The Darkest Heart (22 page)

She was kneeling over a pot of stew, stirring it. She had become a good cook. She was wearing, as always, the feather headband he had made for her, her hair tied in one fat braid, which was very different from the Apache women’s style. He had made matching earrings for her, and they skimmed her cheeks as she leaned forward, shades of blue and red, silver and gold. She had yellow hair the color of sunshine, but she looked like a squaw—his squaw—and he smiled.

She looked up and beamed. “Jack, you’re just in time. Come here and taste this. Tell me if it needs more of that funny bark.”

He knelt and took her shoulders. “Candice, Hayilkah’s fever broke.”

Her expression of pleasure faded. “Oh.”

He lifted her to her feet, “We have to talk.”

Candice bit her lip, a gesture of nervousness he was now familiar with. Her navy eyes were wide and trained right on him. Her heart was pounding urgently. She felt icy despair. “I guess it’s time to go back,” she said, and wanted to die
when she thought about her family’s reaction to her return. She closed her eyes, thinking of the ensuing scandal.

“Not necessarily,” he said quietly, watching her face.

Her eyes flashed. “It was one thing to be stuck here in this camp,” she said, “but I won’t be your mistress.”

His world started to crumble. “You’re my wife.”

She stared. “What?”

“I didn’t tell you because there was no point. But under Apache law we are man and wife.”

She stepped back from the impact of the statement. It was impossible! “I don’t believe you,” she said.

“It’s true. I offered for you and was accepted, we shared the
gohwah
—that’s about all there is to it.”

Candice’s hand went to her winging heart, as if to still it. His words sank in. She was his wife. “But I’m not Apache, Apache law means nothing to me.”

He watched her, his jaw flexing, as more of his world disintegrated.

She imagined the scandal. “Candice married that half-breed,” she could hear Millie Henderson saying. She went red. She imagined her father—stunned and disbelieving. She imagined Luke, Mark, and John-John—their cumulative shock. Having been in this camp for almost two weeks was bad enough, but actually to be married to an Apache.…

She lifted her shocked, frightened eyes to his.

He could barely breathe for the knot that was in his throat. His hand closed around her wrist desperately. “You’re my wife,” he said with a pleading note. “Whether you think so or not. You don’t have to go back. You can stay with me. We could go to California. Wherever you want. We—”

She didn’t hear the last, not really. She stepped away from him. “I can’t be your wife,” she cried. “Jack, are you insane? I can’t—oh, God! No one can find out about this!” she cried frantically.

His face turned expressionless, his voice cold. “Fine. I’ll take you back tomorrow.”

Candice watched him walk away, still dazed. She sank to the ground. She was shaking. It was happening too soon, being confronted with reality, with the future. She was considered married to him? Oh, God. If anyone found out …

She covered her face with her burning hands. She felt
something like panic. She remembered the barbecue and the stares and the whispers.

She thought about Jack. A stabbing pain pierced her to her very soul. But now, now she had to face everything—including what she had become. No better than a whore. A lady did not willingly give herself to any man outside of marriage, especially not one who was half Indian. It didn’t matter that he was handsome and virile, and all she had ever wanted in a man. What mattered was what she had done, how she had acted, had fallen. The only way she could ever salvage her reputation and atone for her sins would be to marry a white man, become a dutiful wife, and confess all her sins.

She really didn’t want to leave Jack.

That, too, she had to face. It stabbed, it twisted, it wrenched, and it hurt. But it didn’t matter, because she had no choice. She had no choice but to forget everything that had happened between them. After all, she was not some Apache squaw—but Candice Marilynn Carter.

Why, then, thinking of Jack, did she feel so guilty?

He did not return to share their
gohwah
that night. Candice couldn’t sleep. She had been thinking—shamelessly—that they still had a few nights together, and even though it was wrong, she wanted more than his intimate touch. She wanted desperately to lie a few last times in his arms, her body entwined with his, his breath fanning her hair. She imagined him angrily stalking the riverbanks. She imagined him in Datiye’s arms. She knew that was not where he was tonight, but soon he would find another woman, and the thought sickened her even though she knew it had to be. Just as she had to find a husband—a white husband.

She was still awake when the first rays of dawn crept beneath the hide flap. Not long after, it opened and Jack ducked his head in. “I’m saddling the black. We’ll eat and leave.” He ducked out before she could even open her mouth.

She trembled. His face had been devoid of warmth—worse, his eyes were absolutely blank. She took a breath and pulled on her moccasins. She rebraided her hair, which had been left loose while she slept. Her hand fumbled over the headband he had given her, then she put it on with the earrings. She stepped outside.

Jack was already heating up the stew left over from last night, and Shozkay was with him. Candice wished Shozkay would leave so they could talk, but he didn’t. Instead he turned to look at her with dark, grim eyes. He spoke urgently to Jack in Apache, and Candice wished she could understand.

Jack replied in a monotone without looking up from what he was doing. Shozkay argued, angry. Finally ne gave up and left.

Jack handed her a bowl of stew and bread made from corn and berries. She waited for him to look at her, acknowledge her, say something, but he didn’t. He squatted and ate quickly and efficiently. Candice had no appetite. “Jack? What did Shozkay want?”

Jack set his empty bowl aside, standing. “He wanted me to stay.”

She bit her lip. “Jack?”

He went into the g
ohwah
and came out with all their things—the hides and blanket, his weapons and saddlebags. He dumped everything on the ground, and she watched as he began dismantling the shelter. She felt sick with heartache. She clutched her hands together.

“Take the pot and bowls down to the creek and wash them out,” he said without even glancing at her.

The frame fell to the ground.

Candice held back tears and picked up the items and started away. Her vision blurred. It was better this way, she decided emotionally. Better to make a clean break now than have even a few more days.

Of course she was lying to herself, and she knew it.

Luz was waiting back at the camp with Shozkay, and Datiye was there too, talking a mile a minute to Jack. Candice handed Luz the bowls and the pot, which they had borrowed, but she stared at Jack listening to Datiye. She was standing too close to him. She touched his arm, let her hand linger. Jack shrugged, spoke, and turned away.

Candice hated her.

He won’t have to look very far for another woman, she thought bitterly.

Luz embraced her fondly. Candice found herself blinking back more tears, then crying. “Usen guard you well, sister,” Luz said softly.

“Thank you,” Candice said, wiping her eyes. “Usen guard you too—God go with you.”

Shozkay and Jack looked at each other, then embraced. Jack had packed up what he wanted and left the rest for his brother. He swung up into the saddle, then dropped his foot from the stirrup, and held out a hand. This was all done impassively. Candice settled behind him, her heart wrenching again. At the touch of her breasts against his back, and her hands on his waist, he stiffened, and she almost gave in to the urge to weep.

“Get off.”

Below the ridge where they’d stopped, Candice could make out the walls and corrals and buildings of the High C, about a mile away. Her hands tightened on Jack’s waist.

The past three days had been the worst in her life.

“Candice, get off,” Jack said again, in a clipped tone she was becoming too familiar with and hated.

Candice slid off the black stallion. “What—what are we doing?”

He was wearing the battered rawhide hat, and he touched the brim briefly with one finger, a clearly embittered expression on his face. “You know the way.”

Her heart twisted violently with understanding—and then began a wild, rapid pounding. “Jack! You’re leaving?”

“That’s right. It will only take you half an hour to make it down.”

She grabbed the horse’s reins. It could not end this way. It couldn’t. “Wait.”

He smiled mockingly. “For what? A fonder farewell? Let go of the reins, Candice.” His tone had become a warning.

“Oh, God, Jack!” she replied, reluctantly dropping the leathers. “When will I see you again?”

“In hell, I imagine,” he said, turning the black.

She ran alongside him. “I’m not going to see you again, am I?” She panted.

“No.” He suddenly looked down at her, his gray eyes icy cold. Candice started to cry. His expression tightened and the black moved into a lope. Candice stumbled slightly, sobbing now, and watched the horse and rider disappear back over the ridge.

She sank onto the ground. She grabbed her knees and sobbed. She rocked and let the anguish and heartache flow. After a while the tears lessened, and the wails ceased, and she wiped her eyes, sniffling. But the sense of loss did not go away. It was potent and stabbing, and nearly unbearable.

She still didn’t understand how he could turn from her so completely and abruptly the night before they’d left camp
—when he had told her they were married. He had not thawed for a single instant since then, and now he had her believing he truly couldn’t care one way or another about her. Had it all been nothing but a lark for him? While she was willing, she was useful—and once she was no longer willing, she no longer mattered? She didn’t want to believe it, but after the past few days she had no other choice.

Oh, God.

The day they left the Indian camp they’d ridden all day in silence. Candice had attempted, finally, to iniate a conversation. She was met with such rude rejection she hadn’t tried again.

The nights had been the same. He limited his words to orders, like “Start the fire,”

“Clean the game.” He never looked at her. When it was time to sleep he threw the blanket at her and slept alone, across the fire from her.

It had been that way for three days and three nights.

Candice sniffed again and wiped her eyes and got to her feet. Maybe it was better this way. It would have been dangerous for him to take her all the way back to the High C. This way she could really lie and say she’d escaped her captors a while ago, shortening the time she had supposedly spent in the camp. Yes, this way was better. In time she would forget Jack Savage ever existed.

And she knew she didn’t believe that for a second.

She started down the slope, trying not to think about that cold bastard. And to think she had once thought he was warm and loving. Had that tender side of him really existed, or had she imagined it? Instead she focused on her story. And her objective of finding a husband.

She remembered Judge Reinhart’s rejection of her because she had danced with Jack at the barbecue. She decided he was out of the running. She was sure she could persuade Tim McGraw to court her, get him to come around if he was still upset about her dancing with Jack. And if not … there was no shortage of men. The sooner she was married respectably, the better off she’d be. But why wasn’t her heart in this?

It was like the sun had gone out of her life.

It took her more like an hour to reach the ranch. The going was slow, treacherous with rocks and spiky cactus, and
she had to keep an eye out for rattlers and copperheads. Once she was out on the flat the sentry saw her coming, and his cries rang out. The heavy wooden gates opened and a rider came out. It was one of the hands.

There was no mistaking his wide-eyed expression. “Miss Carter?”

Candice braced herself reluctantly and thought that the sooner she got out of her buckskins, the better. “Please, Willie, let me up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and he swung her up behind him.

He dropped Candice in front of the house. “Everyone’s out looking for you, ma’am. They been gone for days, so I imagine they’ll be back soon to change horses.”

“Thank you, Willie,” she said, suddenly feeling overwhelmingly weary. She wanted food, real food, and a bath.

Maria came running out of the house, her arms wide, babbling an incoherent stream of Spanish. Candice was enfolded in her soft, ample frame, and the warmth felt so good she thought she might start crying all over again. “Are you all right,
poquita?”
Maria finally said, clutching her face.

Candice gave her a wan smile, about to say “Yes” when her glance flickered past Maria to the porch. A lean, dark man, impeccably dressed, was standing on the porch—staring at her.

She was seeing a ghost.

“Hello, Candice,” Virgil Kincaid said.