Emmeline wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, still looking down at her feet, but said nothing in response.
“Why are you so set on telling Rafe about that night?” Becky demanded in a hoarse whisper. “Do you want to ruin everything, Emmeline?”
“Of course not,” Emmeline said, blinking and glancing away. “I love Rafe. I don’t want any secrets between us, that’s all.”
“Don’t be a fool. Everyone has secrets.”
Just then, the sound of an approaching rig reached them, and both women looked up to see John Lewis approaching, at the reins of a hired horse and buggy. They watched as the team, rig, and driver splashed through a shallow place in the creek, the spindly wheels sending up plumes of sun-shimmered water.
“Don’t be a fool,” Becky repeated in a stern whisper, but her attention was all for John by then. She rose from her chair, smiling, and waved. Her knight-in-shining-armor pulled off his hat and waved it exuberantly, his grin visible even though they were still separated by several hundred yards.
Before an hour was out, Becky had told Concepcion and Angus farewell and much obliged, and set out for Indian Rock with John. Just befre the marshal helped her into the buggy, having secured her things in the small space in back, she hugged Emmeline, kissed her on the cheek, and whispered, “Mind what I said, now, and hold your tongue.”
With that, she was gone, and Emmeline watched her out of sight, torn between Becky’s sensible advice and her own sense of right and wrong. She knew, even then, that her conscience would win out, if only because it plagued her night and day.
Rafe arrived home just as the sun was setting that evening, and he looked so tired, and so full of pride in the work he was doing, that, despite her earlier resignation, Emmeline nearly put aside the decision that had been troubling her so much.
There had to be an end to the deception; she couldn’t bear it any longer. Before her new and fragile feelings for her husband deepened, before she and Rafe conceived a child together, complicating matters even more, or moved up the mountain to that fine, new house, she had to tell him about Kansas City, and about Holt. She was anxious all the time, and felt sure she couldn’t live another day with the very strong possibility that Holt, or someone who’d gotten the story secondhand, would tell Rafe the sordid truth before she did. She knew he would find her silence almost as hard to forgive as the incident itself, and if he was going to hear it from anyone, it had to be from her.
She couldn’t eat a bite at supper, for the painful grinding in the pit of her stomach, and while Angus, Concepcion, and Kade seemed to notice her reticence, Rafe himself was blissfully unaware. He beamed, telling them all he’d accomplished that day at the building site, and declaring that his place and Emmeline’s would be the finest home in the Arizona Territory when he was through with it—save the ranch house, of course.
“Let’s take a walk, Rafe,” Emmeline said quietly, laying her hands on his shoulders when the dishes were done. Rafe was still seated at the table with his brother and father, the three of them studying a hand-drawn map, trying to figure out where a hundred-odd stray cattle might have gone. According to Kade, they were missing at least that many from the main herd.
Kade and Angus had been stealing intermittent glances at Emmeline all during the conference, perhaps seeing something in her face or hearing something in her tone of voice that troubled them, and Concepcion, putting away silverware, gave her a penetrating look when she spoke of leaving the house, but Rafe was oblivious to every nuance.
“Sure,” he said.“It’s a nice night. Lots of stars out.”
“Yes,” Emmeline replied, and hoped she wouldn’t break down crying before she got everything said.
They left by the back door, walked around the house, arm in arm, and made their way to the creek bank. Emmeline’s throat was tight, and her eyes burned so badly that she was tempted to kneel and splash them with water from the stream. She straightened her shoulders, instead, and fixed her gaze on the expansive meadow across the creek. She pictured a rustic house, a dream castle, standing there, and saw it fade away into nothingness.
“I wonder why none of you have built a house on the far side of the creek,” she said. “It’s so pretty, especially in the sunlight, and there’s water handy, too.”
Rafe followed her gaze. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Ma would have liked that, knowing one of her sons had built a home on the land she staked out for herself, way back when.”
“She must have been an amazing woman,” Emmeline said, and she meant it. For a woman alone even to attempt homesteading, in the present day as well as in those early pioneering times, was an Olympian accomplishment.
“She was,” Rafe said, with a remembering kind of smile. “Independent as all get-out. After her folks died—her family lost just about everything in the War Between the States—she gathered up what little was left and struck out on her own. Got all the way here from Louisiana, stopping along the way every now and again to teach awhile, and replenish her grubstake. Pa never did have the heart to tell her that he already owned that half section she’d pegged out for herself. There’d been some kind of mistake at the land office in Tombstone, he reckoned.”
So, Emmeline thought, what Becky had said was true: Most everybody had secrets. Still, Angus’s had been a harmless one; her own was like a stick of dynamite, rolling around at their feet, with the fuse lit.
“Do you think she’d have been upset, your mother, I mean, if she’d ever found out the truth about her homestead?”
Rafe didn’t hesitate. “She’d have been madder than a hen dunked in pancake batter,” he said, grinning. “Pa admitted he was mighty relieved that she never found out.”
Emmeline tried to smile, but she couldn’t. Her heart was beating outside her body, trapped there, exposed, with no way to retreat to safety. She looked up at the stars for a long time, saw them blur into one blazing silver light, and finally met Rafe’s gaze. Only now, when he’d seen her tears, did he turn thoughtful.
“What is it?” he asked.
“If there was something about me—something I’d never told you—would you want to know? Even though knowing might be the end of everything?”
He stared at her, then sat her down on a large rock next to the whispering stream before taking his place beside her. “Put like that,” he said gravely, “I don’t reckon you’ve left me with much of a choice.” She wished he’d take her hand, but he didn’t, and she thought she could already feel a distance growing between them, wider with every heartbeat.“What is it, Emmeline?” he reiterated.
She couldn’t look at him, so she looked at the water instead, splashed with starlight. Under the surface were rainbow trout, surely, living out their whole lives without ever having to keep or share secrets. She envied them, in that moment, and wished she too were a slippery, shiny fish, going about her business, ignorant of the concerns of men and women. In telling her story, she would be revealing not only her own past but, by necessity, Becky’s, too. She hoped that Becky would forgive her, even if Rafe didn’t.
“I told you that Becky was my aunt, and that she ran a boardinghouse in Kansas City,” she began miserably, still unable to look at him, her hands clenched so tightly in her lap that the joints ached. “Turns out, she’s my mother—I was illegitimate, actually—and the boardinghouse was really a—a brothel.”
Rafe was silent, listening so closely that he was rigid. He’d gone cold, too. Emmeline felt the changes in him, even though they weren’t touching.
“I was sheltered, and I never got near the business,” she said. She paused, shuddering with emotion. “Anyway, Becky sent me to a god school, did everything she could to raise me as a lady. But I had no friends, because of the stigma. I was foolish and bored, and probably spoiled, as well, and one night—” she paused, bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, “one night I decided to dress up in fancy clothes and pretend to be a—a lady of the evening. Just as a diversion.” She waited again, but Rafe remain
ed stone silent.“I went and sat on the stairs, just watching, planning to slip away if anyone noticed I was there, and all of a sudden this man was walking toward me.”
She glanced at Rafe, sidelong, and saw that he’d closed his eyes. His jaw was set, as if he was bracing himself for a blow.
“He—he sat by me, on the stairs, and gave me whiskey,” she went on, for there was no going back now. “We talked, and he made me laugh, and it all seemed so harmless. I felt special and, well, chosen, somehow. Nobody had ever noticed me like that before. I had more and more whiskey, and then I was sure Becky or one of the others would find me out, and I’d be in more trouble than I’d ever thought possible—” She stopped, laughed bitterly at the naïveté of that concern.“I wanted to slip away. The man came with me, into the hallway, and it was dark there. He kissed me a couple of times, and—and I started to feel really dizzy. He asked me where my room was, and I lied to him. One of the girls had just left, and hers was vacant, so I claimed it was mine, and—”
Rafe stood up suddenly, turned his back to her. His broad shoulders looked stiff, outlined by the diffused starlight reflecting off the creek, but he still didn’t speak.
“I remember that he carried me into that room, and untied my shoes.” She swallowed, thinking frantically that Becky had been right, and she should have kept the confession to herself, but it was too late now. It was far, far too late to stop. “I woke up the next morning, alone in the bed, and there was money on the bedside stand.”
Silence.
“Rafe,” she whispered. “Rafe, you have to say something—please.”
He turned, very slowly, and looked down at her. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides, and, although she knew he wouldn’t harm her physically, his rage and his pain were palpable. “You were—” His voice was raspy, hurtful to hear. Emmeline wanted to put her hands over her ears.“You were a whore?”
She began to cry then, miserably, hopelessly, like a wounded child. “No,” she said. “No! It was one time, a mistake—I don’t even remember if—”
“One time or a thousand,” Rafe ground out, “you slept with a man for money.”
As horrible as this was, it wasn’t over. “There’s one thing more,” she said, ready to curl in on herself, return, somehow, to the safety of the womb.
“Good God,” Rafe whispered rawly.“What?”
“The man—the man I was with was Holt,” she said.
The silence was terrible; shouts and accusations would have been easier to endure, but there was just that awful, pounding silence.
“Rafe,” she said.“I’m sorry.”
He walked away from her then, just as she’d feared he would, his strides long, carrying him not in the direction of the house, where Angus or Kade or Concepcion mght have been able to calm and comfort him a little, but toward the barn. Like Jeb, he was going away, maybe for good. Unlike Jeb, he wasn’t leaving the land, or his father and brothers. Rafe was leaving her.
She stood, for in spite of it all, her instinct was to go after him, but all the while she knew that would do no good. Besides, her knees were shaking so badly that she had to sit down again, right away, lest she tumble into a heap.
Minutes passed, then Rafe rode out through the barn doors at a lope, and by the time they reached the creek, his gelding, Chief, was running full out. They seemed to set the waters churning, man and animal, as they crossed that stream, and Emmeline was sure they’d both founder and drown in the torrent they created, but within moments they were climbing, dripping wet, up the other bank.
“Rafe,” Emmeline whispered, knowing, for the first time in her life, the true meaning of a broken heart. “Oh, Rafe.”
She cried, and waited to be strong enough to go into the house and start packing her things. Before she could manage that, however, Holt came limping across the expanse of the yard and down the creek bank to stand over her.
“Are you all right, Emmeline?” he asked.“The way Rafe rode out of here just now—”
She looked up at him, her nemesis, and wondered if he’d come to gloat. “I told him,” she said simply. “About Kansas City. About us.”
“Us?” He stared down at her. “Sweet God, Emmeline, you don’t mean—”
“Yes,” she answered, too broken to feel anything now besides despair. “I told him the truth about what happened that night.”
“Good Lord,” Holt said, with such gravity that Emmeline was confounded. Maybe, she thought, he was irritated because he wouldn’t be able to blackmail her, now that her great sin was out in the open. “What possessed you to do a thing like that?”
She stood, at last, buoyed by a rush of angry frustration. “What possessed me?” she snapped. “I wanted to tell him before you did.”
“Before I told him what?” he demanded, looking a lot like Rafe in that light, or the lack of it. “Dammit, Emmeline, there was nothing to tell. You put on somebody else’s clothes and got drunk. I didn’t want to tell Becky what you were up to, and I didn’t want to leave you for one of the other men to take advantage of, so I put you to bed and left. That was the end of it!”
Emmeline’s mouth dropped open.“But those coins—”
“I thought maybe you needed money, that you were in some kind of trouble, and desperate.”
Emmeline sat down again. She felt as though she might throw up, or even faint.
“Emmeline?”
“I thought we—that you and I—”
“Jesus,” he murmured. Then he turned and started away from her, stumping determinedly toward the barn.
“Where are you going?” Emmeline cried, at last finding the strength to break her strange inertia and move her feet.
“None of your damn business!” he called back.
She hurried after tried to take hold of his arm. “You can’t,” she said quickly. “Holt, you can’t. You’re hurt—if you ride—”
“Stay out of this,” Holt said tersely, shaking her off.
“You’ve done enough damage as it is.” They were almost to the barn.
“Don’t go after Rafe,” she pleaded. “He’ll kill you, or you’ll kill him, but nothing good will come of it!”
His eyes were hot.“Go in the house, Emmeline.”
She stood speechless, one hand clasped over her mouth, staring after him as he stormed into the barn.
He managed to saddle a horse, put the bridle in place, and even mount, all without help. Emmeline was still standing where he’d left her when he came riding out into the moonlight; on the ground, he was a cripple, in the saddle, he was his old self.
“At least let me go with you!” she cried.
He paused beside her, reining in the prancing gelding, and got in one last volley. “Oh, you’d be a lot of help,” he scoffed furiously.“You’ve already made enough trouble to keep us all busy for the next hundred years, picking up the pieces!”
With that, he rode away.
The log house loomed, in long lines and shadows, against the spectacular sky.
Rafe, breathless from the hard ride up the mountain, the legs of his trousers still wet with creek water, jumped down from Chief’s back and left him to graze, reins dangling. The saddle looked to be slipping a little, because the cinch had come loose.
Too bad it hadn’t given way on one of those steep, narrow trails he’d just ridden over, Rafe thought, having consumed three-quarters of a flask of whiskey during the journey. His head was spinning, and he’d turned his heart out, like some wild beast, and drove it away from him, unable to bear the pain of Emmeline’s words, and of the images she’d drawn in his mind. It was hard enough to think of her selling herself to another man. Knowing that other man was Holt, his enemy, his brother, made a hell of his very soul.
He gave a great scream of anguish, roaring at the sky. He walked around the house, once, twice—he couldn’t stand to go inside—and then, his movements calm and methodical, for all their admitted madness, he began piling dry brush and wood chips in the main doorway.
>
He’d expected to carry his bride across that threshold in just a few more weeks, when the roof was finished and the floors and windows had been put in. Now, he never wanted to set foot in the place again.
He doused the chips and twigs and small limbs with the remains of his whiskey, then struck a match and tossed it down.
A blaze flared up immediately, and he stared at it blankly for a moment, quelling an instinctive urge to stomp out the fire before it caught the walls. Instead, he thought of Emmeline, doing with Holt the things she’d done with him, and he bellowed again, like a creature snared in jagged teeth of a trap, and started rushing around, gathering up every piece of fuel he could find, hurling twigs and grass and scrap wood into the flames.
Rafe stood back, but not so far that he couldn’t feel the smothering heat, watching as the fire leaped a greare to there, from window ledge to rafter. Within a few minutes, the whole place was burning, spitting sparks, a fire big enough to see from heaven.
“Jesus, Rafe,” a male voice shouted beside him, “get back!” He didn’t move willingly, indeed, he was dragged away from the blaze by the other man, the two of them stumbling. When they were a good distance from the house, and he saw that it was Holt who’d come riding out of the night, he took a swing at him, not giving a damn that he was a cripple. He wanted to kill him.
Holt dodged him easily, for even though he had a game leg, Rafe was drunk, and out of his mind with sorrow.“Listen to me,” he said.
“You go to hell!” Rafe responded. “Damn you, Holt—and damn her—”
Holt’s face tightened, and he nearly lost his balance, using both hands to shove Rafe backward, onto his ass. Remarkably, he caught his crutch before it fell, and jammed it back under his arm, breathing hard as he leaned on it, and gazed down at Rafe.“There’s a real good chance that I’ll go to hell someday,” Holt said, breathing hard and fast, “but it won’t be because of anything I did with Emmeline!”
Rafe tried to stand, but he was winded, and he wanted to come up swinging. He wiped his mouth with the back of one hand.“She told me what happened,” he said.
High Country Bride Page 28
