by Renee Ryan
“You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth.” He rifled through the top drawer of his desk, searching for the document he’d nearly forgotten he had. Finding it at last, he urged her to take it. “Look at this.”
“I don’t see the point—”
“Do what I ask, please.”
Laney tugged her bottom lip between her teeth then lowered her eyes to the piece of paper. She took the document from him and read the inscription aloud. “It’s a death certificate from the state of Colorado,” she gasped. “For Pearl LaRue Dupree.”
“I was given this three years ago by a Pinkerton agent I’d hired to find my wife.”
She handed the document back to him with shaking fingers. “I don’t understand.”
“No wonder. I hardly understand it myself.” Marc raked a hand through his hair. “Apparently, Pearl paid the man to help her fake her own death.”
“Why would anyone do such a thing?”
An excellent question. The magnitude of Pearl’s treachery was starting to sink in. She’d stolen from him and then faked her own death. All because she hadn’t been able to bear the life he’d tried to offer her. He’d wanted to care for her, to lighten her burdens. All she’d ever wanted was his money.
Trey had warned Marc that his pursuit of wealth would lure the ugliest of hearts. How right he’d been.
“Marc?”
“Oh, she had a reason. Actually, she had six thousand reasons.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a long story.”
Laney gave him a forced smile. “Should I sit down for this?”
“I didn’t tell you I’d been married before because, well, it never came up.” She opened her mouth but he stopped her with a wave of his hand. “I know that’s not a good enough excuse. The other reason was that I didn’t want you to know what a fool I’d been.”
Laney angled her head. “You? I can’t imagine you doing anything you didn’t want to do.”
“I wish it was that simple.” Marc blew out a slow breath. “Do you remember I told you I grew up as part of the wealthy elite?”
“What does that have to do—”
“Let me finish,” he said, stopping her midsentence. “Please.”
She nodded. “All right.”
“We went from wealth to poverty in a matter of years. When my father died of malaria and my mother shortly after him, I was through being poor.”
“Oh, Marc. You don’t have to tell me this.”
He scrubbed a hand down his face. “After those hard, lean years I didn’t just want money, I needed it. I was obsessed. Gambling was the quickest route to reaching my goal. I moved out West, traveling from card game to card game. By the time I was twenty-five, I’d earned enough wealth to never see poverty again.”
She sighed.
“When I went to Cripple Creek I met Pearl LaRue. She was ten years older than me and the most exotic woman I’d ever met.” Laney flinched at his words. He laid his hand on her sleeve. “I’m sorry this is hurting you.”
“Go on. I want to hear this.”
“Having grown up in New Orleans I thought I’d seen every kind of woman there was to see. But Pearl was different, unique, exciting. I had to have her for my own.”
Laney’s heart leaped to her eyes. “You loved her.”
Marc smoothed his finger down her cheek. “No, my relationship with Pearl was never about love. At least, looking back now, I realize love hadn’t been the driving force. At the time I thought I’d die if I didn’t win her.”
“So you married her?”
“Not at first. When I met her she was a dancing girl and a prostitute. I wanted to rescue her from that life, so I offered to put her up in her own home with the promise I would take care of her.”
“Not much different from what you do for the women you hire here.”
Touched by the compassionate look in her eyes, he wanted to go to her and let her smooth away all his pains, like she did for children in her care. But Marc was no little boy. He was a grown man. One who had to answer for his sins.
“What I didn’t count on, was that Pearl liked her chosen lifestyle. She refused to quit seeing other men. She did, however, vow to change her mind if I made a more permanent commitment than just offering her a nice cottage and a little cash.”
“That’s when you married her.”
“I knew it was a mistake almost from the start. As soon as I was bound to her for life, the excitement disappeared.”
Her eyes widened with disappointment. “You don’t believe in marriage then?”
“Quite the opposite. Marriage is holy, a promise made before God, and should be honored as such. The two married couples I’d known intimately were my mother and father, and Trey and my sister. I wanted what they had but what I got with Pearl didn’t come close. I was looking for an ideal that didn’t exist.”
He’d been young and idealistic. Now he realized how much he’d lost by trying to do the right thing with Pearl.
“I’m assuming you tried to make your marriage work.”
“A losing battle. It didn’t take me long to realize that I couldn’t change a woman who didn’t want changing. But there wasn’t much I could do. I was married. And marriage means forever.”
“So what did you do?”
“I turned to my only solace. Accumulating wealth. Lots of it, as fast as I could. I continued gambling and didn’t dare allow myself to think about what Pearl was buying with my money or doing while I was playing cards all night.”
“Oh, Marc.”
“No. I can handle your scorn, your anger, but not your understanding. I was young and stupid and set on using one sin to erase another. I’d made my mistake so I lived with it as best I could.” He frowned. “I’ve since repented of that lifestyle. The Lord always offers mercy and forgiveness, but he doesn’t always take away the consequences of our sins.” As evidenced by Pearl’s appearance tonight.
Her expression still full of bafflement, Laney shook her head. “You mentioned you hired a Pinkerton agent to find Pearl. What happened? Did she run off with some of your money?”
He sniffed. “She stole all of it.”
“Oh, my. How?”
“At the time, I wanted my money as close to me as possible. I kept some of my money in the bank but the bulk of my savings I put in a safe much like that one.” He pointed to the small safe behind him. “Pearl learned the combination by watching my fingers.”
“Just like me.” Groaning, Laney buried her face in her hands. “No wonder you thought so poorly of me and believed I wasn’t trustworthy.”
“Don’t, Laney. Don’t compare yourself to Pearl. You aren’t like her. You only took money that belonged to you.” Everything in him softened as the truth hit him. “Deep down, I always knew you weren’t the kind of woman who stole and conned your way through life. Perhaps that’s why I let you get away so easily that first night.”
“And that makes my kicking you in the chest all right?”
“No.” He rubbed the spot where she’d landed the blow. “But it makes your actions understandable. I didn’t give you a chance to explain yourself.”
“I didn’t try very hard to make you hear me. In fact, I intentionally led you to believe I was just like...like...your wife.”
This was the first time they’d ever really talked about the night they’d met. It felt good to clear the air, to get it all out in the open. But nothing was solved.
“So, now you know,” he said. “I was as shocked as you to see Pearl standing in my hotel tonight. Maybe more so.”
“She wasn’t exactly standing.”
“No. She wasn’t.” A strange sort of pity spread through him. “Although Pearl’s timing wasn’t perfect, perhaps it was best she showed up when she did. You realize I was just about to ask you to marry me?”
Tears formed in her eyes. “Oh, Marc, we might have married not knowing, then what would we have done?” He reached for
her but she shook her head. “We can’t.”
No, they couldn’t.
“You should know, Pearl isn’t the same woman who ran away all those years ago. She’s ill. And as much as I know this hurts you to hear, I have to take care of her. She’s my wife. I can’t abandon her.”
“I wouldn’t expect any different from you.”
“I love you, Laney. But I’m married to Pearl.”
Her unshed tears wiggled to the edges of her lashes. “Because you’re married, you realize I can’t be anything more than your employee.”
For a moment, he thought about asking her to run away with him. But too many people depended on them both. And neither of them was selfish enough to think only of their own pleasure.
Marc placed a tender kiss on her temple. As he pulled back, he put a silent pledge in his eyes, praying she understood what he couldn’t say. “You are a part of my heart. But we can’t be together.”
“I know. Oh, Marc, I realized that the minute I heard you had a wife.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Determined to survive one day at a time, Laney turned to routine for solace the next morning. Unfortunately thoughts of Marc, and what they might have had together, never left her mind for long.
It helped to focus most of her energy on getting the children ready to start the school year. She spent the morning rushing around, amazed at the amount of effort it took to get so many girls and boys fed and out of the house on time.
At two minutes past eight, Laney collapsed in a chair and shut her eyes. Pleasantly exhausted, she took a moment to collect herself before facing the rest of the day’s chores.
A smile curled on her lips. As of today, her children were no longer just the sons and daughters of prostitutes. They were normal schoolchildren.
She couldn’t wait to hear about their day, but that would be hours from now. In the meantime she would fill every moment with activity.
The hardest challenge would come later, when she went to work at the hotel. She would see Marc and pretend the tentative friendship they’d forged was enough. But with that lie came unspeakable pain. She nearly had the money to pay off her loan with Prescott, two more nights at most, and then she’d be out of debt. There would be no more need to work at the hotel. No more reason to see Marc again.
That thought brought even more sorrow.
Katherine’s sympathetic voice skidded across her thoughts. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Laney slowly opened her eyes. “What is there to say?”
“I don’t know. But in my experience talking seems to help. Remember when I came back from Miss Lindsay's?”
“You were so hurt, so confused.” Laney swallowed her anguish in a sigh.
“You listened when I needed to talk.” She wedged a chair close to Laney’s. “Let me do the same for you.”
Touched, Laney swiped at a tear escaping down her cheek. “Oh, Katherine, I’m trying not to wallow in self-pity. But it seems God is punishing me for all the mistakes I’ve made lately.”
Katherine shook her head sadly. “Laney, God doesn’t punish us for our mistakes. He just allows us to make them.”
“And then leaves us to suffer the consequences? Like falling in love with a man I can never have?” She clutched the chair. “Why did I have to meet Judge Greene in Marc’s hotel that night? There were so many other places I could have chosen.”
She paused as her words sank in. What was she saying? If she hadn’t gone to the Hotel Dupree she’d have never met Marc. She would have gone through the rest of her life never knowing the man, never knowing the beauty of loving him.
No, she couldn’t be sorry for that.
There were other regrets, though. “Maybe if I hadn’t taken out that final loan, I wouldn’t have needed the money, and then I wouldn’t have needed to force the judge’s hand.”
“I suppose you could look at it that way. But I like to think we find out who we are when we make our choices and then live with them.”
When had Katherine become so wise? “It just seems I’ve been given a much harder road than others.”
Katherine’s expression shifted into sympathy. “No, Laney. You’re where you are now because of choices you’ve made. Pure and simple.”
Laney didn’t deny it. “What other choices could I have made?”
Stitching an age-old wisdom into her words, Katherine touched her hand. “Only you can answer that.”
For a moment, Laney thought hard about what else she could have done. She could have tried another bank, one run by a more honest man. She could have bought a smaller home. In reality, she could have made any number of other decisions.
But she hadn’t. And, in the end, every choice had led her to Marc Dupree and the anguish she suffered now. Even knowing this, she still couldn’t regret meeting him.
She was saved from further reflection when Megan burst into the house, tears streaming down her face.
Her own worries forgotten, Laney jumped from her chair and rushed to the girl. “Megan, what’s the matter?”
“We...” She choked over a hiccup. “We were sent away.”
“Sent away from school? But why?”
Entering the house a few steps behind her, Johnny said, “It was awful, Miss Laney.”
One by one the rest of the children scuttled through the front door.
Surveying the downtrodden faces, Laney’s heart sank. Only a few had tears falling, while the others were red-faced with anger. What concerned her most were the various hues of shame in each of their gazes.
Laney couldn’t make words come out of her mouth. Thankfully, Katherine spoke for her. “Tell us what happened?”
“They laughed at us, called us names.”
Laney instantly found her voice. “The other schoolchildren called you names?”
“Yeah, and then this man came and told us we had to go home.”
Megan added, “He said we could never come back again.”
A sick feeling tumbled in Laney’s chest. “What did this man look like?”
“It was my—” Michael’s lips trembled on a sob. “My daddy.”
Prescott.
“He said he wouldn’t tolerate brats like us mingling with the children of the good folks of Denver.”
Katherine gasped. “Oh, no.”
Laney raised her eyes to the ceiling, praying for an answer or, at the very least, wisdom to know what to do.
Think, she ordered herself. After a moment, an idea formulated in her mind and she felt a surge of excitement. If she and Katherine could pull it off...
“Mrs. Smythe made cookies and candy.” She pointed behind her, urging everyone to look in that direction. “Johnny, take everyone to the kitchen and tell her to serve the treats now.”
He stared at her as though she’d turned into a fish trying to swim up the middle of downtown Denver. “But what are we going to do about school?”
“You leave that to me.” Laney gave him her most confident grin. “I have an idea.”
At the groan coming from Katherine, Laney spun to face her friend. “Well, I do.”
“Yes.” Katherine gave her a soft, understanding smile. “I know.”
“It’s a good one, too.”
“It always is.”
Laney tried not to sigh. “Go on, everyone.” She ushered the bulk of the children toward the kitchen. “Either I or Katherine will join you in just a minute to tell you what we have planned.”
Michael pulled on Laney’s skirt, the look of sorrow wiping away his usual youthful enthusiasm. “We won’t have to go back to that awful school again, will we?”
“Never again, I promise.”
“Laney,” Katherine warned, “Let’s not be hasty with our promises. No good can come from—”
“You don’t even know what I have planned.” Laney poked a finger in the air between them. “So calm your worries right now.”
“Why don’t you calm them for me, by explaining what you have in mind?”<
br />
Laney waited until all the children were out of earshot, then explained, “It’s really very simple. You will teach them.”
“Me?” Gasping, Katherine covered her heart with a shaky hand. “Have you gone mad?”
“Of course not. It’s a brilliant idea.”
Katherine shook her head. “You’re not thinking clearly, that’s it.”
“I’m thinking very clearly.”
“Oh, really? What about supplies? Desks? Chalkboards? Books?”
“Minor details, the kind we’ll work out as we go. Just like we always do.” Excitement swelled, making Laney dizzy with all the possibilities running through her mind.
“We’ll need to purchase a building, at some point, but not now.” She held up a hand to stave off Katherine’s objection. “In a few years, perhaps, once we’ve saved enough money.”
There would be no more loans. Laney had learned her lesson on that score.
“Laney, you’re getting drunk on excitement.” Katherine grasped her by the shoulders and shook. “Sober up. There are more than a few details involved with starting a school.”
Laney looked pointedly at Katherine’s hands still gripping her.
She immediately released her hold, but didn’t let go of her argument. “Where are we going to get the money to buy all the supplies and books? Books are expensive.”
“I’ll keep my job at the hotel for as long as necessary. And if that doesn’t bring in enough money...” Laney looked around her, at the luxurious furnishings Marc had pointed out “...then we’ll sell off some of the best pieces in the house.”
Though that last idea wasn’t her favorite solution, it might be the only way they could raise the necessary funds.
The grim twist of Katherine’s lips did not bode well for her agreement to Laney’s scheme. “Might I remind you, this is the kind of thinking that got us into trouble all the other times?”
Eyes narrowed, Laney tilted her head to look Katherine straight in the face. “Don’t you want to teach the children?”
Katherine took a contemplative pause. “Well, yes. Yes, I do.”
“Then leave the details to me.”
“Perhaps you should discuss this with someone else, maybe get a man’s perspective? Mr. Dupree’s, perhaps?”
