Kissing in the Dark (36 page)

Cora’s scream, and Adam’s yell, pierced Faith’s thoughts so violently she dropped the potato she was peeling and ran for the door.

The instant she stepped outside, her insides turned liquid, drenching her in fear. Cold gray eyes stared down at her, like a bird of prey stalking its next meal. Judge Stone sat on a big, prancing horse, holding Cora, who was as limp as a wilted flower.

“Hello, Faith.”

She would never forget those predatory eyes or that gritty, commanding voice.

“What have you done to her?” she asked, her fear for Cora so acute she could barely breathe. The child’s eyes were closed as if she was sleeping, but she wasn’t sleeping. Had the judge knocked her out?

“Nothing to damage her.”

“I’ll do anything you ask, just . . . let her go.”

“Too late to negotiate, Mrs. Grayson. Now that your husband owns the brothel, my business is with him. You can thank him for sending me this letter. It helped me find you.” The judge tossed the folded parchment at her feet. “Tell him to bring the deed to the brothel and meet me in Syracuse. If he tries any tricks, his esteemed family will pay for his arrogance.”

He kicked the horse and bolted from the yard.

“No! Wait!” Faith leapt forward, but the horse raced down the street. “We don’t have the deed!” she yelled.

Panic exploded in her chest and she raced after the judge and Cora, but Stone turned the horse onto Eagle Street and disappeared. Faith slammed to a stop at the edge of her yard. She couldn’t scream for help. And that manipulative bastard had known that when he rode up as bold as brass and took Cora. Faith couldn’t tell anyone who he was or what happened without putting herself, and Duke and his family and their own children, at risk.

But she needed help.

She had to get Cora back.

Her heart pounded and she wrung her hands, feeling useless and frantic and, dear God, she’d find Stone and kill him for this. She’d slip foxglove or aconite into the bastard’s food. No longer would she let him threaten her and her family or put Duke’s family at risk. No longer would she live looking over her shoulder for that greedy parasite.

Leaves rustled and the sound of Adam’s groan terrified her. She rushed across the yard and fell to her knees beside him.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, not daring to touch him.

He curled forward, then rolled to his knees. His face was pinched and he clutched his chest, gulping as if he couldn’t get air.

“Just point to where you’re hurt.”

He shook his head, then sucked in a gulp of air. Then another. Then he began to sob. “I tried to stop him.” He groaned and rocked on his knees. “He kicked me in the chest.”

“Oh, honey.” Faith pulled him into her arms, terrified and furious and sick to her soul. The children she was trying to protect were in more danger than ever.

So help her God, she would make Stone pay for this.

The neighbor lady stepped onto her porch and peered in their direction. “I heard a scream. Is everything all right?”

“Yes, Mrs. Brooks.” Faith kept her chin down so the woman wouldn’t notice her wet cheeks. “My brother just took a hard spill in the leaves, but everything’s fine.”

“All right then.” To Faith’s relief, the woman went back inside.

Adam pulled away and struggled to his feet. “I got to get help.”

“Wait.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “We need to get a message to Duke without letting anyone know what happened.”

Chapter 34

Duke road his weary mount out of Westfield, tired but certain he would win the election next week. Every township and village he’d visited had shown their support, and his under-sheriff and deputies stood solidly behind him. But of all the trips he’d made on sheriff’s business, none had ever been so tedious or unfulfilling.

Where was his sense of purpose?

Where was the conviction he always felt during these visits? Where was the man who wouldn’t compromise his integrity? Or his badge?

He was losing his moral compass. Decisions that used to be black and white were all tangled up with Faith’s idea of useful or not useful. Nothing was clear anymore. Laws felt too harsh, and rules seemed too rigid in judging some cases fairly. Like Dahlia’s situation. Duke had seen her aim the gun and pull the trigger. But there was truth in what she said: Levens would have killed Dahlia without a second thought, and he would have come back to kill Anna the first chance he got. It was so mixed up in Duke’s head, he couldn’t think about it without tying his gut in a knot.

Eight days of traveling had taken its toll on his shoulder and his mind. All he wanted was a good soak in the bathhouse and a few hours alone with Faith.

He missed her. He’d left too much unsaid between them because he’d been shocked into a state of outrage he’d never before known. From the minute he met Faith, each step that should have taken him due north had been a few degrees off course. Now, without true direction, he couldn’t navigate his way through the day, much less his life.

Everything was in shambles with his brothers because of his lack of attention. He’d strayed off course with them as well.

The thunder of horse hooves racing up behind him made Duke reach for his gun. He was traveling alone, moving through towns like a drifter, crossing paths with all sorts of characters. If anything happened to him out here before he could apologize to his brothers for putting their reputations at risk, and offer Faith the forgiveness she sought, they would never know how deeply he regretted his actions.

He slowed his mare and drew his revolver.

“Sheriff Grayson!” He turned to see a man on horseback waving his arm. “A message for you!” he shouted.

Duke holstered his revolver and reined in his horse. There was trouble, but not from the man stopping beside him.

“Sam Wade said we’d find you heading out of Westfield.”

Duke had wired Wade shortly before leaving to tell him he was heading home, but the wire was from Faith.

Cora missing.

Hurry!

Missing? All Duke could think about was the creek running high and hard from two weeks of heavy rain.

“Any return message, Sheriff?”

“No.” With a tug on the reins, Duke wheeled his horse away, and kicked the big mare into a run. It didn’t matter how or where or why his daughter was missing, it only mattered that she was.

His heart pounded with each mile he covered. The mare was sleek and fit, and Duke wanted to push her harder and faster, to eat up the miles between him and home. But he reined in his panic and alternated the mare’s pace between a trot and a gallop.

Each minute that ticked by drove his anxiety higher, and when an hour passed, his chest was so tight it hurt. Another twenty minutes saw him trotting past the Common and down Water Street. When he finally dismounted in his front yard, he was praying Cora had been found and was safe in the house with Faith.

But Faith met him in the foyer, her face ashen. “Judge Stone took Cora.”

Stone? “The man listed in your mother’s guestbook?” The man Duke had sent a letter to? “Do you know him?”

“Yes.”

“Why would he take Cora?”

“Because you sent him a letter! You told him where to find us!”

She was acting crazy, and it was making him crazy. “What are you talking about? Why would my letter make Stone come and take Cora?”

“Because he’s Cora’s father.”

As if a boulder struck his chest, Duke’s breath whooshed out and he stumbled back a step. “How can that be?” Stone had visited Rose. Faith said she didn’t work upstairs. Nothing was making sense. “Did you and Stone . . . You said you were a widow”

The desolate look in her eyes scared him. “I’m not a widow,” she whispered.

Duke stood perfectly still, his world crumbling around him.

“The judge was my mother’s guest. And Cora was my mother’s last child.”

God almighty. His mind spun with the horrifying reality of their situation. If the judge was Cora’s father, then he was entitled to take his child. Duke couldn’t do anything legally to get back the little girl who’d stolen his heart.

Worse yet, he himself had sent the letter that brought the man to their doorstep. He wouldn’t have sent the letter if Faith had told him about Stone. “How could you let me marry you without telling me this?”

“How
could
I tell you something like this?”

“How could you not?” he countered, pierced by another betrayal, this one unforgivable. “You lied about everything, Faith.”

“What would you have done in my place?”

“I would have . . . hell, I don’t know.” He scraped his hair out of his eyes. “I wouldn’t have lied.”

“Of course not,” she said, her voice laced with sarcasm. “It’s easy to be honorable when your belly is full, when you have a family to lean on, when you’re a man who can fight your own battles. But no one helps a whore or her children. My mother made me ring a damn bell to get her attention! And I could only ring it if I had an emergency!” He expected tears, but she faced him with cold resolve. “When you live in a brothel, nothing is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Right or wrong don’t exist. The only way I got through each day was to choose what was useful and ignore the rest. I’m asking for your compassion, not your approval.”

“I’m your husband. You should have trusted me.”

“I couldn’t! Did you hear a word of what I just said?”

“I heard you, Faith. You don’t trust me. Cora isn’t your daughter. And you aren’t a widow. So . . . why weren’t you a virgin?” he asked, his heart bleeding.

“Because I was a fool. I believed Jarvis loved me, and that he was going to marry me.”

“Who the hell is Jarvis?”

“He was a guest at the brothel. When he saw me and learned I didn’t work upstairs, he hired me to give him massages.”

Duke ground his teeth. He was going to stand in the foyer until he learned every sordid detail once and for all. “No more lies, Faith. No more secrets. Tell me all of it.”

She lifted bleak, swollen eyes. “Jarvis was the son of a wealthy planter from Kentucky. He stopped at the brothel each time he passed through Syracuse.”

So she’d never been married. Another lie. It hardly mattered at this point.

“Jarvis bought a small house for us and gave me money to furnish it while he was away. He said he would return in two weeks to move me in. I thought we were getting married, so I gave in and . . . but after . . . when my mother found us, she made Jarvis confess the truth. He wanted a mistress, not a wife.”

Duke could imagine how manipulated and hurt she felt, because he was experiencing that same painful betrayal. Everything he’d believed about Faith was in ashes. She wasn’t a grieving widow from Saratoga. She’d grown up in a brothel in Syracuse and massaged men’s bodies for money.

But the worst blow of all was still that Cora wasn’t legally Faith’s daughter. It made him sick and more afraid than he’d ever been in his life.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this the night I found out about the brothel?”

“Because the truth was too unbearable for you to hear all at once. And I was trying to protect Cora.”

“Keeping secrets didn’t protect her! That judge has every legal right to keep our daughter!” In hopeless rage, he slammed his fist against the wall.

Her chin shot up and her eyes flashed with anger. “Well, he can’t have her, damn it! I’m going to Syracuse to get her. And I’ll bleed, beg, or kill to get her back.”

“How, Faith? He’s legally entitled to his child.”

“He doesn’t want her. He wants the brothel. He caused my mother’s death trying to get it.”

Duke’s blood ran cold knowing Cora was in that man’s hands. Maybe Duke had no legal right to the girl, but when he’d married Faith, he’d bound his heart to the precious, precocious youth and vowed to protect her. That vow had brought him joy, a sweetness and light that he had never known. Like Faith, he would go anywhere, and do anything to find Cora and bring her back.

“Where’s Adam?” he asked, his decision made completely and irrevocably.

“Next door with Dahlia.”

“I’ll take him to Boyd’s house where he’ll be safe. Pack a bag for us. When I get back, we’re going to Syracuse.”

o0o

Duke left Adam with Boyd, then sent a telegram to Steven Cuvier, hoping the man knew something about Stone or Faith’s mother that would help them. But when Duke reached his office, his brisk manner deserted him. Despair settled in his gut, slowly hardening into a solid, unbreakable resolve.

He climbed the steps of the Academy building, aching to the bone from eight days of traveling. All he’d wanted was to get home, but now he wished he’d taken more time to thank each of his deputies for their service. They were good men, and he was honored to work with them.

But his life as sheriff was over.

He crossed the hall, unlocked his door, and entered his office. Everything was painfully familiar—the heavy oak desk, the rickety chair, the old metal safe—but no longer his. Another man would soon rest his elbows on the scarred desktop. Another man would carry the keys to the safe. Another man would wear the badge that Duke had worn with pride for eight years.

He’d known the day would come when he stepped down of his own accord, or when the vote supported another man. At each election he was prepared to pass the position to a man who could do the job. But he’d never imagined giving up his badge because he wasn’t fit to wear it.

It was only a piece of metal, but when he unpinned the silver star from his leather vest, it felt like he tore out his heart. He closed his fingers around the medallion, missing the weight of it on his chest. He’d worn the badge so long, it had left an impression in the leather, a painful reminder of a position he could no longer live up to. Because he was going to cross the line. He was going to break the law.

The outside door squeaked open and footsteps echoed in the hall. “Glad you’re back,” his deputy called.

“You alone, Sam?”

“I will be in a minute.”

Duke sat at his beat up old desk to write a short note of resignation. He heard keys jangle in the hallway, then the cell door opened and closed, then more jangling as Sam locked it.