The Scoundrel's Bride (23 page)

“An accident. A blow to the head, according to the story your sister told the physicians who examined the child.”

“Lilah was under a doctor’s care?” Stephen asked.

“Mrs. Carstairs’s sister had the girl examined by doctors in every town they visited, which turned out to be quite a number considering how much they traveled. I spoke to three of the physicians personally.”

No one spoke as Stephen and Rosalee finished reading the file. At one point she clutched his hand tightly and a little moan escaped her lips. Stephen realized she had just read of her sister’s death. When she closed the file’s cover and looked up at him, tears sparkled in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“I’ve never stopped loving her, you know. Even after…” Her voice trailed off. Then, she drew a deep breath and said, “There will be time for grief later. Lilah is my present concern.” She turned to Hatfield and asked for clarification on one aspect of the report.

For the next few minutes, the investigator thoroughly answered the questions they posed. After learning all Hatfield could tell them, the conversation moved on to how the Carstairs wanted him to proceed now that Lilah had been found. Stephen was speaking when Rosalee abruptly rose from her chair. Her voice breaking, she said, “Please excuse me. I’m sorry…I…”

“Rosie?”

She shook her head. “It’s all right, Stephen. I just need a few moments.” She fled for the door.

Stephen followed her, glancing over his shoulder and silently asking Paul Hatfield to wait. In the foyer, he stopped her. “Rosie, it’s all right. I know you must be—”

She rested a hand against his chest, effectively halting him. She shut her eyes and shook her head. “No, Stephen. I’m fine, really. I need some time alone, that’s all.”

He set his jaw, his mouth flattening in a grim smile. He fingered the damnable locket around her neck, then abruptly nodded and left her. He returned to the parlor, heading straight for the decanter filled with scotch whisky. It’s him, he thought, pouring drinks for both himself and Paul Hatfield. Even after all these years, she continues to grieve for him, for Lilah’s father.

He’d thought—he’d hoped—that by finding the child for her, she could finally put Wesley Parks to rest. Had he been wrong? Would his wife never bury that ghost?

His voice was rough as he handed the detective his drink and asked, “What about my private concerns? Were you able to learn anything about Harris and Parks?”

Paul Hatfield nodded. “Yes, I was. You were right, Mr. Carstairs. I’ve been able to prove that Jack Harris was present at the skirmish in South Texas during the Mexican invasion of forty-two during which Wesley Parks supposedly died. A number of men we contacted believed it quite possible that Harris was the man who listed Parks among the dead, rather than among those taken prisoner and sent to Mexico.”

Stephen tossed back his drink, then poured another. “All because Harris wanted his wife’s sister.” His hand clutched the fragile crystal in a fierce grip. “He’s had Rosalee’s daughter for thirteen years. Tell me, does she resemble my wife?”

“Closely.”

Stephen Carstairs, the wealthy New York financier well-known for his philanthropic acts, leveled a hard-eyed glare on his visitor and said in a resolute voice, “I’ll kill the bastard.”

THE DARK cloud that had hung a threat in the sky all morning finally rolled over the Burkett cabin near noon. A second barrage of ice pellets spat from above, a drum roll proclaiming frigid air behind the storm. When the sky cleared, the temperature had dropped another twenty degrees, but the absence of wind and nimbus improved conditions to a bearable state, allowing Morality’s escape from the confining walls of Zach Burkett’s cabin.

The bitter air stung her lungs. She slipped and slid her way across the frozen earth toward the barn and the rogue inside who had offered her something she’d desired for years. Choice. The opportunity to choose the direction of her life.

Certainly, the paths available numbered but a few and didn’t include some of the options she might have preferred, but those avenues did constitute a choice. This was exactly what she’d claimed to have wanted for years. Which proved the truth of the saying,
watch what you wish for, you just might get it
. Now that she’d been offered the choice, she had to up and choose.

It wasn’t easy. She’d considered all of his arguments and those of her own he’d not known to advance. She had found his mention of Patrick especially persuasive; she thought it showed a great deal of character for Zach to offer the boy a place in his life.

Morality had weighed the negative aspect to his proposition, also. If she married Zach Burkett, how would she live up to the responsibility of her miracle? How would she go about sharing her miraculous gift with the world?

How could she avoid the loss of her uncle s love?

It was her greatest concern, the sticking point that prevented her from making her decision.

Reverend Uncle would not take kindly to her choosing a direction so different from the one he intended for her. While she didn’t want to marry the man, neither did she want to lose his presence in her life. He was family. She loved him like a father.

She had never before realized that freedom could be this difficult.

Having successfully negotiated the precarious route across the yard to the barn, she stood beside the building’s south wall. A noise grabbed her attention. A sound that shocked her to the bones.

Zach Burkett was singing.

Warmed by the meager rays of sunshine piercing the cold, Morality listened as he crooned the words of the song she’d always considered her own. Deep and resonant, his music touched her soul. Any man with a voice so beautiful, a man who could put that much emotion into the singing of “Amazing Grace!”, couldn’t be all bad.

He crooned, “I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see.”

Perhaps it is his song, too
. She remembered the night they first met and the arguments he’d used to convince Reverend Uncle to allow him to address the congregation. She recalled the confession he’d made before the people of Cottonwood Creek.

Zach Burkett had certainly been lost—evil done with malicious intent, killing without remorse. Morality wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered. He’d been a very bad person, but he’d found his way home. For atonement. In search of forgiveness. To denounce the darkness and return to the Light.

His voice boomed, “ ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears relieved.”

Morality felt a shiver rake her skin, a reaction separate from the cold. This was a tremor of the heart, a vibration of the soul. Could it be that Zach Burkett was truly her destiny?

He had a problem with lies and with foul language. She had one with temper and other failings too numerous to mention. Perhaps they had been brought together to teach one another, to use their strengths to counter the others weaknesses.

Of course, it did appear that they both fell vulnerable to the sins of the flesh.

Maybe there’s a lesson in that too, Morality. Maybe they’re not so sinful after all
.

And maybe this was all the wishful thinking of a desperate mind. She cringed at the memory of lying next to him, naked as Eve before the apple. And Adam staring down at her, the glow of the devil in his eyes.

Inside the barn, Zach ended his hymn and began a second song. This tune was lively, boisterous, and as she listened to the lyrics, the warmth of a flush crept up Morality’s neck.

The man was scandalous, positively scandalous.

She was smiling as she pushed the barn door open. “Zach Burkett holding a pitchfork. Oddly appropriate, to my mind,” she dryly observed.

A forkful of hay sailed toward her, and the devil who flung it wore a wicked, dimpled grin. “Tell me you’re here to roll in my hay.”

She wrinkled her nose, attempting to hide her confusion. Sometimes she simply didn’t understand what he said, but something about the way he said it told her she was better off not knowing. “I was getting cooped up inside the cabin. What are you doing out here?”

“My own cure for that same ailment—cold air and hard work.” His hungry-eyed gaze took a slow path from her head to her feet, then meandered back up again. He clicked his tongue. “Not working too well, I’m afraid.”

He tossed more hay into the pen with the milk cow. “How about you? What are you doing out here, Morality? After all that trouble of heating up bathwater, you just couldn’t stand to be warm for a bit?”

She shrugged, then walked away from him, stepping carefully around a pile of mucked-out straw to the stall where Zach’s dun gelding poked his nose over the gate. The horse’s nostrils flared, his hot breath sending up puffs of vapor in the cold as she stroked his nose. “I’ve been thinking about our situation.”

Zach thrust the pitchfork’s tines into the pile of clean hay. “And?”

“I have a few questions.”

“All right. Let’s hear ’em.”

The horse nickered softly as Morality gathered her courage. “This talk of a baby. What if there isn’t one? Would you still wish to marry me?”

“I thought we went over all this at breakfast.” He pitched another forkful of hay to the cow, then hung the tool on a pair of nails in the wall.

She winced at the scrape of metal against metal. Noise like that always made her teeth hurt. “We didn’t discuss everything. I need to know just what I’d be getting into, Zach. Please, answer my question.”

“You don’t believe in starting off with the easy ones, do you?” He walked up beside her and patted the horse’s neck. Morality stepped back as he opened the gate and entered the stall. He straightened the blanket draped across the dun’s back, then pulled an apple from his pocket and offered it to the horse. “Morality, I’ll be honest with you.”

He ignored her disbelieving snort and continued. “Even if we hadn’t made love last night, I would have asked you to marry me this morning. The truth is, your reputation might have withstood the scandal, but I don’t think mine would.”

“Your reputation?” Morality reared back in surprise. “Pardon me, but I find that idea a bit disconcerting. You, Cottonwood Creek’s most infamous son, plan to marry me in order to save your reputation?”

“Exactly.” He patted the animal’s neck once again then exited the stall. “I’ve invested a lot of effort in convincing the town that I’ve changed. Cottonwood Creek’s fine citizens wouldn’t put their faith and their funds in the hands of a vile despoiler of a young innocent. If I don’t marry you— and fast—chances are the Texas Southern Railroad will never lay a rail through the fair city of Cottonwood Creek.”

Morality lifted her gaze toward the rafters, her tone scornful. “So much for your earlier words of love. You want to marry me to protect yourself. I think I felt better not knowing that.”

“Don’t forget all the other reasons, too. There’s the baby, of course. And to save you from your uncle. To make a home for my family—you and the child and Patrick. Then there’s the challenge of it. We have to remember that.”

His voice was a low, sensuous rumble as he said, “You dealt my pride a near mortal blow this morning by not remembering my lovemaking. I want the chance to redeem myself.”

Redemption. Atonement. Salvation. It was all there somewhere. What other clues did she need? “Patrick lives with us, you promise?”

Zach nodded. “I’ll even give him his own dog.”

Morality swallowed hard. “All right, do it.”

“Do what?”

“Ask me.”

“Ask you what?”

She eyed the pitchfork. “Mr. Burkett, I have received three previous marriage proposals. Not a one of those men enjoyed the superb verbal skills you so frequently display. However.” She drew it out, folding her arms and squaring her shoulders. “Each of them managed to pay me the courtesy of actually posing the question!”

“Oh. You want me to ask you, huh?”

She answered with her most ferocious glare. Then, when the gleam kindled in his eye, she began to reconsider. He took a step forward, she took one back. Morality thought the heat in his eyes raised the temperature in the barn ten degrees.

He kept coming and within moments she felt the barn’s wall against her back. He put his hands against the boards, caging her between them.

“Marry me, Morality,” he said, leaning close, touching her only with his gaze, and with his breath, and with the music that poured from his soul and vibrated the air between them. “Marry me and be my wife. I’ll take you places you’ve never dreamed, show you worlds you’ve only imagined. We’ll share a bit of heaven here on earth, and I’ll fill you with life and with love and with joy.” His mouth mere inches from hers, he said in a husky whisper, “Marry me, angel. Be my wife.”

Morality ached for his kiss. Craved his hands on her body. Yearned to take him inside her and fill the emptiness she’d known all her life. “Yes, Zach Burkett. I’ll marry you. Yes, please, I’ll marry you.”

In that moment, Zach wanted her, body and soul. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted another woman. Even more than he had wanted her that morning, when he’d awakened hard and hot with her soft seductive body wrapped around him like a Christmas morning ribbon.

As he fit his mouth to hers, he ignored the whisper in his mind that told him this was more than just a con.

Somewhere along the way, Zach had forgotten he was lying.

A STORM had been brewing all afternoon, only this tempest had nothing to do with the weather outside the cabin. Zach was reminded of the day years earlier when he’d been working on a small central Texas farm. An hour before the vicious, twisting cloud had appeared in the sky a curious tension had filled the air. The birds quit singing, the horses went skittish, and the hair on the back of Zach’s neck stood up. He’d thought at first it was Indians. He and the fellow helping him plow a cotton field had made a beeline for the meager shelter of a nearby outcropping of rock.

The trouble, when it came, made a Comanche raid look like Sunday-morning church service.

Zach had never seen such natural violence as the churning, air-sucking cloud that roared overhead and destroyed the sturdy stone farmhouse, the barn, henhouse, and storage sheds faster than the blink of an eye.