Authors: Rachel Cartwright
Caden stood, haggard and crazed, in the middle of the smashed remnants of his once-magnificent third floor study.
Did he hear another man’s voice calling her name or had it been his own?
His open, black walking coat was torn and caked with mud. His belt was unfastened and the fly of his trousers gaped open.
Only three cracked walls remained standing, the roof gone, the bookcases and laboratory glassware destroyed, and the pages of his prized notebooks scattered by the wind and water.
Caden turned toward the corner where two walls met. His tattered canopy bed had been jammed up against the far wall near the shattered window by the final blasting fury of the storm.
Rebecca and Edward . . . it was not to be, but destiny still has plans for you, dear friend.
He stared at the ether bottle and cloth on the floor.
We alone have survived, dearest Gabrielle, and we alone will begin the new millennium together.
Gabrielle, her eyes still closed, lay on a tattered comforter, a ripped and dirty white satin gown draped off her bruised shoulders. She moved her head from side to side with agitated jerks as she clamped down against the belt gag across her mouth.
Her eyes fluttered and slowly opened. She looked around as though drunk. A few moments later, the whites of her eyes went wide in panic. She kicked and shook her arms, struggling to break free of the ropes binding her to the four corners of the splintered cherry wood bed.
Caden stood at the foot of the bed, unbuttoning his shirt. “It is over now, Gabrielle . . . and today, Sunday, the holiest of all days, a vengeful God may rest . . .”
He removed his belt. “But a vengeful man . . . has much to do.”
Gabrielle squirmed; her muffled screams only inflamed Caden’s passion. “Few will have survived and those who did will be weak or diseased.” He caressed himself, feeling pain melt into pleasure as his manhood hardened with every word he spoke. “I’ve waited so long . . . for the only woman who was truly worthy.”
“Gabrielle! Gabrielle, are you there?” another man’s voice roared from below, breaking his spell of desire.
Caden paused and scowled.
Has fate been that careless?
He slid out Bret’s ivory handled derringer and checked the chamber.
We must make amends for that, old friend.
He padded toward the one side of the locked door, the sudden pain in his groin flaring with each step, and waited.
At the second floor landing, Bret was almost out of breath. “Gabrielle!” He rested against the banister for a few moments and listened. He heard something scraping against the undamaged section of the top floor above his head.
Maneuvering with uneasy stealth up the shattered stairs toward the third floor landing, Bret stretched and jumped over missing steps. He leaped across a gaping hole in the floor and grabbed the third floor railing for support. “Gabrielle! Are you here?”
The stifled sounds of someone’s voice came from behind the closed door. Bret gripped the handle but it wouldn’t turn. He took a few steps back and rushed the door with his shoulder, breaking it open and hurtling headlong into the room.
Regaining his balance, he saw Gabrielle tied to a bed in the corner, straining against the ropes.
Thank God she’s alive
. Bret rushed to her side. Gabrielle’s long hair hung down in dirty strands against her pale, bruised face, and her eyes could no longer brook the tears welling up inside.
“It’s all right now my love. I’m here.”
Gabrielle’s eyes were frantic with movement as she strained her head toward the door.
Bret could have cried for joy at that moment but he had to make sure she was safe and free. He untied the belt gag from her mouth at the exact moment someone pressed the barrel of a small revolver against the back of his skull.
“Your blood must be stronger than your soul.” Caden cocked the trigger with a sharp
click
. “For what other reason would nature have chosen you to survive when so many . . . pure and deserving . . . were swept away in a single night?”
Bret tensed and swallowed. “Why, Caden?”
“I was fifteen, terrified; a boy trying to act like a man. They told me the Yankees were doing it all over Texas and the South to our women. Some had lost their own so they were looking for any excuse to spill blood on the other side.”
Bret subtly shifted his upper body toward him. “You killed Timothy, didn’t you?”
“Regrettable but necessary. The meddling moron didn’t know when to leave well enough alone.”
Bret leaned closer. “But why Gabrielle?”
“Because you didn’t deserve to survive
then
for the wound you inflicted on my body . . . and you certainly don’t deserve
her
now for the wound you inflict on my soul with every breath you draw.” Caden pulled the trigger.
The next sound Bret heard was a hammer hitting steel. Then a second time . . .
In the brief pause of surprise, he swung around and punched Caden in the side of the face.
The taller man stumbled back and dropped the derringer. Bret recognized it as his immediately.
I knew it. There could have been no one else.
Caden shook his head, glared at Bret and charged, attacking his enemy like a vicious, snarling dog in a pit fight to the death.
Bret fought back, fueled by the unrelenting hatred of a man who had caused so much misery for his family in the past and threatened now the future and life he hoped to share with Gabrielle; the only woman he had ever truly loved.
Caden pressed forward, using his greater height and weight to his advantage, forcing himself on top of Bret and wrapping his hands around his throat in a choke grip.
Bret struggled against the bigger man but in his weakened state he knew he could not hold out much longer against Caden’s strangling hands pressing against his throat.
Caden smiled down at him like a madman as he started to choke the life out of Bret. “Captain Boland wanted me to go first, but you rushed out from behind your mother’s skirt and pierced me with your tiny whittling knife.” He squeezed harder.
Bret reached out frantically to his side, clawing at the floor.
“The men had a good laugh and told me to sleep on it. ‘Don’t you worry none,
Gus
, It will get better by morning . . .” Caden grimaced, feeling a sudden flare of pain in his groin. His grip slackened around Bret’s throat.
Bret brushed the derringer with his finger.
“Lord . . . but you were lucky to get away. Still, you were too late to warn your traitor of a father, now . . .
weren’t you
?” Caden grinned and chuckled in triumph.
Bret inched the derringer into his hand with his fingers. In a flash, he brought the revolver up like a hammer against the side of Caden’s head. Bret’s repeated blows knocked Caden off his chest to the floor.
Caden lurched to his feet, his head bloody, and stumbled back toward the shattered window near the bed.
He spotted a broken two foot-long iron pipe in a small pile of debris on the floor. He snatched it up and swung at Bret, hitting him across his shoulder. Bret fell back on his side, grabbing his wound.
Caden raised the pipe over his head, and turned to strike Gabrielle. “How could you ever choose a lesser man than me?”
Bret roared like a fierce warrior and charged with all his remaining strength toward the towering madman. Hitting him low with his good shoulder, the force of his impact propelled Caden back, tumbling and plummeting through the broken window.
Bret staggered to the sill and looked down.
Doctor Caden Augustus Hellreich—his neck bent at an unnatural angle—lay in the contorted death pose like so many storm victims in the street.
Bret examined his ivory-handled derringer. He glanced back down at Caden’s body. “Don’t you know, Doc? They’re no good . . . when it rains.” He stumbled back to Gabrielle and untied her.
“Bret, oh God!” She glanced out the window and covered her mouth. “Take me out of here.” She cried and lowered her head. “There’s a vial in his coat. We have to get it if it’s not broken.”
“What do you mean?”
“Caden lied. He told me before . . .” She looked away. “He showed me the real cure. Oh God . . . I could have poisoned you when I thought I was saving your life. I’m so sorry.” Gabrielle covered her chest. “Please, Bret. Don’t look at me like this.”
Bret diverted his eyes, searching around the room for something to cover her.
“That . . . that bastard threw my clothes out the window. Please, I need something,” she pleaded.
In the opposite corner, the contents of a smashed chest of drawers were scattered about the floor. He rummaged through the pile with his good arm until he found a crinkled white blouse and black skirt wrapped up in the center of a damp ball of clothing. “These are the driest I could find.”
Gabrielle grabbed the clothes. Bret turned his back and she dressed herself as best she could. “Gabrielle? Did that animal—”
“No,” she answered in a whisper. Gabrielle turned away to hide her tears.
Bret rubbed his aching forehead. Philip’s words and the faded threads of childhood memories fluttered briefly through his mind like the tattered curtains on the broken window. “Philip was right. About the others and Caden.”
He stared at the derringer in his palm. “He killed Timothy too.”
Bret’s restless guilt—the old burden of promise once obscured by grief and anger, and haunted by a faceless presence of doubt—now gave way to something else.
If not pity, then letting go after having seen such wretched remains of a man, forever consumed by the hellish appetite of his own unforgiving hunger that it left nothing for revenge to savor.
Bret felt the light, soothing touch of Gabrielle’s hand on his bruised shoulder. He turned and saw her dressed in Rebecca’s damp blouse and skirt. “Let’s go home and get this bandaged. There’s nothing more for you here.”
He took Gabrielle in his arms and held her close for a long while, calming himself in the entwined breathing of their embrace. He kissed her hair. It was all he could do to stop his tears from falling on her cheek.
“You don’t have to be afraid anymore.” She touched the tear in the corner of his eye.
He kissed her, long and deep, the way he had kissed her before, when the power of his unspoken love for her had threatened to carry him away forever.
CHAPTER 29
Beaumont, Texas, January 10, 1901
The rattling jolts and backfires from Bret’s automobile parked in front of the Beaumont Hotel were enough to make people cross to the other side of the street.
Trying to idle his newly rebuilt Panhard et Levassor was a risky business for more than a minute or two. It could overheat and blow a gasket or fall suddenly quiet and refuse to budge.
Not unlike Gabrielle these days. If she doesn’t get a move on . . .
Bret reached over his seat for the wood toolbox to look for his tire pressure gauge. There, he’d stuffed stacks of old business papers and envelopes recovered from the battered oak desk in the ruins of his home.
The paper was streaked with grease from the small parts Philip and his workmen had salvaged from the wreck of his first automobile. Underneath, he found the glass tire gauge wrapped in a remnant of his old cotton vest.
Carefully unwrapping the frayed rag, Bret felt the crinkle of paper inside the vest pocket. He pulled out a chafed packet of folded writing paper and carefully unfolded the edges of the mildewed sheets.
The writing was blotched and faded, but the voice in the words was still clear.
Lord. After everything that’s happened since you’ve completely forgotten about her letter.
He massaged his sore shoulder and looked back at the main doors to the hotel and waited for a few seconds, tapping his foot in time to the rhythmic jostle and bump of the automobile.
Why haven’t you thrown this away yet? What more do you hope to find by keeping it?
Bret wiped the sweat off his brow. He peeled off his calfskin driving gloves and began reading.
“I know, dearest Bret, that you must hate me and despise the first moment our lips touched. How could I have deceived you so intimately and left you to suffer at the vengeful hands of my uncle? I don’t have any excuses for you, only to say that it gives me no greater pleasure than to know that you’re alive and reading this letter now.
From the first verse I sang that night, when I lifted my face to meet your warm smile and inviting eyes, I knew that my uncle could not have told me the whole truth about you.
The next day, sunlight quivered through my window and walking along the garden path I heard the hum of the summer bees singing, as though with that enchanting melody that you adore so much. What happiness I felt!
That’s when my heart started to change toward my uncle, the Society—everything. You awakened my soul, my darling, inspiring desires and wants that barely existed before I felt the pull of your loving arms bringing our bodies and souls closer together.
In the Society’s study hall, where once I was impressed by the statues of great thinkers, I now saw only the marble faced tombstones of dead men who knew nothing of my life, my hopes, or my longing to love and be loved in return.
In truth, dearest Bret, it was as though my spirit was asleep in the arms of the dead, forever resting in the tomb of their failed dreams and ambitions. My despair was a chilling and crushing weight fastened around my neck by the yoke family obligation; a promise to deceive a stranger by any means necessary in order to ruin his credibility on false charges of rape or worse.”
Bret’s mouth was dry. He swallowed and looked over to the front doors of the hotel. People were walking in and out but Gabrielle had yet to make her appearance.
He folded the first sheet along its creases and placed it inside the vest pocket of his driving jacket along with the envelope. After checking the the dashboard gauges, he read the second page.