Authors: Jill Marie Landis
The hours had flown while she had supervised Simon and his crew, and since Amelie and the children arrived there hadn’t been a moment to spare. She hadn’t even returned to the
garçonnière
since she had taken the children to meet Colin three days ago.
Not that she cared to see him while she was still confused about her reaction to his accidental touch. Not while that glimpse of what he was and could be again lingered in her mind.
She picked up the photographs of the Delanys, put a smile on her face, and breezed into Amelie’s room.
“You’re looking better today!” she exclaimed.
“Poor Kate.” Amelie’s voice was no more than a hoarse whisper. Ravaged from her nightly battle with fever, she lay limp and wasted against a mound of pillows.
“You
do
look better.” As Kate opened the window hoping fresh air would dispel the staleness in the room, she heard Amelie’s soft sigh.
Kate walked to the bedside and handed her the photographs. “I brought these in from the
garçonnière
. Do you feel like looking through them now or should I set them on the table?”
Amelie held out her hand. Kate couldn’t help but notice the tremor that ran through it.
“Where are the children?” Amelie dropped the photographs in her lap.
“They’re out exploring with Myra, walking along the levee and watching the boats on the river.”
“They don’t know how to swim—” Amelie’s worry increased the lines around her eyes.
“Myra won’t let them anywhere near the edge of the path. Remember how vigilant she was with us?”
“I suppose.” Amelie turned her attention to the photographs, pausing now and again to comment.
“Remember this dress?” She turned the photograph so that Kate could see. Amelie’s skirt was draped over a wide hoop, the hems of her ruffled pantalets showing beneath it. “I loved that gown. What a silly creature I was.”
“You look like a confection. A crème layer cake.” Kate fought to keep her tone light, afraid her voice might crack and give her away.
Amelie took her time perusing through the stack twice, then laid the photographs on the bedclothes draped over her thin frame.
“Thank you, Kate. I’ll be seeing Mama and Papa again soon enough.” Her voice was so weak Kate barely heard her.
Kate was hard-pressed not to grab the photographs and toss them out the door and over the balcony.
“Don’t talk like that.” She walked back to the window, clasped
her hands together, and tried to still her racing heart. She knew she sounded far too harsh but couldn’t control her anger. How was Amelie to get well if she didn’t believe it herself?
“Your children need you,” Kate said.
“I know they do,” Amelie said with more strength than she’d shown in days. “But they won’t have me much longer and they need a home. I think that you of all people can understand.”
Suddenly it was all back. Her birth mother’s illness and death, she and her sisters huddled together crying. Lovie tried to comfort them. Megan angry. Sarah too young to know what was happening. The feeling of helplessness, of emptiness, had been terrifying.
Kate swallowed a sob.
“Kate, turn around and come here, please.”
She took a deep breath and collected herself before she obliged. She went to sit on the edge of the bed and took Amelie’s hand.
“The children still speak of their visit to Colin. Thank you for taking them to meet him.”
“It was nothing.” At the very least she should take the children back to visit him again before she left for the city tomorrow.
“He hasn’t come to see me yet,” Amelie said.
“Perhaps in time …” Kate looked away from the hopelessness in Amelie’s eyes.
“I haven’t much time, and I have no idea if Colin will ever forgive me or if he’ll be willing to care for my children. I need a promise from you, Kate. Please promise you’ll raise my children as your own after I’m gone.”
To promise would be to admit Amelie was dying.
Kate shook her head. “I can’t. I won’t … because you are going to get well.”
“There’s no reason for you to give up your dream. Hire a nanny or have Myra care for the children while you work. It’s enough to know you’ll still be there to guide them, to help them.”
Kate had told Amelie of her studies, of the influence Patrick Delany had had on her.
“It’s not that. Never that.” Kate reminded herself not to squeeze Amelie’s hand and cause her pain. “I simply refuse to let you go.”
Kate stood up again and paced over to the marble-topped washstand. She dipped a washcloth in a basin of water, twisted the water out, and went back to wipe Amelie’s brow.
Amelie closed her eyes. “Please don’t refuse me this.” A smile touched her lips. “I know how hardheaded you are, Kate. My father used to call you a stubborn Irish lass.”
“You’re half Irish yourself,” Kate reminded her. “Use that stubbornness to fight this, Amelie. If not for me, for the children.”
“It’s only sheer will that has kept me here this long.” She coughed again, taking the washcloth from Kate and daubing at her mouth. Rust-colored stains seeped into the fabric. “You were an orphan, Kate. Would you subject little Marie and Damian to that fate?”
The memory of the orphan asylum in New Orleans came back with a fierce swiftness — the sound of children who had lost their mothers crying themselves to sleep at night; her confusion over wondering where her older sisters had been taken. Kate had even begged the plump woman in the ruffled poke bonnet and the older gentleman who had adopted Sarah to take them both.
She could only imagine how she must have looked with her round, frightened eyes misting behind the new spectacles the nuns had given her, pleading with the strangers to take her too. She swore to them she barely ate anything and promised she would give them no trouble if they would just
please
take her with Sarah.
But Sarah went off alone and Kate was there for months until the Keenes adopted her. Gil and Nola were not loving parents, but they made certain she had a roof over her head and everything money could buy. They had kept her safe and saw to her future, and for that she would be forever grateful.
A motherless child was a crime against humanity. Never, ever would she submit Marie and Damian to an orphanage, never would she turn her back on them. But to agree to Amelie’s plea was an admission of defeat. She couldn’t do it.
Amelie’s warm hand closed around Kate’s.
“Please, Kate. You’re breaking my heart. I need you to promise to do this for me. It’s the only thing I need or want. Please.”
Amelie started crying such deep, wracking sobs that Kate wrapped her arms around her.
“Hush, now. I’m so sorry.” She held her for a moment and then settled her friend against the pillows. “If what you want is a promise that I will care for your children, of course, I give it gladly. But someday we’ll both be old women together and the children will be grown with families of their own. You’ll see.”
Amelie managed a weak smile.
“Thank you,” she whispered as she wiped away tears.
Kate, distracted by movement in the doorway, looked up expecting to see Eugenie with another dose of medicine. Instead, she was shocked at the sight of Colin leaning against the door frame.
Seeing him there was exactly what she wanted, but the cost had been dear. His face was drained of color, his brow glistened with perspiration. His pain was mirrored in his dark eyes. White knuckled, he clutched his cane in one hand. In the other, he carried a book. He fought to stand tall, to hide his agony, and he even attempted a slow smile for Amelie.
Kate was tempted to rush to his aid and usher him to a chair, but stayed where she was to avoid causing him any embarrassment.
How much had he heard?
When Amelie saw him, she gasped and clutched Kate’s hand.
“Colin—”
At the rasp of his sister’s voice, he stepped into the room and limped closer to the bed. Kate got to her feet and drew a chair over to the bedside. She held it steady as Colin lowered himself into it. When he handed over the book to her, she glanced at the spine:
A Pirate’s Tale of the West Indies
.
Completely silent, she hesitated to break the spell as brother and sister studied one another for the first time in over a decade. Stepping into the background of the Delanys’ lives was familiar territory, and yet this time Kate was uncomfortable in her role as
silent observer. She started to edge her way around Colin to leave them alone.
Amelie gave a slight shake of her head and whispered, “Please stay, Kate.”
C
olin barely recognized his sister. How much she must have suffered. It shamed him to think of his own self-pity. Not only was Amelie ravaged by disease, but her hands were cracked and red, her nails uneven and ragged. Signs of time in the sun marred the skin over her thin, pale cheeks. Seeing her this way, he was happy that her husband was already dead.
“Forgive me, Colin.” Amelie’s hushed whisper dispelled his dark thoughts.
“There’s nothing to forgive. I wasn’t here to advise you. I wasn’t here to defend you and Mama. I could have come back after our father died, but I chose not to. I could have kept you from running off with that—”
“Billy Hart is dead. That life is over,” Amelie interrupted.
“So the children said.”
He had more than an inkling of exactly how hard her life had been. The plains were wide open, raw and challenging enough without having to eke a living out of the soil. Far hardier souls than Amelie had been broken by the West.
It was hard to imagine her living on the edge of the rough cow town a few miles outside Fort Dodge. Thanks to the railroad, Dodge grew almost overnight into a watering hole for drifters, cowhands, buffalo hunters, and soldiers. A legendary cemetery was already full of gun-toting braggadocios.
He took a deep breath, shifted on the hard seat of the chair. His heart ached at the sight of Amelie so wan, so pale. She was far more ill than Kate had let on. No wonder little Marie had been so concerned. No child should have to see her mother ravaged like this. Colin reached for Amelie’s hand. It felt as fragile as a hummingbird’s wing.
“I’m glad you’re home.” The words, straight from the heart, were out before he knew he was going to utter them.
Home
.
From what he knew of Kate Keene now, he was certain she had painted a rosy wash over his circumstances, and for the moment he was relieved. There was no need to make Amelie’s burden any greater.
Amelie’s breath rattled as she spoke.
“I’m here for the children’s sake. I want them to grow up at
Belle Fleuve
… the way we did.” After a fit of coughing through which Colin was forced to sit helplessly, Amelie shook her head and her voice faded. “I didn’t realize those days are gone.”
She looked at a point over his shoulder before she met his eyes again. “But you are here and, by some miracle, so is Kate. With both of you bringing this place back to life, it will be better than before.”
So Kate hadn’t told Amelie that he had forbidden her from rescuing the house. She hadn’t confessed that she’d gone against his wishes. Kate had let his sister believe he had a hand in the repairs of the newly cleaned and partially furnished rooms.
Making his way upstairs a few minutes earlier, he’d been amazed at how much Kate had accomplished in so little time, but the repairs only highlighted how much more needed to be done.
“How were you injured? How long ago?” Amelie’s voice brought him back.
He hated talking of that day on the Texas plains, hated remembering what had been done to a band of innocent women and children in the Comanche stronghold. Hated remembering what had happened to him. An arrow had gone through his ankle, clear through the bone and into his horse’s belly. The animal had gone down on top of him, compounding his injuries.
“I took a Comanche arrow in the ankle.” He shrugged, ashamed of his self-pity in light of what she was suffering through so bravely. “It’s taken quite some time to heal.”
Amelie looked over his shoulder again and this time said, “Come closer, Kate.”
Until now, Colin had almost forgotten Kate was still in the room.
“I should leave, let you get some rest,” he said.
“Please, stay,” Amelie said. “Help me sit up.”
Kate stepped forward and helped Amelie.
Amelie smiled at Colin. “Kate won’t admit how ill I am or that she is powerless to save me. I’ve asked her to raise my children. I want them in your care too, Colin. They are innocent of what I’ve done, of what Billy did. I’m just grateful they are nothing like their Hart kin.”
“I’ll do what I can,” he promised. Even though he was the children’s uncle, Kate was the obvious choice as guardian. He had nothing of real value to give them, no money to see them through, and his spirit was as damaged as his ankle.
“Did you know that Kate has always loved you?” Amelie asked him bluntly.
Kate gasped and cried, “Amelie!”
Surely his sister was delirious.
“You know very well it’s true, Kate.” Amelie paused as if to gather strength. “I suspect … that might explain why you never married.”
Colin looked at Kate. Behind her spectacles, her eyes were wide with shock. He continued to stare — to really
look
at her for the first time as more than his sister’s friend. Beneath Kate’s expensive, well-tailored outfit, her figure was trim and shapely; her hair was thick, a rich brown shot through with russet highlights; her skin was flawless, her cheeks stained with embarrassment.
Kate had been here at
Belle Fleuve
for nearly a month and all he really knew about her was what he’d heard from Eugenie. It was obvious she held
Belle Fleuve
and his parents’ memories in her heart, but how could anyone possibly love him? Perhaps before the war, but not now.
Kate was studiously avoiding looking at him. Amelie lifted the family photograph from the bed.
“Since our Bible cannot be found, both of you must swear on this photograph of Mama and Papa and on their memories that you will marry and care for my children … together.”
“Amelie, you can’t possibly—” Kate began.