Straight For The Heart

by Marsha Canham

  Alisha fastened her robe while she watched the subtle changes come over Michael’s face—the thinning of his mouth, the tautening of a jawline that was already square and solid and unyielding. She took advantage of his distraction to sidle closer, and, when he made no attempt to stop her, she placed her hand on his chest and tilted her face up to his.

  “What a shame,” she whispered, “to waste all of this on someone who doesn’t appreciate it.”

  Alisha gasped as his fists twined around thick skeins of her hair. She gasped again, feeling the fury in his hands as he flung her harshly aside. Her ankle twisted painfully in the soft earth and she stumbled further down the embankment, unable to stop herself from sliding or rolling until she had skidded to an outraged halt in the gooey mud.

  "You bastard! You filthy bastard!"

  Her cries met with no response, however, for when she used her dripping, muddy hands to push aside the obstructing veil of her hair, Michael was gone.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Amanda spent an interminably sleepless night pacing, arguing with herself, arguing with Michael in absentia, blaming his drunken arrogance and her own foolishness for prompting a confrontation that should never have progressed as far as it had. But it had, and now he was off on his own somewhere and she was sitting a tearful vigil over her sleeping daughter, playing and replaying every wretched detail of the day and night through her mind, wondering if there had been any single moment when either of them could have just held up their hands and stopped things going from bad to worse to terrible.

  The ring had been presented at an inappropriate time, that was all. And he hadn’t lied to her about wanting Ryan’s help with his bloody horses, he simply hadn’t discussed any of his business activities with her at all. Nor was he obliged to. There were no vows in the wedding ceremony that stated “thou must divulge all of thy plans, motives, secrets …”

  She had secrets too, and each time Amanda looked at Verity, she suffered a fresh, hot blur of tears. Ryan was right. She should have told Michael everything. The whole sordid truth. She would have been able to tell Caleb, and he would have accepted the child as his own. She probably would have been able to tell Josh—before she had known about him and Alisha, of course—but that was because she had known him most of her life and he would have understood the importance of keeping a family together, regardless of the cost or the sacrifice.

  She simply didn’t know Michael Tarrington well enough to trust him with such fragile pieces of her heart. Or to guess what his reaction toward the child might be.

  His parting words echoed in her ears like wind chimes. Stay here, go back to the Glen with him. It was her choice. But with dawn an avalanche of pink and purple clouds rolling across the sky, and he hadn't come back to talk to her further, she was more confused and uncertain than ever.

  Maybe, if she only had herself to worry about, it would have been an easier choice to make. But she did have Verity to worry about and the child had been genuinely frightened by the anger and brutish display. Verity held the most fragile piece of her heart and came first in importance and always would.

  There was no water in the pitcher when she looked and she slipped out of the room to go to the kitchen. Her path took her past the parlor and she might not have seen him, might not have stopped had a stab of reflected sunlight not drawn her eye into the room as she passed. Her footsteps slowed, stopped, and her uncertainty kept her poised on the threshold with her heart lodged in her throat and her hands reaching up to hug her upper arms.

  Michael was there, asleep on a chair, his long legs spread and bent at ungainly angles, his arms hanging over the sides. Clutched in one hand was a glass that still held a few drops of amber liquid; beside him, an empty bottle of whiskey. His shirt was opened to his waist and his head was lolled to one side.

  The sight sent her leaning against the wall for support. Her throat was dry, her senses suddenly so acute, she swore she could hear the room itself breathing.

  She had not yet had the opportunity to observe her husband with his defenses down. How different he looked, especially without the maturing slash of moustache to camouflage the youthful shape of his mouth. Gone too were the etched lines of authority that readily pleated his brow, and the rigid set to his jaw that made him look so formidable, so uncompromising. The long sweep of his lashes lay on his cheeks like the fallen wings of a sparrow, and his hair, never completely tidy at the best of times, curled over the top of his collar and lay against his cheek in gleaming, thick waves.

  His shirt was spread open across the breadth of his chest, and she could recall quite clearly how it felt to run her fingers through the wealth of coarse dark hairs. Her gaze wandered lower and traced the outline of his thighs, following the creases and folds in his trousers, lingering over the bulge that was impressive even in repose. It did not take much effort to remove the barriers in her mind’s eye, to see him naked and standing in the sunlit alcove, or naked and kneeling in front of a glowing fire, or naked and lying beneath her, assuring her he would not break and neither would she.

  He had frightened her that first night, but only with his power and vitality. And he had taken such care to remove those fears, to turn them one by one into eagerness and passion, that she could not bring herself to believe he would ever do anything to deliberately hurt her or Verity.

  Lust was not a Yankee monopoly. More than a few honorable Southern gentlemen, overcome by drink and desire, would undoubtedly have behaved the same way. Some men —and it took no strain to imagine Forrest Wainright’s greedy, grasping hands—might not have stopped last night at all, whether Verity was there beside them or not. Michael had stopped. He had been as shocked as she and instantly contrite. And had obviously spent the night drowning in guilt.

  Amanda drew a deep breath and pushed away from the wall. She walked across the width of the parlor and stopped beside his chair, and tried not to notice how badly her fingers were trembling as she reached down and touched his arm.

  Michael’s jaw worked up and down and his chin came up off his chest. His foot stirred and his leg straightened. The hand holding the glass lost its grip, sending the heavy crystal to the floor with a dull thud. The noise brought his eyes open, but it took a long moment for him to bring them into focus. The gray centers were washed pale by lack of sleep, the whites were veined and bloodshot.

  He became aware of someone standing between him and the window, and his eyes made a concentrated effort to squint through the glare the reflected sunlight was throwing off Amanda’s dressing gown. He followed the blurred flow of white cloth upward and when he found Amanda’s face, he held it for two measurable heartbeats before his eyes widened and he was jolted awake.

  “I’m sorry," she said. "I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Michael sat up straight and took a further moment to gain his bearings. He knuckled his eyes and rubbed until some of the fog cleared. "What time is it?"

  "Just after dawn. Six or so, I should think."

  He grunted and pushed to his feet, crossing to the window so he could open the sash and bring in some cool air. When he had taken several lungfuls, he turned and gazed at Amanda, searching along the delicately ruffled edge of her robe until he saw the face of her locket. When he saw the scrolled initial in its bed of etched roses, some of the wariness drained from his face, but he still looked as though he needed a gallon of strong coffee and some crushed willow bark to stop the drumming in his head.

  The blood was, indeed, pounding in his temples and his mouth tasted like rusted iron. The world outside was too goddamned bright and he quickly turned his back to it, but that only brought the glowing white specter of Amanda before him and he had to cradle his head in his hands to keep his skull from splitting apart. The collar of his shirt was displaced further, letting the light fall directly on the ridge of his collarbone.

  Amanda moved a step closer, a small frown wrinkling her brow.

  “Did I do that?” she asked in a whisper, reaching cool fing
ers toward his neck.

  Michael waved away her hand and pressed his own over the area that had drawn her concern. When he found the lines of raw scratchmarks Alisha’s nails had left, his stomach rolled over in another sickly somersault.

  “I’m sorry,” Amanda said, and looked down at her hands. “I … reacted badly. I shouldn’t have been so … anxious, and I certainly shouldn’t have struck you.”

  Michael had no reply, mainly because there wasn’t one. If he told her she hadn’t been the one to leave the marks on his neck, he would have to tell her who did, and then he would have to tell her the rest. He watched her struggling with her conscience, and he tried to see the lie, tried to convince himself he would never find it, but he only saw Alisha’s taunting grin and heard the echo of her laughter telling him his wife was proficient at cheating at far more than cards.

  “You … said you wanted to leave early. I can make you breakfast, if—”

  “I’m not bothered about breakfast,” he interrupted a little more curtly than intended. “I’ll be leaving as soon as Foley brings the carriage around.”

  Amanda moistened her lips, still avoiding his eyes. “Very well. We should only need an hour or so to get ready, or”— she looked up and her eyes were the same unbearably clear blue as the sky outside—“if you don’t want to wait, we can have someone drive us home later.”

  His head was not pounding so much that he missed the word home. Nor did the loud rushing of blood through his veins drown out the word we.

  “How is Verity?” he asked, scanning the nearby sideboard in search of something to moisten his mouth. There was only wine and whiskey, neither of which seemed like wise choices at the moment. “Are you certain she wants to come with me? Are you certain you want to come with me?”

  “She just needs time,” Amanda said. “Perhaps we all just need time to adjust.”

  Michael's nod was a feeble effort at best. He found himself in the awkward and totally unfamiliar position of wanting desperately to pull his wife into his arms yet fearing that if he did, she might push him away.

  Amanda bowed her head and twisted her hands together. His question had caught her off guard, for despite having the same argument with herself over the past few hours, hearing the guilt in his voice had made her realize how foolish her doubts were. But what she longed to hear, what she wanted to hear was that he was giving them no choice.

  Part Two

  PLAYING OUT THE HAND

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It took E. Forrest Wainright six weeks to discover a weakness in the wall of respectability Michael Tarrington had built around himself. Surprisingly, it came from a most unusual and unexpected source, one of Tarrington’s own people: Flora Reeves’s son-in-law, Ned Sims.

  Ned was not a well-liked man. He was lean and hawkish in appearance, lazy as the day was long, with a knack for doing as little as possible for as long as possible without raising too much of a sweat. He had met Sally Reeves after mustering out of the Army and he had been quick enough, wily enough to recognize the preferential treatment reserved for Flora and her daughter in the Tarrington household. He was even quicker to woo and wed the shy, introverted Sally, justifying his cleverness when the family presented them with a gift of one hundred gold double eagles on their wedding day.

  Flora loathed him, of course, and he took perverse pleasure in keeping Sal awake and active all night long just to see the look on the old denizen’s face when her daughter wobbled into the kitchen in the morning barely able to straighten her legs. Sally wasn’t too keen on him either. The only thing passably pretty about her—her smile—had faded away the first time she walked into the stables and found him naked with the laundry maid. Ned had been the one to get angry, accusing her of spying on him, of sneaking around and following him. He had slapped her some, to stop her wailing, and when she had threatened to lock him out of their bedroom, he had punched her solidly in the gut and taught her a lesson in obedience she would not soon forget.

  How was he supposed to have known the bitch was breeding?

  He had known it soon enough that night when she started bleeding all over the bed. He had known it the next morning too, when Michael Tarrington had blown into the stable like a thundercloud and nearly beat him to a pulp. The bastard would have thrown Ned out onto the streets of Boston then and there if not for Sally. She was simple and naive and believed a woman’s place was by her husband’s side, regardless of how he treated her. And if Ned had been banished from the household, Sal would have gone too—he would have seen to it—and Flora Reeves would not have been able to bear it.

  The beating had only reinforced Ned’s opinion of Tarrington. The big, arrogant bastard had everything—money, looks, charm, women eager to ride him all night long for the price of a smile. Ned had two blown-off fingers and a wife who bleated like a stuck pig if he took too long in one hole or the other.

  It did not make matters any better when Tarrington announced he was looking for land in the South. At least in Boston, Ned had his contacts on the waterfront. He’d known where to sell the odd bits of silver he lifted from the house and he’d known where to find the hottest whores and the cheapest whiskey. More often than not those same whores could tell him who their richest customers were and if they happened to be visiting in the country this particular weekend or that. For a share of the profits and a rollicking good tumble afterward, Ned could be persuaded to scale a wall and find an open window. His hoard of greenbacks and double eagles had grown impressively, and it wasn’t long before he had earned himself enough to think about making a clean break and heading West.

  That was just about the same time Flora had made the decision to accompany Michael Tarrington to Natchez, and the same night that Ned, who would have preferred to follow Jonah into the mouth of the whale, had been caught red-handed in the middle of robbing the home of a prominent magistrate. Ned had been interrupted by one of the maids, and while he thought he had left her for dead, he found out later she had lived long enough to give the authorities a fair description, right down to the missing fingers on his left hand.

  Natchez had suddenly become a good deal more appealing than Boston. He could still bolt at the first smell of trouble, if need be, and if not … well, he knew where Tarrington kept his fancy Spanish strongbox and he knew how to pick the antiquated double-key locking mechanism. He just had to pick the right time.

  The perfect time had come and gone right under his nose. It had happened so fast, it left him cursing himself breathless to think how close he had come to holding fifty thousand dollars cash. He had known there were often a few thousand dollars locked away in the heavy iron box, and he should have guessed, with all the repairs going on at Briar Glen, that there would be a need for a hefty cash flow. Still, it had caught him off guard—apparently it had caught a lot of people off guard when Michael Tarrington had announced he would be bringing a new wife to home.

  He had been working on the terrace the first time he had seen her, and even then he hadn’t half believed his eyes. He’d looked up into a flash of sunlight shining off an upper window, and there she was, a golden-haired angel draped in white sheets. He hadn’t even blinked, he’d been so stunned. Sal had spent the previous day in town buying up every frill and gewgaw she could lay a hand to, but either he had been too drunk to absorb what she had told him, or he had plum just not believed it. He still hadn’t fully recovered from his surprise later that morning when he had been fixing a stone wall outside the library window and observed the less than friendly meeting between the newlyweds and E. Forrest Wainright.

  When he had seen the fifty thousand come out of the strongbox … well, he had nearly gone into spasms then and there. He’d checked that damned box only the day before and there had only been a couple of hundred in greenbacks. Ned hadn’t known who E. Forrest Wainright was at the time, but he was damn quick to find out. He also hadn’t recognized the name Montana Rose when Tarrington had said it later on, but because he seemed so adamant about assurin
g the new Mrs. Tarrington that her secret would remain safe within the walls of Briar Glen, Ned Sims thought it equally necessary to find out just how valuable a secret it might be.

  It had not taken him long to determine the answer to both questions.

  Ned glanced up at the sound of a footstep on the cobblestone path. His eyes, a nondescript blend of blue and green, screwed down to slits as he saw Amanda Tarrington rounding a copse of tall junipers. She was searching out the last of the late-blooming roses and collecting them in a curved straw basket. She hadn’t seen him yet so he allowed himself the luxury of a long, slow perusal. His gaze lingered over the porcelain smoothness of her skin, the delicately sculpted cheekbones, the soft and luscious mouth. The day was warm and sunny and she wore a lightly woven shawl draped more over her elbows than her shoulders, affording an unrestricted view of her breasts as they mounded impressively over her bodice each time she leaned forward in pursuit of a rose.

  She was certainly a prime cut of womanflesh, Ned decided, and Tarrington had spared no expense on clothes and fine trimmings for her. The frock she was wearing today, for example, had lit Sal’s eyes up just to touch it. Sateen, she had called it. Midnight blue to show off the whiteness of her shoulders and the pale yellow of her hair, and costing enough to keep a grown man in liquor for a year.

  And yet, from what Ned could gather from the scullery gossip, something was amiss between the king and queen. They spent most of their waking hours in separate pursuits, him with his racehorses, her with reading and sewing and fussing around the house. He had even heard they kept to separate bedrooms most nights. The brat, Sal had said, had been so frightened the first few nights, the new Mrs. Tarrington had slept in the small room with her. The fact she had never quite made the move back into her husband’s bed had been the subject of many a whispered conversation between Sally and her mother that Ned was probably not supposed to hear. But he had, and it fascinated him to think a swaggering womanizer like Michael Tarrington could not kick his way past a locked door. That would be the day—or night—Ned would allow such a thing.