Secret Hearts

by Duncan, Alice

  Yes, he decided, he would. The notion held no appeal.

  As he slowly trudged up the stairs, his mind kept churning over the same problem and ending up in the same conclusionless muddle. Then he remembered the wire Scruggs had handed him before supper and pulled it out of his pocket. Turning it over in his hands, he stood in front of Claire’s door, undecided.

  Then, concluding he was being idiotic about this whole thing, he rapped sharply on her door.

  “Claire? Claire, there’s a telegram for you.”

  Silence greeted his announcement. He cleared his throat and tried again.

  “Claire, please come to the door. There’s a telegram for you from town, and we need to talk.”

  Nothing.

  Tom stood at the door and frowned. Was she in there and avoiding him? Maybe she’d gone out for a walk. No; it was pitch black outside and cold as a witch’s— Well, anyway, he was pretty sure she hadn’t gone out walking.

  “Claire,” he called, more loudly.

  Nothing.

  This had been a hard day for Tom. His entire very satisfying new life had been kicked topsy-turvy by the woman who wasn’t answering his knock, the same woman who had claimed to love him not three days hence. Frustrated, he closed his fist and pounded on the door once, hard.

  Not so much as a rustle of petticoats could he hear from the other side of that blasted closed door.

  “Claire! Damn it! Here’s a telegraph message for you. If you won’t speak to me, at least look at your wire!”

  Furious when he got no response from this last caustic command, Tom declared, “Well, then, if you don’t care what it says, I’ll open it myself and tell you.”

  Knowing he was behaving like a thwarted schoolboy, Tom nevertheless yanked the wire out of his pocket and ripped it open. “Here. It says, ‘Miss Montague, I regret that there is no legal way I can—’”

  Tom stopped reading aloud and finished scanning the message silently. Then he looked at the door. “Claire?” He rapped several times, loudly. “Claire, why did you wire Oliphant to direct your royalties to my bank account?”

  The unearthly silence finally made Tom’s brittle patience snap. With one final thud on Claire’s door with his fist, he barked, “Damn it, if you won’t come out here and talk to me, I’ll just come in there.”

  Although he expected he would have to break the door down since Claire was obviously planning to out-stubborn him, Tom rattled the knob only to have it unlatch silently. He pushed lightly and the door swung open without a sound. Of course. There wasn’t a door at Partington Place that squeaked, because Claire saw to them herself, every week, like clockwork.

  He stood in the hallway for a moment or two, as still as a statue, dread gradually overcoming anger in his chest. Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the room. It was neat as a pin and empty of Claire. He sucked in a breath and held it, suddenly terrified.

  When he saw the carpetbag, packed and set neatly on Claire’s bed, the last faint spark of hope in his heart sputtered and died. Aching, he walked to the bed, took up the note Claire had left on the bag, and read his name scripted in Claire’s fine hand on the envelope.

  His hands trembled when he opened it. He read it silently, unable to make a sound for the grief welling up inside him.

  “Dear Tom,” the letter read, “Thank you for everything. You have been kinder to me than I deserve. Please believe me when I say I did not mean to hurt you with my books. They were written out of love, evidently misguided, and I regret any pain they may have caused. I realize I was wrong not to have consulted you before I used you as my model, and not to have told you about my authorship after we’d met. I hope one day you will forgive me. I shall send for my bag when I am established elsewhere. May God bless you and keep you. You will always have my heart.

  Claire.”

  Tom swallowed around a tremendous ache in the back of his throat. His eyes stung and his head felt heavy. He lifted a hand and pressed his forehead as if that could keep the pain contained.

  She’d left him. He’d driven her off. He’d hurt her, denounced the one thing she’d tried to give him, and she’d left him.

  He whispered, “Oh, Claire,” once, and then clamped his mouth shut for fear the next thing to emerge would be a sob.

  Tom didn’t know how long he stood there, dumbly staring at Claire’s note. It seemed like hours. However long it was, he was eventually jolted out of his stupor by the clanging of the front doorbell.

  Claire, he thought, his heart soaring for a minute before it crashed to earth again. It couldn’t be Claire. She wouldn’t ring the bell.

  Unless she’d left her key behind. With that thought buoying him, Tom raced from her room, down the stairs, and sent Scruggs reeling against the wall when he dashed past him and wrenched the front door open.

  “Claire!” he shouted into the face of the tall, portly, mustachioed gentleman who stood on the porch.

  The gent smiled an oily, seductive smile that stabbed Tom in the heart as surely as if the fellow had used a knife. “We meet again, Mr. Partington.”

  Tom had seen his emotions in color before a couple of times before. Once, in the heat of battle during the war, he’d viewed life through an orange haze. Once while being pursued by a band of Cheyenne warriors, he’d seen the world in shades of purple.

  When he saw the mustachioed gentleman who had been walking away from a frightened Claire on the street of Pyrite Springs three months before, Tom’s world suddenly turned red.

  The man’s greasy smile fled, his eyes bugged, and his mouth opened into a startled “O” when Tom grabbed him by the throat and began to throttle him.

  “Where is she? Where is she, damn you to eternal hell! What the devil have you done with Claire?”

  It took the combined efforts of Scruggs, Jedediah Silver, and a terrified Sylvester Addison-Addison to drag Tom away from Claude Montague before he could kill him on the front porch of Partington Place.

  # # #

  “I tell you, I’m Claire’s father.” Claude took another gulp of brandy and massaged his Adam’s apple tenderly, as if he wasn’t quite sure Tom hadn’t damaged it beyond redemption.

  Tom ran his fingers through his hair. He had consigned Jedediah and Sylvester to the parlor, and had taken Claude into his library. He didn’t relish an audience while he questioned this slippery specimen who, he feared, had more to do with Claire’s odd behavior than he’d ever guessed. Her father! And he’d believed they were lovers, which would have been bad enough. But her father! Good heavens.

  “Why didn’t she tell me?” His voice sounded pathetic. For good reason. He felt pathetic.

  Rattled out of his usual aplomb, Claude swallowed another mouthful of brandy and muttered, “Undoubtedly because she hates me.”

  “What?” Tom stopped pacing and stared at Claude. He couldn’t imagine his Claire hating anybody, much less her father. Not even if he was this pernicious fellow.

  Realizing how baldly he had declared his daughter’s dislike, the wily Claude eyed Tom and seemed to draw himself together. “That is to say, our family life was disrupted when Claire was quite young, you see. We, er, fell upon hard times and I greatly fear Claire blamed me.” He splayed a plump hand over his chest and managed to look put-upon.

  Tom thinned his gaze and allowed himself to stop pacing and take in the full glory of Claude Montague. He remembered the sly fellow from the night they’d drunk together in the saloon. The man was a bottomless well of amusing anecdotes, but Tom hadn’t trusted him then, and he didn’t trust him now.

  He shook his head. “No. You said she hated you. Why does she hate you? It can’t be just because you had a hard time making a living. Claire wouldn’t hate anybody without a good reason.”

  Rubbing his throat again, Claude adopted a melancholy expression. “I regret to say that Claire believed herself to be above her surroundings. I fear it has always been a grave fault in her, Mr. Partington. We, er, experienced a few hard times during and after t
he war, you see. Claire’s dear mother passed on, and I was obliged to take up employment beneath my capabilities.”

  Eyeing him slantwise, Tom asked, “And what employment was that, pray tell, Mr. Montague?”

  Claude lifted his chin, opening and closing his mouth several times as if testing to make sure his jaw still worked. Tom held onto his patience only by force of will.

  At last Claude said, “For several years, my son and daughter and I traveled the roads, Mr. Partington. It was a perilous life, but I provided for my children the only way I could.”

  On the verge of throttling him again, Tom said very tightly, “What exactly do you mean, you traveled the roads.”

  “I’m afraid ours wasn’t a settled life. We led a rather Gypsy-like existence.”

  “What the hell did you do, damn it?”

  Claude, never much for bravery, squeaked and pushed himself back against the sofa cushions. His answer came fast, propelled by fear. “We traveled in a medicine show wagon.”

  Tom felt his eyes bulge. “You’re a medicine-show quack?”

  Striving for dignity, Claude said smoothly, “I prefer to think of myself as an entertainer.”

  “An entertainer? A snake-oil salesman?” Recollecting the few times he’d encountered medicine-show swindlers, members of a species he considered particularly loathsome, Tom said, “You dragged your daughter around with you in a wagon while you bilked people out of their hard-earned money by selling them worthless remedies? You call that entertainment?”

  Miffed, Claude said, “I was very entertaining, as a matter of fact.”

  Tom’s hands clenched and unclenched. He was finding it difficult to keep them from Claude’s throat. He’d witnessed the result of a few medicine men in his day. Claude Montague and those like him sold gullible, sometimes seriously ill, settlers medicines made from alcohol and doctored with everything from peppermint oil to rattlesnake venom. He’d helped bury more than one victim of a plausible medicine-man’s “sure cure.” He despised Claude Montague and fakers like him.

  Things were beginning to make a terrible kind of sense to him. “I suppose you used your children in your act.”

  “It wasn’t an act!”

  “Of course not. Let me guess. You dressed them in rags and made them pretend to be strangers. Then when you dosed them with your so-called cure, they were supposed to pretend to get better. They’d throw their crutches away and miraculously walk without a limp or be cured of pneumonia. Is that the sort of life you gave your children, Mr. Montague?”

  It didn’t look as though Claude quite trusted Tom’s tone of voice, which was thin and strained. He sidled down the sofa, away from his host, as though he aimed to get as close to the door as he could in case Tom sprang at him. “Claire was never any good at the act. When she was older, she proved to be a little more useful, although she wasn’t a very obedient child, I’m afraid.”

  Ignoring the last of Claude’s whine, Tom snapped, “What do you mean, she was more useful when she was older?”

  “Well, even then, she wasn’t worth much.” Claude frowned at his fingernails and didn’t see Tom stiffen. “She was such a prissy little prude. And such a snob. She didn’t approve of the costumes she had to wear.”

  “What kinds of costumes?”

  Claude flung a hand in the air. “Well, you know, she was female and therefore could have been an asset to the show, even if she was a string bean. Those costumes cost a fortune, too.” He sounded very disgruntled. “If she’d had any family feeling at all, she would have realized that a little flirting would only have helped.”

  Tom tried to say “flirting,” but his tongue wouldn’t work. He stared at Claude Montague and endeavored to imagine his sweet Claire in this monster’s clutches.

  Things began to click into place in his brain. Claire’s terror of being thought a loose woman, her rattlesnake hair, her dull brown dresses, her belief that she was somehow unworthy, her trying so hard to be prim and proper. Her finding a hero in the man his uncle had told her Tom Partington was, a man who was the exact opposite of her father. Her turning Tom into a dime novel idol.

  God save him. He closed his eyes for a moment, hurting for Claire. The very idea of her being used by this vile charlatan in his devious medicine show was repugnant to him. How she must have hated it! How his upright, splendid, wonderful Claire must have felt, being used by this—this—Tom couldn’t think of a word bad enough to describe Claude Montague.

  And Tom had made the woman his mistress! And condemned her for writing those books. His wonderful Claire. The only woman on the face of the earth he could ever love. He admitted it to himself now without even a hitch in his heart. He loved her. Of course, he did. She exemplified everything he’d ever valued in a human being.

  Well, by God, he was going to get her back. He was going to go after her and find her and bring he home and marry her and never let her go again.

  He would deal with her father later.

  Striding to the door, he yanked it open and bellowed, “Jed! Addison! Get in here right now!” Then he turned and pinned Claude Montague with a look that made the old fraud shrink into the sofa cushions again.

  “My friends are going to stay here with you, Mr. Montague. They’re going to stay here until I find Claire and bring her back. Then we’re going to get to the bottom of this. If you manage to escape before I come back, I’ll track you down and kill you.” He gave Claude a smile that had been known to wither braver men than Claire’s father. “I’m an ace scout, you know.”

  He had expected Sylvester to fuss at him and was prepared to deal with the simpering poltroon in no uncertain terms. He was, therefore, surprised but gratified when Sylvester, upon being apprised of the situation, cried, “Splendid! What an opportunity! I’ve longed for this moment!”

  “You have?”

  “God, yes. Ever since Claire told Dianthe and me about her father, I’ve been longing to interview him.”

  “You knew this man was her father?”

  “Well, not exactly. But she’d told us that her father was a vile confidence trickster.”

  “I beg your pardon!” Claude drew himself up and glared at Sylvester.”

  Tom shook his head. “Damn. She told everybody in the world but me, I guess.”

  “She didn’t tell me,” said Jedediah helpfully.

  Tom wrapped his woolen scarf around his neck and began to draw on his riding gloves. “I plan to get the whole story out of her, but I don’t want this prime article to get away before I do. Depending on what Claire wants me to do with him, I may let him go later.”

  Claude looked mortally offended and not a little frightened, but he didn’t offer up an objection until after the door slammed shut behind Tom. Then he eyed his captors carefully before deciding Sylvester looked as though he’d be more responsive to his tales of woe than the disapproving, stuffy Jedediah Silver.

  Chapter 20

  It had gone dark an hour ago, although some light crept through the window from the lantern secured outside the Wells Fargo coach. Mostly, though, Claire saw nothing but her own black visions as she stared out into the night.

  Thank God she’d been able to purchase passage on the last stage to Marysville. She had no idea what she’d do once she got there, but she expected she’d be able to find a hotel room. If not, she wouldn’t be the first passenger in the world forced to sit overnight with her baggage in the Wells Fargo office.

  San Francisco was her ultimate destination. Fortunately, her banking account was in the Pyrite Springs Wells Fargo branch. There were Wells Fargo branches in San Francisco, so it shouldn’t be difficult for her to draw enough money out to begin her life anew.

  The thought made the lump in her throat ache, and she swallowed in an effort to control it. It was amazing how physically painful emotions could be. Right now, for example, her chest ached, her throat ached, her head ached, and her stomach ached. Her legs and bottom ached, too, but that was because of the dreadful bouncing of the st
agecoach. She hadn’t thought to bring a cushion with her like the other passengers.

  How many years, Claire wondered, before I don’t hurt anymore? It was hard to imagine becoming accustomed to life without Partington Place and Tom. Partington Place had been the only real home she’d ever known, and she loved it. And Tom was the only man she could even imagine loving.

  “It’ll be all right, dearie.”

  With a start, Claire realized she’d sighed aloud and that the kind-looking woman across from her was smiling sympathetically. The woman was a perfect stranger, and her amiable good-heartedness was almost Claire’s undoing. Quickly, she snatched out a handkerchief to catch any tears that might fall before she could sniff them back.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Life can be very unkind sometimes,” the woman said with a little nod. “But we females have to carry on. We’re the strong ones, you know, dearie.” She spoke confidingly and with a sideways glance at the other passengers, all men, and all snoring.

  The woman’s declaration surprised Claire. She’d always been led to believe men were stronger than women, but this perfect stranger’s words resonated within her, sounding a bell of truth. She sat up straighter and gulped the last remnants of tears welling up in her throat.

  “I—I believe you may be right, ma’am.”

  The woman nodded again. “I know I’m right, dearie. We’re the ones always left behind whilst the men go off and fight their fights and play their silly games.”

  Their silly games. Yes. Claire thought she understood what the woman was trying to tell her. It was always the females who kept the home fires burning. They reared the children and prepared the food. They were the glue that held society together. Claire belonged to a sisterhood forging the grit, the glue, the very backbone, of civilization.