Читать книгу Lydia - Elizabeth Lane - Страница 10
Chapter Three
ОглавлениеSarah was wiping sums off the blackboard when she heard the sharp, heavy rap at the door. She knew at once who was there and why he had come.
For an instant she stood frozen, her heart in her throat. Every well-honed survival instinct screamed at her to leave the bolt in place and hide until he went away. But it would do no good, she realized. Donovan had seen the children leaving. He knew she was here, and he was quite capable of forcing his way inside.
The knock sounded again, louder this time, and even more insistent. Sarah willed her feet to move toward the sound. She had been expecting Donovan. And she had already made up her mind not to run away.
Once more she heard the angry thud of his big, rawboned knuckles on the wood, and his voice, chilling her with its cold contempt. “I know you’re in there, Lydia. And unless you want a scene this town will talk about for the next decade, you’d better open that door!”
Lydia.
Sarah’s ribs strained against the rigid stays of her corset. Her breath came in shallow gasps as she paused before the door, marshaling her courage. One hand rose instinctively to check her pince-nez spectacles. They were in place, perched firmly on the bridge of her nose. She hesitated, then deliberately removed them and laid them on one of the benches. The glasses were part of her masquerade—stage props, fitted with flat lenses that had no effect on her vision. It was time to put them aside. As far as Donovan was concerned, at least, the masquerade was over.
Donovan’s anger seemed to emanate through the heavy door planks. Sarah fumbled with the bolt, her icy fingers betraying her panic. In the course of the war, she had braved enough dangerous situations to fill a whole shelf full of dime novels. But never before, until now, had she faced the blistering rage of a man like Donovan Cole.
Steeling her resolve, she tugged at the door. It swung inward with an ominous groan of its weather-dampened hinges.
Donovan’s towering bulk filled the frame. His presence crackled like the air before a thunderstorm as he stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. Suddenly everything else in the room seemed small.
Sarah’s throat was as dry as field cotton on an August afternoon. Fighting the impulse to run, she forced herself to stand straight and proud. He loomed above her—as he loomed above nearly everyone—his eyes searing in their unspoken indictment.
“Hello, Lydia.” His voice was thin with contempt.
Sarah spoke calmly, as if she were reciting lines from a play. “My name isn’t Lydia. It’s Sarah. Sarah Parker Buckley.”
The emotion that flickered across his face could have been anger, dismay or disbelief. “They told me you were dead. I saw your grave.”
“Lydia Taggart is dead. If you saw a grave, it was hers.”
His hand shot out and seized her upper arm, his fingers almost crushing bone in their powerful clasp. “No more riddles, Sarah, or Lydia, or whatever the hell your name is! I want answers. I want the truth about everything that happened. And once it’s out, I want you packed up and gone.”
Sarah glared up into the granite fury of his eyes. “You’re hurting me,” she whispered.
His grip eased slightly, but he did not release her. “I’ve never done physical harm to a woman in my life,” he growled. “But heaven help me, if some things don’t get cleared up fast, I’ll shake you till your teeth fall out of your lying little head!”
“Let me go.” Sarah thrust out her chin in regal defiance, like Antigone, or perhaps Medea. Her theatrical training had served her well, she assured herself. Donovan could not possibly know that she was quivering like jelly inside.
“You’ll talk?”
She felt the hesitation in his fingers, the reluctance to trust her enough to let go. “I’ll answer any questions you want to ask me,” Sarah replied coldly. “But you might as well know right now, I have no intention of leaving Miner’s Gulch.”
“We’ll see.” His hand dropped from her arm. The pressure of his grip lingered, burning like a brand into her flesh.
“Sit down,” she said.
“I’ll stand.” His gaze had left her. Sarah watched his restless eyes as he surveyed the makeshift classroom that doubled as her living quarters. Puncheon benches, arranged in rows with the lowest in front, took up most of the floor space. A desk in one corner was piled with slates and battered readers. A potbellied stove, with a narrow counter along the nearby wall, provided for simple cooking. The door that led to her bedchamber was closed.
Silence chilled the room as he strode to the window. For what seemed like a very long time, he stood staring down at the street. From behind him, Sarah’s eyes traced the rigid contours of his shoulders through the sweat-stained leather vest and faded flannel shirt. Her gaze lingered on the flat, chestnut curls at the back of his sunburned neck. She tried not to remember how it had felt to be touched by him. She tried not to feel anything at all.
Abruptly he turned on her. “Damnation, I don’t understand any of it!” he exploded. “Not then, and not now! I don’t even know where to begin!”
Sarah glanced down at her clasped hands, then willed herself to raise her face and meet his condemning eyes. “Neither do I,” she said with forced calm. “Except that I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“You took up spying for the fun of it, I suppose.” His bitter voice ripped into her.
“Don’t—” she murmured, but he was as implacable as a millstone. Biting back hurt, she stumbled on. “At first, I believed that what I was doing was noble and right. I didn’t realize how the consequences would just keep going on and on, like ripples when you toss a pebble into a lake—”
“Virgil’s dead. He was killed at Antietam.”
“I know.”
“Do you, now?” Donovan retorted savagely. “Did you feel anything for him? Anything at all?”
Sarah fought back a rush of bitter tears. She would not let him see her cry, she vowed. That would only feed his rage. And she would not tell him about the dreams—the nightmares of anguish, fear and guilt that time had done little to ease.
“You used my brother! Virgil loved you. He trusted you. And all that time—”
“There was a war on. I did what I had to!” For all her efforts to be calm, Sarah felt her own anger rising. She had hoped for understanding, even some kind of resolution. But it was clear that Donovan’s only intent was to hurt her.
His face, thrusting close to hers now, was dark with fury. “How many others did you use the same way? How many men died because of what you—”
Sarah’s hand flashed out and struck the side of his jaw. The slap echoed like a gunshot in the quiet room.
Shocked into silence, he stared at her. Sarah had half expected him to hit her back—that’s what Reginald Buckley, her long-dead husband, would have done. But Donovan did not move. Only a subtle twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed any sign of emotion in him.
Seconds crawled past as they faced each other, bristling like two hostile animals thrown into the same cage. Sarah could hear the harsh rasp of his breathing in the tense stillness. Her own heart was a drum in her ears. Her body felt feverish.
His eyes—dark green with flecks of fiery amber—drilled into hers. His face—not a truly handsome face, but strong, blunt and oddly sensual—was frozen into a determined mask, inches from her own.
Sarah’s nipples had shrunk to hard, brown raisins beneath her camisole. A poignant ache trickled downward from her chest to her thighs. She wished he would do something—grab her, curse her, stalk out of the room-anything but stand there like a stone, shattering her with his wintry fury.
With painful effort, she found her voice. “I think you’d better leave now,” she whispered.
“No—” A shudder went through him as he cleared the huskiness from his throat. “Not until I find out what I came to learn.”
Sarah took a step backward, widening the perilous distance between them. Fighting for self-control, she willed her thundering pulse to be still.
“I agreed to answer your questions, Donovan,” she declared firmly. “I did not agree to stand here and submit to your bullying!”
With a small sound that was somewhere between a groan and a snarl, he turned back to face the window. His shoulders rose and fell with the force of his harsh breathing as he stared outside at the glaring sky.
“Who are you?” He spoke without looking at her, his voice harsh with emotion.
Sarah gazed at his rigid back. “My name is Sarah Parker Buckley,” she said in a tightly modulated voice. “But I have been many women. Juliet…Ophelia…Portia…Beatrice…Lady Macbeth…” “And Lydia Taggart! Lord, an actress!” His fist crashed against the window frame. “And I suppose that sweet Southern voice was as false as the rest of you!”
“I was born and raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts.” Sarah recited the words as if she were reading a script. “At sixteen, I eloped with Mr. Reginald Buckley, an actor and a Southerner—”
“Of the Savannah Buckleys?” The question snapped reflexively out of Donovan, an empty echo of a social order that no longer existed.
“I believe so, although I can’t be sure. Both Mr. Buckley and I were…estranged from our families. He taught me to perform with him. Shakespeare, mostly. We spent a number of years touring in the South.”
“And where is your Mr. Buckley now?”
“Dead. He passed away a few months before the war began.” No need to explain how, Sarah resolved. The fact that Reginald had been stabbed in a brawl over a saucy little Natchez whore was no longer of any consequence.
“An actress! Damnation, I should have seen through you! I should have guessed!” He spun back to face her, eyes blazing. “And this is your latest role, I suppose. Sanctified Sarah, the Angel of Miner’s Gulch!”
His words slashed her, but Sarah masked her pain with ice. “What you suppose is of no importance. I’m doing what I can to make peace with myself, and for that I will not apologize—not to you or to anyone in this town!”
His chest quivered in a visible effort to contain his anger. “Does my sister have any idea who—what—you were?”
“No. But even if she did, I think Varina would be fair. Unlike you, she tends to look for the good in people.”
“In your kind of woman, she’d have to look damned deep to find any! We’re beholden to you for last night, but even that won’t make up for what you did. It won’t buy back Virgil’s life.”
Sarah withered inside as his words struck her. Donovan had suffered a deep loss, she reminded herself. She could not blame him for being bitter. Even so, anger was her only defense against him.
“That’s enough!” she snapped. “I told you I wouldn’t stand for your bullying! Ask your questions and be done with it!” She glanced at the battered pendulum clock that hung on the far wall of the room. “You have five minutes before I start screaming for help.”
“Screaming?” He glared at her skeptically. “You’d really do that?”
“I’ve got friends in this town, and as you already know, I’m an accomplished actress.” Sarah punctuated her declaration with a defiant thrust of her chin. “Now, I’d say you’ve used up about twenty-five seconds. What else do you want to ask me?”
Donovan rumbled his exasperation. Turning away again, as if he could not even bear to look at her, he stared emptily through the window. The next question seemed to explode out of the darkest pit of his soul.
“Why? How could you have done it?”
“You fought for what you believed in. So did I.” Sarah spoke softly, addressing the rigid silhouette of his back. “I had seen the evils of slavery in the South, and I welcomed the chance to strike a blow against it.”
“And that was your only reason?” Donovan’s voice reflected bitter incredulity. “So now it’s Saint Sarah of the Slaves! Life for you is just one noble cause after the other, isn’t it?”
“Stop that!” Sarah would have slapped him again if he’d been standing close enough. “I’m trying my best to tell you the truth, Donovan, but you’re not making it easy.”
She paused, hoping, perhaps, for a word of apology from him. But it was not to be. Donovan’s resentful silence lay cold as winter in the room, broken only by the slow, rhythmic tick of the clock. Taking a sharp breath, Sarah plunged ahead.
“No, it wasn’t my only reason. My husband was dead. My family had disowned me. I had no money, no work, no home. The chance to live in Richmond as an agent for the Union was the only—”
Donovan had turned around. Sarah’s voice dried up in her throat as she saw his face.
“So it was a blasted convenience!” he rasped. “The chance to lie and betray under comfortable circumstances. The house, the servants, the parties—you lived as well as any so-called lady in Richmond! Compared to you, those women down there at the saloon are rank amateurs!”
“No!” Sarah reeled as her defenses crumbled. She had tried to be honest with Donovan, but what was the use when he wouldn’t even listen? How could she tell him what it had really been like for her? How could she tell him about the guilt-racked nights, the terrible dreams?
Seizing the advantage, he waded into the fray with renewed fury. “Virgil died in my arms, did you know that? He made me promise I’d return to Richmond and give you the ring he was saving for your wedding. The last word he spoke was your so-called name—Lydia.”
Donovan took a step toward Sarah. She fought the instinct to back away as he loomed above her, a tower of smoldering rage. “Did you love my brother, Sarah Parker?” he asked in a low, hoarse voice. “In your lying, mercenary heart, did you care for him even a little?”
Sarah forced herself to meet the raw hatred in his eyes. She was trembling inside, but she would not lie, she resolved. She was through with lying forever.
“Virgil was as fine and gentle a young man as I’ve ever known,” she answered softly. “I was fond of him. But I couldn’t allow myself to love him. I was not in a position to love anyone.”
Donovan wheeled away from her with a snort of disgust. “That’s all I want to know.” He glanced up at the clock. “I see my time is up, so I’ll be taking my leave.”
He strode to the door. Sarah stood like a pillar, her impassive face masking the shambles he’d made of her emotions. Never, in all her life, had anyone spoken to her with such contempt. And to have it be Donovan-”One thing more.” He had paused in the open doorway, one hand gripping the frame. “I want you out of this town, away from my sister and her family. Be gone within one week, and I’ll keep quiet about your past. Otherwise, the whole gulch is going to know what you did. And I’ll wager there are people here who won’t take kindly to it.”
Sarah drew herself up with an air that would have done credit to Queen Victoria. “Do your worst, then, Mr. Cole,” she said crisply. “But your allowing me the week won’t make any difference. Miner’s Gulch is my home. No matter what you might say or do, I have no intention of leaving.”
Surprise flickered across Donovan’s face, but he was quick to recover. “Then heaven help you, Sarah Parker Buckley!” he snapped. “At least you can’t say I didn’t give you fair warning. Remember that after it’s too late to change your mind!”
Sarah did not reply. She stood like stone as Donovan turned his back on her and stalked outside, slamming the door brusquely behind him.
Only when the echo of his boots on the wooden stairs had died away did Sarah allow herself to react. Her throat constricted as if squeezed by an invisible fist. Her knees went liquid. She sank onto a bench, her heart pounding a tattoo of fear against her ribs.
It was not too late, she reminded herself. Donovan had given her a week to be gone. She could take her time—invent some pretty story about a new position or an unexpected inheritance back East. She could pack at her leisure and hire a wagon to drive her to Central City, where she could catch the stage for Denver.
And then what? Another masquerade someplace else, with more lies and the inevitable discovery? A retreat to the safety of New England, where nothing could follow her except those black, tormenting dreams?
No, Sarah concluded, gulping back her fear. Running was not the answer. She had worked too hard at building a life here, with the Southern children she taught and the Southern women who had come to depend on her. In recent months, she’d even experienced some nights of restful sleep, when the nightmares did not come.
Her only hope of peace lay here, helping the people she had betrayed—and had come to love.
Resolutely she rose, brushed the chalk dust from her skirt and began tidying up the classroom for tomorrow’s lessons. She would go on as if nothing had happened—as if Donovan Cole had never come to her with his threats. She would show him what Sarah Parker was made of. She would show them all.
Squaring her shoulders, she chalked the new sums across the board in an order that began with the simplest problems and progressed to the most complex. Maybe nothing would happen, she speculated, trying to be cheerful. Maybe Donovan’s threat to expose her had been an empty bluff.
But no, she knew better. Donovan was no bluffer. He was as blunt and honest as nature itself. Whatever intent he stated, he would carry out as surely as winter followed autumn.
The chalk slipped from her fingers and dropped to the floor, shattering as it struck. Sarah let the pieces lie where they had fallen. She clutched at her arms, trembling as if an icy wind had blown into the room.
Walking to the window, she gazed down at the passersby in the muddy street. The people of Miner’s Gulch were her friends now, but the war had touched almost all of them. Many had lost friends and relatives. More than a few had lost property. They had forgiven her for being a Yankee, but how could they forgive her for being a spy?
If she’d been caught back in Richmond, she would have been tried and summarily hanged. What would happen to her here, in an angry little town with no law?
Closing her eyes, Sarah pressed her forehead against the rough-sawed frame of the window. Only moments ago she had convinced herself she was strong enough to face the past. But now she felt her courage slipping away, leaving her weak, frightened, and more alone than she had ever been in her life.
Donovan’s long-legged strides ate up the ground. Mud spattered beneath his boots as he drove his energy into putting as much distance as possible between himself and Sarah Parker Buckley.
She had not even denied it, he fumed as he stalked past the boarded-up assayer’s office. She had played Juliet, she said, and Ophelia, and Lady Macbeth—and oh, yes, Lydia Taggart, the belle of Richmond! Lord, she’d almost seemed proud of it! She’d admitted to everything, even the part about not loving Virgil.
Donovan fed the fire of his anger as he mounted the trail. Sarah Parker was a woman without a conscience. She deserved to be ridden out of town on a timber. She deserved to be tarred and feathered, even hanged. Back in Richmond, in fact, she would have been hanged. The gallows had been standard punishment for spies during the war.
Donovan’s breath eased out in a ragged sigh. In truth, he had no stomach for that sort of violence, especially where females were concerned. That was why he’d allowed Sarah time to make a clean getaway. Some people might not view it as right, letting her go like that. But surely it was what Virgil, in his gentle, forgiving way, would have wanted.
As for Sarah, she might be stubborn, but she was no fool. Given a few days to think things over, she was bound to take the sensible way out. There’d be no need to go through the ugliness of exposing her past.
But if she refused to leave on her own—Donovan’s jaw clenched with the force of his resolve. He would do whatever it took to get Sarah out of Miner’s Gulch. And if that meant laying her treachery bare to the whole town-His breath stopped for an instant as he remembered the sight of her face, tilting toward him like a proud flower. His mind retraced the quietly defiant eyes, the determined thrust of her dimpled chin, the silkily parted lips that seemed to be made for a man’s kiss…
Damn her! Lydia Taggart was still working her cursed magic, and he had already learned that he was not immune. If he wavered, even for an instant, he would be vulnerable. He could not afford to let that happen.
He walked faster, charging up the trail as if the devil were pursuing him with the most enticing bundle of torments ever devised. He would stay away from Sarah, he resolved. Varina’s cabin needed plenty of work, more than enough work to keep him busy for the rest of the week. He would return to town only when the time limit was up. By then, if she had any sense, the woman would be gone.
But if she chose to remain—yes, he would be strong enough to make her pay. Sarah Parker Buckley would get no second chance.
Ahead, through the screen of aspens, Donovan could see the bright, bobbing patches of his nieces’ coats. Anxious for the distraction of their company, he lengthened his stride to catch up. A smile tugged his lips as he remembered the coins he’d given them to buy peppermint sticks at the store. Varina, he knew, didn’t have the money for such indulgences, but all youngsters deserved a treat now and then. He could only hope that, in the days ahead, Varina’s staunch independence would allow him to provide more than candy.
As he came abreast of the girls, Katy glanced up at him with a hesitant smile. Annie, however, seemed to avoid his eyes. Donovan swiftly saw why. Against her coat, she clutched a ten-pound sack of flour. They had not bought candy at all.
“Please don’t be mad, Uncle Donovan,” Annie said in a firm little voice that echoed her mother’s. “We like candy. We like it a lot. But we need this flour. Ma’s bin is almost empty, and I have to make bread this afternoon.”
Donovan swallowed the sudden tightness in his throat. “That’s fine, Annie,” he said, feeling frustrated and foolish. “But you should have told me you needed flour. I’d have bought a big sack of it, and some candy, too.”
“Oh, no!” Annie protested. “You’re our guest! Ma said we weren’t to ask you for anything!”
“In that case, I need to have a talk with your mother.” Donovan cursed Varina’s pride. The idea that her family was on the brink of starvation, and the woman would not even ask her own brother for help-But anger wouldn’t accomplish anything, he reminded himself. He had to find some other way to aid Varina. Something she would not reject as charity.
There was the mine—she had offered him a partnership. But the thought of grubbing away his days on Charlie Sutton’s worthless diggings was enough to crush his soul.
There had to be another answer, another possibility, lurking just out of reach. Something in the land, perhaps, or even in himself. He would give the matter some serious consideration. In the next few days, when he wasn’t working on the cabin, he would investigate Varina’s mining claim and the terrain surrounding it. He would keep himself fully occupied, leaving no room in his thoughts for the likes of Sarah Parker Buckley.
But even as he made his plans, Sarah’s image burst into his mind. His face blazed, recalling the sting of her slap on his skin. His body quivered with the memory of last night-her body straining against him, the silken feel of her hair, tumbling over his hand. Something clenched inside him—a hunger so raw and fierce that it almost buckled his knees. He stumbled, damning his own weakness.
“Hurry, Uncle Donovan! We’re almost home!” Annie called, and Donovan suddenly realized that the girls had left him behind. He hurried to catch up, breathing hard to clear his mind. He was thirty-six years old, he reminded himself, old enough to know that the woman who called herself Sarah Parker was pure poison. She’d deceived trusting friends and neighbors in Richmond. She’d betrayed Virgil, who had loved her with all the passion of his youth. And for all her virtuous demeanor here in Miner’s Gulch, Donovan knew better than to believe she’d changed. Beneath Sarah’s prim facade, Lydia Taggart was alive and well. She was his enemy. He would see her vanquished once and for all.
The Crimson Belle Saloon had seen better days. Its porches sagged where the unseasoned lumber had warped. Its paint, once a brazen red, was weathered and peeling. The men who drifted in and out of the double doors tended to have a whipped look, as if any spirit they’d ever possessed had been beaten away by the hard years. Even the piano sounded tired.
Not that Sarah was listening. The piano’s tinny, thunking tone had filled her ears for so many seasons that she scarcely heard it anymore. Besides, this evening her mind was on other matters.
Lifting her skirts above the mud, she rounded the corner of the saloon and slipped through the shadows toward the back entrance. Her free hand clutched the canvas valise that served as her medical kit. Her spectacles were in place once more, perched firmly on her narrow nose.
The rear of the Crimson Belle was expressly designed for discreet comings and goings. A cluster of bushy blue spruce trees screened the entry, which opened into a dim hallway with a narrow, inside staircase leading to the second floor. The door at the top of the stairs was locked, but Sarah’s knock—three precise taps, a pause, then two moretouched off a scurry of footsteps on the other side. The bolt rattled and, seconds later, the door swung inward to reveal a frowsy blond woman in a faded mauve silk wrapper. Her husky shoulders sagged as Sarah stepped out of the shadows.
“Ach, thank goodness it is you!” She spoke in a rough cello voice, heavily accented with German. “Marie is worse—the coughing, the blood—”
“Take me to her, Greta.” Sarah clutched her valise and followed the woman down the carpeted hallway, her eyes avoiding the closed door that indicated one of the girls had a customer. She had long since lost count of her visits to these rooms above the saloon, but all the same, she never quite got used to things here. The lamps in the hallway cast a hellish glow through their rose glass chimneys. The air swam with incense, its sickly-sweet aroma mingling with tobacco smoke. From downstairs, the muffled tinkle of the piano did not quite drown out the lustful grunts and whimpers that emanated through the walls of the locked room.
“Here.” Greta opened the second-to-last door to reveal, in the dimly lit space, a thin, dark figure lying on a wide bed. Sarah walked slowly toward her, weighted by a sense of helplessness. She could deliver babies, apply poultices and administer concoctions of whiskey, quinine and camphor, but in this case, there was nothing she could do. Marie, tragically young and no longer pretty, was dying of consumption.
Marie’s weightless hand fluttered like a leaf on the stained brocade coverlet as Sarah approached. “Thank you for coming,” she whispered. “I wanted the chance to tell you before—” She broke off, overcome by a spasm of tearing coughs. The kerchief that Greta pressed to Marie’s mouth came away flecked with blood.
“Don’t try to talk,” Sarah murmured, her eyes welling with emotion. “Just rest. I brought more of that chamomile tea you like. The girls can brew it for you—” She fumbled in her valise for the packet, her vision blurred by tears. Marie belonged in a hospital, with real doctors and nurses, or in some warm, dry climate where her lungs could heal. Here, in this wretched place, there was no hope for her.
“She ain’t slept all day. Ain’t done nothin’ but cough, poor lamb.” Another woman, near forty, with gentle eyes and garishly dyed red hair, had stepped out of the shadows to take the chamomile. “I’ll start some water. Maybe this’ll soothe her some.”
“Thank you,” Sarah said softly. “You’ve been good to her, Faye.”
“We got to do for each other. Ain’t nobody else’ll do it for us—’ceptin’ you, o’ course, Miss Sarah. You been a real angel to us all.”
“Ach, ja,” Greta agreed. “But listen, we been fighting with that bastard Smitty again. He says that if Marie is too sick to work the customers, he can’t afford to give her room and board.”
“Not again!” Sarah sighed wearily, remembering the confrontations she’d had with the Crimson Belle’s miserly owner. Smitty treated his girls like livestock, with no regard for their welfare. They’d lived in the most abject dread of him until last year, when Sarah had stepped in. Conditions were somewhat better now, but the old man’s curmudgeonly heart was as hard as ever.
Sadly Sarah gazed down at Marie’s pale face. It was Marie, she recalled, who had triggered her first visit to these upstairs rooms. The poor girl had miscarried and was near death when a desperate Faye had come pounding on Sarah’s door in the middle of the night. Sarah had saved Marie’s life that time. But there was nothing she could do now. She had no skill, no potion, to turn back the ravages of consumption.
Marie’s skin was so transparent that the delicate blue tracery of her veins showed through at the temples. Her cheeks flamed like two garish red carnations against the white oval of her face. Her eyes had sunk into hollows. It wasn’t fair, Sarah reflected bitterly. Marie was sweet and kind and had never willed harm to anyone. She should have had a different life—a home, children, the love of a good man. Now, even the brief, sad life she’d had was nearly over.
“I could take her to my place,” Sarah said. “At least Smitty would leave her in peace there.”
“Nein,” Greta interjected swiftly. “With Marie in your room, how could you have the children come for their lessons? And what would their mamas say? You would have to close your little school.”
“We can handle Smitty. Don’t you worry none ‘bout that,” Faye added. “We done like you said—told the ol’ buzzard none of us would work ‘less’n he let Marie stay. He’ll come ‘round. Ain’t got much choice. He won’t get no new girls comin’ to a town like this ‘un.”
Sarah sighed wearily, one hand brushing back Marie’s dark, damp hair. “Give her as much of the tea as she’ll take. At this point, there’s not much else you can do. I’ll be around to see her again tomorrow night.”
“No need your takin’ so many chances, Miss Sarah,” Faye said. “You know what some of the ladies in this town would say if they ever saw you comin’ in here.”
Sarah nodded, knowing Faye was right. There were women in Miner’s Gulch, self-styled social leaders like Mrs. Eudora Cahill, who would brand her an instant pariah if they knew she associated with Smitty’s girls. In the days ahead their support would be more important than ever. But right now Marie needed her. And even in the face of wisdom, one did not turn one’s back on a friend.
She leaned over, clasped Marie’s fleshless hand and felt the tightening of the frail fingers. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she whispered. “Meanwhile, you get some sleep. Try to have some beautiful dreams—” The words died as emotion choked her throat. Tears flooded her eyes as she turned away from the bed and left the room.
The night breeze blew cold on Sarah’s damp face as she made her way home through the alley. Thoughts of Marie mingled with the memory of Donovan’s threat, churning like a maelstrom in her mind. There was nothing she could do for Marie. And there was very little she could do about Donovan. Another man might be charmed or cajoled into changing his mind. But not Donovan Cole. He was too bitter, too determined, too cocksure that she would turn tail and run.
She could not let him win.
Whatever happened, Sarah resolved, she would not let Donovan see her fear. Until he played his ace against her, she would behave as if nothing had happened. She would hold her head high and go about her usual business.
Sarah’s heart lurched with the sudden realization that her usual business would include looking in on Varina. She always followed up her deliveries with visits to the new mothers. If she did not come, Varina would wonder why.
Unless Donovan had already told her.
Sarah’s pulse skipped erratically as she mounted the back stairs of Satterlee’s store. Every impulse screamed at her to run—to fling her essentials into a bag, saddle her mule and ride for her life.
But running was out of the question. Miner’s Gulch was her home. If she did not take a stand here and now, no place on earth would ever be home to her again.
The schoolroom was dark with familiar shadows; warm, still, from the embers that glowed in the potbellied stove. Locking the door behind her, Sarah paused at the threshold of her bedroom. Her eyes lingered affectionately on the squat log benches, the slates piled haphazardly in a far corner, the rows of sums and minuses chalked neatly across the blackboard. Not much of a kingdom. But it was hers. She had built it, carved it out of nothing, with pluck and patience as her only tools.
It was good, she reassured herself as she hung up her cloak, opened the bedroom door and lit the brass lamp on the dresser. She had made herself useful here. She had made a difference in people’s lives.
Could it be? Had her father had been wrong, after all?
Her hands moved to the high muslin collar of her shirtwaist, fingers unfastening the buttons with practiced skill until the prim garment fell open in front. Sarah slipped her arms out of the sleeves and hung it with her other things on the row of hooks that served in place of a wardrobe. She could not afford to be careless with her clothes. They had to last.
With a weary sigh, she raised her arms and began plucking away the pins that held her hair in its tight bun. The silky locks tumbled loose, bringing back a sudden stab of memory. Donovan—his fingers tangling in her hair, eyes probing hers, dark and hot, seething with unanswered questions…
Turning, she caught a glimpse of herself in the cracked mirror—arms lifted, cheeks flushed, lips damply parted. She froze, staring at her own image. One hand quivered upward to touch her cheek.
She had almost succeeded in forgetting that she was pretty.
Seized by a sudden wild compulsion, she curved her mouth into a smile, inclining her head, arching the fine, dark wings of her brows. The image in the glass assumed a subtle sensuality, an air of unmistakable invitation.
Lydia.
Sarah’s arms dropped to her sides as the sound of laughter echoed and faded in her mind. Was this what Donovan had wanted when he’d ripped the pins from her hair? Deep inside, without his even knowing, was it really Lydia he had wanted to see?
Driven by dark emotions, she raised her arms again, tightening the fabric of the worn chemise against her breasts. Her hands lifted and spread the satin wealth of her hair. Her eyelids lowered coquettishly.
“You’re no good, Sarah Jane Parker!” Her minister father’s voice rumbled like a tempest out of the past. “Wasting your time playacting! Prancing and posing like a strumpet! Vanity is the devil’s tool, Sarah! Mark my words! Remember them when you’re burning in hell!”
Sarah spun away from the mirror, hands quivering where they pressed her cold face. She’d gotten word from a cousin after the war that her father had died of apoplexy in New Bedford. In the eight long years since she’d run off with Reginald Buckley, he had not once spoken her name.
Sometimes at night, when the wind howled high in the Colorado pines, his voice echoed in her dreams, its thunder blending with the roar of cannon fire, the screams of horses and the groans of the wounded.
“You can’t hide from the sight of God, Sarah Jane! Wherever you go, his wrath will find you, and in the end, you will burn for your sins! The devil will seize you and carry you down, and burn you forever in hell!”
Sarah blew out the lamp and finished undressing in the dark. She tugged her flannel nightgown over her head and buttoned it to her throat with trembling fingers. Moonlight made a window-square on the patchwork quilt as she crawled between the sheets and lay rigid, eyes wide open in the darkness.
Strange, how some things never seemed to change. As a little girl, she had lain awake at night, listening to the creaks and groans of the old frame house, waiting for the devil to come and snatch her from her bed. Twenty years later, she still jumped at shadows, her fear so deep that it defied every effort to reason it away.
When would it come, the moment of reckoning when the fire would exact its toll?
Impatient, Sarah turned over and punched her pillow. She had problems enough in the here and now, she reminded herself. The devil might be biding his time, but Donovan Cole was not. Donovan was not a patient man. His revenge would be swift and without mercy.
Unless she could think of a way to beat him at his own game.
Restless now, she flopped onto her side, feet jerking at the tightly tucked quilts. There had to be an answer—there was always an answer.
All she had to do was find it.
Sleep was impossible. Sarah rolled out of bed, flung on her robe and strode to the window. The tick of the schoolroom clock echoed in the silence as she gazed through the tattered curtain at the black clusters of pine and the moonlit peaks beyond.
There was always an answer. Maybe not an easy answer. Maybe not the answer one would ask for. But an answer all the same.
She shivered beneath the worn flannel robe, hands clutching her arms as she racked her brain and searched her heart. It was there, she knew, if only-The solution fell into place like a thunderclap.
Sarah’s breath caught as she examined it—an idea so simple that she could scarcely believe she hadn’t thought of it sooner.
Simple. And terrifying. Her hands began to tremble as she weighed the risks, the ramifications. No, she did not have the courage. There had to be a different way, something easier.
She waited, cold and alone in the darkness, but when no other answer came, Sarah knew what she must do. She had spent years running, assuming one role, then casting it off for another, losing herself in lies.
It was time to stop running once and for all.