Lily’s heart felt lighter than it had all day. She smiled and held out her hand to Melody.
“Oh, help me up. I think I’m stuck.”
Melody pulled and Lily pushed. That’s when things went wrong. One of them, Lily wasn’t sure which one, stepped on the cat’s tail. The cat screeched and jumped on the horse’s hind leg with its claws bared. The horse whinnied loudly and kicked to try to dislodge the cat.
It was as if time slowed down. Lily saw the horse’s hoof heading straight for Melody’s head. She moved faster than she ever thought possible to push the girl out of the way. The last thing she remembered was incredible pain in her hip and thigh, and the door of the stall rushing up to meet her. Then all was black.
———
“Paaaaaaaaaa!”
Ray looked up from his coffee and immediately stood, knocking over the chair. He was halfway across the room before the back door burst open and Melody skidded in with snow-covered shoes.
“Pa! Help me, please! I can’t move her and Uncle Tyler’s horse is gonna kick her again. I tried to m-m-move her, but I couldn’t. There’s blood, Pa.”
Ray didn’t wait to hear the rest, he was out the door before she finished talking. His heart lodged somewhere near his throat and he almost forgot to breathe. He slammed into the barn, heading straight for Sable’s stall. He heard the big horse whinnying like he was in pain, with a lot of grunts and thunks.
He saw Lily on the floor partially out of the stall, lying as still as a stone. Her bright blue hat forgotten in the dirty straw beside her.
Sweet Jesus!
He hadn’t even stopped running before he grabbed her and pulled her out of the stall completely. Tyler and Jack were right behind him. Tyler jumped into the stall and took charge of his gelding. He heard the soothing murmur Tyler crooned to the horse, and Jack asking Ray if Lily was okay, but he didn’t acknowledge anything but her.
Lily.
Ray knelt down next to her. She had a gash on her forehead and it looked as if her nose was really broken this time. Her face was as pale as milk, making the sprinkling of freckles stand out like dots of brown paint. He yanked a handkerchief out of his back pocket and held it against the bloody mess. She was breathing, but out cold.
“Melody!” he bellowed.
She appeared from behind Jack, looking absolutely terrified.
“What happened here, girl?”
“W-we were talkin’ and then we stood up, and the cat got scared and scratched Uncle Tyler’s horse. He was gonna kick me and M-miss Li-l-lian pushed me out of the w-w-way.” Tears streamed down her reddened cheeks and she sobbed between words. “I th-think the horse kicked her and she fell on the stall d-d-door.”
Jack picked her up in his arms and started rubbing her back. “It’s okay, Mel. It’s okay.”
The horse kicked her somewhere. Probably in the back or legs. He had to get her inside so Nicky and his mother could take a look at her. Praying he wouldn’t hurt her any worse than she was already hurt, Ray stood with Lily in his arms.
“I’m s-s-sorry, Pa,” Melody said.
Ray didn’t answer her. He was already out of the barn and heading toward the house, his precious bundle clutched in his arms.
He burst into the house, careful not to let the doorjamb hit Lily.
“Mama! Nicky! I need you!”
Ray took her upstairs to her bed, laying her down gently. He was removing her shoes when his mother and Nicky came in at a run.
“What happened?” Nicky asked.
“Sable kicked her and she slammed into the damn stall door. I think her nose is broken and she’s pretty banged up.”
They pushed him out of the way and started stripping her.
“Get out, Ray,” said Nicky.
“Don’t talk to me like that, Nicky,” he bellowed. “She’s going to be my wife. I have every right to be here.”
“You’re in the way, so move,” Nicky ordered.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Ray shot back.
Francesca scowled at them with blazing green eyes. “If you’re going to fight, both of you get out. This girl needs help and the two of you are not helping.”
Duly chastised, Ray tried to swallow the fear that had invaded his throat. Lily was so still, lying there on the bed. When his mother pulled up her dress, and tugged down her knickers, he sucked in a pained breath. Her hip and thigh were already purpling with an enormous bruise. A horseshoe of angry welts were at the center of the bruise.
“We need to pack some snow on this to keep the swelling down,” said Francesca. “Ray, go get a bucketful.”
Ray wanted to stay in the room, but knew his mother was right. They needed to keep the swelling down. He opened the door and ran into his brothers, Tyler, his father and the children in the hallway.
For some reason that escaped logic, they all started talking at once. He couldn’t even think through the cacophony. The noise was deafening.
“Enough! Mama and Nicky are looking at her. She got kicked by a horse and hurt her head on the stall door. Now get out of my way so I can go get some snow for the swelling.”
The door opened behind him. Nicky poked her head out and frowned at everyone. “Jack, go get some towels. Trevor, go get Mama’s sewing kit.”
She closed the door and the silence lasted for a moment, then everyone started talking again.
“If you want to help Lily, go away. Jack and Trevor, get what Nicky asked for,” Ray shouted. He pushed his way through everyone, intent on getting a breath of fresh air and the snow for his future wife.
My woman.
Not even married yet and already worried about losing her. It was hard. Too hard. He didn’t know if he could do it again.
Chapter Eleven
Lily could not remember where she was. All she knew was her rear end and her face throbbed in tune with each other. The pain in her behind was excruciating. It felt like Archie had taken a cane to her again. Mama must be out looking for business.
“Mama? Archie?” she asked.
“Shhh, it’s okay. Relax,” came a soft, feminine voice.
Lily just couldn’t focus. She was lying on a soft bed, somewhere, so she knew she wasn’t home. The sheets and the bed were too soft.
“Who the hell is Archie?” an annoyed man responded.
“Ray, if you can’t be nice, leave the room,” another man replied.
“Make me.”
Someone sighed. “Will you two stop it? I am sick of hearing it,” said the woman.
“Sorry, Rebecca,” the annoyed man grunted.
“Sorry, Becky.” The other man sounded much more sincere.
“You’d think you two were five instead of grown men.”
There was silence for a minute. Lily tried to concentrate on the voices. The annoyed man sounded so familiar. The memory was like a dandelion puff in the wind though and she just couldn’t run fast enough to catch it.
“Why don’t you two go check on your children? Lily is obviously still talking in her sleep. If she wakes up, I’ll let you know,” the familiar man said.
“I think he’s trying to get rid of us.”
“And with good reason, Jack. You’re being a pest,” the woman, Rebecca, teased.
“You wound me, Angel,” replied Jack.
Lily heard a kiss then a chair scrape. A gentle hand touched her cheek.
“She’ll be all right, Ray. You heard what your mother said. Her body just needs to heal itself.”
Lily wanted to cry from the gentleness in that voice, that touch. It had been so long since she’d felt such softness. Her closed eyes pricked with tears and she struggled to control them. Her head pounded and her nose ached something fierce. Crying would make everything worse.
A door closed and all was silent. Lily opened one eye and saw a man sitting on a chair next to her. He was big, with wavy reddish-brown hair, at least a day or two’s growth of whiskers on a strong jaw, and the most intense green eyes she ever remembered seeing.
> They flicked to her and she was startled to see concern, regret and something else in the depths of those eyes.
“You’re awake,” he said. “You had us all worried there, sunshine.”
“Did Archie cane me again?”
Now he looked startled. “Nobody hit you. A horse kicked you in the…er…hind end and you slammed into a stall door and hit your face.”
Relief coursed through her. Now if only she could remember where she was, and more importantly, who this man was. Sleep started creeping over her like a warm blanket and she struggled against it.
“Where am I?” she mumbled.
“You’re in a bed in my mother’s house. We came here for the twins’ birthday, remember? You and Hope were sharing. She’s been bunking down with the younger girls though downstairs so they don’t disturb you.”
Lily wanted to ask who he was, but the blackness swallowed her in a roar and she surrendered to sleep.
———
Lily slept. This time it wasn’t that deep unconsciousness that had plagued her since yesterday. Now she was simply sleeping. A wave of relief washed through him. Mama had been right—Lily just needed to heal herself.
“I know who Archie is.”
Ray almost jumped off the chair in surprise. Melody had crept up to stand next to him and he never heard a sound. Damn, that girl was like a ghost.
“You snuck up on me.”
She shrugged. “Aunt Bonita taught me how.”
He nodded. Bonita was half Lakota Sioux and liked to teach the children some of her Indian ways. Ray thought it was a good thing for the children to learn whatever they could from her.
“Who is Archie, Mel?”
She scooted onto his lap and laid her head on his shoulder. He anchored his arm around her tiny waist. He inhaled her childish scent of oatmeal, soap and milk.
My daughter.
No matter what anyone ever said about Melody, she was his daughter.
“He’s a bad man. Miss Lillian told me he married her mama and that he was evil.”
An evil, bad man who married her mother and obviously took a cane to her more than once. Lily surely knew what pain was. No wonder she thought she’d been caned when she woke. She likely knocked her head around enough to mix it up.
“I think he hurt her.”
Ray sighed. “I think he must have hurt her too, but we won’t let that happen again. Will you help me protect her?”
“Yes, Papa, I will. I don’t want Miss Lillian to be hurt again either.”
Melody snuggled in deeper against his chest. It had been so long since she had wanted to be held or cuddled. He simply accepted it as a change, perhaps brought about by one tiny, voluptuous woman who he intended to marry.
“Do you love her, Pa?”
Well, shit. He should have expected that. How to explain to his five-year-old daughter what love and trust meant.
“I like her, Mel. We can make a good life together.”
She harrumphed against his collarbone. “Grandma would call that no answer at all.”
He chuckled. “When did you get to be forty-five instead of five?”
“I’m only five, Pa. If I was forty-five, I’d be almost dead already.”
Ray held back the chuckle this time, because it would have turned into an all-out laugh.
“Will you let her be your new mama?”
She didn’t answer.
“Will you try to let her be your new mama?”
A baby soft sigh gusted past the skin on his throat.
“I’ll try, Pa, but it ain’t gonna be easy.”
Melody was like a wise old woman in the body of a child. She surprised the hell out of him all the time. He squeezed her tightly for a moment.
“Ouch! What’re you doing, Pa? Trying to squish me?”
“Sorry, Mel, just thinking what a lucky father I am.”
“Oh, yuck, you’re going to be mushy now? I’m leaving.”
Melody scrambled off his lap and darted out of the room. He watched her go with a shake of his head. Then he turned his gaze back to his future wife. Some wedding day this turned out to be.
———
Lily awoke to bright sunshine. Her left eye felt sore and tight. She reached a hand up and felt a bandage, underneath that she could feel the outline of stitches. She opened her eyes, blinking until she could focus on the chair in front of her. Next to the bed, sleeping in the chair with his head back, mouth open and snoring softly, was Ray. It was probably the last thing she expected to see by her bedside. He looked strangely at peace, although distinctly uncomfortable.
Lily tried to focus on how she ended up in the bed, obviously hurt, with Ray as her nurse. She had been in the barn with Melody and that big black horse and a screeching cat, then pain. She remembered dreaming of Archie and Mama. It had been fifteen years since she’d seen them, but they danced like demons at the edge of her memory. She tried to roll over, but the pain in her hip and thigh stabbed at her like a thousand knives. Lily groaned and shifted her weight.
The pain was familiar. It was as if she’d been caned. That’s why she’d been dreaming of Archie. The humiliation, the thwack sound of his cane on her bare legs and behind. The refusal to make a sound while he did it.
She clenched her fists on the bed and forced herself to remember how strong she could be.
“You need help?”
She was embarrassed to have Ray find her in her nightgown, half out of the covers, groaning and moaning. It could be worse. She could be naked too.
“Yes, please,” she finally admitted. “I feel like a babe learning to roll over.”
He chuckled and gently helped her turn on her side.
“Who’s Archie?”
The question dropped to her stomach like a lead ball. Her tongue felt as dry as cotton and her throat closed up.
“Oh, shit, I didn’t mean to blurt that out, sunshine. I…well, the thing is you were talking in your sleep or whatever it was. Mel said he was a bad man who hurt you. Jesus, I’m starting to sound like Nicky. Frigging magpie.”
Lily decided right then and there that she might as well tell him all of it. If they were going to be married, she wanted to begin with no secrets. There was too much ugliness in her past to hide it any longer. Once she started, the words just tumbled out.
“My father was a gambler, a pretty poor one. He was killed in a poker game when I was nine. My mother remarried within months. Archie was my stepfather. He…uh, he used to beat my mother and me. He got her hooked on opium and made her sell her body to anyone willing to pay a few bucks for her. I hid from him as much as possible, but when I was eleven, I um…matured early. Since Archie wanted to have me under him, he figured other men did too.”
Ray stared at her, growing paler and paler as she spoke.
“Are you telling me that your stepfather turned you into a whore?”
“For one night he did. I don’t even remember the man, other than he had pale white skin, was flabby and smelled of onions. I ran away and lived on the streets for a week. When I returned, I found out that my mother had killed Archie and then took enough opium to kill a horse. That’s when I was sent to St. Catherine’s. Do you want me to continue?”
His eyes were shuttered. “Is there more?”
”Yes.” The painful lump in her throat grew larger by the minute.
“Finish it then.” His voice was hard and curt.
“I tried to fit in at St. Catherine’s, but I was an ignorant, foul-mouthed daughter of an opium addict and whore and a dead gambler who had his head blown off in front of me. I started getting into fights constantly and was always in the infirmary. That’s where I met Sister Margaret. She had infinite patience for me and always had time to listen to whatever came out of my mouth. When she,”—Lily swallowed. Hard.—“died, I decided right then and there to be a teacher. She opened the world up for me, Ray, of books and people and places I will never see, but know because of books.”
“How did she die?�
�
She was hoping he wasn’t going to bring that up, but in for a penny, in for a pound. Just finish it.
“We were ice skating in the park and I fell down by the thin ice. She tried to pull me to safety, and I panicked. The ice cracked under her weight and she fell in. She drowned saving me.”
It was so quiet, Lily could hear her heartbeat thumping like a locomotive.
“So your mother was an opium-addicted whore, your father was a gambler, and your stepfather sold you as a whore when you were eleven. Your mother murdered your stepfather then committed suicide. You lived in an orphanage where you accidentally killed your favorite nun and teacher.”
Saying it out loud was more painful than she imagined. What an ugly life she’d had.
“Anything else?”
Lily closed her eyes tightly for a moment, then opened them. “All my other governess positions were terminated because of my clumsiness or the fact that the father couldn’t keep his eyes off my breasts long enough to pay attention to his wife.”
Ray stared at her with his fathomless eyes. He stood and walked to the window, rubbing his neck with both hands. He likely had a crick in it from sleeping in that uncomfortable chair.
“I know I’m not a prize catch for a wife, Ray. Things went awfully fast for us. I want to let you know that you can step out of this marriage. I would understand completely and not be angry about it.”
She would have a broken heart to go with her broken noggin and rear end, but at least the parts would all match. She almost laughed aloud at her absurd, maniacal humor.
He turned and looked at her. “Do you still want to marry me?”
“Yes.”
There was no hesitation on her part. The answer would always be yes.
He nodded. “Then you rest up for another few days and we’ll get married.”
Ray walked out of the room without another word, without a kiss or a hug, or even a handshake. Lily felt like she had just been interviewed by a desperate man looking to fill a hole in his life who was willing to settle for whatever dredges came through the door.
———
Ray took a drag from the cigar and blew the smoke out into the frigid night air. He’d been hiding from the family most of the day. Since Lily revealed a past so shocking, he had to flee or break down in front of her.
The Treasure Page 12
