Читать книгу Wyoming Widow - Elizabeth Lane - Страница 12

Cassandra felt her stomach clench. A wave of cold nausea crept into her throat. Determined not to disgrace herself, she willed it back. It was panic, nothing more, she told herself. She could—and would—control it.

“Cassandra doesn’t feel she owes us an explanation,” Morgan broke in before she could reply to his father’s question. “But, yes, she has reason to think her baby’s father might be working for us—maybe up with the herd in the summer pasture.”

The old man twisted a dangling strand of his drooping mustache. “Well, whoever he is, the damned fool ought to be horsewhipped, runnin’ off and leavin’ a young girl in a family way. Bring him in and I’ll do the job myself. What did you say his name was, Red?”

Cassandra felt her stomach clench again. The flapjacks and eggs swam before her eyes. “Would you please excuse me?” she said, rising. “I’m afraid I’m not feeling well. I need some…air.”

With as much dignity as she could muster, she strode out of the dining room and, once out of sight, bolted for the front door.

The morning breeze struck her face as she staggered onto the porch. She gulped it frantically, leaning over the rail like a seasick ocean passenger.

Little by little the urge to retch diminished. Cassandra closed her eyes, letting the wind cool her sweat-dampened face. It was all right—she was all right. But she could not make herself walk back into that dining room and face Jacob Tolliver’s question.

What should she have told him? Not the truth, heaven forbid. And not the lie she had carried all the way to the Tolliver Ranch. Morgan was right—the old man was not ready to hear the shocking news that her baby was Ryan’s.

If she’d had her wits about her, she could have given Jacob Tolliver the first name that came into her head. Then she could have made a dramatic show of searching for her lost sweetheart, bursting into tears when she learned he was not on the ranch. That, at least, would have satisfied Morgan. But it would have added one more lie to the sickening tangle she’d woven, a tangle that was already threatening to drag her down to eternal fire and brimstone.

Impulsively she stepped off the porch and wandered across the yard toward the corral. Waiting there, just beyond the fence, was her single true friend in this place—the one friend who had no need for lies.

“Xavier!” She held out her hand, wishing she’d thought to steal a biscuit from the table. No matter. At her call the old dun mule pricked up his ears and trotted toward her, his limp noticeably better.

“How’s it going, old boy? Are they treating you right?” Cassandra’s eyes misted as she stroked the velvet nose, then moved her hand upward to scratch between the long, rabbity ears. The irascible creature had been her confidant, her protector and her only companion on the northward trek from Laramie. “It’s a good thing you can’t talk,” she whispered, laying her cheek against the bony neck. “I’d have no secrets at all in this place, would I?”

The mule snorted, bobbing his massive head up and down as if sharing the joke.

“And what secrets would he be telling about you, Miss Cassandra Riley?”

The rough whisper, coming from just behind her ear, startled Cassandra into a fit of hiccups. She glared up at Morgan Tolliver, struggling to maintain her dignity while her diaphragm convulsed in painful spasms.

“Don’t you ever…hic…do that to me again!”

His mouth remained as grim as a hatchet blade, but his eyes, Cassandra noticed, glimmered with sparks of amusement.

“Do you make a habit of…hic…sneaking up on people and scaring them? What if I’d had a gun, or a knife? You could be…hic…bleeding right now!”