"You know I ain't ever liked you much," Collie blurted.
Michael braved the boy's hostile stare. "Yes."
"'Course, Jamie thinks you hung the moon."
"Jamie misses his father."
Collie's jaw jutted. "He's got that Luke feller wantin' to marry his ma. He don't need no fathers anymore."
Michael's smile was fleeting. "And you do?"
"I didn't say that. Don't go puttin' words in my mouth."
"I'm sorry."
"Humph."
Collie cocked his head. That suspicious, half-wild stare pierced Michael like an arrow. "I'm man enough to own up when I'm wrong, I reckon."
"What makes you think you've been wrong?"
"I got eyes. Kit McCoy's back in town."
Michael sucked in his breath.
"You were right all along about that bastard."
Something in the boy's manner chilled Michael more than the wind that kicked up the fallen dogwood leaves. "Where is he?"
"Headed to your house, I reckon."
Michael muttered an oath.
"You got a gun?"
Michael froze in midturn on his way to Brutus. "Why would I need a gun?" he demanded, forcing neutrality into his tone.
The boy shrugged. The gesture did little to detract from the canniness that hardened his features. "Rat huntin'."
"Collie..." The boy was already loping into the blue-black shadows of the coining night. Michael raised his voice above the wind. "Where are you going?"
But if Collie answered, the words were lost in the eerie scraping of the dogwood's barren branches.
* * *
The warmth of the sun was a distant memory as Michael dismounted, slapping Brutus toward the stable. Although Claudia's cottage glowed behind its overgrown hedgerows, every window in his house was dark. Both chimneys were smokeless.
Dread seeped into his bones.
Shoving open the door, Michael fumbled with half-frozen hands to strike a matchsafe and illuminate the foyer. No rosemary or cinnamon wafted from the kitchen hall. Stazzie didn't saunter out of the shadows to greet him with a stretch and a yawn.
"Sera?"
His call reverberated through the two stories, making them sound as hollow as a dry well. He had to force the next name from his lips.
"Eden?"
Facing the woman he loved, the woman who thought him a coward, would be harder than burying Gabriel.
But the echo of her name sighed into a silence that was broken only by the chiming of the parlor clock. Seven bells.
The trading post had long since closed. She should be home by now.
Frowning, he removed the lamp from the wall. He liked to think Collie's talk of guns was the only reason for his growing unease. After all, Rafe was most likely keeping company with Sera—and hopefully, distracting her from any rumor of Kit McCoy's return. Thus, for the moment, Michael was less worried about his sister than he was about the unusual silence in his house.
He headed for the bedroom, the lamp's circular, saffron glow bobbing at his feet. It was the peculiar absence of Stazzie, he decided, that had triggered his alarm.
"Eden?" he called again.
The door was cracked open; he pushed it wider—and froze. Stazzie's pillow was gone. So was the portmanteau Eden kept under the armoire. A quick inspection of his footlocker and chest of drawers proved that she'd removed her shoes and bonnets, skirts and blouses—in short, everything she owned.
Except those things that he'd bought her.
Realization knifed him. He searched for a letter and found a sheaf of paper propped against his shaving bowl.
I love you too much to watch you waste away your life, she'd written in a shaky hand. Since you don't want me, or even need me, I think it's best that I leave.
He ran his thumb over the ripple where her tear had fallen. Was this some sort of test?
Crumpling the letter in his fist, he crossed to the window. His neighbor's guest room was lit. Perhaps Eden had merely fled to Claudia. Who else might be occupying that spare bedroom? Not Collie, certainly. The boy had yet to overcome his aversion to "fancy living." Although he'd agreed to do chores in exchange for shooting lessons and board, he'd flat-out refused Claudia's offer of a feather mattress, instead making his bed with her mare, Nag.
Michael scowled. That the spinster and the orphan had struck up a friendship still dumbfounded him. He didn't approve of Claudia's efforts to school the boy in gun play. In fact, he'd argued vehemently against the arrangement.
"Mind your dadblasted business, Michael," Claudia had flared, her chin jutting and her chest thrusting forward like a Bantam rooster's. "That boy'll turn sixteen come November. It's high time he traded his slingshot for a Peacemaker."
"Peacemaker my eye," he'd retorted, secretly impressed that the seventy-five-year-old curmudgeon could do battle with him without suffering mottled skin or shortened breath. Andrew Mallory's heart tonic was a phenomenon. "Collie's got his father's blood running through his veins. Why do you think Sheriff Truitt confiscated every firearm MacAffee owned?"
"Collie's a good boy, and you ain't got no right to deny him his passage to manhood."
"Deny him? I'm trying to see he lives long enough to be a man."
But because Michael had no legal right to assert his guardianship, he'd lost that argument. Collie had been eager for Claudia's shooting lessons. Unfortunately, the more proficient the boy became as a marksman, the less interest he showed in the veterinary trade that Michael had hoped he'd pursue.
Muttering an oath, Michael dropped the curtain. He recalled Collie's eyes, as hard and gray as the barrel of the scattergun he'd carried. Did the boy mean to force a showdown with Kit McCoy?
His head throbbing with a low-level pain he'd come to recognize as a warning, Michael headed for his neighbor's house. Leaves swatted his face and hands; muffled laughter whipped past him on the rising wind. He braced himself on Claudia's doorstep. The gaiety emanating from her kitchen beyond made him feel more like an intruder than neighbor, more like an outcast than brother.
Still, he wasn't a man who shirked his responsibilities. He rapped twice and pushed in.
The blast of warmth that assailed him was far more welcoming than the silence.
Sera's lips formed a startled O. Rafe arched a tawny eyebrow. Claudia squinted and scowled, while Eden averted her gaze, twisting her hands in her lap.
"Dadblast it, Michael, close the door," Claudia growled.
The wind yanked it out of his hands, slamming it so hard, the windows rattled.
Sera gasped in irritation, jumping up with potholders to peek inside the oven. "For heaven's sake, Michael, are you trying to flatten Rafe's welcome-home cake?"
"Or tear the house down," Claudia growled, tugging her pipestem from her teeth. "Between you and Collie blowin' in here like black blizzards, I ain't gonna have nuthin' but toothpicks left for walls—"
"Where is Collie?" he interrupted, his own irritation getting the better of him as he watched his wife train her gaze on anybody but him.
"Gone rat huntin'," Claudia said. "'Course, I told him a shotgun would shear a little bitty varmint clean in half."
Michael bit back an oath, his worst fears confirmed—fears that he didn't dare divulge in the presence of Sera and Eden.
"You'll have to blame someone else, brother," Rafe drawled. "I haven't been here long enough to be a bad influence on the boy."
Michael scowled. Always the smart-aleck. If he'd had nothing better to do, he would have taken Rafe aside and demanded what his intentions were, particularly toward Eden. Michael considered it no small coincidence that he'd found his charming, devil-may-care brother sitting cozily beside his wife twice in one day.
Fortunately for Rafe, Michael didn't have time to indulge in their sibling rivalry.
"Eden." He turned to face her, steeling himself against his surge of hurt, against any loss of composure that would make him a target for his brother's rapier wit. He didn't have time to dall
y. And yet, he couldn't walk out the door without at least trying to bridge the distance between him and Eden. What if she fled on the morning stage while he was still hunting for Collie?
"Would you grant me the favor of a private word?"
The reluctance in her manner twisted the knife in his chest. He found himself grinding his teeth as she rose silently and sailed before him down the narrow hallway to the parlor. The sweet, unconscious swaying of her hips sharpened the lover's hunger in him. But then, he'd been smitten by Eden Mallory ever since he'd first laid eyes on her. How he could have fallen in love with an exasperating, seventeen-year-old healer, he'd never know, but what else could explain his heart's secret, eight-year affair with her? She was special in ways that defied understanding; still, it was the little things that were indelibly etched on his mind: her autumn fringe of lashes, the smattering of freckles across her breasts, her fascination with spider webs, the way she twisted her skirts when she was upset.
But when she crossed to the mantel, facing him at last, her hands hung loosely at her sides.
The observation rocked his world.
"Yes, Michael?" she asked quietly.
His palms grew moist. He reached for the cherrywood doors to buy himself time, and they rolled closed with a raspy snick. The only other thing that could be heard above the unnatural tattoo of his pulse was the hissing of the pine log in the hearth.
He let another moment lapse as he struggled to erase the desperation from his features. When he forced himself to face her, he had to compromise, masking his despair with sternness instead of the serenity he'd been striving for.
"I want you to come home."
"I can't do that."
"You're my wife."
"I thought you'd forgotten."
His frown was wary. "Meaning?"
"My God, Michael," she whispered. "That you could stand before me and pretend not to know what I mean, is, perhaps, your cruelest blow yet."
"I never meant to hurt you—"
"But you have. Deeply."
He swallowed. While it was true he couldn't be the husband she wanted, the husband she deserved, he'd tried to be the mentor she so desperately needed. There were times when he'd challenged her medical opinions, playing devil's advocate, for instance, on the days that Jamie had complained of a sore throat and Amanda had swelled up with hives.
But Michael had done so to teach Eden that a doctor couldn't earn her patients' trust until she learned to stand by her diagnoses. He'd wanted to encourage her independence, so he'd made her responsible for treating minor maladies. He'd even supported her quest to patent her father's heart tonic by writing to colleagues in Cincinnati, Chicago, and New York, where the country's most prominent patent medicine companies operated. He'd been hoping to surprise her with good news.
But now it looked like his attempts to make his bride a self-reliant widow had backfired. Eden had gathered the courage to walk out his door.
"You can't forgive me, is that it?"
Her chin quivered. "Is that why you've come? To ask my forgiveness?"
He blew out his breath. Hell no! He'd never done a damned thing but try to provide for her. And he'd been called a coward for it.
On the other hand, she obviously wanted his apology.
He conceded, trying not to sound as grudging as he felt. "I'm sorry you're unhappy. But I told you how it would be before we married. In the chancellory, I gave you your chance to back out. Instead, you swore an oath before God. 'In sickness and health, till death do us part.' That's what you promised."
"I know what I promised, Michael." As soft as her voice was, he could hear its underlying bitterness. "You promised things, too. Namely, to be my husband. But I can't remember the last time you shared my bed."
He was surprised. "Is that what this is all about?"
"I know it's not sickness that keeps you from... from lying with me."
Jesus. Relief flooded him so fast, he was hard-pressed not to laugh. She was jealous!
"Eden, honey, I have never been unfaithful to you."
Her hands splayed on her hips. "You mean to tell me that all those times you disappeared, never once giving me a good reason, you weren't really rendezvousing with Bonnie?"
"Good God. Of course I wasn't."
Her eyes narrowed. "Or with anyone else?"
"Eden," he said huskily, his throat aching as the words struggled through, "I swear. There has never been any other woman but you. I love you."
Tears brimmed, spilling crystal rivulets down her cheeks. "Y-you do?"
"Yes." His heart swelled with the admission. How could she not know it? How many times had he whispered it as she'd slept? How many times had he breathed it into her ear as she'd dreamed?
In truth, he died a little each minute he denied himself her touch. After she woke and went about her business, he would slip into her bedroom and inhale the scent of her pillowcase. He kept an oriole feather in a dry inkwell at his office, and a milkweed pod in his valise, just so he could recall the wonder he'd felt to be with her on their fateful Independence Day. How could she not know how he warred with himself, trying to keep the burden of his legacy from her womb?
"Then why—"
"Can't you guess?"
A sob bubbled past her lips. "I don't care if I get sick too."
"My God. If I had ever thought that was possible, I would never have allowed you to marry me."
"Then why won't you let me touch you?"
She edged forward, her eyes pleading. A cyclone of needs and desires, regrets and fears, funneled through him. It took every ounce of will he possessed to stagger away from her fingers.
"I can't. Don't you see? I'm trying to spare you!"
"S-spare me?"
"By the time you and Sera split my property, there won't be enough left to make a good dowry. And a baby will only make courtship more difficult."
"What?"
"A bachelor won't consider a widow with a child as desirable a match as a maid."
She halted dead in her tracks, her ears growing red enough to steam. "Michael Jones, that is the most egotistical excuse I have ever heard in my life! How dare you make decisions about babies without consulting me?"
He blinked, stunned by this about-face. "I am your husband."
"Yes, my husband! Not my warden. Stop punishing me for marrying you!"
"It was never my intent—"
"Did it ever occur to you that bearing your child might be the greatest happiness of my life?"
He jolted, knocked off balance by such an inconceivable truth. "You're not being practical."
"Practical? All this time, I thought you had taken another lover! I thought I didn't please you. Do you know what that was like for me?"
Shame burned its way to his soul. "I did what I thought was best for you."
"That's because you're just arrogant enough to believe, really believe, you know how to live my life better than I do." The tear she flung off her cheek splashed him. It felt like acid on his chin. "You treat us all like children. You take care of everybody but yourself. Whether you realize it or not, you've been using me, Sera, and Collie as your excuse. As long as you're trying to run our lives, you don't have to take a good, hard look at your own."
She pushed past him, wrenching open the doors, then paused, as if thinking better of storming out.
"Ever since I was seventeen and you saved me from Black Bart," she said raggedly, "I've loved you. You've always been my hero. But the difference between you and me, Michael, is that I don't expect you to be infallible. I just expect you to be a man."
"I'm sorry—"
"No! No more apologies," she choked, grabbing hold of his coat lapels and shaking him with both fists. "Just live life—your own life, damn you—before it's too late!"
She turned with a sob, knocking aside the hands he reached to embrace her with, and fled up Claudia's stairs.
His next breath shuddered through him. Slumping against the doorjamb, he watched in agony a
s all that he treasured, all that he held worthwhile, disappeared from his view—and perhaps from his life.
"I declare. That might have gone better, don't you think?"
Michael grimaced, spying his kid sister as she crept from the shadows, shoving her face up against the stairwell's balusters, much as she used to do as a three-year-old. Only this time, she hadn't been eavesdropping on their parents' argument. She'd been eavesdropping on his.
"You heard?" he asked bleakly, too dejected to feel guilty.
"It was hard not to."
He sighed, rubbing his temples. They were throbbing with a vengeance now. "Will you speak to her for me?"
"Absolutely. I didn't go to all this trouble to find you the perfect wife so you could chase her away."
She climbed two steps, apparently thought better of it, and hurried back down to throw her arms around his neck. "Honestly, Michael," she whispered against his cheek. "We all love you. It's just a little harder when you're being such a bear."
He smiled faintly, watching her bound up the stairs. All dimples and mischief, she turned on the landing and blew him a kiss.
Kit McCoy isn't fit to shine that girl's shoes.
The thought sobered him instantly. He'd forgotten Collie and his other mission. Michael just prayed he'd have another chance to talk sense into Eden, because he didn't dare wait around for her to calm down while Collie was running loose with a shotgun.
With Sera and Eden safely out of earshot, Michael waded back through Claudia's habitual smoke cloud on his way to the kitchen. He found his brother and neighbor huddled like conspirators over their coffee mugs, Rafe's golden head nearly bumping Claudia's silver one. Michael wasn't sure whether his shadow or his footstep alerted them to his presence. But he didn't like the accusation in the pair of eyes that rose to challenge him.
Once again, he found himself struggling with his temper. All Rafe had to do was arch that insolent eyebrow—like he was doing now—and Michael wanted to explode. Never mind that his black sheep half-brother hadn't said a word. Or that ten years should have been long enough to heal old wounds.
Standing there, Michael was twenty-one again, facing down the nineteen-year-old upstart who'd dared to show his face after a five-year absence and had announced he was taking Gabriel to Texas so the child could have his wish to be a cowboy before he died. All the pain, all the fury, all the futility Michael had been feeling for those two long years as he'd watched Gabriel's decline, had culminated in a release of such volcanic proportions that Rafe was lucky he was alive today.
His Wicked Dream (Velvet Lies, Book 2) Page 27
