“Sarah, was there no one you could ask for help?”
“No. No one. I was too ashamed. And then he found color on a claim he was working. I’m not sure how he got the money to buy the miner out. The man was disgusted that he hadn’t gotten rich as quickly as he was promised and was only too glad to pull out with a stake.
“It wasn’t a rich strike, but there was enough to get us to Denver. Judd felt his luck had finally changed. He swore this time the gambling was to one end. We’d buy a place and settle down.”
She tried to pull away from Rio as the anger grew and was revealed in her voice, but he held her tight.
“You’d think I’d have learned my lesson not to believe him. I hadn’t. But I learned to be a thief. When he’d come in so falling-down drunk that he wasn’t sure who I was, I’d get him to bed and go through his pockets or money belt and steal as much as I dared.
“It was uncanny how drunk that man could get and still remember how much he’d won or lost. But he didn’t think I had any reason to lie to him.”
She managed to lift her head and look at Rio’s face. “Do you really want to hear this?”
“Do you want to tell me?”
Her eyes glittered with the meld of turbulent emotions that seethed in her. “I’ve never told a soul what I’m saying to you.”
“Do you think I would use this against you, Sarah?”
She studied his features, absorbed his calm, and the warmth of his body. Slowly then she shook her head and resumed her place where she could lean on him.
But her voice was no longer strong, just a soft, trembling whisper, her words dragged forth from battlestained memories.
“He found the money I had hidden away. I think he knew then that I’d leave him. He was insane. The fighting…”
“I am here for you, Sarah. He is not He cannot hurt you again. No one can.”
“You can’t understand what it means to a woman to think herself strong with purpose and find that she cannot stand against a man’s violence.” The words tumbled out in a rush, mumbled, broken with sobs, as if saying them would rid herself forever of nightmares.
“I hated him. There were times I couldn’t be in the same room with him without wanting to kill him. I hated breathing the same air as he did. I despaired of ever being free of him.”
The last was a whisper as if she had lost all will to fight.
And the silence came again, leaving Rio to wonder what more had happened. The man was dead. She had gotten free. He found himself saying those words to her, over and over as he rubbed her back.
“You don’t know,” she moaned, pressing her cheek against his chest.
“Tell me, Sarah. If a wound festers long enough, it will poison and kill. You are a strong woman, too strong to allow that”
“Strong?” She pulled back to look up at him. She shook her head. “No, I’m not strong. I was never that strong. If I had been, I…I…” She swallowed and couldn’t go on. She averted her eyes from his.
Rio drew her against him. Her body was cold, his on fire. She was totally unaware that they were joined from breast to knee without space for a feather. He reined in his body’s unruly response to her nearness.
“He’s dead, Sarah. He cannot hurt you again. How did he die? Can you tell me?”
“He died.”
Her flat tone told him there was more to it. He stroked her neck, then began to knead her back to help relieve the tension. Sarah was strong, just as he had told her, but there was also a lush femininity to counter that physical strength.
Into his mind entered the idle thought of lifting her up, featherweight and vulnerable, and carrying her to bed to still her cries. The silence from the parlor told him his sons slept soundly. Sarah would be spared their knowing. The painful desire he felt for her allowed the image, but the sane part of his mind held him back from acting on it.
Making love to Sarah—and he was struck by the thought that he would make love to her, not satisfy lust—would not help her now. And he wanted to help her as much as she had helped rid him of so much poison.
It took him a few minutes to fight the heat and the tension in his groin. He held her close until the sobs had ceased and her breathing became calm.
She surprised him by pushing against his chest, wanting to be free. He let her go. With her arms wrapped around her waist, she paced away from him.
“Tell me how he died, Sarah.”
“I’m…I’m not sure.”
“Not sure? Were you not with him?”
She shook her head.
Rio watched as she retreated from him. Not only in the physical sense, but emotionally, too. And once more he called for patience and waited until she was ready to talk.
And he was rewarded.
“I wasn’t with him when he died.”
The words were whisper soft but held a chilling edge of guilt. Rio held his silence, afraid now to speak, to ask the hundred questions that prowled his thoughts.
“You thought I grieved for him, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Whatever we had, Rio, was long gone over the years. There wasn’t one overwhelming tragedy. At least not until the end. It was all a series of small deaths. Love and respect, friendship and caring, pride and dreams. And maybe it never ended. I somehow survived,” she said, keeping her back toward him.
“Somehow I went on, at times feeling less than half alive. I had the house and then news came that my cousin Mary was widowed and destitute. She needed me, and then our friend Catherine, widowed too, came to live with us. I really believe we gave each other strength. I know I learned to smile and laugh again.”
She rubbed her arms. “And we sang, every night. Songs from our childhood, others we had learned. That’s what began the townspeople calling us the merry widows. If only people knew what I’ve told you.”
She stood near the doorway. Rio thought her poised to flee. He had listened. And now he mulled over what he had heard. She had been married to a man who had no right to call himself one. He was no husband to Sarah. He had not cared for her as was a man and husband’s duty to do for the woman he took to wife.
Sarah had made him see that even had he been with his own wife on that fateful day, he could never have prevented her death. If anything, he would have added his own and those of his sons.
But the more he thought, the more he realized that Sarah had never really answered his question about her husband’s death. And it seemed there was more, much more that she had not told him.
“Not one overwhelming tragedy. At least not until the end.”
“Sarah?”
“Now you know,” she answered, without turning to look at him.
“Sarah, who is it that you grieve for?”
Rio started toward her, then changed his mind. He refilled his coffee cup, and found one for her.
“Come have something hot to drink. You must be cold.” He pulled out a chair for her and stood there waiting.
“Was there someone else, Sarah? Some man who learned to care for you? Is he the one you grieve for? Was he killed? Did he fight your husband? Is that how they died?”
His hands gripped the back of the chair. He listened to the demands he made on her, and knew where they came from, even as he wanted to deny it. Jealous. He was that and more. What confused him was the lack of betrayal he felt to his own dead wife. He had loved her, loved every moment of their shared time, but he was not left alone and lonely. He had their sons, and she lived on in them.
But Sarah had no one.
“Why are you punishing me by asking for more?”
“Is that how you feel? I wish to…I…” He abandoned his place to go to her. He drew her back against his chest and held her. Rubbing his cheek against her hair, careful of her wound, he absorbed her silent sobs.
“Nothing happens without a reason,” he murmured against her hair. “More of Grandfather’s wisdom. I believe it now. I do not know which spirit led me here. I thought it was the trickster Coyote. But now I wonder. You ease
d my heart’s pain. I only want to ease yours.
“I would wound my own flesh before I hurt you, Sarah. I can feel your pain. Holding you like this makes me feel it. Let me care for you.”
As he spoke, he felt the tension leave her. She leaned back against him, until he was taking almost all her weight. He drew her back toward the chair he had abandoned and sat down. She offered no resistance when he coaxed her to sit on his lap.
Her arms were still wrapped around her waist, but she rested her head on his shoulder and he once more held her.
“There was no other man,” she said softly after a few minutes. “I don’t remember much about that last winter. We moved around a great deal. But spring was late coming to the mountains. I do recall the cold.”
Silence again. Then she shook with sobs, her eyes closed, her body rigid even as he rocked her.
Finally she blurted, “I can’t. Can’t talk about this. Not to you. Not to anyone.”
“Then do not. Let me hold you. No more than that.”
The room grew colder, but Rio was afraid to move to add kindling to the stove. He listened to the wicked hiss of rain and wind beating against the house and sat in the gloom while she cried. He had no sense of time, and knew the fragile woman he held in his arms did not care of its passing.
“I wish,” she said suddenly in a broken voice, “that I had told someone. It wasn’t until spring or early summer that I knew I carried his child.”
He held his breath as she paused, totally caught off guard by her admission. A child? He had no thought, no suspicion there had been a child. He smoothed the hair from her face and kept her tucked close to his body.
“I begged him to find a house for us. Begged him on my knees. He yelled and he left me. He didn’t want a child. And he finally admitted that he didn’t want me. But he found a place. An old cabin far enough from town that there would be no help for me. When he remembered, he came with food.
“Most of the time he was drunk and would pass out. I’d steal what I could from his money belt. Then I’d take his horse and ride in to buy supplies. He never knew, never caught on. No one knew I was his wife. No one asked. And I was so…ashamed I never told anyone.
“He must have hit a winning streak. I didn’t see him for weeks. I often wondered what made him come to see me.
“I found out. He was waiting for me to die. He didn’t have the guts to kill me. Not so blame could be laid on him. But he was waiting for me to die.”
“Sarah, oh, Sarah—”
“No. Please. Let me finish,” she said in that same flat voice.
“The weather grew colder. I had to go farther and farther to find wood. I had hidden most of the food I bought. I was so afraid that he would find it and take it from me. At night I would dream of my baby. I knew I had to get away from him. I had money that I’d stolen. I used to think of my grandmother watching, disappointed that I’d become a thief. But I had no choice.
“Sometimes I prayed that someone would find me and take me away. But there was no one. My baby had only me to depend on.”
She turned her head, pressing against his shoulder, burrowing, almost as if she would crawl inside him and hide.
The rocking motion of his body and her own drew her back to the times she would sit and rock herself. Her hands over her swollen belly, cradling, soothing the tiny life within. She didn’t want to remember the first time she felt life and dropped a load of wood only to stand there, waiting, expectant of feeling it again.
And each time the flutter came, it renewed her strength to see a way clear. And when the kicks became stronger, how she felt less alone.
No, these were not the things she wanted to remember.
“What happened, Sarah? If he were not dead, I swear to you I would kill him for what he did to you.”
“No. It was for no one but me to do. And in a way, I had my chance. I went into labor. I knew it was too soon. But I prayed. Prayed so much and I was so afraid of being alone. I don’t remember all of it. I know I was weak. I tried to…I tried…Oh, God, how I tried,” she cried out.
Her hand clawed its way to his shoulder where her fingers grabbed hold. Her body shook with the renewed pain of remembering, of speaking of a time that she had held secret.
She wasn’t hearing Rio’s words, only the soft murmur of his voice. And she was cold, a cold that came from inside as she struggled to get the words out.
“I lost track of time. My baby…my little girl was gone. I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t save her. And all I wanted to do was die. But the Lord was cruel. He wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t give me the peace I craved. And he brought that bastard back into my life.
“I remember dragging myself from the shack. I crawled to a little tree and used a rock to dig a grave. And that’s when Judd came. When I was burying our baby.
“He was hurt. Someone had shot him. Too bad they missed his black heart. He wanted me to take care of him. There’s a blank space there. What I recall is being in the shack and it was night. Judd was drunk. I stole his money belt, and his horse and I left him there. Weeks later I heard he had been caught cheating. That’s how he got wounded. I’m not sure how he died, or even where. I only heard he was dead.” It seemed to take what was left of her strength to lift her head and look at him.
“So now you know. I’ve never told this to another person.”
He kissed her forehead. “Now I know what makes Sarah a woman rich in forgiveness and in compassion. I know her as a woman whose strength is measured beyond that of a man’s. I know she is beautiful in her heart, even more than the loveliness my eyes behold.”
Rio brushed his lips over hers for a fleeting moment
“No tears?”
She thought about that. She shook her head. “I cried so much and it hurt for so long that it became a part of me.”
“It is time to let go of the past, Sarah.”
She closed her eyes, her sigh deep and heartfelt
“You regret telling me?”
“No. No, Rio, I don’t have any regrets. Like you, I punished myself for a long time.” She opened her eyes. “I recall reading something about burdens being shared becoming halved or lighter or some such thing. I’m not really sure what I feel now.”
His fingertips trailed over her cheek. He tried to smile. “You honor me with your trust, lovely woman. Now, no more talk. You need to rest”
Rio rose with her still in his arms. He hushed her protest as he carried her through the hallway and up the stairs to her room.
She didn’t ask for the lamp to be lit, and he had no wish for her to see what he was sure was in his eyes.
But when he set her on the bed, she surprised him.
“Would it be terrible of me to tell you that I don’t want to be alone.”
“Sarah—”
“I’m not…I mean, I just need to be held. Like you did before. I don’t know if I can explain, Rio, but I don’t want to be alone and in the dark, left with memories that are more like nightmares to me.”
“You do not know what you ask,” he managed to say.
“Do the Apache have some taboo against being a friend? That’s what I need, Rio. A man who has proven himself to be trustworthy, a man who listens with an open mind and heart”
A man first, Sarah. A man who wants you as a man wants to claim a woman.
The words remained unspoken.
“You held me before when I needed you.”
“Yes.” The word was torn from his lips. But she didn’t know what he had been feeling for her. She did not know of the hunger that prowled now, or the need that arose in him to change nightmares into sweeter and more powerful memories. Sarah knew nothing of his longing to hear her cry out his name in the heat of passion. If she did, she would never ask him to stay.
“Will you stay with me?”
Chapter Seventeen
Rio did not know where the strength to resist her softly uttered plea came from. She offered him a chance to hold her. She asked f
or nothing more, made no promises, asked for none from him.
Why then was he still hesitating?
The moments in the dark bedroom stretched into minutes. Her hand reached out to touch him. She said nothing more.
Rio listened to the deepening cadence of their mingled breathing and wondered why she was not aware that the very air in her room sizzled with tension.
“Rio?”
A whisper. But it came from Sarah. And he discovered he had very little defense against it.
The bed creaked as she turned away from him.
His own words about not hurting her came back like a fierce, rushing blow. She trusted him, and he was turning away, shutting her out.
“Sarah, I—”
“No. It’s all right. I understand. Really, I do. I was wrong to ask…just wrong.”
He put his hand on her shoulder, felt her stiffen at his touch but left it there. He could no longer stop himself from gently rubbing, then he stroked back and forth from the curve of her neck to her upper arm until he felt her body relax.
“You were not wrong to tell me. I am not standing here and judging you, Sarah. It is me. Not you. Never you.”
He heard the stifled sob. Touching her, he could not miss the slight tremble of her body. Before he thought, he gathered her close, turning to once more hold her as he sat down. He cradled her against him.
“It is ever so. A woman says she has no more tears and from some deep well, she finds them. Cry, Sarah. Cry till there truly are no more tears. Mourn your little girl, grieve as you have not and I will hold you safe.”
“And who…who will hold you?”
“You are, right now.” Rio called himself eight kinds of fool. Sarah was not the woman for him. He knew it. All he had to do was get his body to believe it, too. She had only to touch him, to smile and he wanted her with a hunger he had never known. But he would never act on it. She needed a man who could give her her dreams. He had nothing.
Sarah locked her arms around him. She sensed the loneliness in him, the darkness, too. She knew he could be harsh and tender by turns. She moved her head and her hair flowed over his arms. His hand came up to cradle her cheek. His thumb brushed at the silent tears she couldn’t seem to control. He tilted her face upward. Not that either of them could see the other in the dark, but Sarah suddenly became aware of a new tension there in the room with them.
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