Summer Moon

by Jill Marie Landis

  He looked as if he was going to walk out without another word, but then he paused in the door to the hallway. “Jeb Cooley is my father’s lawyer. He’s not in Lone Star right now, but I’ll make certain that you get paid each month. Charm, too, if she stays on as cook. Anything you want—food, clothes, whatever you need for yourself or the boy, or Charm—tell Harrison Barker at the Mercantile, and you’ll have it. I’ll stop and leave credit instructions with him.” He looked at the damp bodice of her gown. “I mean it—don’t hesitate to buy whatever you need.”

  Kate was too stunned to speak as he walked out into the hall. She rushed after him, caught him by the sleeve. “Reed, wait.”

  He frowned down at her hand. “What is it?”

  She let go. “Will you be well enough to leave in a week?”

  His hand went to his injured shoulder. “I’ll heal no matter where I am.”

  “What about Daniel? Are you simply going to walk out on him? He needs you right now more than the Rangers do.”

  “You seem to be doing all right by him.”

  “But, it’s not the same. I’m hired help. He needs you. You’re his father.”

  Reed’s expression immediately shuttered. His eyes iced over.

  What terrible pain lodged in his heart kept him from wanting to be with his son after all these years? She fought to reach him. “I didn’t just teach at Saint Perpetua’s. I was raised at the orphanage. My mother left me there and walked out of my life. I’ll never forget that night as long as I live, the emptiness I felt, the bottomless fear. I blamed myself. I thought that if I had only been better, if I hadn’t gotten sick and slowed her down, that she wouldn’t have done it. Don’t abandon Daniel just because he’s been with the Comanche. None of this was his fault.”

  She had hit a raw nerve. His hands curled into tight fists. He hesitated before he spoke, stood with his forehead creased in thought, his expression darkly fierce. He drew a long breath, slowly let it go. “I’m giving you leave to do with him as you see fit,” he told her. “You think this is easy for me, to see him the way he is now? To know what he’s been through? It’s my fault he was captured that night. I left him and his mother alone in a cabin on the edge of the ranch in what had become hostile territory.”

  Kate waited, sensing he had more to say, stunned by his startling admission of guilt.

  The wind howled across the prairie, sighed beneath the eaves of the house, breaking the strained silence, echoing his shame and deep-seated pain. He bowed his head, stared at his boots. Then he met her eyes with raw, unflinching honesty. “I don’t know that Daniel’s my son.”

  “But . . . he looks exactly like the child in the photograph.”

  “I don’t mean that he isn’t the same boy stolen from Becky and me. What I’m saying is that I don’t know that the boy she gave birth to was my own flesh and blood.”

  Kate’s hand went to her throat. “What?”

  “The night she died, Becky told me that Daniel wasn’t mine. She claimed another man fathered him.”

  “Oh, Reed.”

  Resurrected pain left an indelible brand on his features, haunted his eyes. Compelled to move closer, she stepped up to him. She tried to imagine what he must have gone through after Becky’s terrible revelation. Any man would have been devastated. His only son had been taken from him by his wife’s confession of adultery, then captured by Comanche raiders. The light of his life had been taken from him not once, but twice that night.

  The weight of his words hung heavy on the air around them in the empty hallway. Kate wished there were something she could do or say to ease his pain. Had he been a child, she could have held him, rocked him, told him everything would be fine. But what could she possibly say that might ease his guilt and pain? Especially if he was guilty of leaving them to their fates.

  There were no words, no answers. Without thinking, she reached for his hand, expecting him to shrug her off. As if numb to her touch, he didn’t even react. She held on tight, giving him the only thing that she could give, silent understanding.

  She wondered how his wife could have betrayed him, wondered with whom. “Did you know him?” Her question was hushed, barely uttered.

  “Yeah. Yeah I knew him.” He swallowed, stared straight at the opposite wall. “It was my father.”

  Reeling, Kate closed her eyes. Daniel looked like Reed, but then, Reed favored his father, too. She had mistakenly thought that his father had been the man in the photograph she had received.

  “Your father?” She still couldn’t believe it.

  “That’s what Becky claimed. After we were married, we lived here at the house. She told me they had been lovers off and on since that time. She said I wasn’t half the man my father was, and that Daniel was his for certain. A few minutes later I left to go see if I could help the neighbors, but only after convincing myself that Becky and Daniel would be all right that night—but they weren’t.”

  He was holding her hand so tight, squeezing so hard it was growing uncomfortable, but she didn’t pull away.

  “She shot herself outside the cabin door. I wasn’t certain what happened to Daniel at first. His body wasn’t there. I didn’t know if Becky might have killed him to keep him from being captured. I nearly went crazy. Do you have any idea what it’s like to sift through the ashes of your home looking for what might be left of a three-year-old? When I never found a trace, I started tracking the war party. There had been four homesteads attacked that night, so the Rangers were called in to take up the chase. I joined up then and there. We never found Daniel.”

  “What about your father? Did you ask him if what Becky said was true?”

  “Of course, but he denied it. Claimed she only said it to hurt me, to drive him and me farther apart. I told him that I thought he was capable of it and that he would have slept with her just to prove that he had been right about her in the first place. He said if it would change my mind about her that he would have. We argued. I left to join the Rangers and never saw him again.”

  “But you brought Daniel back to Lone Star. Why?”

  “For the same reason I was so hellbent on rescuing him right after he was captured. I wanted my father to swear on Daniel’s life, to tell me to my face that he never touched Becky. That there was no chance in hell Daniel was his.”

  He looked down, realized he was rubbing his thumb across the back of her hand. It settled him to talk to her, calmed him. She was listening to him with rapt attention. Her expression told him that she cared about what he had to say, that his story greatly disturbed her.

  He paused, leaned back against the wall, empty, hollowed out by hurt and betrayal. “When I walked back into this house that day, I thought I would finally learn the truth.”

  “But your father was dead.”

  “And now I’ll never know.”

  Her intense anger surprised him. “I’m glad he’s dead. I’m glad that I never met him face-to-face. When I think of what he did to me, of how he tried to use me to lure you home, it makes me furious. After everything you just told me, I can understand how you could believe he might have fathered Daniel, and I know how much you could hate him, and me—or anyone else connected to him. But please believe me. I would never have agreed to such a twisted plan.”

  “I know. I’ve read your letters.”

  She went perfectly still.

  “You what?”

  “I read your letters. The ones you wrote to my father.”

  “My letters?” She tried to pull her hand away. “You read them all?”

  “Sofia gave them to me before she left.”

  Kate was shaken to the quick.

  He knows.

  He knows all about my mother.

  He knew about the desperation that made her begin her correspondence in the first place. Again, she tried to take her hand back, but he wouldn’t let go.

  “I know that’s why you befriended Charm so easily, when any other woman in your position would not have and why you don’t
hold what she is against her,” he explained. “You took to Daniel because you know better than most what he must be going through, what it feels like to be a child alone in strange surroundings.”

  She finally managed to wrest her hand from his grasp, but she didn’t walk away. He knew all of it. He knew about her and her foolish dreams. All the reasons she had given for answering his father’s advertisement. He knew her childhood fancies of a home of her own, a place she could care for and cherish. A safe haven where she had hoped to raise children. “It’s not fair, you know,” she said aloud.

  “What’s that?”

  “You know all about me, but I know next to nothing except what they chose to tell me about you. I only know what your father wanted me to know.”

  “I just told you how it was with me and Becky. There’s not much else to tell.” He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced back into the kitchen when someone knocked at the back door.

  “That’d be Jonah.” Reed sounded as tired as he looked.

  “You need some rest. I need to see about supper.”

  “Kate, I’m sorry I ruffled your feathers, but—”

  She held up a hand and stopped him cold. “I’d thank you not to refer to me as some sort of fowl.”

  Jonah knocked again. Reed stepped around her and headed for the door. “Hell, Kate. Those letters were addressed to me. I’m the one you thought you were writing to, so where’s the harm?” He swung the door open.

  Jonah was standing there with his hat in his hand, looking sheepish, ready to ride. “Well, I’ll be going,” the captain told them, glancing from one to the other. “Just in time, too.”

  “Bye, Jonah. I’ll see you soon,” Reed said.

  Jonah nodded and then bobbed his head to Kate. “Adiós, ma’am.”

  “Good-bye, Captain. It was nice to meet you. Don’t worry about Charm. She’ll be fine.”

  “No, ma’am, I sure won’t. Thank you, ma’am.” He told Reed good-bye and walked away.

  Reed closed the door, and they were face-to-face again.

  When Kate noticed the dark circles of fatigue beneath his eyes, she felt like a shrew. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep before supper? This is the first time you’ve been up all day. I’ll wake you when it’s ready.”

  “I’m sorry about the letters. I didn’t think you would mind.”

  “If you really thought that, you would have told me you read them before now,” she said softly.

  He closed the space between them until they were standing toe-to-toe. She caught her breath, afraid he was going to kiss her again, knowing she did not have the will to resist.

  It took every ounce of waning fortitude that he had not to kiss her.

  Reed found himself wishing he had ridden off with Jonah and taken himself out of temptation’s way. Now he was going to have to live with it. He was going to be under the same roof with Kate for at least another week.

  She was right. He had a feeling she would resent his reading her letters, which is exactly why he hadn’t told her before. Reading them had made him feel like he was peering into the windows of her soul without permission. He didn’t know which bothered him more, his intrusion or the look of betrayal on her face.

  First his father and Sofia, now him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. He really was. “Would you like to have them back?”

  “What?” she whispered, staring up into his eyes.

  “Your letters.”

  She shrugged and sounded sad. “What does it matter now? I don’t want them anymore. They’ll only remind me of something I would rather forget.”

  She had come to Texas with stars in her eyes, and her hopes had been dashed. He felt bad enough about what happened right now to see if maybe those stars were still there, banked like embers that, with a little attention, just might flare to life.

  But he wasn’t a man to start something he couldn’t finish, so he forced himself to step away.

  “I think I’ll go take that nap you suggested,” he told her.

  He couldn’t tell if she was relieved or disappointed when he turned and walked away.

  21

  There were still three days left in May, but Texas nights were already so hot that Kate found it hard to sleep. She wondered how she would ever survive July and August.

  She had taken refuge in her room with all her windows raised; a book of poetry she had found in the parlor bookcase rested open on her lap. About to give up and turn down the light, hoping that darkness might make the room seem cooler, she was reaching for the lamp when she heard Daniel yell.

  Without taking time to grab her robe, she whipped open her bedroom door and started running down the hall. The deep flounce around the bottom of her nightgown billowed. Her long braid swayed like a pendulum against her back.

  Loud, angry Comanche words echoed down the hall. She was about to rush into Daniel’s room but stopped on the threshold the minute she realized that Reed was already there.

  Reed, in fact, was the target of the boy’s curses. Kate’s hand went to her throat. Daniel had somehow gotten out of bed and managed to crawl, hop, or drag himself over to one of the open windows. He was clinging with his arms looped over the sill, half in and half out.

  Reed had the tail of the boy’s nightshirt in his fist and appeared willing to let Daniel vent his rage. “Go ahead and holler all you want, you’re not going anywhere,” Reed told the frustrated child. “I don’t think you really want to fall out on your head anyway. This is all for show.”

  Kate’s first instinct was to step in and help him calm the boy but seeing Reed finally trying to deal with his son kept her from reacting. Knowing that she was running out of time, she had tried all week to get him to sit with Daniel, to carry a meal up to him, or to read to him the way she had started to do—but Reed had either refused outright or found some excuse not to be with the boy.

  Fearing Reed would see her, she stepped back into the hall and let him handle Daniel’s rage, even though it appeared that his solution was to let the boy yell his lungs out. Every now and again Daniel would try to kick Reed away with his good leg while still clinging to the sill.

  Charm came running down the hall half-naked with her curly hair standing out around her head. Kate took one look at the short black chemise that barely covered her breasts and at the girl’s long, bare legs and was speechless.

  “What’s wrong?” Charm whispered, trying to peer around Kate into Daniel’s room.

  “It’s all right,” Kate whispered back. “Reed’s with him.”

  Charm rubbed her eyes and smiled a sleepy smile. “Good. It’s about time.” She turned around and headed back to her room without giving the situation a second thought.

  Reed waited, not so patiently, until the boy slowly quieted, then Kate saw him reach down and pick Daniel up by his waist and none-too-gently deposit him on the bed. Then he went over to the open window, closed and locked the bottom pane. With a bit of pulling and banging on the frame, he got the window to open from the top, where Daniel could not reach it.

  While Reed was moving from window to window in Daniel’s room, reaching up to open them and then lock the bottom halves shut, Kate stepped farther away from the door and waited for him in the hall.

  She hoped that Reed would stay and talk to Daniel now that the boy was calm again, but almost as soon as the pounding stopped, he stepped out into the hall. He closed Daniel’s door and turned the key in the lock.

  “Is everything all right?” Kate tried to act as if she had just come moseying down the hall.

  One of his dark brows arched. She could tell that he knew very well that she would not have waited to see what was bothering her charge.

  “Everything’s all right now. I found Daniel hanging out of the window. He had a fit when I tried to pull him back in, so I let him get it over with. He’s back in bed but not very happy about it. I opened the windows from the top so he can’t climb out.”

  She was tempted to go in and se
e if Daniel was indeed settled, but she wanted Reed to have the last word this time.

  Reed glanced back at the door. “We can’t keep him locked up forever.”

  “He’s changing, Reed. He really is. Slowly, but surely.”

  “Yeah? Well, I don’t see it.”

  “Because you aren’t with him enough. He lets me read to him. Charm sits with him and bakes him cookies, which, by the way, he loves. You would know that if you spent some time with him.”

  He walked down the hall to the room at the end, one that had been his father’s office. She followed him, bound and determined not to let him ignore her this time. As he strode inside, Kate lingered in the doorway, watched him walk over to the massive wooden desk that shared stacks of papers and receipts with a fine crystal cigar humidor and a matching inkwell. A sterling letter opener lay amid the clutter.

  She had come in once to dust, taken one look at the desk, and decided not to disturb anything and closed the door. Reed walked over to a tea cart beneath the window, where a collection of crystal decanters was gathered along with an array of glasses. He picked up a bottle of amber liquid, carefully laid the top aside, and poured himself half a tumbler full.

  Kate watched him as he raised the glass to his lips and took a sip. He was still dressed, and from the looks of it, he had been seated in the deep leather chair, working at the desk earlier. He wore his hair long enough to tease his shirt collar. It was neatly trimmed, thick and dark. She found herself taking in every detail, from his height to his confident stance to the way his strong hand dwarfed the crystal tumbler.

  Over the past week they had trodden carefully around each other. Over time she had grown used to being near him, used to the differences of living with a man as opposed to a houseful of women.

  His footsteps were always loud and firm, filling the house with sound whenever he was about. His temper was mercurial. While recovering from his wounds, he spent his time lost in deep thought, his mind taking him places he was not willing to discuss.