The Inheritance (19 page)

“Nora—” Douglas said in an agonized voice.

She moved the sheet away to expose the bandage over the stump. Then she leaned down and kissed the clean linen. Tears brimmed in her velvety eyes as she raised them to meet Douglas’s gaze. “It doesn’t matter to me, Douglas. I’ll love all of you there is. I won’t say you won’t miss your foot, but what’s done is done. It doesn’t change the way I feel.”

Douglas held out his arms, and she tumbled into them.

Nicholas pulled the door quietly closed. He was breathing hard, and his nose stung with tears he refused to shed. He moved quickly to his bedroom and let himself inside. He sat in the chair beside his bed and closed his eyes and tried not to remember.

But the memories spilled over the high wall he had erected to keep them at bay. He shoved at them, tried to force them back. But they flowed over him, demanding attention. Bringing it all back.

He was only fifteen, tall and lanky, with a beard that was embarrassing because it refused to grow all over his face. His voice had the disconcerting habit of breaking when he was in the middle of a sentence. And he was in love, with a woman three years older than himself. Her name was Evie.

He had met her in the two-story house on the edge of town where his mother had last worked. The ladies there had taken pity on him when he was orphaned and let him sleep in the kitchen on nights when the wind howled and the snow blew into drifts. Evie wasn’t supposed to sleep with him because he hadn’t any money to pay her. But she had taken a fancy to him, she said, and invited him upstairs late one night, when everyone else was asleep.

He had come to her a virgin, and she had enjoyed teaching him how to please a woman. He had been so nervous at first that his body was stiff. Fortunately, at least part of him was supposed to be that way. She had made him laugh at himself, and after that first glorious deflowering when he had discovered the pleasure to be had from a woman’s body, he had limbered up and quickly learned how to bring her as much pleasure as he enjoyed himself.

They had passed most of the winter that way. He
hadn’t been in love with her at first, just grateful for the use of her body. But they were both young and alone, and she began to share her dreams with him. He, young fool, did the same with her.

She was going to marry a rich man some day, a man who could take her away from the house. She was going to wear silk dresses and have a maid to do the housework.

He was going to have a ranch, a place of his own with cattle and horses. He would have a beautiful wife and dress her in silk and have a maid to do the work for her.

He hadn’t realized until much later that his dream had incorporated hers. He hadn’t realized he was in love with her. Not until spring came, and he had no more excuse to come to the house. He missed her terribly. Not just her body, but the quiet moments after, when they would share their secrets and their dreams.

That was when he realized that if he wanted to make his dream come true he couldn’t keep on working in the saloon. He was going to have to learn all there was to know about ranching. He was going to have to become a cowboy.

He had no horse, no saddle, no gun, no rope, no hat, no spurs, no chaps, no bedroll, no slicker—no experience. He had nothing to recommend him at all to Mr. Hardin at the Bar Five. But Hardin must have seen something in him that he liked, because he offered Nicholas a job. Twenty dollars a month and found. Hardin would provide the horse and credit at Stone’s Mercantile in town, where Nicholas could buy anything else he needed to do his job.

Nicholas had ridden back to the house where Evie
worked and tied his new Bar Five horse to the post out front. He could still remember the way his eyes had crinkled from the width of his self-satisfied smile. He was so damned happy! He was going to make his dream come true. All he needed was for Evie to wait for him until he could make enough money to buy that ranch.

He hadn’t known anything was wrong until he saw Mrs. Greely’s face. She was the madam who took care of all the girls. At first he thought it was just because he had used the front door, instead of the back.

“I have a job,” he blurted. As though that would make it all right.

“You’ve been sleeping with Evie,” she said. It was an accusation, really.

“I …” What could he say? “I have,” he admitted. “But not during regular hours,” he was quick to add.

“You got her pregnant,” Mrs. Greely said. “I’d’ve never known who the father was, except it could only have happened during that two weeks we had freezing cold and snow and everybody stayed tucked inside so we had no business. You have to be the father. It couldn’t be anyone else.

He had been stunned. And then so damned proud. He and Evie had made a child of their own! “I’ll take care of her and the child,” he said. “Don’t you worry.”

“I’ve already made arrangements,” Mrs. Greely said.

“What arrangements?”

“To get rid of the child. Evie will be docked what it costs from her pay.”

“You can’t do that!” he said. “You can’t! That’s murder!”

He had raced up the stairs to Evie’s room, but when he tried the knob, it was locked. He had pounded on it with his fist and yelled, “Evie! Let me in! I’m not going away until you talk to me.”

He knew she would let him in because Mrs. Greely hated a rowdy customer more than just about anything. Sure enough, Evie had opened the door. He had gone inside and closed it and locked it behind him, locked out Mrs. Greely and her dastardly plans for his child.

“Have you agreed to this?” he demanded.

She didn’t ask him what he was talking about. He could see from the petulant look on her face, from the sullen cast of her blue eyes, that she knew exactly what he was talking about.

“I have,” she said. “And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

He had her by the shoulders before he knew what he was doing. He shook her hard, telling her she couldn’t go through with it, that it was murder, and he’d see
her
dead if she tried killing his child. When he let her go, she sank down onto the iron bed where she spread her legs nightly for any man who had the price.

The sound of the springs squeaking reminded him of all the times she had laughingly urged him to be still, not to make so much noise or they would wake up Cass in the next room.

He felt panicked at the thought of losing his child. His eyes were hot and dry, his whole body tensed. He shoved his hand through his hair, trying to make some sense out of everything.

“I thought we were going to get married,” he said.

She sat cross-legged on the white chenille spread—which he realized only now that he saw it in daylight bore numerous yellow stains—and shook her head. “Where did you ever get an idea like that?”

“We talked—”

“I want a rich husband, someone who’ll take care of me.”

“I g-got a job today,” he stuttered desperately. And realized how differently he was saying those words than how he had planned to say them. “I’ll take care of you.”

“How?” she demanded.

“I’ll be getting twenty a month and found.”

“Where would I live?”

He swallowed hard, knowing she couldn’t stay in the bunkhouse with him, and that the only other home he had was the abandoned line shack where his mother had died. “We’ll find a place.”

“I won’t live in a hovel, Nick,” she said defiantly. “And I don’t want a kid.”

“Not even mine?”

She shook her head. “A kid would just be a millstone around my neck. What man is going to marry me if I bring along a whining brat?”

“I would marry you,” he said. “I love you.” Then he said the words that even today made him cringe. “Don’t you love me?”

If there was ever a question that left a man open to being destroyed, that was it. In his youth, in his innocence, he had asked. And she had answered.

With a laugh.

“Good Lord, no, Nick. We just had a good time together. You’re good in bed. That’s all. I never loved
you. If I had it to do over again, I’d think twice about inviting you upstairs. I didn’t count on ending up with one in the basket, if you know what I mean.”

Somehow he had managed to stand his ground, to keep fighting for the child inside the woman who had laughed at him for being stupid enough to think that what they had shared together had anything to do with love.

“I don’t want you to get rid of it.”

Evie picked at one of the nubby tufts on the spread. “Mrs. Greely’s got it all arranged.”

“I’ll pay you to have the baby.”

Her head jerked up, and her eyes found his. “What?”

“I want the baby, even if you don’t. I’ll pay you my salary every month you’re carrying my child, and I’ll take the baby when it’s born.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Not crazy,” he insisted in a voice that already held a hard edge he had found somewhere to deflect her ridicule. “I meant what I said before. If you kill my child, I’ll kill you.”

He saw her shiver and felt a deep satisfaction at the fear that shone in her eyes.

“Mrs. Greely won’t let me do it.”

“I’ll take care of Mrs. Greely. Do we have a deal?”

She pouted, and he tried to remember what he had found so enticing about her lips. She laid her hands on her belly, which he saw was already rounded with his child. “All right,” she said. “But I want the whole twenty dollars, every month.”

“You’ll get it.”

He had left the room then, before his anger forced
him to violence against her. After all, she was the mother of his child.

He had paid off Mrs. Greely with the promise of another ten dollars a month. He earned that working odd jobs all over town on weekends and at night when he should have been sleeping. His face grew haggard, and permanent shadows left his eyes looking sunken. Hardin watched him like a hawk, but he did his work and never let on what it was that drove him so hard.

Once or twice Hardin looked him up and asked him how he liked the work, but that was as close as he came to inquiring about Nicholas’s situation. No man asked another his business in the West. Nicholas had never shared his problem with Hardin. At first he was too ashamed, and then too determined to manage on his own.

Evie complained the whole time, but she carried the baby to term. He checked up on her, making sure she knew what would happen if she did anything that endangered the child. Mrs. Greely had sent word to him when the baby was born, and he had come to get it.

Fantastic as it seemed, he didn’t, until the moment he held his son in his arms, have a thought about how he was going to feed the baby, or even how he was going to take care of it. Evie didn’t offer to nurse the child, and Mrs. Greely made it clear she wanted the wailing brat out of her house.

He had gotten on his horse and ridden away with a squalling newborn in his arms. He had felt …

Nicholas felt a burning sensation in his nose, the sting of tears at the corners of his eyes as he relived that awful time in his life. Lord, he had felt so desolate.
He had ridden the whole day, until late in the afternoon, when he stopped his horse and got off and sat cross-legged on the ground. He had opened the blanket at last to look at his sleeping son, who had finally exhausted himself crying.

And marveled at how perfectly made he was. At his black hair. At his tiny fingernails and toenails—ten of each. At his long eyelashes. He had promised his child that somehow he would make a life for him that was better than his own. But he had known, deep down in some painful place inside him, that he didn’t know the first thing about taking care of a baby, let alone raising a child.

That was when Simp had found him.

Nicholas wondered how his life would have been different if Evie had been like Nora, willing to stand by him even in the face of calamity. What if she had loved him enough to endure the hardship of building a life with him, even though they were starting it with a third mouth to feed?

Nicholas hadn’t ever allowed himself to become maudlin. Right now he was in danger of being downright sentimental over the past.

He had learned a hard lesson at a young age. He had never offered love to another woman. And never given another woman the chance to hurt him the way Evie had. He had learned a great deal from her. Actually, he owed her a debt of gratitude. He knew how to please a woman in bed. Those lessons had stood him in good stead over the years.

And he had Colin. He could never be sorry for that.

It was amazing that nearly twenty years later he was finally going to be married. It was good to remember
the lessons of the past. He would have to keep Evie in mind when he bedded Daisy. And remember why he would be the world’s worst fool if he ever let himself fall in love again.

Colin had done his best to converse with Lord Frederick Willowbrook, but the young man was pompous and condescending, and Colin had about had his fill of sentences that began with “In London we always …” Colin sighed in disgust. He had hoped to spend some time with Lady Roanna, but she had been totally diverted by Lord Frederick’s two simpering sisters.

He made his escape when luncheon was announced, excusing himself and heading for the stable. He would rather ride back home in the rain than spend the rest of the day in the company of a London fop. There was a groom available, but Colin preferred to saddle his own horse. He wasn’t used to having servants do for him, and he didn’t intend to get used to it. He had just finished when he realized the groom was gone, but he wasn’t alone.