Lily felt a flush climb her cheeks and she looked with gratitude at the woman who spoke. “Then you haven’t hated me for the past years, Mama?”
Letitia shook her head. “You’re my daughter, Lily. I never hated you. Only myself for allowing you to sacrifice yourself for the rest of us.”
“He threatened to burn the house, didn’t he?” Jenny asked, her face pale, her voice strained. As Lily watched, Shay reached to take his wife’s hand and bent his head to whisper in her ear.
“I’ve been where you were,” Jenny said frankly. “And I made the same choice as you, Lily. I’d do it again if I had to.”
“Jenny—” Shay cut in and his wife held up her hand in a swift movement, halting his protest.
“I don’t mind if they know, Shay. They’re family, and I can’t help but stand by Lily and let her know that I understand her motives. I’m only thankful that I was left behind to clear up the mess after those horrid men rode off.”
“I wish it had been that simple for me,” Lily said. “Instead I was bundled up and taken on the longest trip of my life. The ragtag end of the colonel’s unit headed for home, and I was forced to live in the woods and sleep on the ground for more days and weeks than I want to remember. All along the way, he promised we’d be married once we got to his family home.”
She paused as if the words were too painful to speak aloud, and Morgan’s hand reached for hers, his fingers squeezing gently in comfort. “Instead I was taken to a house in the city and stayed there, almost a prisoner, wondering all the time when this wonderful wedding was going to take place. I had no place to go and no money to get there. It seemed hopeless to try to escape him by then. I had nowhere to go.
“Then the colonel came in one night and told me he was getting married. The ceremony wasn’t going to include me. He’d been affianced to a society woman before he went off to war and the wedding date had been set.” She paused and wet her lips, fearful of her family’s scorn when she revealed the climax of the story.
“I picked up a fireplace poker and smacked him with it.”
“Good for you,” Roan muttered beneath his breath, and Lily gave him a trembling smile.
“He fell on the floor and there was blood all over. I thought he was dead.”
“And was he?” Katherine asked, leaning forward in her chair.
Lily shook her head. “But I didn’t know that for two years. Until just a few weeks ago, in fact.”
“Where’d you go?” Jenny watched with tears running down her cheeks, and her hands were clenched now on the table.
“I headed out of the city.” Lily turned to her mother then. “I pawned your brooch, Mama, the one you gave me for my eighteenth birthday. I had to have money, and that was the only thing of value I owned.”
“Should have cleaned out the bastard’s pockets before you left,” her father said. And then grimaced as his wife cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Letty. Shouldn’t have said that.”
“I saved the money and found a job tending children. After that I traveled as far west as I could afford to go on my earnings and worked in a restaurant at a hotel. Next came another job with a woman who was having a baby and needed help with her children. Her husband paid me well and I stayed there for almost a year.”
“I might have known you’d head for home, first chance you got,” her mother murmured. “I just wish it hadn’t taken so long to get here.”
“I discovered that I could earn more by using my voice,” Lily told them. “All that Sunday morning choir singing came in handy when I found an ad in the paper in Chicago for singers for a fancy restaurant. They hired me and I stayed there for another year, till I earned enough to head South again. I still had the money from the brooch. I think I had dreams of redeeming it one day. But in the meantime it was my nest egg, insurance against the day when I’d be dead broke.
“That day came when I continued on to the Mississippi River and my funds were gone,” she said.
“I met her on a riverboat,” Morgan said, cutting in abruptly. “I knew from the first that Lily wasn’t the sort of woman to work her way down the river.”
“What sort of work?” Shay asked, even as his smile spoke of his trust in Lily’s integrity. “I’ll warrant she sang, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, she did,” Morgan said, and Lily knew he would not reveal more.
“I was on a job for the government, and Lily and I made an agreement. She wanted to come home and I needed a good cover for the work I was in the midst of. We got married as soon as we left the boat, and then traveled into Arkansas. We were there for a while, setting up the plan I’d hatched with the local lawman, and then Lily apparently thought…”
His pause was long and he glanced at the woman beside him. “I think Lily thought I didn’t love her enough to be married to her. She left me and went to Brightmoor. Found an old friend there and began singing again.” He looked around at her family and his silvered gaze was a warning.
“You’d have been proud of her. She looked like an angel up there in front of the crowds. But when I found her, I determined never to let her leave me again.” He grimaced as he began to tell the rest of the story.
“Lily had been featured on Wanted posters along the river.” At her mother’s gasp of horror, Morgan quickly gave the pertinent details of the encounter with Colonel Stanley Weston. “She got away from me again.” His words sounded harsh, his frustration with her evident. “And so I followed her,” he finished firmly.
From outside the open windows, a chorus of insects chirped and made themselves known, a mockingbird sang its repertoire into the stillness, and then LeRoy rose to his feet. “I suspect all of this will go no farther than this room,” he said firmly. “Lily’s home with us, her husband is here with her, and this is a family visit.”
“We won’t argue that story,” Shay said firmly. His arm had slid across the top of Jenny’s chair to enclose her shoulders in his embrace and she glanced up at him with a damp smile.
“You’ll get no quarrel with us,” Roan said, and Katherine nodded her agreement.
Lily sat down, feeling that her legs could no longer hold her erect. That they had accepted her, recognized the woman she’d been forced to become, and loved her still, was almost too much for her to absorb.
That Morgan had spoken up and glossed over the trip on the riverboat, not exposing her depths of despair to the family, only served to deepen her love for him.
At Katherine’s nudging, Morgan was sent to the veranda with Lily in tow as the rest of the women cleared table and joined Susanna in the kitchen. “I think she wants us to have some time alone,” he whispered as Lily preceded him out the door.
She led him to a swing that hung at the end of the long porch and he sat beside her. “Do you truly mean to stay on here?” Lily asked forthrightly, as if the query burned to be spoken aloud. “I don’t know what your plans are, Gage. I only trust they include me.”
“I’ll do whatever you want,” he told her. “I’d like to see my family one day, but I’m not in any hurry. They’ve gone this long without me hanging around. A while longer won’t hurt anything.”
“How long are we talking about? A year? Five or ten? Or maybe a month or so?”
“You tell me,” he said flatly. “I’ll stay here until the baby comes if that’s what you’d like, Lily. I don’t know if I want to haul you around the country right now. Or if you’d rather, we’ll take our time and go to Texas for a visit while you’re still able to travel, and see how the wind blows.”
“I’ve missed my mama,” Lily said in a small voice. “I think I’m going to need her over the next months.”
“That settles it then,” Morgan said firmly. “We’ll stay until you want to move on.”
Lily smiled at his words. “I think we need to be here long enough for you to get to know Shay, and I’d like to spend more time with Jenny.” She sobered as she thought of the man who’d been her eldest brother, had borne the name of Gaeton and exchang
ed it for Shay. It was a story she would hear one day, she decided.
“He’s been terribly scarred, hasn’t he? But Jenny doesn’t seem to give it a second thought. Did you know that the boy, Marshall, is Jenny’s child. He seems to consider Shay his private property, I noticed,” Lily said. “You’d think he was Shay’s own flesh and blood. And Jenny is so pretty. She really loves my brother, I think.”
“She’s not as pretty as you,” Morgan said with emphasis.
“How can you say that?” Lily scoffed. “She’s beautiful.”
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known,” he said. “Not just your face or hair or the body that makes me feel like a randy schoolboy.” His grin seemed a bit sheepish, but he plunged ahead, determined to finish the tribute he’d begun.
“It’s the woman who lives inside that form that means the most to me, Lily. You’re beautiful from the inside out. I know that sounds sort of old hat, but I mean it. It’s the woman who stood up to adversity and dared to make it on her own who holds my admiration.”
He watched as tears formed in her dark eyes, and his heart melted as her lips trembled. “Don’t cry, sweetheart. I can’t stand it if you cry.”
“Then don’t let me,” she said. “But know this, once and for all, Gage Morgan. I never knew another man but the one who took me away from my home. There’s been no one else for me but you. I swear it, as God is my witness.”
Morgan’s eyes closed for a moment, then he looked deeply into her gaze and murmured words of repentance. “I refused to face the facts, Lily, and I’m sorry. I think I knew all along that you were as close to innocent as a woman could be. I only wish I could claim the same. Will you forgive me?”
She nodded, her smile trembling at his words. “Kiss my tears away, Gage Morgan. Just love me with all your heart. For all the years to come.”
It was still a bit early for bedtime, but no one spoke a word as the two of them walked through the door and toward the wide staircase that rose to the second floor. They climbed it slowly, his arm encircling her waist, her head tilted upward, the better to meet his gaze. And then they made their way to the last bedroom at the end of the hall. “This is the beginning. The two of us making a fresh start,” Morgan said, unbuttoning her dress and sliding it to the floor.
“No,” she said with a quick shake of her head, resting her hand on the rise of her stomach. “This is the beginning. From now on it’s the three of us, Gage.”
“However you want to slice it, lady, this is bound to be the happiest night of my life. Guaranteed.”
Epilogue
Christmas Eve
The house seemed to have shrunk over the past two days. The appearance of a huge pine tree in the parlor made shifting furniture a necessity, and the subsequent clutter involved in readying the whole house for Christmas had taken every available hand to clean up.
Shay and Jenny had arrived yesterday, with her father and their son, Marshall, in the back of the surrey while Mattie slept on her mother’s lap. The bedrooms on the second floor were full, almost to overflowing, with Marshall ensconced in Jeremy’s bed, a fact that delighted both small boys.
Celebrating a holiday was more fun with family, and this Christmas was bound to be the best Lily had ever known. For if she was any judge, there might be a new family member joining the clan before Christmas morning.
She’d wakened early on, restless and vaguely aware of a backache. Susanna had noticed right off, as soon as Lily made an appearance in the kitchen to help with preparing breakfast. It was a fact that didn’t surprise Lily, and she only smiled as Katherine cast her a long look.
“It’s the baby coming, isn’t it?” she’d whispered as they prepared to carry breakfast into the big dining room table. And then she’d smiled, that blinding, brilliant smile that transfixed those who saw its appearance, no matter how long they knew the woman. And Lily was no exception. Katherine was all she’d ever wished for as a sister. Jenny had been a bonus, each visit bringing them closer to forming the same kind of union as she shared with Roan’s wife.
Now Lily sat beside Morgan at the table and spoke brightly of holiday excitement, teasing Roan because he hadn’t wrapped Katherine’s gift as yet, and agreeing with Letitia that certainly turkey was holiday fare. Privately, LeRoy had confided that he was rather partial to ham, but no one was about to tell Letitia that her menu was less than perfect.
Morgan was quiet, and then in the midst of the gaiety that filled the room, he reached for her, enclosing her fingers in his palm. “Are you all right?” he asked softly, lifting her hand to his lips, and looking at her from beneath lowered lids. “You didn’t sleep well, Lily. Are you hurting somewhere?”
Morgan had spent the past months watching her like a hawk, a situation that Katherine assured her was normal. Menfolk fussed over their wives during the long months of pregnancy, she’d said, though Lily privately thought that not all men fit that criteria.
“I’m just a little queasy this morning,” she answered lightly. “My back aches a bit, but I’ll be fine.”
“Is it time, do you think?” he asked, his gaze sharpening on her, the silver-gray of his eyes warming as he seemed to consider the possibility of becoming a father today.
“I hadn’t planned on spending Christmas in bed,” she murmured ruefully, “but I think it’s a distinct possibility.” Her free hand moved to rub fretfully at the lowest area of her belly as a niggling cramp settled there. “I don’t think I’d better eat much more,” she said thoughtfully. “Susanna said that once I began this process I’d do well to stick to tea and toast.” She’d kept her voice to a whisper, but her tension seemed to draw attention.
From the foot of the table, Letitia eyed her daughter with concern. “I declare, you don’t look a bit well this morning, Lily. Are you under the weather?” It was a phrase that had been a synonym for many conditions in Letitia’s vocabulary, and Lily smiled a bit, aware that her mother was honing in for a private word with her daughter.
“I’m fine, Mama,” she said quickly. “Just a little tired. I didn’t sleep well.”
“Well, maybe you’d best go up and take a rest this morning,” Letitia said firmly. “We want you to be in good form tomorrow.”
“You’ll no doubt feel better by morning,” Katherine said in a low voice from Lily’s other side. “You’d might as well tell Mama,” she told Lily with a grin. “She’s persistent as all get-out.”
Lily sighed. “You’re probably right.” She looked at her mother again and tossed a verbal firecracker into the middle of the general conversation that seemed to have come to a sudden halt. “I believe I’ll just go up and get ready to have a baby.”
Bedlam struck. LeRoy pushed his chair back and rose hastily. Lily thought he hadn’t been so quick to move in years. His steps carried him to her side, and he frowned down at Morgan. “Why is this girl sitting here at the breakfast table when she’s about ready to give birth?” he asked sternly.
Morgan merely shrugged. “I only do as she tells me, sir. You ought to know by now that Lily rules the roost where I’m concerned.”
Almost choking on her laughter, Lily pushed her plate away and got to her feet, a rather lengthy process involving levering herself up on the table edge. “I believe I’ll take my leave now,” she said. “Now that we’ve all had a good laugh.” Her look toward Morgan was clearly of the wait-till-I-get-you-alone variety and Katherine hooted with a total lack of dignity.
Yet, it was Katherine and Jenny who settled Lily in her bed several hours later. They’d walked for a time, up and down the long hallway on the first floor, then moving their arena to the bedroom area. “I’m worn out,” Jenny said with a yawn, “and I’m not even the one having this baby.”
“Well, you’d better stay awake for the big event,” Lily told her. “I’m hoping for some support from the both of you.”
“You’ll have it,” Katherine said. “If Morgan lets us stay in the room.”
“Morgan? He won’t w
ant to get too close to this production,” Lily predicted.
And found her words to be contrary to Morgan’s own expectations.
“I’m going to be with you,” he said firmly. “Shay was with Jenny when she had Mattie. Just ask him.”
Shay had just poked his head in the door, announcing himself a delegation for the men who waited belowstairs, to get a progress report. Now he shrugged his shoulders, and smiled, nodding his agreement with Morgan’s announcement. Lily considered that argument lost, and knew a sense of relief that Morgan would not forsake her today.
She shot a look at the dark, strangely handsome man who, like herself, had chosen a new name for himself. “I’ll just go back downstairs,” Shay said, as if relieved to be excused from the proceedings. “Letitia’s on her way up, by the way.”
Lily felt surrounded by her family, including the sisters gained through marriage, not to mention having added a niece and three nephews in one fell swoop. It had been no accident that they’d met and things had come to pass in good order, Morgan had told her. All things work according to a plan, he’d said, including their meeting and the events that led them both to this place.
She settled in the bed, laughing as Susanna shooed everyone aside while she made up the proper arrangement for a birthing. Draw sheets must be stretched just so, and thick pads she’d sewn over the past weeks kept handy for the event. Two ropes were looped over the posts at the foot of the bed and Jenny explained their use, waving a hand as though the labor was of little import, and only the results were worth discussing.
And then the aching back and the clenching of muscles beneath her belly began to mesh into a form of pain designed to bring her child into the world, and Lily was caught up in the process. She did as Susanna bade her, allowed Morgan to rub her back, drank the tea Katherine and Letitia offered as a panacea for the pain, and clutched Jenny’s poor hands until they both decided the ropes would bear up under bruises better than Jenny’s fingers.
The Marriage Agreement Page 27
