“You? You have nothing to do with this, Emma.”
She heard Noah growl something at Gilson’s use of her given name, but she kept her eyes on Gilson. “On the contrary, I have much to do with this. As Noah’s wife, I’m part of his family and Belinda’s family. In addition, as I’ve told you, this is my house. Belinda is my guest, and I shall not have her removed from here against her”—she gave him a smile as arrogant as his—“or my will.”
He laughed. “You have as good luck with women as you have had in court, Sawyer. Do you want me to shut her up for you? Yapping women need to be taught a lesson or two.”
“There’s no need to silence her when she is speaking the truth. This is Emma’s house, and she has asked you to take your leave.” Noah walked to stand beside her. He put his arm around her as he continued, “If you’ll go now, there will be no need to send for the sheriff.”
“Sheriff? No hick sheriff is going to stop me from getting that child.”
As if on cue, the door to the porch opened, and Lewis stepped inside, carrying a cup of coffee. “Good morning.” His smile faded when he looked at Gilson. “After our conversation a few minutes ago, I didn’t expect to see you here, sir.”
“Tell Sawyer he should hand the child over to me right now.”
Lewis shook his head. “I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?” Gilson slapped the paper against his hand. “I have the court’s decision right here. It says I have legal custody of Belinda Sawyer and am trustee for her inheritance.”
“I know what it says, but Judge Purchase told me yesterday Belinda is to stay here, where I can keep an eye on her as well as Noah.”
“You’re lying!”
Lewis’s smile became chilled. “If you want to wake up Judge Purchase this early on a Sunday morning, I can give you directions to his house. You can ask him if I’m lying about following his orders. I’m not going to bother him before he’s had his first two cups of coffee.”
Gilson squared his shoulders as he shoved the page back beneath his coat. “There’s no reason to disturb the judge now. Tomorrow is soon enough.” He scowled at Noah. “If you weren’t a complete fool, Sawyer, you would know this is a battle you can’t win.” He patted the breast of his coat where he had placed the paper. “I have all the proof I need right here. Once the judge sees this order, he’ll give me Belinda and send you to hang for kidnapping her five years ago.”
“Good morning, Mr. Gilson,” Emma said coldly.
“You are welcome to call any time you wish, my dear Emma, once you’re no longer married to Sawyer. Or before. Room 5 at the Haven Hotel. I’d be very happy to comfort your widow, Sawyer.”
“Good morning, Mr. Gilson,” she repeated.
He winked at her before swaggering out of the front door. She slammed the door shut and locked it, then closed her eyes. Leaning her hands against the frosted glass in the door, she fought to hold back the tears of anger that burned in her eyes. Anger and fear.
When fingers settled on her sleeve, she turned to Sean, whose lower lip was trembling. His face was as pale as it had been when he became sick from eating too much of Gladys’s cake.
“He said he’s going to take Belinda,” he whispered.
She squatted in front of him, pulling her gaze from his frightened eyes long enough to watch Noah hold the kitchen door aside for Lewis. As the sheriff entered, Noah looked back at her and offered her a bolstering smile.
“Emma?” whispered Sean.
Looking back at the boy, she took his hands. “He said that, but it doesn’t mean it will happen.”
“He said he has some kind of proof.”
“He has some papers from a court in Chicago, and Judge Purchase will have to review them. If there’s a way, the judge might dismiss them as useless and ask Mr. Gilson for other information.”
“How can that man take Belinda away? She and Noah belong together. They are family.” Tears filled his eyes. “They are my family.”
She gathered him into her arms and held him while he cried. He had lost one sister to the maze of New York City. He had quickly come to consider Belinda another sister to ease his grief at losing Maeve, and he feared he would have her taken away too.
“What’s wrong with Sean?” came Belinda’s voice from the stairs. “Did he fall down and get hurt?”
Emma stiffened. Unlike Sean, Belinda had never been without her family. Would the little girl be able to understand the horror the rest of them shared? Quietly, Emma began, “Sean—”
He pulled away and, wiping away his tears, said in a raspy whisper, “I won’t say anything to her. I don’t want to scare her. I know how scared Maeve was when she thought we wouldn’t be together.”
Emma hugged him again. His longing for a family was so simple and pure … and honest. As she released him to let him run up the stairs to Belinda, she came to her feet. They were giggling by the time she climbed the stairs to go up and change.
She could not wait any longer to be honest with Noah. She must make him listen to her … before it was too late.
Emma stood as she heard the front door open. She had been sitting here, petting Queenie, who offered her a comforting purr, for more than an hour while Noah and Lewis went to talk again to the judge. When she saw Noah’s victorious smile as he let Lewis enter before him, she wanted to cheer and she wanted to cry. This was only the first, so very minor skirmish with the biggest battles still ahead of them. They might have won this one, but she feared what would happen to Belinda—and to all of them—if the little girl had to go with Gilson back to Chicago.
Noah grasped her at the waist and swung her around. As Butch barked wildly, he set her back onto her feet and kissed her. She gripped his shirt, wanting to stay within his arms, where she had been honest with him from the first.
But he released her as he said, “Judge Purchase agreed that having Belinda stay here with you to watch over her, sweetheart, was the best choice for now. He trusts you to do what’s right for her.”
“I’m glad.” She tried to hush the dog, but Butch was too excited.
“I’ll take him out back,” Lewis said. “C’mon, Butch. Time for you to run around with the puppy and chase some squirrels.”
“Thank you,” Emma replied.
Her uneasiness must have shown on her face because the sheriff said, “I think I’ll take a few minutes to enjoy the sun. It’s going to be a warm day.”
Emma did not wait for Lewis to go into the kitchen before she said, “Noah, we need to talk.”
“Yes, we do.” He put his arm around her shoulders and went with her into the parlor. When she closed the pocket doors, he said, “I never noticed those.”
“I don’t use them often, but we need to speak. Privately.”
He chuckled. “I can think of a few other ways to enjoy this privacy!”
“Noah, don’t!” She edged away from his hands that were reaching out to enfold her to him.
“Don’t?”
“I have been trying to tell you something important for days. You must let me tell you.” She sat on the sofa and motioned for him to take the rocking chair next to it.
Puzzlement dimmed his eyes, but he sat in the chair. “I’m listening, sweetheart,” he said, folding her fingers between his again.
“Really listen, Noah. Don’t try to seduce me with your kisses when I must tell you this.”
“You drive a hard bargain.” He flashed her an enticing grin that tempted her to throw aside her resolve to be honest with him and just surrender to passion once more. “You have my word. I won’t try to seduce you … now.”
Emma submerged the shiver of delight at his suggestion. She hoped he would still feel the same after what she had to tell him. “You know that I came here to Haven about seven years ago.”
“Yes.”
“I came here from Kansas.”
“Did you?” Impatience was creeping into his voice, and she knew he could not figure out why she was discussing thi
s when he wanted to devise a plan to halt Gilson’s scheme.
“I thought I’d be able to build a new life here.”
That got his attention. He scowled. “A new life? What was wrong with your old life?”
Knowing she must withhold none of the story from him, she looked directly into his eyes as she told him what she had hoped no one in Haven would ever hear. She did not play down her mistakes or how she had been foolish to believe Miles Cooper and let him draw her into his web of lies and crime. When she finished the tale with how she had fled in the middle of the night, she waited for Noah to say something. Instead he stared at her, as he had in the nightmare when he lifted the noose around her neck.
She quickly added, “This is why I hesitated when you asked me to marry you. I didn’t want to tell you about the past I had to create for myself to replace what I left behind in Kansas.”
“You were married to a bank robber?” he asked in not much more than a strained whisper.
“Yes, but I didn’t know he was a bank robber when I married him. Noah, you must believe that.”
“You were married to a bank robber?” he repeated as if he had not heard her. He released her hands and stood. He walked away as if he could not bear to look at her now that he knew the truth.
“I didn’t know he was a bank robber when I married him. You must believe me, Noah. I was a silly girl who believed he really loved me.”
“As I believed you loved me.”
She jumped to her feet. “I do love you, Noah.”
“Maybe you do. Maybe you don’t. I don’t know what to think about anything about you any longer. I thought I knew you, Emma.”
“You do. I am the woman you married. The woman who runs Delancy’s General Store and …” Her voice broke. “The woman who loves you. The woman who left Kansas is as dead as the man who betrayed her.”
“Betrayed? He might have betrayed you, but you’ve betrayed me.”
“Might have betrayed me? Are you suggesting I was Miles’s accomplice, as everyone else believed?” She fought to keep from dissolving into tears. She had dared to hope Noah would listen and accept the truth … unlike everyone else. Instead he was accepting the accusations … like everyone else. “Noah, I told you I didn’t know a thing about—”
He faced her. “I do know if Gilson doesn’t know of this, he will soon. He has a week before the hearing begins. His network of spies are most efficient, as you have seen—both the Pinkerton men he hires and those he can buy with his offers of rewards.” He scowled at the pocket doors. “He’ll set them to work to unearth every fact about you.”
“I know that. That’s why I knew I couldn’t delay telling you the truth any longer.”
“So you wouldn’t have been honest with me otherwise?”
Hurt by his sharp question, she fired back, “Would you have told me the truth about Belinda otherwise?”
“I’d planned to be honest with you when I asked you to marry me, but you were so blasted stubborn about agreeing to accept my proposal that everything else went out of my head.”
“How convenient for you to say that now!”
“But it’s the truth.” He closed the distance between them, but she stepped back, bumping into the sofa. The volatile fury in his eyes was now aimed at her, as she had hoped it would never be. “Emma, even you must admit that saying I was my brother’s daughter’s father instead of her uncle is a small lie in comparison with what you’ve been hiding.”
“I tried to tell you the night we were married and last night, but you halted me with your kisses.”
Emma was unsure if he had heard her, because he turned on his heel and walked to look out the front window. She saw his gaze shift toward the courthouse beyond the village green. Wanting to reach through his shock and hurt, she went to him. She slipped between him and the window. She put her hands on his arms. He did not shake them off, but continued to frown in silence.
“Noah, please listen to me. I know this is a horrifying story. I don’t know how I’d judge anyone else if I learned of it happening to them.” She tightened her grip on his arms. “But I was—I am innocent.”
“Then why did you run away?”
“I told you. They were set to lynch me, as they had Miles. How could I prove I was innocent if I was dead?”
“But you didn’t try to prove your innocence. You ran.”
“You make it sound as if I’d made the decision lightly. I tried for several days to get someone to listen to my pleas for justice. They could think only of their rage and need for vengeance. Hanging Miles wasn’t enough. Would hanging me have been enough? Or would they have gone after my family, too? I couldn’t stay and put them through that hell.”
“So you ran.”
Tears bubbled out of her eyes as she whispered, “I gave up my family and everything I had known to come here and use the money my grandfather had left me to buy the store.” Her chin rose as she saw the suspicion in his eyes that she had not believed she would ever see there. “No matter what anyone might think, I didn’t buy my store with any of the money Miles stole. I never even knew where he hid it.”
“So your name isn’t Delancy?”
“No, it was Emma Stephenson before I married Miles.” She hesitated, then said, “Delancy was my mother’s mother’s maiden name. I used it when I moved here because I thought maybe one day Leatrice and Howard—”
“Who?”
“My sister and brother. I thought that maybe one day they would try to find me and ask me to come back to Fort Pixton.” She bit her lower lip as another pair of tears flowed down her face. “For seven years, I hoped they would contact me, but they never have.”
He reached up to wipe away one of her tears, then, with a curse, walked away again. “What a disaster! I’d thought I might get a better hearing from a judge if I had a wife. So what did I find myself? A wife who is accused of being an accessory to a bank robber’s crimes! I might as well hand Belinda over to Gilson now and put my head in the noose.”
“Noah, you can’t give up. You must fight him.”
“Instead of running away as you did?”
She flinched at his barbed words. “You have people who will heed you. I didn’t. It’s not the same. You must stay and fight Gilson.”
“I intend to, but one of my best weapons against him is now a liability.”
“Best weapon?” She took one step toward him, then paused, shaking her head. “Is that why you married me, Noah? To help you in your battle to keep Belinda?”
He stared at her without speaking. Then he opened the pocket doors. She winced when she heard the porch door slam shut behind him.
Closing her eyes, she dammed the tears within them. “Miles Cooper, are you watching in hell now? Have you had your final laugh at my expense, or will this torment go on as it ruins the rest of my life?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Emma took Belinda’s hand and Sean’s as they stood at the end of the church service. When Noah took Belinda’s other hand, Emma struggled to keep her smile in place. Nothing must suggest they were not the happy family they had been even a few hours ago.
When Noah returned just as Gladys was putting breakfast on the table, he had said nothing to any of them. Gladys had chatted throughout the meal as if nothing seemed amiss, and Belinda had giggled with the housekeeper about something the two dogs had done. Sean was quiet and barely touched his eggs and bacon. Emma understood, because she was not hungry either.
Noah had been equally silent when they walked across the green with the sheriff in tow to attend church. Even during the service, he had not said anything, not even singing with the rest of the congregation. She knew he was deep in thought, but she could not guess what he thinking. She hesitated to ask. He might not tell her. Or he might, and her hopes that they could rebuild the trust between them would be decimated.
How could he think she had changed her heart simply because he had? Or had he changed his heart? Had he ever really loved her, or was she ju
st a way to help him keep Belinda?
As she watched him tip his hat to Mrs. Parker, she wondered if she had let Noah bamboozle her exactly as Miles had. She had promised herself she would never let another man delude her and her heart. She had kept that promise until her heart refused to listen any longer to sense. That rebellion had begun the moment Noah had first come into her life.
“Awful,” Mrs. Parker was saying as she stood directly behind Emma in the aisle. She edged in front of Emma and stopped, paying no attention to the frowns of those who were waiting to walk out of church. “Just awful to hear someone is trying to spread these horrible lies about Noah and that sweet child.”
“It is awful, isn’t it?” Emma replied, although she wanted to remind the sheriff’s mother how often she had repeated gossip that was untrue.
“I hear that rude man is staying at the hotel.”
“Yes.” She glanced to where Noah and the children were now halfway to the church door.
“What was Mrs. Riley thinking to allow him to take a room there?”
“It’s her business. She can’t turn away folks simply because she doesn’t like them.”
“I hope he doesn’t try to speak to me.” Mrs. Parker put one hand on her waist and shook her other hand to emphasize her words as she added, “I fear I could not be polite to such a despicable man.”
“Yes, I can understand how difficult that would be.” She saw Reverend Faulkner was talking to Sean as if today were no different from any other Sunday. Pushing past Mrs. Parker, she said over her shoulder, “Excuse me, Mrs. Parker.”
“Well!” she heard the older woman exclaim, but Emma did not turn to apologize. Circumventing any more questions would be wise, because Emma did not want to do anything to jeopardize the already precarious situation.
She realized she had been worrying needlessly. The rest of the townsfolk seemed eager to avoid her. Although she guessed it was because, for once, they did not know what to say to her, she never had felt so alone. Not even when she had left Kansas and traveled to the Mississippi and up the river to the Ohio and then followed the Ohio to this small town whose name offered what she was seeking. Then, when she had fled, she had known she had no other choice but hanging. Now she had so many choices, but all of them urged her to return to her husband’s arms.
Twice Blessed Page 24
