Wendy Lindstrom

by Kissing in the Dark

  “Oh, honey.” Faith pulled him into her arms, terrified and furious and sick to her soul. The children she was trying to protect were in more danger than ever.

  So help her God, she would make Stone pay for this.

  The neighbor lady stepped onto her porch and peered in their direction. “I heard a scream. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Brooks.” Faith kept her chin down so the woman wouldn’t notice her wet cheeks. “My brother just took a hard spill in the leaves, but everything’s fine.”

  “All right then.” To Faith’s relief, the woman went back inside.

  Adam pulled away and struggled to his feet. “I got to get help.”

  “Wait.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “We need to get a message to Duke without letting anyone know what happened.”

  Chapter 34

  Duke road his weary mount out of Westfield, tired but certain he would win the election next week. Every township and village he’d visited had shown their support, and his under-sheriff and deputies stood solidly behind him. But of all the trips he’d made on sheriff’s business, none had ever been so tedious or unfulfilling.

  Where was his sense of purpose?

  Where was the conviction he always felt during these visits? Where was the man who wouldn’t compromise his integrity? Or his badge?

  He was losing his moral compass. Decisions that used to be black and white were all tangled up with Faith’s idea of useful or not useful. Nothing was clear anymore. Laws felt too harsh, and rules seemed too rigid in judging some cases fairly. Like Dahlia’s situation. Duke had seen her aim the gun and pull the trigger. But there was truth in what she said: Levens would have killed Dahlia without a second thought, and he would have come back to kill Anna the first chance he got. It was so mixed up in Duke’s head, he couldn’t think about it without tying his gut in a knot.

  Eight days of traveling had taken its toll on his shoulder and his mind. All he wanted was a good soak in the bathhouse and a few hours alone with Faith.

  He missed her. He’d left too much unsaid between them because he’d been shocked into a state of outrage he’d never before known. From the minute he met Faith, each step that should have taken him due north had been a few degrees off course. Now, without true direction, he couldn’t navigate his way through the day, much less his life.

  Everything was in shambles with his brothers because of his lack of attention. He’d strayed off course with them as well.

  The thunder of horse hooves racing up behind him made Duke reach for his gun. He was traveling alone, moving through towns like a drifter, crossing paths with all sorts of characters. If anything happened to him out here before he could apologize to his brothers for putting their reputations at risk, and offer Faith the forgiveness she sought, they would never know how deeply he regretted his actions.

  He slowed his mare and drew his revolver.

  “Sheriff Grayson!” He turned to see a man on horseback waving his arm. “A message for you!” he shouted.

  Duke holstered his revolver and reined in his horse. There was trouble, but not from the man stopping beside him.

  “Sam Wade said we’d find you heading out of Westfield.”

  Duke had wired Wade shortly before leaving to tell him he was heading home, but the wire was from Faith.

  Cora missing.

  Hurry!

  Missing? All Duke could think about was the creek running high and hard from two weeks of heavy rain.

  “Any return message, Sheriff?”

  “No.” With a tug on the reins, Duke wheeled his horse away, and kicked the big mare into a run. It didn’t matter how or where or why his daughter was missing, it only mattered that she was.

  His heart pounded with each mile he covered. The mare was sleek and fit, and Duke wanted to push her harder and faster, to eat up the miles between him and home. But he reined in his panic and alternated the mare’s pace between a trot and a gallop.

  Each minute that ticked by drove his anxiety higher, and when an hour passed, his chest was so tight it hurt. Another twenty minutes saw him trotting past the Common and down Water Street. When he finally dismounted in his front yard, he was praying Cora had been found and was safe in the house with Faith.

  But Faith met him in the foyer, her face ashen. “Judge Stone took Cora.”

  Stone? “The man listed in your mother’s guestbook?” The man Duke had sent a letter to? “Do you know him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would he take Cora?”

  “Because you sent him a letter! You told him where to find us!”

  She was acting crazy, and it was making him crazy. “What are you talking about? Why would my letter make Stone come and take Cora?”

  “Because he’s Cora’s father.”

  As if a boulder struck his chest, Duke’s breath whooshed out and he stumbled back a step. “How can that be?” Stone had visited Rose. Faith said she didn’t work upstairs. Nothing was making sense. “Did you and Stone . . . You said you were a widow”

  The desolate look in her eyes scared him. “I’m not a widow,” she whispered.

  Duke stood perfectly still, his world crumbling around him.

  “The judge was my mother’s guest. And Cora was my mother’s last child.”

  God almighty. His mind spun with the horrifying reality of their situation. If the judge was Cora’s father, then he was entitled to take his child. Duke couldn’t do anything legally to get back the little girl who’d stolen his heart.

  Worse yet, he himself had sent the letter that brought the man to their doorstep. He wouldn’t have sent the letter if Faith had told him about Stone. “How could you let me marry you without telling me this?”

  “How could I tell you something like this?”

  “How could you not?” he countered, pierced by another betrayal, this one unforgivable. “You lied about everything, Faith.”

  “What would you have done in my place?”

  “I would have . . . hell, I don’t know.” He scraped his hair out of his eyes. “I wouldn’t have lied.”

  “Of course not,” she said, her voice laced with sarcasm. “It’s easy to be honorable when your belly is full, when you have a family to lean on, when you’re a man who can fight your own battles. But no one helps a whore or her children. My mother made me ring a damn bell to get her attention! And I could only ring it if I had an emergency!” He expected tears, but she faced him with cold resolve. “When you live in a brothel, nothing is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Right or wrong don’t exist. The only way I got through each day was to choose what was useful and ignore the rest. I’m asking for your compassion, not your approval.”

  “I’m your husband. You should have trusted me.”

  “I couldn’t! Did you hear a word of what I just said?”

  “I heard you, Faith. You don’t trust me. Cora isn’t your daughter. And you aren’t a widow. So . . . why weren’t you a virgin?” he asked, his heart bleeding.

  “Because I was a fool. I believed Jarvis loved me, and that he was going to marry me.”

  “Who the hell is Jarvis?”

  “He was a guest at the brothel. When he saw me and learned I didn’t work upstairs, he hired me to give him massages.”

  Duke ground his teeth. He was going to stand in the foyer until he learned every sordid detail once and for all. “No more lies, Faith. No more secrets. Tell me all of it.”

  She lifted bleak, swollen eyes. “Jarvis was the son of a wealthy planter from Kentucky. He stopped at the brothel each time he passed through Syracuse.”

  So she’d never been married. Another lie. It hardly mattered at this point.

  “Jarvis bought a small house for us and gave me money to furnish it while he was away. He said he would return in two weeks to move me in. I thought we were getting married, so I gave in and . . . but after . . . when my mother found us, she made Jarvis confess the truth. He wanted a mistress, not a wife.”

  Duke could imagi
ne how manipulated and hurt she felt, because he was experiencing that same painful betrayal. Everything he’d believed about Faith was in ashes. She wasn’t a grieving widow from Saratoga. She’d grown up in a brothel in Syracuse and massaged men’s bodies for money.

  But the worst blow of all was still that Cora wasn’t legally Faith’s daughter. It made him sick and more afraid than he’d ever been in his life.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this the night I found out about the brothel?”

  “Because the truth was too unbearable for you to hear all at once. And I was trying to protect Cora.”

  “Keeping secrets didn’t protect her! That judge has every legal right to keep our daughter!” In hopeless rage, he slammed his fist against the wall.

  Her chin shot up and her eyes flashed with anger. “Well, he can’t have her, damn it! I’m going to Syracuse to get her. And I’ll bleed, beg, or kill to get her back.”

  “How, Faith? He’s legally entitled to his child.”

  “He doesn’t want her. He wants the brothel. He caused my mother’s death trying to get it.”

  Duke’s blood ran cold knowing Cora was in that man’s hands. Maybe Duke had no legal right to the girl, but when he’d married Faith, he’d bound his heart to the precious, precocious youth and vowed to protect her. That vow had brought him joy, a sweetness and light that he had never known. Like Faith, he would go anywhere, and do anything to find Cora and bring her back.

  “Where’s Adam?” he asked, his decision made completely and irrevocably.

  “Next door with Dahlia.”

  “I’ll take him to Boyd’s house where he’ll be safe. Pack a bag for us. When I get back, we’re going to Syracuse.”

  o0o

  Duke left Adam with Boyd, then sent a telegram to Steven Cuvier, hoping the man knew something about Stone or Faith’s mother that would help them. But when Duke reached his office, his brisk manner deserted him. Despair settled in his gut, slowly hardening into a solid, unbreakable resolve.

  He climbed the steps of the Academy building, aching to the bone from eight days of traveling. All he’d wanted was to get home, but now he wished he’d taken more time to thank each of his deputies for their service. They were good men, and he was honored to work with them.

  But his life as sheriff was over.

  He crossed the hall, unlocked his door, and entered his office. Everything was painfully familiar—the heavy oak desk, the rickety chair, the old metal safe—but no longer his. Another man would soon rest his elbows on the scarred desktop. Another man would carry the keys to the safe. Another man would wear the badge that Duke had worn with pride for eight years.

  He’d known the day would come when he stepped down of his own accord, or when the vote supported another man. At each election he was prepared to pass the position to a man who could do the job. But he’d never imagined giving up his badge because he wasn’t fit to wear it.

  It was only a piece of metal, but when he unpinned the silver star from his leather vest, it felt like he tore out his heart. He closed his fingers around the medallion, missing the weight of it on his chest. He’d worn the badge so long, it had left an impression in the leather, a painful reminder of a position he could no longer live up to. Because he was going to cross the line. He was going to break the law.

  The outside door squeaked open and footsteps echoed in the hall. “Glad you’re back,” his deputy called.

  “You alone, Sam?”

  “I will be in a minute.”

  Duke sat at his beat up old desk to write a short note of resignation. He heard keys jangle in the hallway, then the cell door opened and closed, then more jangling as Sam locked it.

  “Sleep it off, Morton.” Sam’s boot heels clunked across the wood floor, then he appeared at the door, his auburn beard looking like it needed a good trim. “Did you get your telegram, Sheriff?”

  “Yeah.” Duke knelt by the safe to open it. This was the last time anyone would call him Sheriff. When he walked out of his office, it would be as a private citizen.

  And a father.

  The law said Cora belonged to Stone, but she belonged to Duke. Maybe Faith was correct, that right and wrong didn’t exist. But without those boundaries, how did one maintain a true course? Without knowing right or wrong, how could a man judge himself?

  “I’m turning in my badge, Sam.”

  Sam’s eyebrows pinched above his craggy nose. “I got water in my ears yesterday and I still can’t hear right. What’d you say?”

  “I have a shoulder that won’t heal, so I’m withdrawing from the election.”

  “But you can’t . . . you’re sure to win.”

  Duke’s hands shook as he put his badge inside the safe. “Maybe. Maybe not.” Didn’t matter. He unbuckled his gun belt and laid it beside the gleaming badge, then stood and handed the keys to Sam. “You and the under-sheriff can manage for a week until our new sheriff is elected. I suspect Phelps will be the man. Maybe Taylor will surprise us with a win, but I’m confident that Archer is out of the running.”

  Sam gawked at the keys. “You’re serious!”

  Duke wished he wasn’t, that he could confide in his friend, but his decision was made. “I’ve got a train to catch. Will you get this to the Censor for me so they can print my resignation in tomorrow’s paper?”

  Sam stared at the note. “Damn, Sheriff, is your shoulder that bad?”

  His shoulder was improving each day and would probably heal completely, but his conscience was festering like a deadly wound.

  “I’m not the sheriff anymore,” he said.

  Just Duke Grayson.

  And who the hell was that?

  Chapter 35

  The rocking motion of the train would have soothed Faith, but she was too brokenhearted and scared to be comforted by anything. Cora must be terrified. Duke hadn’t spoken a word other than to ask questions about the judge that she couldn’t answer. So he sat in grim silence, studying her mother’s guestbook with scowling intensity.

  “Did you really quit?” she asked, afraid to disturb him, but needing to know the truth.

  “Yes.” He didn’t look up from the book.

  “Why? I don’t understand, Duke. You were sure to win the election.”

  “Phelps will likely win now, and he’s worthy of the job.”

  “But it was your job.”

  He sighed and lowered the book to his lap, his eyes cold. “I can’t wear a badge and commit a crime, Faith.”

  “What crime? We’re getting our daughter back.” She hoped. She prayed.

  “If Cora’s in Syracuse, how do you suppose we’ll get her away from Stone? I’ll have to kidnap her from her father who has a legal right to keep her, and that’s against the law.”

  “You’re a sheriff. The law. Make the judge understand that he’s tangling with a powerful man. My mother couldn’t fight him, but you can.”

  “I’m not wearing a badge anymore. I’m a private citizen now.”

  “But he’s a lying, blackmailing criminal!” she insisted quietly. “Can’t you take back your badge and arrest him?”

  “For what, Faith?”

  “For taking Cora and . . .” She sighed, and her eyes welled up. Stone was protected, and there was no way to prove he’d committed any crime. “Maybe you could have used your badge to scare him off.”

  Duke scoffed. “A sheriff’s badge is little threat to a big city judge.”

  “I don’t understand why you couldn’t get Cora back and still keep your job. She should be with us. The judge is corrupt and in the wrong here. Not us. You know that.”

  “That doesn’t make it okay for an officer of the law to break the very rules he’s supposed to enforce.”

  She saw the loss in his eyes, as if some part of him had died. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to quit?” she asked softly.

  “There was nothing to discuss.”

  She knew it was because Duke was a black-and-white type of man. As soon as he
’d realized he would have to break the law to get Cora back, he’d made his decision immediately and irrevocably. He hadn’t needed to mull it over or talk about it with her, he’d just borne the pain and done what he had to do. To know that her lies had brought him to this point and caused him to sacrifice so much, shredded her heart.

  As the train pulled into the Syracuse station, she fought back her tears, praying they would find Cora, and that Duke would someday forgive her.

  She was physically and emotionally exhausted by the time they reached the courthouse where, according to Duke, Steven Cuvier and several other lawyers kept their offices. She both worried and prayed they would run into Judge Stone, who supposedly sat the bench here, but they crossed the lobby without seeing anyone. Duke scanned a sign on the wall, then guided her across the marble floor to Mr. Cuvier’s office.

  The lawyer was a tall, lanky dark-skinned man, who looked familiar enough to have Faith searching her memory for where she might have seen him. Not at the brothel. Surely Iris would have raved about a handsome man like the lawyer. Not at the market. Maybe nowhere. Maybe she had never crossed paths with the man.

  The lawyer was waiting with Duke’s telegram in his hand. “Sheriff Grayson, what’s the emergency?” he asked, but before Duke could answer, the lawyer’s gaze fell on Faith. “My God He stared as if seeing a ghost. “You must be Celia’s sister Constance.”

  Hearing her mother’s first name startled Faith as much as learning her mother had a sister. Her mother went by Rose at the brothel, but it made sense this man would know her full name if he was in fact her lawyer. “I’m her daughter Faith,” she said, sensing kindness in him. “Did you handle my mother’s legal work?”

  “I did.” Sadness filled his eyes as he clasped Faith’s cold hands. “I didn’t realize you were her daughter. I’ve been looking for you since I heard the sad news about your mother. I can’t express how deeply her passing grieves me.”