Hannah’s Beau (11 page)

However tight his shoulders were now, he continued to gaze at her directly. “I have been given the opportunity to plant a new church in Greeley, Colorado. The Rocky Mountain Association of Churches is sponsoring my efforts.”

Her eyes widened. “My father was the chairman of the Association.”

“Still is.”

“I see.” She looked flustered and irritated and completely disappointed in him.

A little finger of panic curled in his chest. “You misunderstand. I’m not on this journey to please your father. I’m here because it’s the right thing to do. Your sister must be found and brought back home.”

It was the surprise in her eyes, surrounded by a note of genuine concern and understanding, that gave him hope she believed him.

“What if Rachel refuses to return with us and my father blames you for your part? Could he take away your church?”

Tension the size of a railroad tie roped around his chest like an iron band. But at this point Beau owed her the complete truth. “Yes.”

Dread leaped into her eyes. “Then you can’t—”

“Yes, I can.” He reached out and touched her hand. “Like I said before, going after your sister is the right thing to do.”

“Oh, Beau. I’m so sorry.”

Still holding his gaze, she turned her wrist until their palms met. He instinctively twined his fingers through hers.

For a moment, sitting like that, with a simple holding of hands, they were a unit.

“Don’t be sorry for me, Hannah. The risk is mine to take. To be quite frank, my brother owes all of us an explanation. It is my duty to make sure he gives us one that will satisfy all the injured parties.”

A look storming with emotion settled into her eyes. Now that they’d come this far, he had a choice to make. He could leave the conversation alone, stop where they were and let everyone settle down. Or he could press the conversation in another, equally volatile direction and be finished with the secrets between them.

Beau chose the harder of two routes. “Tell me about the night you were sent from your father’s home,” he blurted out.

Counting the seconds until she spoke, Beau waited for her to respond. When he made it to ten and she still kept silent, he feared she might ignore his bold request.
But she surprised him by pulling her hand free and shutting her Bible with a smooth snap. “You’re sure you want to hear this now?”

Beau recognized the bleakness in her eyes, the desire to avoid the conversation. He touched her hand gently. “I do.”

She paused, blinked slowly and then nodded. “I suppose it started when my mother died. Rachel and I were only ten years old at the time. On her deathbed, Mama made me promise to take care of Rachel because she was small for her age, and fragile, much weaker than I ever was.”

Beau couldn’t imagine a more fragile woman than Hannah. With a sudden flash of insight, he wondered if her parents had mistaken her inner strength for physical strength. “And so you did as your mother requested.”

She studied her hands a moment. “At first it was just picking up her chores when Rachel was too ill or too tired to complete them herself.”

Beau shook his head at the notion. She couldn’t be serious. His eyes lingered on her face a moment, and he saw that she was indeed serious.

She cleared her throat. “What started as small chores here and there turned into far more the night Rachel ran off after she and I had a fight over a boy.” Her eyes became haunted. “It was a stupid argument, and I refused to go after her. Rachel lost her way that night. When she was eventually found the next morning, she had caught a bad cold and suffered permanent hearing loss in one ear.”

“You blame yourself.” A lump, hot and thick, stuck in Beau’s throat at the realization.

She dropped her gaze to her hands again. “I should have gone after her.”

“It wasn’t your fault she ran off and got lost.”

“Wasn’t it?” she whispered.

Troubled by the stark guilt he heard in her voice, Beau opened his mouth to speak, but she talked over him. “I tried to make it up to her. And so I began taking the blame for bigger transgressions.”

He didn’t want to ask. How could he
not
ask? “Such as?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “If Rachel broke a valuable item, I told our father I did it. If she said something mean to make a kid cry, I confessed I said it.”

Beau could see the hurt Hannah was trying to hide. It was in the slump in her shoulders, in the shake of her voice. “How could he not know it wasn’t always you? No child is all good or all bad. Surely your father could see the truth.”

“My father has always thought the worst of me.” The calm resignation in her voice startled him. “I was different from every other kid, more colorful, more dramatic. It was easy enough to assume I was bad. A rose is still a rose by any other name.” She snorted. “Or in my case, a thorn is still a thorn by any other name.”

He wanted to deny her words, but Beau understood those particular dynamics all too well. By preaching in “dens of iniquity,” by associating with sinners, he was suspect among the more pious ministers of the Association. By answering God’s calling for his life in the way he felt most productive, he’d been labeled a rebel.

But there was a difference between Hannah and him.
He was guilty of everything they claimed. She was not. “Those weren’t your sins to bear,” he said softly.

Her head shot up, and her eyes speared daggers at him. “You think I don’t know that? That I haven’t scolded myself over and over and over in the past five years? But what else was I supposed to do? I promised Mama. If it wasn’t for me, if I had gone after her, Rachel would still be able to hear in both ears.”

Beau recognized the conflicting emotions on her face. Guilt. Sorrow. Despair. Anger.

“Hannah, listen to me.” He lowered his voice and allowed the compassion he felt for her situation to flow into his tone. “By taking the blame for your sister’s actions, you played your own role in her ultimate selfishness.”

She bowed her head. “I know that. It can’t continue. No more will I accept responsibility for her actions.” Her gaze held his, determination blazed in her eyes.
“No more.”

“Good.
Good.
” He tilted his head and studied her mutinous expression. “But none of this explains why your father banished you from his home.”

She broke eye contact and looked out the window, gulped in a deep breath as though she was gathering her courage to finish her story.

Beau waited in silence, giving her the time she needed.

“As you can imagine, the pattern had been set. By the time we were eighteen, Rachel was a master of manipulation. She had a secret tryst with the young, newly hired schoolteacher in town.”

He’d heard of worse. He’d
seen
worse in some of the mining camps. And yet, her words startled him. In an attempt to erase all expression from his gaze, Beau rubbed his hand across his face. “That couldn’t have ended well.”

“He was married.”

An odd combination of shock and fury left him speechless. He blinked, noticed how the moonlight streamed through the window and cast her in a pale, eerie glow.

“There’s more.”

Too many secrets. Too many shadows. Too much pain. “I can’t imagine anything worse than adultery.”

She gave a short, bitter laugh. “During the entire liaison, Rachel pretended to be me.”

He should have guessed, should have been emotionally prepared. But his temper snapped anyway. Rage, hot and uncontrollable, bubbled just below the surface.

Beau suddenly wanted to hit something. He swallowed back the emotion. Swallowed again. But still the urge to unleash his anger held him in a death grip. Alarmed at his violent reaction, he turned to scowl out the window.

“I could never understand Mr. Beamer’s strange, inappropriate looks,” she said. “Or the way he tried to touch me when no one was looking. I never understood, that is, until the night the truth of the affair came out. The town instantly assumed it was me.
He
thought it was me. He’d been given no reason to believe otherwise.”

Beau had to force his words out slowly and carefully in order to contain his temper. “And your sister let you take the blame.”

“Yes.”

“She never spoke up?”

Hannah crossed her arms in front of her in a protective gesture and looked at him with her own anger and grief warring in her eyes. “No.”

For once in his life, whether in the role of pastor or friend, he didn’t know what to say.

“I thought I’d forgiven her. And when she came to visit me in Chicago, I thought all would be different between us. After all, she was set to marry Will, a boy who has adored her since they could walk.”

A muscle locked in his jaw. “Then she ran off with Tyler.”

The sound that came from her throat was a rumble of pain and humiliation.

“Hannah—”

“I want her to pay, Beau. And I want it to hurt her. I—” She gasped and her hand flew to her mouth. Hot color flooded her face. Tears welled in her eyes.

Beau’s heart responded immediately, even as his head told him to remember where they were. He struggled to keep from pulling her into his arms. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be proper. Nevertheless, he had to let her know there wasn’t something inherently wrong with her for thinking such ugly thoughts.

He hunkered down in front of her and grabbed her hands in his. “Hannah, it’s only natural to feel anger at your sister over this.”

She was shaking her head before he finished speaking. “No. Holding a grudge is a sin.”

“Yes. But once you confess that sin, you must try to accept God’s forgiveness and let go of the guilt. Don’t allow this to turn into shame.”

Her chin trembled. “What if it’s too late?”

“It’s never too late with Christ.”

She stared at him, searching his face.

Beau held her stare. He’d never met a woman quite
like Hannah Southerland. Even in her anguished state, she recognized that her bitterness was wrong. And because she knew it was wrong, she agonized over it.

In that moment, he realized his own enormous mistake. At the start of their acquaintance he’d judged her because of her outward appearance. He hadn’t looked deep enough to see her real beauty, the beauty inside. That made him no better than the men and women who judged him.

It wasn’t Hannah’s character in question. It was his. And now the truth hung heavy in the air between them.

She
wasn’t unworthy of him.
Beau
was unworthy of her.

H
annah slept.

Mavis slept.

Beau, however, did not.

He had too much to consider, too much to organize in his mind. Now that he’d begun to get a good sense of who Hannah Southerland really was, on the inside, he only wanted to know more.

The woman was clearly the worst thing that had ever happened to him. For all intents and purposes, she was everything he shouldn’t want in his life. Everything he
couldn’t
want. Yet he did want her in his life. And now that he knew her better,
knew himself better,
there was no way he would be able to walk away from her. Not without leaving a part of himself behind.

Merely sitting in the same compartment with her felt too confining, too constricting, too…personal.

There was no question he had to fight this secret attraction. No matter how kind, compassionate and merciful of heart, she wasn’t the right woman for a man starting a church in the conservative Rocky Mountain
Association, even if her own father led the largest congregation in the organization.

And it wasn’t for his sake, it was for hers. She wasn’t conventional enough. The people in Greeley could easily ostracize her, judge her, perhaps even look down on her merely for her profession on the stage. Beau could never put Hannah in that vile situation. She was too full of life, too full of joy to suffer a moment of that kind of prejudice. Prejudice that he himself had held.

Surely these feelings he had for her would pass. They
had
to pass, for both their sakes. Then he could resume his search for a nice docile wife. Until that time, Beau would simply keep his distance from the appealing actress.

Starting now.

His jaw tight and teeth clenched, he rose and went in search of Logan in the dining car.

The young lawman sat at a table in a back corner, looking woefully out of place among the fine white linens, sterling silver utensils and crystal water goblets. He had a full plate in front of him, heaped with all sorts of rare delicacies. But instead of eating, he stared unblinking at the untouched food.

“Are you planning to eat any of that?” Beau asked.

“At some point,” Logan said, keeping his head bent over his plate. With his fork, he drew a series of invisible geometric shapes on the tablecloth, repeating the same pattern over and over and over again.

Beau lowered himself into the seat opposite the deputy. “Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Want me to leave you to your brooding?”

Logan snapped his head up and give Beau one long,
frustrated stare. “I’m not brooding, I’m just…” His voice trailed off.

“Thinking?” Beau supplied.

“Something like that.”

Knowing precisely what was troubling the young man, Beau went straight for the crux of the matter. “Megan will be there when you get back.”

Logan gave a nod, which might have been acknowledgment. “I hated leaving her,” he said as he shoved the plate of untouched food away from him. “She was so…quiet.”

“Her mother just died.”

“Yeah, well, I wish I could have helped her with—” He broke off and shrugged. “I don’t know. I wish I could have done something.”

In spite of the seriousness of the situation, one side of Beau’s mouth kicked up. “You’d risk Marc’s wrath?”

Logan’s face tightened into an angry knot. “He doesn’t scare me.”

“He should. Marc takes his guardianship very seriously,” Beau pointed out in the smooth, patient tone that marked his occupation far more than the words themselves did.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve faced down worse. One over-dressed dandy isn’t going to put me off from something I know is meant to be.” The words came out strong, but Logan’s gaze showed hesitation. “What does he have against me, anyway?”

“Try to understand. It’s not personal, Logan. In his mind, Marc is protecting Megan, as any good guardian would.”

Logan made a noncommittal sound in his throat, but
the uncertain look in his eyes was enough to make Beau lean forward and speak in earnest.

“You’re both young. There’s plenty of time to be together. You just have to believe it will all work out in the end.”

“In other words—” Logan blew out a disgusted snort and sneered “—trust in God’s plan. Is that what you’re saying, preacher man?”

“Yes.” Resting his weight on his elbows, Beau commanded the young man’s gaze with a hard one of his own. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“I’m supposed to do nothing? Just wait for everything to work out?”

Logan’s expression was mutinous, frustrated. And very, very angry. Beau registered all three, and then noted the panic underneath the emotions.

“Faith,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “
Real
faith requires patience.”

“I thought the Bible said God helps those who help themselves?”

How many times had Beau heard that blatant misquoting of Scripture? “That’s not precisely what the Bible says.”

“No?”

“No. Have faith. Fear not. Trust God. Those are clear commands set out in the Bible. But for a man to forge ahead with his own purpose motivating his actions, and then to tell God to bless the outcome, well, that’s not Biblical. It’s dangerous. And selfish. And more often than not leads to destruction.”

Logan opened his mouth to argue, his eyes continuing to blaze with confusion and a good dose of youthful
rebellion. Beau held the other man’s stare, knowing they’d come to a moment of truth for the deputy. At last, Logan clamped his lips into a hard, thin line and nodded. “You’d know better than me.”

Ignoring the belligerent tone, Beau pressed on. “If you and Megan are meant to be together, you will be together.”

And in that moment, Beau knew he should listen to his own advice, especially where Hannah Southerland was concerned.

Have faith. Fear not. Trust God.

It was time Beau started walking his talk.

“Even if we don’t understand the ‘why’ behind our circumstances,” he said, “we can always trust that God works them out for our own good.”

“Words, Reverend O’Toole, fancy words filled with nothing but rhetoric.”

“Not just words,” Beau said in a firm, unrelenting voice.
“Truth.”

“Well, here’s some truth for you.” Logan nailed Beau with a hard warning in his glare. The look revealed the seasoned lawman inside the boyish face. “If I lose Megan, someone will pay.”

Gauging Logan’s frustration, Beau ignored the threat and switched the conversation to a less volatile topic. “Since we’re on the subject, what’s all the animosity between you and Mavis?”

Logan shoved at his hair and made a face. “We aren’t talking about Mavis.”

“We are now.”

“I say we don’t.”

“I say we do.”

Logan’s scowl deepened. “The woman hates me.”

“Want to tell me why?”

Logan lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know, maybe because I call her
old woman.
” Frowning, he slapped his palms on the table and pressed his weight forward. “But I don’t mean any disrespect. She just takes it wrong.”

Beau stared at the other man for a full ten seconds. The deputy couldn’t possibly be that dense. Trey Scott would never hire a stupid man to cover his back. “Let me see if I heard you correctly.
You
call Mavis
old woman,
and yet
she
takes it wrong.”

Logan sat back. His mild blue eyes flickered with a faraway expression. “I used to call my grandmother
old woman.
She fancied the nickname. And unlike a certain woman in our impromptu search party, Granny had a sense of humor.”

Beau nodded in understanding. Every family, even his own, had its set of codes and pet names and forms of speech that outsiders never quite understood, and often considered odd.

Given that fundamental truth, Logan hadn’t meant any disrespect when he’d called Mavis
old woman.
He’d been giving her a compliment. Of sorts.

Breaking the silence, Logan sighed. “Granny kind of looked like Mavis. Well, not really.
Nobody
looks quite like Mavis. But there’s something about the old woman that reminds me of Granny. It’s in the way her face scrunches up when she’s mad. And how she gets all ornery when you cross her. I kind of like the old bird. There, I said it. Happy now?”

“Have you ever told Mavis how you feel?” Beau asked. “Tried to apologize for the misunderstanding?”

“Are you insane?”

Beau smiled at Logan’s horrified expression. “Do I look or sound insane?”

“If I so much as hinted at an apology, Mavis would never let me live it down.”

“Would that be a bad thing?”

Logan looked like one of the Charity House orphans, full of belligerence and bad attitude. “I’d rather face Armageddon.”

Pride, Beau thought. It got a man every time.

Hannah unfolded her legs, maneuvered past the pile of luggage on the floor and tumbled into the empty aisle beyond. Righting herself with as much dignity as possible, she lifted her arms overhead and released a jaw-cracking yawn. Every muscle ached from hours of inactivity. But that would soon come to an end. According to the conductor, they were due to arrive in Cheyenne within the hour.

Instead of feeling joy that they were another step closer to Rachel, Hannah found herself dreading the confrontation all over again. The revelation of her own unresolved bitterness toward her sister was still too fresh, too strong, in her mind. How could she face her sister with so much anger still in her heart? How could she prevent herself from saying something they would all regret?

Perhaps with Beau by her side, everything would go smoothly.

Beau.
Ah, Beau.

Just thinking how far they’d come since their disastrous introduction brought a smile to her lips.

There was no denying that the rebel preacher had dis
appointed her at their first meeting, proving he was nothing like the compassionate minister she’d dreamed of encountering when she’d read his letter to his brother. And yet, in the ensuing days, his behavior had been above reproach. He’d been accepting of the children of Charity House, an advocate for Jane, an instrument of hope for Megan and a rock for Hannah.

The truth was irrefutable. Hannah was starting to care for Beauregard O’Toole. In the way a woman cared for a man.

But what did that mean for her, for him, for the future? For—

Mavis snorted.

Grateful for the interruption, Hannah turned toward the sound. As she stared at her chaperone, a jolt of affection hitched Hannah’s breath. Mavis Tierney was quite a character. The woman snored louder than the train wheels churned. She squirmed and burrowed like a rodent. Most of the time, she chose to be surly, mean, and spoke her mind without thinking of the consequences.

And yet, Hannah adored her.

Mavis mumbled, snorted again but continued to clutch the smallest of her three satchels against her. Hannah bit back a smile. The older woman seemed overly attached to that canvas bag. In the realm of obsession. A fixation. A…

“Now hold on just a moment,” Hannah whispered to herself.

Using the soft steps earned from years of ballet training, Hannah edged closer to Mavis and narrowed her eyes at the woman’s white-knuckled grip.

Understanding dawned.

“You little sneak.”

With slow, measured moves, Hannah wrapped her fingers around the handle of the bag. Inch by careful inch, she tugged. To no avail. Mavis’s death grip was a force all its own, which only dug Hannah’s suspicions deeper.

Another yank, a quick snatch, and Hannah freed the bag from Mavis’s hold.

The woman didn’t stir.

“Thank you, Lord, for sound sleepers.”

Gliding through the railcar on her toes, Hannah moved to an isolated corner and turned her back to the rest of the occupants. Relatively alone, she rummaged through the contents of the satchel until she found what she was looking for.

“I knew it.”

She poked her hand into the bag, quickly palmed the objects in question and turned back around. Only to come face-to-face with an engaging preacher.

“Oh,” she said.

He smiled.

“I…Oh!”

He smiled some more. “You said that already.”

“I…I…” Her heart stopped beating altogether, held a full five seconds, gave a slow pitch and then picked up speed. “You gave me a fright.”

“I’m sorry.”

He didn’t look sorry in the least.

But he did look handsome. Confident. Charming.

Glory.
When Beauregard O’Toole produced that particular smile, he had all the charisma and style of his rogue brother. With none of the cunning.

Hannah wondered if Beau knew how engaging he
was, in that masculine sort of way that made a woman want to rest in his strength. She wondered if he knew his charm was utterly irresistible. She wondered if he knew his smile was a powerful weapon, one that should never be misused.

She wondered if he knew she was getting very adept at wondering.

“Stealing from a helpless old woman?” he asked.

Caught in the act, Hannah grasped the tobacco pouch tighter in her fist. Then slowly, very, very slowly, she nodded.

“I’m shocked at you, Miss Southerland.” His eyes crinkled at the edges.

Hannah caught his playful mood—at last—and returned his smile with one of her own. “I am what I am.”

A single eyebrow arched toward his hairline. “Have you no shame, my dear?”

“Absolutely—” her smile widened “
—none.
”

He leaned in closer and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, creating a world all their own in the crowded railway car. “Can I get in on this brazen robbery of yours?”

“Only if you promise to dispose of…” She made a grand gesture of peering around him and then lifting her palm a bit higher. “The contraband.”

“I’d consider it my personal duty.”

Hannah’s stomach performed a stunning flip, and then another, refusing to settle for even a moment. She didn’t quite know what to do with Reverend O’Toole in this lighthearted mood.