High Country Bride (30 page)

“I have to get away,” she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss his beard-stubbled cheek. “While I’ve still got enough pride to hold my head up. You understand, don’t you?”

Angus’s eyes said he didn’t, but he nodded. He put the food basket under the seat, and handed Emmeline a sealed envelope. “You need anything,” he said, “anything at all, you go over to the bank and show Big Mike Jenkins this letter of credit.”

“I couldn’t,” Emmeline said.

He pressed the envelope into her hand. “You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a daughter,” he told her, neary strangling on the words. “No matter what happens, you’ll always be my girl. So you take this paper, missy, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

She sniffled, wiped her eye with the side of one thumb, and took the envelope, shoving it into the pocket of her cloak. No one else seemed to be cold, that July day, but Emmeline was chilled to the marrow. “Thank you,” she said.

Angus only nodded, that time, looking as though he didn’t trust himself to speak. He kissed her forehead and helped her up into the wagon seat, and Kade scrambled up on the other side, taking the reins in gloved hands. His gaze was fixed straight ahead. He hadn’t said one word to Emmeline since that morning, at breakfast, when she’d announced that she was leaving.

Now, it was real. Emmeline was seated in that wagon, riding away from the Triple M, toward Indian Rock. She did not allow herself to look back.

They passed the burned-out homestead, where the Peltons had lived, and Emmeline remembered Phoebe Anne’s words:
This is a hard land….

“What happened, Emmeline?” Kade asked, when they were well away from the house. He hadn’t been present when she confided in Concepcion and Angus, and Rafe was still gone. Holt, too, had packed up, early that morning, saying it was time he moved onto his own ranch.

She lowered her head. “I made a terrible mistake,” she said.“I’d like to leave it at that.”

Kade gave her a sidelong glance, then patted her hand in a brotherly fashion, as if to say everything would be all right. Which only went to show what
he
knew.

Nothing was ever going to be all right again.

“E
MMELINE
H
ARDING
M
C
K
ETTRICK
,”
Becky said furiously that afternoon, in the relative privacy of her tiny office behind the registration desk, when the unexpected guest presented herself, and the rudimentary details of her separation from Rafe had been explained. “I have never suffered fools gladly, and I do not intend to begin with you!”

Emmeline’s control over her emotions was growing more tenuous by the moment. Her back ached, after the long ride from the Triple M to Indian Rock, jolting and jostling over a rough track, perched on the hard seat of a wagon. She and Kade had said very little during the trip, because she didn’t want to explain why she was leaving, and he was keeping his thoughts to himself. Her heart was in pieces, and scattered all about, like pearls from a necklace, spilling off a broken string. Her worst fears had come to fruition: Rafe had put her aside for good, like some biblical harlot, and now she must face Becky’s angry recriminations as well. She opened her mouth, and when no words came, she closed it again.

Becky shook a finger at her. “I warned you,” she reminded Emmeline. “I told you that Rafe wouldn’t understand!”

Emmeline lowered her head, but only for aecrimint, then she was looking directly into Becky’s eyes again. “I had no other choice,” she said.

“Oh, indeed,” Becky ranted in an outraged whisper, well aware, as Emmeline was, that Clive was probably just outside the room, with one ear to the keyhole. “Well, my dear, you haven’t just finished your own reputation in this town, you’ve put an end to
mine
, as well. Lacking your penchant for spoiling a good thing, I had planned on making a new start.” She sighed, her expression thoughtful now.“Once word gets around, that may be quite a difficult thing to do.”

“I do regret that part of it, truly,” Emmeline said with feeling. “It’s just that I couldn’t think of a way to clear the air with Rafe without revealing how I came to be in such a situation in the first place. Therefore, I had to tell him that I grew up in a brothel, and naturally, that meant—”

Becky rolled her eyes. “Saints preserve us,” she murmured. It was the closest Emmeline had ever heard her come to offering a prayer, though the tone of it was more like swearing.“Well, my girl,”she said after an interminable, steaming silence,“what do you intend to do now?”

“I have no idea,” Emmeline admitted. “I was hoping to stay here with you, until I come to some decision. I can certainly help with the work.”

It seemed, for one dreadful moment, that Becky would turn away from her, just like Rafe had done. In the end, though, Becky simply walked over to the wall safe, opened it with a few deft spins, this way and that, and reached inside to pull something out. She handed Emmeline a thick packet. “This is the documentation concerning the funds I put aside for you after I liquidated most of my interests in Kansas City. You can have the money transferred to the bank here in Indian Rock, but I wouldn’t recommend it—John tells me the place has been robbed four times since it opened.”

Emmeline stared at the packet. “Are you sending me away?”

“Dolt,” Becky snapped, and gave an annoyed little sigh. “Of course I’m not. You and I are family. I’m your
mother,
for heaven’s sake! Remember—I told you there was money when I first visited you at the Triple M.”

Emmeline found a chair, sat down hard. “I’d forgotten,” she said.“Is it a great deal?”

“Yes,” Becky said, nodding briskly at the envelope, which rested in Emmeline’s lap.“See for yourself.”

Hands shaking, Emmeline opened the packet, drew out the papers, unfolded them. It took a few seconds for her to find the line marked, “Balance on Deposit,” and when she did, she gasped aloud. It was a small fortune.

Becky’s smile was a welcome sight, even if was a bit ironic. “You are a wealthy woman in your own right, Emmeline,” she said.“Does that surprise you?”

“Yes!” Emmeline burst out. “I had no idea—I can’t possibly accept—”

“Stuff and nonsense,” Becky said, cutting her off. “You will inherit three times that much when I pass away, and this hotel into the bargain, such as it is.”

Emmeline pressed one hand to her mouth, shook her head. Even in her wildest flights of fancy, she’d never imagined having so much money. With such wealth, she could do anything she wanted to do, travel to any part of the world, wear the finest clothes and bedeck herself in the kind of jewelry she’d always coveted, and still have a fat balance in her bank account.

The strange thing was that she would have given all of that up, and gladly, every penny of the money, every luxury such riches afforded, if only she could be with Rafe, back in that tenuous golden time before she’d shattered his image of her. She lowered her head, a great sob rising into her throat, and Becky took her into her arms.

“There, now,” she said.“We’ll work this out somehow.”

“I was trying to do the right thing,” Emmeline wept.

“I know,” Becky commiserated.“I know.”

Emmeline had been at the hotel a week, cleaning rooms with Mandy, helping the cook in the kitchen, and working at the front desk whenever a stagecoach came in, and there were customers to be dealt with, when Holt came into the dining room one afternoon.

He took off his hat.“Hello, Emmeline,” he said.

Emmeline, who had been setting the tables for the supper trade, went absolutely still. “How is Rafe?” she heard herself ask. It was as though she had two voices, her normal one, and this other, speaking up when she least expected it, quite independent of her brain.

Holt stood leaning on his crutch, watching her. “I couldn’t rightly say, since I’ve been on my own place, and haven’t seen much of him. He came by once to make sure I hadn’t dammed up the springs.” He paused to consider. “I’d guess from the looks of him, though, that he’s miserable as a rattlesnake circling the bottom of a rain barrel.”

Although she tried not to show it, Emmeline was relieved that Rafe hadn’t left the territory; the ranch was an integral part of him, the physical counterpart of his soul. She was also illicitly pleased that he was miserable. “He is a stubborn man,” she said, thinking aloud, and was immediately sad. “Sit down, Holt. I’ll bring you some coffee.” A customer, after all, was a customer.

He nodded his thanks and took a seat at the nearest table, propping his crutch against the wall. Emmeline went into the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee from the big pot on the stove, and carried it back to the dining room. The cook, a small Chinese man who went by the unlikely name of Stockard, was out in back, chopping wood for the huge cast-iron stove, Becky was in her room, taking a rest, and Mandy and Clive had gone out to run various errands.

Holt stood, very awkwardly, and waited until Emmeline was seated across from him before sinking into his chair again. He grimaced a little, and she knew he was still in considerable pain, but he was a hardheaded McKettrick, whatever name he went by, and, as such, it would take more than a badly broken leg to prevent him from riding all over the countryside just as if he were in the peak of health.

He added sugar and cream to the coffee she’d brought him, stirring with a clatter of the spoon, while Emmeline waited for him to state his business, being well aware that he hadn’t stopped in to pay a social call.

“I was wondering,” he said finally, after taking a careful sip from his cup, “if you’ve got any woman friends back east.”

She looked at him quizzically. “Why? Are you looking to get married?”

He chuckled.“No,” he said.“I need a housekeeper.”

Immediately she thought of Mandy, and said so.

“The nun?” Holt asked, plainly surprised.

Emmeline sighed. “She
isn’t
a nun,” she confided. “She’s just pretending.”

“Why would anybody pretend to be a nun?”

She glanced around, to make sure no one was listening. “I think she’s hiding from somebody,” she said. “Maybe she’s in trouble.”

“Now, there’s a great recommendation,” Holt said.“I’m looking for somebody to cook and clean and sew, not rob me blind, or get me shot by a jealous husband.”

“That’s not very chivalrous,” she said.

“I am not a chivalrous man,” he replied. “Emmeline, why don’t you go back to the Triple M?”

She turned her head toward the window beside their table, fixing her gaze on a mule drinking at a moss-covered horse trough on the other side of the street. “I can’t,” she answered quietly. “Seeing that look in Rafe’s eyes again—
ever
again—well, it would be worse than dying. I just couldn’t bear it.”

He waited, taking another taste of his coffee.

“Why didn’t you tell me before that nothing really happened that night we were together?” she demanded suddenly. The question had been gathering speed inside her, like a runaway locomotive, ever since the night of her confrontation with Rafe. Now, it came out of her mouth all on its own.

Holt leaned forward slightly, his eyebrows raised. “I figured you knew, Emmeline. It isn’t as if there aren’t—well—indications.”

Of course there
were
indications; she knew that now. Still, she blushed, wildly embarrassed, incapable, for the moment, of answering. An experienced woman would have been aware, of course, but Emmeline had not been anything of the sort. Indeed, she was
still
woefully ignorant about a great many things, despite those unconventional chats with Becky, during her girlhood. Nothing Becky had ever said had prepared her for the glorious, soaring joy, the melding of souls, she’d known in Rafe’s bed.

“You truly didn’t know,” Holt marveled, his voice quiet.

She shook her head.

“Damnation,” he muttered, sounding exasperated, and after that he seemed to be at a loss for words.

Emmeline’s eyes felt as though they’d been pricked with needles at the inside corners. She’d gone to Rafe’s bed as a virgin, and now he’d spurned her for a whore. It was all her fault, and no one else’s, however much she would have liked to share the blame with somebody.

“What are you going to do now, Emmeline?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I have some money. Maybe I’ll move on to Denver or San Francisco or somewhere, and start over.”

“Bide your time,” Holt counseled with a solemn shake of his head. “I told Rafe that I never touched you, except to put you to bed for the night. He
to believe me, I could see that.”

“Don’t you see that it doesn’t make any difference to him, that we didn’t—didn’t do anything? As far as Rafe’s concerned, I was
willing
to sell myself for money, and that’s the same thing as whoring.”

“Maybe,” he admitted ruefully.

“What would you do, in his place?”

Holt sighed. “I don’t know,” he said, and Emmeline knew immediately that he was lying. He would have put her aside, just as Rafe had done.

“Do you think you’ll ever make peace with your father and brothers?” she asked, after a long silence.

“Hard telling,” he said, just as Becky entered the dining room from the lobby, looking refreshed after her nap. Whatever else Holt might have added to his brief response was lost as he stood to greet Becky.

Her eyes shone with affection as she took his hands in her own. “Holt Cavanagh,” she said. “How good to see that you’re recovering from your injuries. Tell me, do you bring us happy news? We’ll settle for just about anything.”

He glanced at Emmeline before meeting Becky’s sparkling gaze again. “Things are pretty much the same all around, I reckon” he said.“I was in town on some personal business, so I decided to stop in and pay my respects.”

“We would never have forgiven you if you’d passed us by,” Becky said. Her eyes fell on the coffee cup on the table, now empty. Emmeline stood to clear it away, suddenly needing something to occupy her hands. “All you had was coffee?” she asked. “It’s true that dinner’s well over, and supper won’t be served for a couple of hours yet, but we could surely serve you something more nourishing. Is there any of Stockard’s wonderful beef stew left over from last night, Emmeline?”

Emmeline didn’t get a chance to answer; Holt spoke too quickly.

“I had a big meal at my place,” he said.“And I’ve got to be headed back to the ranch now anyway.” He rose, nodded to both women, and left the dining room.

“You and Holt are good friends,” she mused, watching Becky watch his departure. “I don’t think I realized that before.”

“Yes,” Becky said, meeting Emmeline’s gaze and holding it without flinching. “We go way back, Holt and I do. We’ve even shared in a few business deals.”

“He’s looking for a housekeeper,” Emmeline said.

“He doesn’t need a housekeeper,” Becky said briskly. “He needs a wife.” With that, she dispensed with the subject.

Emmeline let out her breath. She’d expected to get over missing Rafe so much, but it was worse than ever. The malady seemed to grow keener and more painful with every passing day, rather than better, as it should, by rights, have done.

“Any word of Rafe?” Becky asked gently, laying a comforting hand on Emmeline’s forearm.

“I asked after him,” Emmeline admitted. “Holt said he was ‘miserable’—and just as stubborn as ever. I believe he thinks that if I go back to the Triple M to live, Rafe might get over his anger sooner.”