Secondhand Bride Page 27

  His expression was so bleak that she raised a hand to her throat in alarm.

  “Did something happen to Jeb?” she asked, stepping back.

  “He’s fine.” Holt’s every motion was fraught with weariness as he hung up his hat and coat and took off his gun belt. “You don’t look like you got any more rest than I did.”

  Chloe set aside her own concerns, laid a hand on his arm. “Holt, what’s the matter? You look wretched.”

  He turned to her. “I sold the Circle C.” He sounded surprised, even as he spoke the words, like it was something he hadn’t expected to do.

  Chloe’s mouth fell open.

  He brushed past her, went to the stove, poured himself a cup of coffee, even though the grounds hadn’t had time to settle. “It’s part of the Triple M now,” he said. “All of it. Including this house.”

  Chloe shook her head, unable to take it in. She wasn’t well acquainted with Holt, but she knew how he felt about the ranch by the way he ran it, and she was baffled. “Wh-what about Lizzie?” she asked.

  He glanced at the ceiling, as though he could see through the boards, catch sight of his young daughter, asleep in her bed. “She’ll stay with the McKettricks until I get us a place in Texas,” he said.

  Chloe had to sit down. “Why? Why would you leave here?”

  Holt took a sip from his coffee cup, avoided her gaze. “Because Texas is home.”

  “This is home,” Chloe said, though she didn’t have the right. “Oh, Holt, Lizzie is going to be devastated. She just found you, just began to settle in.”

  “She loves her grandfather. She’ll be fine at the Triple M.”

  “She loves you. If you leave, she’s going to believe you’re not coming back, no matter what you tell her beforehand.”

  “It’s done,” Holt said, in a tone that brooked no further discussion. His expression was grim, his eyes haunted. “Go ahead with the lessons, and don’t mention any of this to her. I want to break the news myself.”

  Chloe shook her head.

  Holt left the room without another word, and he stayed clear of Chloe the rest of the day.

  She went over Lizzie’s schoolwork with her, but they were both distracted and fitful, and they didn’t accomplish much.

  “I think something’s the matter with my papa,” Lizzie said late that afternoon, watching dolefully as Chloe packed her reticule to go back to town. She wondered if she’d ever set foot in this house again and felt sad to think of it standing empty, without Holt and Lizzie.

  “He’s got some things on his mind,” Chloe said carefully. Holt had made his wishes clear, where Lizzie and the sale of the Circle C were concerned, but it was hard to be cheerful.

  Lizzie looked sad. “He liked having Uncle Jeb here, I think.”

  “Yes,” Chloe agreed. So did I.

  “Is Uncle Jeb mad at my papa?”

  “I don’t think so, sweetheart. And I know for sure that he’s not mad at you, either, so don’t be worrying.”

  “He sure sounded like he was mad at somebody last night.” Lizzie’s gaze was level. Chloe’s last hope that the child hadn’t heard the argument between her and Jeb was dashed. “So did you.”

  Chloe went to sit beside Lizzie on the bed, slipped an arm around her. When Lizzie rested her head against Chloe’s shoulder, the cracks in her heart gave way.

  “You mustn’t fret, Lizzie,” she said, very softly.

  A little shudder went through Lizzie. Realizing it was a sob, Chloe held her closer and rested her chin atop the small head. “Uncle Jeb only rode that bad horse for you,” Lizzie said, and wept in earnest. “He was going to build you a house with the money he won.”

  Chloe’s own eyes were wet. “Did he say that?” she whispered.

  Lizzie nodded against her shoulder. “We talked a lot. I threw bottles up in the air, so he could shoot them.” Another shudder went through the child. “Why can’t anything ever stay like it is? Why do people always go away?”

  Chloe didn’t know how to answer. She was asking the same questions, inside, where nobody else could hear.

  There was a sound from the hall, and she looked up, saw Holt in the doorway. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen so much pain in a man’s eyes as she saw in his in that moment.

  “The buckboard’s out front,” he said to Chloe. “If you’re ready, you’d better go while there’s still some daylight.”

  Chloe sniffled, nodded her head. “I’m ready.” She extracted herself gently from Lizzie’s embrace, kissed the child’s forehead. “Work hard on your lessons,” she said, nearly choking on the words, and her attempt to say them without breaking down completely.

  “I will,” Lizzie promised. She glanced at her father and, probably wanting to please him, dashed away her tears with the backs of her hands.

  Holt carried the reticule downstairs, put it in the back of the buckboard, helped Chloe up into the seat. The driver had a rifle close at hand, she noticed, and this time there were two men on horseback to accompany them instead of just one.

  “Goodbye, Chloe,” Holt said, and that was when Chloe knew how soon he meant to leave for Texas. She wouldn’t be coming back to the Circle C, not to teach Lizzie, anyway.

  He handed her an envelope.

  She glanced over at Lizzie, who stood shivering on the porch, and saw the realization of what was happening strike the child like a blow. Chloe tried to smile, to wave, but she couldn’t lift her hand, and her mouth refused to work.

  Holt stepped back from the wagon and signaled to the driver, and in the next instant the team was in motion, with a great clatter of hooves and rattling harness fittings.

  Nearly blinded by tears, Chloe knew she shouldn’t look back, but she did.

  Lizzie ran after the wagon, waving her arms and weeping. “Chloe!” she shrieked, squirming free when Holt tried to restrain her. “Chloe, come back!”

  “Stop!” Chloe cried to the driver. “Stop this wagon!”

  He drew back on the reins, yelled “whoa” to the horses.

  Chloe scrambled over the side and raced back to gather Lizzie into her arms. Holt was right behind Lizzie, but he stood back now, looking helpless. His throat worked as he swallowed.

  “Hush, baby,” Chloe said, holding Lizzie fiercely. “Please don’t cry.”

  “He’s sending you away forever!” Lizzie wailed. “I know he is!” She whirled in Chloe’s embrace to look at Holt. “I hate you!” she screamed. “I hate you!”

  Holt lowered his head.

  Chloe cupped Lizzie’s wet face in her palms. “You mustn’t say that, Lizzie,” she said. She was crying, too. “Your papa loves you very much. He’s trying to do what’s best for you.”

  “Don’t go,” Lizzie whimpered. “Uncle Jeb went away, and now you’re going, too.”

  “You can visit me in town,” Chloe said, because it was all she had to offer. She was watching Holt, holding Lizzie. “We’ll always be friends, Lizzie. I promise you that.”

  Lizzie seemed to deflate. “But you have to go?”

  Chloe swallowed, nodded. “Yes,” she said.

  A tremor went through Lizzie, and she broke out of Chloe’s arms, turned on Holt, grabbing up handfuls of dirt and small stones, flinging them at him in a shower of despondent fury. “You’re not my father!” she shrieked. “I hate you! I want my grandpa!” With that, she raced into the house, stumbling as she went, and slammed the door behind her.

  Holt had endured it all in silence. With a nod, he indicated that Chloe should get back into the wagon.

  Having no choice, Chloe obeyed.

  56

  Sue Ellen Caruthers sat in a rocking chair on the front porch of the Triple M ranch house, bundled in a quilt and watching the autumn sunlight dance on the creek. Across the water, Rafe McKettrick was driving stakes into the ground, fixing to put up a picket fence around the sturdy house he’d built for himself and Emmeline.

  Just that morning, Sue Ellen had taken breakfast at the kitchen ta
ble for the first time, instead of from a tray in bed, and she’d watched Kade—the man she’d come west to marry—with Mandy. The two of them joked a lot, and even bickered a little; but when Kade looked at his wife, the whole of his heart was in his eyes.

  Sue Ellen ached inside. For a while, she’d hoped to win Holt’s affections, cooking and cleaning for him, dusting all those oft-read books he had, taking any chance to please him and making the most of it. Even before the child, Lizzie, came, though, she’d known she was practically invisible to him.

  And then there was Jack Barrett. She’d entered into that alliance in a spirit of vengeance and shouldn’t have hoped for anything better than she got. She had things to make up for, where that choice was concerned.

  The front door opened, and she knew by the good smells of lavender and cinnamon and starched cotton that Concepcion was there.

  “Feeling better?” the other woman asked gently. Sue Ellen hadn’t said a word since she’d awakened, hadn’t been able to, but Concepcion never gave up. She just kept on reaching out, trying her best to initiate a conversation.

  Tears burned in Sue Ellen’s eyes, and she shook her head.

  Concepcion pulled up a second chair and sat down, facing her. The crisp breeze ruffled tendrils of her ebony hair, made them dance around her brown-Madonna face. “I suppose it was hard for you, seeing Kade and Mandy together this morning at breakfast.”

  Sue Ellen kept her gaze on Rafe, watched numbly as Emmeline came out of their fine house to speak to him. He picked her up in his arms, kissed her soundly, and spun her around in a dance of purest joy, and the sound of her laughter floated across the sparkling creek.

  What was it like to be that happy? Sue Ellen despaired of ever knowing.

  Concepcion took her hand, squeezed it. “I was alone, once, like you are now,” she said, very quietly. “My Manuel was murdered. It was a horrible thing, and I did not think I could endure it. The first Mrs. McKettrick— her name was Georgia—took me in. My life changed that day, though I did not know it yet.”

  Sue Ellen met the other woman’s eyes, curious and quietly moved. If she could have spoken then, she would have, but words, however clear in her thoughts, were garbled when she tried to voice them.

  Concepcion squeezed her hand again, and the dark eyes turned sad, reflective. “When Georgia died, I wanted to die, too. The world seemed too cruel a place to live in. But she had made me promise to stay and look after Angus and her boys if anything ever happened to her, so I had to do it. It was hard, and Angus was so broken that I thought he would never mend; but in time, things changed. Things will change for you, too, Sue Ellen. If you hold on, you will see.”

  Sue Ellen swallowed. She had to warn these people about Jack Barrett, but it seemed impossible. Then, through her confusion, a single shaft of reason shone. On the strength of that, she made a writing motion with one hand.

  Concepcion understood immediately, and hurried into the house. She was back in a few moments, with a ledger book and a stub of a pencil.

  The effort of writing was laborious for Sue Ellen, and eminently frustrating. The letters were lopsided and childlike, and like her private attempts to speak, they didn’t come out right, but Sue Ellen got her message down.

  JACK BARRT TRI TAK HTS GIRL.

  Concepcion’s eyes widened as she read the words over, once and then again. She crossed herself and dashed back into the house, shouting for the men.

  Kade came out, crouched in front of Sue Ellen’s chair, nodded to the ledger book and pencil she was still holding. “Where, Sue Ellen?” he asked quietly. “Where is he?”

  CABN WOODS CC, she wrote, agonizing over every letter.

  He nodded. “Thank you,” he said. Then he turned, this man who might have been hers, and shouted across the water for Rafe to come. Rafe nodded and ran toward his barn, with Emmeline right behind him, holding her skirts so she wouldn’t fall.

  A tear slipped down Sue Ellen’s cheek, but Kade never noticed. She hadn’t expected him to, but it still hurt that he didn’t.

  Time had passed, she didn’t know how much, when someone took her hand. Startled, she turned and saw Mandy standing beside her. Her smile was gentle, and her eyes saw too much. “You’d better come into the house now,” she said. “Rest up and have some tea. I’ll help you back to bed, and bring you a tray if you’re hungry.”

  Sue Ellen felt raw inside, as though everything vital in her had been scraped clean away; but she nodded, and let Mandy help her to her feet.

  Lizzie’s eyes were puffy from crying, and her stomach felt peculiar, all jumpy and fretful. She’d listened woodenly to her papa’s explanations at supper—Chloe hadn’t done anything wrong, he’d said. He’d sent her away because the ranch was sold, and she, Lizzie, was going to live at the Triple M, with her grandpa and Concepcion, while he found them a new ranch in Texas.

  She didn’t want to go back to Texas. It would hurt too much to see those old places again, without her mother in them.

  So she’d pretended to go right to sleep after Papa tucked her into bed, and waited with her eyes closed until she heard him come back up the stairs, a long time later, and go into his room down the hall. Then she’d gotten up, put on her clothes and her sturdiest shoes, and sneaked out.

  There was a light under his bedroom door, and she almost ruined everything by going over and knocking. Telling Holt Cavanagh straight out that she wasn’t going to Texas or anyplace else.

  She knew what he’d say, though, the same thing Chloe had said. That he was doing what was best for her. Well, the best thing wasn’t going back to Texas. The best thing was staying right there, where they had a family. She felt a deep need to get to her grandpa as soon as possible. When Angus McKettrick heard tell of this foolishness, he’d straighten everything out.

  She let herself out of the house, and the cold wind buffeted her. It was powerful dark, too, and she knew the bad man might be out there someplace, the one who’d killed Aunt Geneva and the stagecoach driver, then tried to steal her at the rodeo. She’d remembered his eyes when she looked into them; they were cruel, those eyes, with no soul behind them. Even if she lived to be older than her grandpa, and that was old, she would never forget the evidence of that cruelty, her aunt and the driver falling down dead, with his bullets in them.

  Again, Lizzie hesitated. Her papa’s temper would be sorely tried when he discovered she was missing, and though he’d never whupped her, he probably would this time if he caught up to her before she got to her grandpa.

  She heard her grandfather’s booming voice in the back of her mind. If you ever run up against something you can’t handle, Lizziebeth, you just come to me, and I’ll fix it directly. If he’d said those words to her once, he’d said them a dozen times, and Lizzie believed them with the whole of her spirit.

  So she started walking toward the Triple M.

  She walked, and she walked. Her feet started to hurt, and she was scared the whole time, though she felt better when the sun came up and warmed her as it climbed higher into the sky.

  She heard the horses coming, and almost ran to hide, trying to decide which side of the road to go toward, then her uncles came around the bend, all three of them. They were clearly surprised to see her.

  It was Rafe who swung down and scooped her up. “Lizziebeth,” he gasped, “what the Sam Hill are you doing out here by yourself?”

  “I ran away,” she said, without a shred of remorse.

  “Well, that was a damn fool thing to do,” Rafe replied, but he smiled a little, with his eyes, if not his mouth. “Is everything all right up home?”

  Lizzie shook her head. She hoped Rafe wouldn’t set her down too soon, because it felt good to be held in those strong arms, even if she wasn’t a baby, like little Katie. “Papa says we’re going to Texas,” she said.

  Rafe walked back to where Jeb and Kade sat, like giants on the backs of their big horses, looking on with serious faces. Lizzie hoped they weren’t put out with her for leaving home
.

  “I only wanted to talk to Grandpa,” she said, in her own defense.

  Rafe handed her up to Kade, probably because Jeb’s arm was still such a mess.

  “I think we’d better have a word with your father, first,” Kade told her.

  They didn’t have to travel far to do that. They met her papa less than a mile up the road. He was riding hard, and he looked more scared than mad, though he narrowed his eyes when he saw her and swung down off his horse while it was still moving.

  “Lizzie McKettrick!” he yelled, storming toward her. “I ought to tan your hide!” He was so furious that he didn’t seem to notice he’d called her by a different name.

  “There’ll be none of that,” Kade said, and his arms tightened around her, just a little, though he held the reins easy, like he’d been born with them in his hands. “Calm down, Holt.”

  “Calm down?” her papa hollered, flinging his hat right to the ground and stepping on it once, in a purely ornery way. Lizzie began to wish he’d look scared again, and she didn’t hold out much hope that he’d be over his fit anytime soon. “Damn it all to hell, Lizzie, if you ever run off like that again—”

  “I wanted to see Grandpa,” she explained, chin high. “And you’d better not whup me, either, because he might just whup you.”

  Her uncles chuckled at that, but none of them spoke.

  Her papa let out his breath, and his big shoulders seemed to sag a little. “Lizzie, what the devil were you thinking? If you wanted to see that old buzzard, I would have taken you there myself. But to set out on your own—”

  Lizzie stiffened her spine, the way she’d seen Chloe do. There wasn’t another woman in the world, now that her mama was gone, that she admired more than Chloe. “You’d have said you had work to do, and I should be a good girl and study my lessons,” she replied.

  Jeb shifted in his saddle. “We ought to take Lizzie back to the Triple M, Holt,” he said. “She’ll be safer there, with plenty of women to look out for her.”