick of his finger against her nipples, the piercing sweetness of his possession, and her body ached in hollow yearning for his.

When she forced these images away, others replaced them. She dreamed of a child growing within her, Peter's child. She imagined a little boy with curls as dark as his. She tried to imagine how Peter would greet this stranger, but she could only hear an infant's wails of hunger and pain and see herself alone again. That terror stalked her even through the daylight hours.

She heard nothing from Peter. She had not expected to. There were no telegraph offices through much of the territory where he was going. Pen and ink and paper would be hard to come by. The nearest town probably had a mail service of sorts, but he'd said that was fifty miles away. No, he wouldn't try to reach her until he had his mountain and his gold. He'd said he would send for her by the end of August.

By the end of August she still hadn't heard from him, and she still hadn't had her monthly courses.

She was pregnant, without a home, and her husband was missing.

At least she had a husband, Janice consoled herself. That was an improvement over last time. She had the money still pinned to the inside of her corset, so she wasn't completely penniless.

But those practical consolations weren't what she needed. She needed Peter.

As August became September, Janice realized that more strongly. She needed Peter to reassure her that everything would be all right. She needed him to come home at night and hold her. She needed him to laugh at her fears, to admire Betsy's artwork, to compliment her on her cooking. Most of all, she needed him to look proud about the child she carried, to feel its first kicks, to know that he would be there to hear its first cries. She didn't intend to go through another pregnancy alone.