by Tess LeSue
“You wait until they’re filing out,” Leonard instructed. “I’ll be standing right here, under this tree, watching.”
He stage-managed it to perfection, he thought later. It was a scene the people of San Jose would be talking about for generations. It must have brought a tear to the eye of those with even the hardest hearts. Leonard only managed to bring a tear to his own eye by scratching it with his fingernail. It was a trick he’d learned a long time ago. Tears could win people over fast.
The last hymn ended, the lovely sound hanging in the air for a moment as the doors to the courthouse opened and people streamed out. And there she was, a vision in palest blue.
“Now,” Leonard hissed, giving William a shove with his cane. “There she is, go now. Just like I showed you.”
And for all his mulishness, the boy played his part to perfection. Perhaps because he wasn’t playing at all, but was genuinely overjoyed to see her.
“Mama!” William yelled, his voice splitting the morning air. And then he was pelting across the street and hurling himself at Georgiana. He might have knocked her sideways if that brute of a trail guide hadn’t been there to hold her up.
The crowd parted, muttering.
And then there was a desperate cry as Georgiana realized who was hugging her. “Wilby? Wilbeeeeeeeeeeee!”
Leonard watched, satisfied, as she dropped to her knees in the dust, hugging the life out of the boy, rocking and weeping and generally making a spectacle of herself.
Leonard let her get the hysterics out of her system, and only then, when she’d calmed enough to pull back and look up, did he step out of the shadows.
“Hello, darling,” he said, modulating his voice so it sounded husky, as though he was suffused with emotion. He’d flicked his nail into his eye before he’d stepped forward, and he blinked, to let a tear roll down his cheek. “God must have been watching over us”—he paused for effect—“because I rescued this boy in the wilderness . . . and it turned out to be our son.”
She looked up at him, astonished.
And then she began to cry in earnest.
41
THE SISKIYOU TRAIL stretched six hundred miles ahead of him, into the vast and lonely wilderness between San Jose and home. He traveled light and he traveled alone. Now and then he passed a wagon train headed south to the goldfields of California.
“Hey, mister, you’re going the wrong way!”
He nodded and smiled tightly each time he heard it, giving a tired wave, although the joke had worn thin fast. He didn’t have much of a sense of humor these days, and maybe he never would again.
“You got gold in those saddlebags, mister?”
“How’d California treat you, mister? You going home a rich man?”
He moved Pablo off the trail to let yet another band of hopeful gold hunters pass him by. No, he thought, as he watched them rumble away; he wasn’t going home a rich man. In fact, he’d come to California a rich man, richer than he’d ever believed possible. And he was leaving impoverished.
Matt resumed his long trudge north home to the Willamette Valley, his thoughts a thousand miles away. He remembered meeting Georgiana in Independence: her freshness, her intelligence, her beauty and her sadness. She’d taught him what real wealth was. Real wealth was her. For all the sadness of losing Wilby, those months on the trail had been the richest and most meaningful of his entire life.
Wilby. The thought of the boy sent a blazing pain through him. It was all he could do to keep breathing, the pain got so strong.
He’d failed them all. It was his fault that Wilby had been lost, and his fault Wilby hadn’t been found. Georgiana had suffered needlessly for all of those months because of his failure.
And it had been Leonard . . . her husband . . . who had restored her son and her joy.
Ah, that hurt like hell. The memory of Wilby running headlong into Georgiana outside the courthouse-come-church hurt so much it was hard to breathe. The astonishment, and then the joy of it . . . For that first moment or two, Matt had believed in miracles. It was really, truly Wilby. He was taller and less babyish, and he looked different with all his hair shorn, but it was Wilby.
And then Blunt had stepped forward.
Matt kicked Pablo into a trot, as though he could outrun the feelings that threatened to run him down. No matter how hard he tried to leave them behind, the memories tracked him, every minute of every day, and he lived with a constant ache in his chest.
Blunt was everything Matt was not. He was slender and elegant, finely dressed and softly spoken. He treated Georgiana with extreme courtesy and gentility. And—this hurt, but it was true—he looked like he belonged with her. They were a matched pair. Where Georgiana always made Matt feel oversized and clumsy as he towered over her, Blunt was in proportion. As they stood in the middle of their brood, staring into each other’s eyes, Matt had felt his heart stop in his chest. They looked good together. They looked right.
Georgiana had turned to look at him, her eyes red and swollen from crying. His instinct was to step forward and pull her into his arms, but what right did he have? Her husband was right there beside her. It was his privilege to comfort her.
Matt felt a jealousy so sharp it cut to the bone. It only worsened when Blunt bent down to speak to Susannah and he saw their resemblance. This was his family, not Matt’s.
Matt was suddenly and irrevocably an outsider.
The next day or so after that had been sheer hell. He’d watched Blunt lead his family away from the courthouse, and Matt hadn’t quite known what to do with himself; he followed behind for a few steps and then stopped. He had the repulsive feeling that he was intruding. He felt like a stray dog skulking behind them, in hopes of picking up scraps. It didn’t help that Blunt treated him like some kind of servant.
“Can you arrange for their belongings to be brought to my hotel?” the man called back to Matt. “Many thanks!”
Georgiana had looked at him helplessly. She had Wilby in her arms, her cheek pressed against his head. What could she say? There was too much to say, and a public street wasn’t the place to say it.
Right then, at that exact moment, Matt had known it was over. Maybe not consciously, but certainly deep down in the pit of his stomach. Even if Georgiana told Blunt about Matt, what did it change? She was Blunt’s wife, not Matt’s. The children were Blunt’s children, not Matt’s. Her future was with Blunt, and not with Matt.
And where did that leave him?
Alone in their room at the inn, that’s where it left him. The room was screamingly empty, loud with her absence.
Matt had numbly packed their belongings, but he couldn’t bring himself to carry them across town and deliver them like a servant. He didn’t want to come face-to-face with Blunt again. He didn’t want to be witness to their family reunion. It hurt bad enough to know it was happening without having to witness every last detail of it. So he’d paid some of the locals to deliver their things.
He needed time. And Georgiana knew where to find him. What was going on over there was her business, not his. She’d come and speak to him when she was ready.
And he was afraid of what she was going to say.
* * *
• • •
“LET’S RUN AWAY!”
He’d opened the door to find her crying. She’d reverted to the woman he’d met in Independence: beautiful, nervous, weeping.
She burrowed her face against his chest and gave in to sobs of pure despair. “Please,” she begged, “let’s pack up and go. You can take us to your home in Oregon, like we planned.”
That was when Matt got angry. At her, at Blunt, at the whole damn world. Because she didn’t mean it. The way she was crying told him that she didn’t mean it.
Which meant he had to be the one to say it, and it was the one thing he didn’t want to say. Every single part of him wanted to
grab her and those kids and run home.
“You don’t mean that,” he said, taking her by the arms and prying her off his chest.
“I do!”
It took every ounce of his self-control not to lose his temper. “No, you don’t. If you meant it, you wouldn’t be crying. You’d have your bags packed and the kids here, and we’d be loading those wagons. You’d be kissing me, instead of getting my shirt all wet.”
She cried harder at that, her shoulders hunching over and her head hanging so low her chin was practically touching her chest.
He was so mad he could have shaken her. Fight, he wanted to rail. Fight, Goddamn it. Fight for me, for us. For all that we are and all that we could be.
Matt loved her with every last inch of himself. He’d die for her.
He loved her so goddamn much he’d even work against himself. He’d do the thing she was finding so hard to do. He’d say their good-byes.
But he wouldn’t make it easy for her. He wasn’t that noble.
“Here, have a glass of water. You’re crying yourself dry.” Hurt made him sound cold. He moved away from her and poured her a cupful from the pitcher. He wished she’d stop staring at him like that, with such mute misery.
She drank the water and drew a couple of shuddery breaths.
“Tell me how he found Wilby,” Matt said flatly. He kept his distance from her. He’d only be able to get through this if she didn’t get too close. If he got too close, he might start kissing her, and then he’d be lost.
“Some Indians had him.” Georgiana’s voice was shaky. “Leonard didn’t even know who he was when he rescued him.”
Matt winced as Georgiana said her husband’s name. It sounded so familiar to her, so intimate as it fell from her lips.
“It was the first time he’d ever seen him.” Georgiana gave a slightly hysterical laugh. “He and Leo left before I even knew I was pregnant.”
Matt nodded and clenched his teeth. That was the final nail in the coffin, right there. “He deserves a chance to know his father and his brother.”
Georgiana pressed her lips together and nodded, sending fat, slow tears sliding down her cheeks.
He sighed, his anger warring with jealousy and hurt, and the urge to comfort her.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“Don’t.”
“I do. I love you. That’s what I was going to tell you the other day, when . . .”
“Please,” he said harshly. “Please, don’t.” He closed his eyes. He heard her weeping softly. “Let’s not draw this out.”
“Matt . . .”
“No.” He opened his eyes. “Don’t.” His voice was raw with pain. She heard it and fell silent.
She swallowed hard. “What will you do?”
He laughed. It was a hard, bitter sound. “I’ll go home. What else would I do?”
He saw the flash of pain in her eyes. But what in hell did she think he’d do? Stay? Watch her play happy family with her husband?
“When?”
“As soon as I can.” There was no point in dragging this out. It wasn’t going to get easier. And Matt had a sudden longing for home. He wanted to ride up the valley and see his people. He could practically see the house at the fringe of the foothills, surrounded by blazing autumn trees; his brother out working his horses; Alex in her vegetable garden; his nieces running in the yard. He felt homesick at the vision. He’d been gone for a long time. It was time to go home.
He’d wanted to go with Georgiana. To ride proudly up to the house and to introduce his brother to his wife, to see the look of happy shock on Luke’s face . . .
Stop. Those thoughts just intensified the pain.
“Are you going to say good-bye to the children?”
Matt clenched his teeth so hard it was a surprise they didn’t crack. He knew he had to say good-bye. It wasn’t fair to them to disappear without a trace . . . But God, he couldn’t think of anything more painful.
But he was wrong. Saying good-bye to the children was bad, but there was something worse. And that was saying good-bye to Georgiana.
On the day he was riding out, they came to see him off. They stood by the inn’s stable in a solemn clump as he cinched his saddlebags and tied Fernando’s lead to Pablo’s saddle. He had to work hard to keep his composure. They were upset enough, without his emotions upsetting them further. The twins had been resentful and bratty; Susannah had cried; Wilby had thrown a tantrum, yelling senselessly about Tom and Dog and Woof and now Matt. Leo had watched it all from a distance.
“I’ll take care of them,” he’d told Matt quietly, before leading the little ones away so Matt and Georgiana could have some privacy.
This is the last time you’ll ever see her.
Neither of them could find the words to say good-bye. Matt drank her in, trying to commit each detail to memory. Those prairie flax blue eyes, the way her dark curls tangled at her temples, that perfect mouth. He reached out and pressed his palm to her cheek.
As he stared into those blue, blue eyes, his anger fell away, subsumed by the deepest sadness he’d ever known.
“You were the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said huskily. And he meant it. He wouldn’t give up a single moment, not even to save them this pain.
He rubbed his thumb against her soft skin. “Be safe, sweetheart.”
And then he couldn’t take anymore. He swung himself up into the saddle and rode out, before he lost his nerve and kidnapped the lot of them.
* * *
• • •
THE MILES HAD never been so desolate. And for all his experience with being alone, he’d never felt this alone before. He pushed himself, barely sleeping, determined to reach home before winter blocked his way.
Even though he knew he couldn’t have stayed, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d made a mistake. That there should have been something he could have done.
“Hey, mister, you’re going the wrong way!” The cry followed him all the way up the trail.
Hey, mister, you’re going the wrong way . . .
42
LEONARD LIKED SAN Jose. He decided they should stay, at least for a while. One day he led Georgiana and the children to a house in the older part of town. It was a low Spanish building, with terra-cotta tiles and a shady veranda.
“It’s ours!” he declared, expecting them all to be thrilled.
Georgiana tried to act thrilled, she really did. But she didn’t feel thrilled at all. She felt even less thrilled a couple of weeks after they moved in, when the creditors started coming to the door. Her stomach sank to her knees. Not again.
She hadn’t really thought Leonard would change. But everything had happened so fast: Wilby’s return, Matt leaving . . . it hadn’t given her much space to think about the future with Leonard.
Truth be told, she didn’t think about much else than Matt Slater . . .
Sometimes on the street she thought she saw him and her heart would leap. But of course it wasn’t him. He’d be a hundred miles away by now.
The first night in the hotel, Leonard had tried to kiss her, and she’d pushed him away, muttering a weak excuse about shock and nervous exhaustion. After a week or two, he was getting impatient with her, but the thought of letting him touch her filled Georgiana with dread. She didn’t care what the law said; she felt married to Matt, not Leonard. Being with Leonard felt like a betrayal. So she offered excuse after excuse. It was that time of the month, she had a headache, she was poorly, she was tired . . . Eventually, he got so irritated he reverted to a version of himself she hadn’t seen for a very long time. A mean version of himself.
“Ah, who wants to sleep with you anyway,” he’d sneered, when she’d rejected him yet again. “Your tits are sagging after all those brats.”
She’d flinched at his crudity. She’d forgotten his
cruelty. She was relieved when he’d pulled his boots on and slammed out of the house. He’d probably gone to a whorehouse, she realized sickly.
“Mama?” Susannah had appeared in the doorway. She was sucking her thumb again.
“It’s all right, darling. Daddy just had a bad moment.”
Daddy had a lot more bad moments. Especially after the creditors came and he and Georgiana had their first real fight about money.
“Just pay them!” he’d ordered her.
“With what?” she’d asked in astonishment. And that’s when he found out her money was gone. At which he’d thrown a monumental tantrum.
“It’s your fault it’s gone,” she’d said coldly. “And it’s your fault we don’t even have the gold claim anymore.”
Things went from bad to worse after that. Georgiana found they hadn’t been paying rent when the landlord posted an eviction notice. After that, she started taking in laundry to pay the bills. It wasn’t nearly enough. She begged the landlord for more time, and he gave it to her, but only another week, and only because he felt sorry for her. And then he dared to suggest that there were other ways she could pay the debt. His eyes ran over her body as he said it, and she shuddered.
And then there was that horrific day when she walked in on Leonard whipping Phin with his belt. Hard. He strapped him with all his strength. Hard enough to break the skin.
“Get off him!” Georgiana shrieked, pulling him away. He pushed her, and she went flying into the table. She got straight back up and launched at him again. “If you touch him again, I’ll kill you,” she promised. And she meant it.
The house was a brooding place, seething with unhappiness. The children were subdued and resentful. Georgiana lay awake at night while Leonard was out (doing whatever it was that he did), feeling tangled and bleak, worrying endlessly about money and how to pay the rent and put food on the table. In the depths of the night, her mind turned north to Oregon and Matt. She heard his voice in her head, describing his home. The fall colors would be turning the trees orange and red and gold by now. The valley would be preparing for winter. His family would be laying in supplies and splitting wood. Smoke would be curling from the chimney. In her mind, the Slater property was an idyll. She wished she were there with all her might.
