“Be careful, Eve.” Amelia scolded her, setting the costume she was sewing aside. “You’ll fall off that stool if you keep twirling like that.”
“No I won’t.”
“You never did know when to stop.”
Disappointment spread through Eve’s chest and throat so fast she thought she might choke. Nothing she had done since stepping off the train and into Cold Springs had been good enough for Amelia.
“Here, let me help you down.” Rebecca offered Eve a hand.
“Thank you, Mrs. Turner.” Eve stepped off the stool.
“You can call me Rebecca, if you’d like.”
“I shall then.” Eve smiled. “You have done such a magnificent job with the costumes for the pageant that, were I inclined to return to the stage in the new year, I should insist on taking you with me as my personal wardrobe assistant.”
“I think my four children would have something to say about that,” Rebecca laughed and moved to put away her things.
“You shouldn’t tease her like that,” Amelia whispered when Rebecca reached the far end of the room. “She’s had a hard year, what with her husband being locked up for robbery and having to sell her farm and Mr. Avery working to get her a divorce.”
“A divorce?” Eve blinked.
“Yes. The poor woman is under more than enough scrutiny from the town as it is. She doesn’t need to invite more wrath by rumors getting out that she’s running away to join a troupe of actors.”
“So you think that anyone who escapes a miserable situation by turning to the stage is worthy of condemnation?” Eve asked, planting her hands on her hips.
It took a second for realization to dawn in Amelia’s eyes. “No, no, I’m not saying that you should be ashamed of yourself,” she tried to backtrack.
“Aren’t you?”
Eve turned away from her. This whole afternoon had been a bad idea. Where there should have been hugs and giggles there had been only sighs and sharp comments. On both sides. She shrugged out of the wise man’s robe. She had a costume tunic on underneath but started to wriggle out of that too.
“Heaven’s sake, Eve!” Amelia shook her head. “Have you no modesty? Undressing in public?”
Eve scowled as she pulled the tunic over her head. As soon as her face was visible again she put on a smile.
“My dear sister, we’re in a private room with the door shut inside of an empty church on a Monday,” she said. “On top of that, I have drawers, a petticoat, and a chemise on. That’s more than most children wear to school.”
“You are not a child.” Amelia arched an eyebrow.
Eve folded the tunic and set it on a pile of garments on the room’s sewing table. Rebecca came to scoop the entire pile into her arms.
“I’ll bring this home with me and sew the hems on my machine,” she said. She glanced from Eve to Amelia before lowering her eyes and whisking out of the room.
As soon as they were alone, Eve was sure Amelia would launch into a scolding tirade. Instead her sister sighed.
“Are you really not inclined to return to the stage?” Amelia asked.
Eve took her time answering. She wasn’t certain of the answer herself. The stage had been a brilliant escape, a way to forget the horrors she’d run from. It had been a godsend at the time, but with each new city, she felt as though that time was up. The type of show they’d been putting on to draw crowds had been sinking to a point that neared degradation for her of late. Even she had her limits.
“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully, crossing to fetch her clothes from the table next the bench where Amelia sat. She lifted her dress then frowned. “Have you seen my corset?”
“No. You know you’re welcome at mine and Eric’s ranch any time,” Amelia said.
The idea of going to live with Amelia and Eric, of insinuating herself in their storybook-perfect life, itched its way down Eve’s spine. She searched the cluttered side table for her corset and tried not to make a sour face.
“I wish you would pack your things and move out of the hotel and in with us today,” Amelia continued. She closed a hand over top of one of Eve’s. “I mean it, Eve. I… I feel so responsible for you, as if I have let a great wrong go on for too long. But now I have a chance—”
“I must have left it on the other table.” Eve spun away from her sister, smiling like the sun to fight away the dark clouds that threatened her. She laughed. “Oh dear. I suppose Rebecca has my corset in her pile of costumes. Well, I’ll have to go without until I get back to the hotel.”
“But if you would just come stay at the ranch—”
“Isn’t Mark’s new church divine?” She turned back to Amelia but looked up and gestured to the ceiling. She couldn’t let the conversation go where she didn’t dare go herself. “Of course, I suppose all churches are divine.”
“Eve—”
“Mark has been terribly kind to me.” She rushed across the room to fetch her dress. The serious look in Amelia’s eyes—the regret—was more than Eve could bear. “He’s such a fascinating man. Why, we stayed up until all hours the other night just talking. I feel as though I could tell him anything.”
“Rev. Andrews is a delightful and compassionate man, I know,” Amelia agreed with a sigh. She rubbed her forehead as though a headache were coming on. “I’ve spoken to Eric about it,” she went on, “and he agrees that your home should be with us. If you’re ready to leave the stage, then we want—”
“Do you know who Mark reminds me of?” Eve yanked the conversation back to where she wanted it, to where she could survive it. She clutched her dress to her chest and leaned closer to Amelia as she had on nights when they’d stayed up well past dark sharing secrets.
Amelia hesitated, pressing her lips together. She took a breath then asked, “Who?”
“Father.”
Amelia balked. “Father?”
“Yes, of course.” Eve’s throat constricted with the memory of the first man she had loved. “He’s kind and thoughtful like Father was.”
“Father wasn’t thoughtful, he was drunk,” Amelia said.
“He had difficulties that weighed him down,” Eve argued.
“Gambling away all of our money, you mean.” Amelia shook her head. “Rev. Andrews is ten times the man Father was.”
“How can you be so heartless?” Eve snapped. She lowered her arms, her dress brushing the floor. All the same, her heart twisted and burned with the truth she knew her sister spoke. She clung to her few bright memories in spite of it. She had to.
“Father was trying to make things better for us, but he didn’t know how,” she defended the man she needed their father to have been.
“He was trying to drink himself into oblivion, you mean,” Amelia said. “Which, by the by, was the one thing he ever succeeded at.”
“It’s so very easy for you to pass judgment on those less fortunate than you now that you have your perfect, happy life, isn’t it?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Amelia pushed herself to stand.
Eve turned away so that she wouldn’t have to watch the struggle, so that she wouldn’t have to see the beautiful promise inherent in her sister’s round shape. She glanced down at her own flat, empty stomach, placing a hand over her scar.
“I merely mean that those who have everything a heart could desire should not cast aspersions on those who are forever forbidden from the golden fruit of that sort of life,” she said.
“Really, Eve,” Amelia sighed. “This habit you’ve developed of speaking as if you’re on stage acting out a monologue from a tragedy is wearing thin.”
She twisted to glare at her sister with a look that could cut ice. “This from the woman who wants to shelter me in the bosom of her home? Is it any wonder I’m happier at the hotel?”
Amelia threw up her hands. “I’m sorry. I take it back. I would be glad to hear you speak with all the grandiloquence in the world if you would just do it in our home at the ranch.”
The pro
spect of a real home, of peace and stability and love, was a powerful draw. In a way, Amelia was offering her everything she’d ever wanted. At the same time, she was dangling the bitter impossibility of having that stability in front of her face like a carrot she would snatch away with the next tart comment.
Eve sucked in a breath, lifting her shoulders with it. “Well, you can hate Father all you want,” she said. “I choose to think of him as a poor, flawed soul who did what he could for us and ached on the inside because it wasn’t enough.”
“Please!” The force behind Amelia’s words made Eve flinch. “You were not even ten when he was found dead in a seedy back alley. You don’t know.”
“Don’t I?”
A sullen silence stretched wide between them.
At last, Amelia dropped her shoulders and said, “I’m sorry.”
Eve had nothing to say to the apology. She turned her dress over and began gathering the skirts so she could put it on.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have tried to shelter you so much,” Amelia continued. She sank to sit on the bench once more, rubbing her belly.
“You didn’t shelter me from anything,” Eve said. She dropped her arms, putting off getting dressed.
Amelia snapped her eyes up, anxious and indignant at once.
“I knew what was going on,” Eve continued, “and when you left us I felt the full force of it.”
“Eve, I—”
“No, what’s done is done. I’m sick to death of talking about it. Let’s talk about something more pleasant.” She sat on the far end of the bench and searched for the right character to play. “What is Mark Andrews’s family like? He said he grew up here, but I haven’t encountered any other Andrewses.”
Amelia arched an eyebrow. “Why do you want to know about his family?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Eve smiled, but the stone in her sister’s expression wilted her hope once again. Still, she forged on. “I am truly enjoying myself, helping out with the Christmas pageant. Mark’s new church is such a fine venue to stage a play. Why, I suggested to him that he make theatrical endeavors a regular part of his services, like the medieval mystery plays performed in cathedrals.”
“What did he say to that?”
“He loved the idea.” A flush that had nothing to do with acting rose to her cheeks. “He said that he wouldn’t be able to do it without my help, though.” Before she could think better of it, she leaned closer to Amelia. “I think he was hinting at something.”
Amelia shook her head. “Eve, you’ve only been in Cold Springs for four days. Four days!”
“Yes, what of it?” A twist of iron entered her soul.
Amelia sighed. “This is not a fairy tale, it’s Montana. And you are not a fairy princess.”
It was growing harder and harder for Eve to swallow the painful lump in her throat. “So?”
“So there is no such thing as love at first sight and princes who kiss princesses and wake them up from nightmares.”
Eve stood and turned to face Amelia. “Your handsome prince came along and whisked you away to his fairy tale kingdom,” she said.
“That was different. Eric—”
“Why shouldn’t mine do the same?”
Amelia pressed her lips together, folding her arms over her stomach and staring at the wall. She held that pose as Eve resumed fiddling with her clothes.
“Is it so very wrong for me to have made a friend here?” Eve finally asked. She bunched the fabric of her dress and lifted her arms so she could slide it on over her head.
“No, not at all,” Amelia answered. “I want you to make friends here. I want you to make this your home. It isn’t wise to—Dear God, Eve! What’s that on your stomach?”
Before she could pull her dress down to hide, she felt Amelia’s hand brush across her scar.
“Don’t touch me!” she yelped and stepped back. She nearly fell over backward before she was able to yank her dress into place. Hot prickles raced across her skin and she began to tremble.
“What was that?” Amelia asked.
“It was… it was nothing.” She turned away and fumbled to do up the row of buttons along the front of the bodice. The dress didn’t fit right without a corset. Nothing in her life fit right.
“That was not nothing.” Amelia stood and took a step toward her. “Let me see—”
“No! Stay away from me. You can’t…. It’s nothing.” She retreated to the far end of the room.
“Don’t shut me out, Eve deLaurent,” Amelia scolded her. “I’m your sister.”
“Yes, yes you are.” Eve spun to face her, most of the buttons fastened. “And I shall endeavor to deserve you.”
Amelia gaped at her. “What does that mean?”
She tried to settle her thoughts into something civil, but after the way Amelia had touched her, Eve was beyond checking herself. “It means you can go back to your perfect ranch and your perfect, handsome husband, and your perfect, darling baby, secure in the knowledge that you did your best to rescue your shameful sister.” She crossed to the door to fetch her winter coat. “That’s what you’re after, isn’t it? Something to ease the guilt of running out on me when I needed you most? How noble of you.”
Amelia flushed bright red. Tears filled her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Yes, I know.” Eve thrust her arms into the sleeves of her coat. “Now if you will excuse me, I have to go back to the hotel. It’s terribly improper for me to be running around in public without a corset. Reverend Andrews might spot me, might get a peek at my ankle, and unman himself on a street corner. We wouldn’t want to cause a scandal, would we?”
“Eve!”
“I wish you a pleasant day, Mrs. Quinlan, which you are certain to have a better chance at without me.”
She pulled open the door and marched out into the main hall of the church, slamming the door behind her. Instantly, she burst into tears. She pressed a hand to her stomach. What had she been thinking, imagining she could stay in Cold Springs, that she could erase the past and pick up where she’d left off with Amelia? It was a fool’s errand at best.
She pushed on, swallowing her tears and marching across the sanctuary for the hotel. If it weren’t for Mark, she would pack her things and keep marching to wherever the horizon would take her.
Chapter Five
Some sort of change had come over Eve since Monday. Mark watched her float down the stairs of the Cold Springs Retreat, as if she were making a grand entrance on a stage. She was stunning in a dark blue velvet dress with silver trim—far too glamorous for Cold Springs—and her smile was bright enough to light the room. But ever since the morning she’d spent with Amelia at the church, she had been quiet and pale. Patrons of the hotel stared at her as she crossed the lobby, but to Mark it was like seeing a photograph of the real thing. Eve’s vivacious confidence was gone.
“How do I look?” she asked with a practiced lilt as she reached him and twirled.
“Like a star of the stage,” he said and arched an eyebrow.
She laughed. Then she sighed and dropped her act and her smile. His heart skipped a beat as the beautiful, complex woman he had spent so much time with over the past week finally showed herself under her costume.
“I like dressing up,” she admitted as he held out his arm to her. “You’re a man, so you wouldn’t understand, but it feels delicious to be pretty.”
“I know all about delicious,” he said with a laugh. “And trust me, I am more than capable of appreciating pretty.”
He leaned close and kissed her cheek.
The gesture sent a shockwave through him. It had come out of nowhere, but few things had felt as satisfying in years. He was honest with himself. He wanted to kiss her again, a lot. He wanted to hold her in his arms and trace the lines of her body with his hands. He wanted to peel away her layers to find that consuming pain underneath and love it out of her.
“Well!” Her exclamation shook him out of his thoughts. “After a kiss like that, I’m sur
e we’re flitting off to the grandest hotel in Montana for supper.”
His warm, carnal feelings were squelched by the reality of the evening he had in store for her.
“No, we’re not going that far,” he said. “It’s just a short ride from here.”
“I am a-tingle with the mystery of it.” She smiled, a genuine smile.
She wouldn’t be so charmed when they showed up on Eric and Amelia’s front porch.
“Have you talked to Amelia at all since Monday?” he asked to determine just how much hot water he would be in once she found out.
Her smile vanished. “Just a little. She was too fatigued to come into town on Tuesday. She was here for errands yesterday and we spoke a bit, but not for long. I’m not sure I want to speak to her if she’s determined to be so cold.”
Mark paused near the door leading out to the early winter twilight. He held Eve’s gloved hands between them.
“We’re going to Amelia and Eric’s ranch for supper,” he confessed.
Eve’s swirl of tormented emotions gathered to shock, and then a new emotion he hadn’t seen in her yet, anger.
“No. No, that’s not fair.” She pulled her hands out of his and turned away from him.
Mark swallowed and set his shoulders for the battle he’d known he would have to fight.
“It’s just one evening. I’ll be with you the whole time,” he said.
Eve half turned back to him. She arched an eyebrow. “I do not appreciate being fooled into facing my sister.”
Mark shrugged. “At least I told you now, here at the hotel, instead of when we got there. You’re free to back out if you’d like.”
She crossed her arms and tilted her chin up. “Do you mean that?”
“I do.” He nodded and took a step closer to her. “I think that you should go, though. It’s important. Eve, I don’t like seeing you like this.”
“I’m fine, see?” She attempted one of her theatrical smiles. It crumbled and fell apart before she could fix it firmly in place. She huffed and may have even stomped her foot under her billowing skirts. “Oh, I can’t even play the part when I’m around you,” she muttered.
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