Love and Fury: The Coltrane Saga, Book 4 (6 page)

Colt didn’t like himself very much right then. She was right. They had just made beautiful love, and he was treating her like a whore. What a louse. Still, his every instinct told him to get her home. “We’re taking a big chance,” he said helplessly.

Sensing surrender, Charlene stood on tiptoe, raining kisses all over his face. “No, no, we’re not,” she assured him. “I know Daddy. He won’t leave for home till after he’s had breakfast. The bank doesn’t open till eight thirty, and it’s a two-hour trip to Pine Bluff, so he won’t get back till just in time to open up. I can leave here at first light, slip into the house through the back way, and no one will ever know.”

As Colt gave in, he promised himself that they were going to have a talk later, and no matter how much she cried, he would make her realize once and for all that he was not going to be pressured into marriage, and further, that if she kept pestering him about it, he’d stop seeing her, period.

She protested again when he left her to return to the work she had interrupted, but he ignored that outburst and went back to the study, flinging himself into his chair. He was angry—with Charlene and, even more, with himself.

He directed his attention to the work before him, vowing that at first light she was getting the hell out of there even if he had to drag her.

Charlene opened her eyes and blinked against the light streaming in through the window. Instantly she was alert, sitting up and looking around wildly. The sun was up. Dawn had come and gone and—where was Colt? Why hadn’t he awakened her? “Oh, Lord,” she whispered in the empty room, panic welling in her throat, “I’m in trouble now!” Her parents would be home, and would have discovered her missing by then. They would never suspect her of doing something so scandalous as sneaking out to be with a lover, so they would assume something terrible had happened to her. They would call the sheriff, and—oh, what was she going to do?

Grabbing her dress from the floor, she pulled it on, then ran from the room and down the hall, calling Colt’s name. Reaching the stairs, she took them two at a time, almost fell, and grabbed the railing for support.

Colt groggily lifted his head from his desk when he heard screaming, shaking himself as he struggled to clear his mind. What the hell was going on?

Charlene burst into the room, a madwoman, golden hair flying, blue eyes bulging. “Colt! What time is it?” she screamed. “Why did you let me sleep? Oh, God, God, we’re in trouble now…” She ran to him and threw herself into his lap.

Colt got shakily to his feet, almost dropping her to the floor. Two things told the story, he realized with a sick feeling: the empty whiskey bottle and the clock. It was nine a.m.

“Oh my God!” He sank back into the chair, his head in his hands.

Charlene paced up and down in a frenzy, wringing her hands as she wailed, “What are we going to do? They’re home by now. Daddy’s probably called the sheriff, and they’ve probably got a posse out looking for me. There’s no way I can keep him from finding out I’ve been here all night. He’s going to kill me! He’ll kill you, too, and the whole town is going to find out. I’m ruined! I’ll never be able to face people again!”

On and on she raged. Colt watched, his own thoughts torturing him. There was going to be big trouble, all right, trouble he damned well didn’t need. Everyone knew Carleton Bowden adored his only child, and he was not going to look kindly on the man he would blame for besmirching her. Charlene wasn’t exaggerating when she said her father would kill Colt. He’d probably try.

A sound in the hall told Colt that the servants had arrived. He got up and called into the hallway that he didn’t want to be disturbed, then closed the door. He went to Charlene and gripped her arms, forced her to meet his burning gaze. “All right, now, calm down. Let’s see if we can figure some way out of this mess. Your going all to pieces isn’t getting us anywhere.”

She searched his face for a miracle, whispering tremulously, “Colt, you’ve got to believe me. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I really was going to leave and get home before my parents did. I swear I was.”

He ran agitated fingers through his hair and turned away from her. “I know, I know,” he told her absently. Hell, she was cunning, but he doubted that even she would pull a dumb stunt like this.

He walked to the window, stared out at the grassy plain beyond, the sleepy river rolling along lazily in the bright morning sun. Then he turned to face her once again. “We’ll say I invited you out here for dinner. We drank too much wine and fell asleep. I’ll get the cook to lie and say she was here all night, that we didn’t leave the parlor. We’ll say we were chaperoned.”

Charlene shook her head firmly. “It won’t work. Even if Momma and Daddy believed it, there’d be too many busybody gossips that wouldn’t, so there would still be scandal.”

“Our word against theirs. Let them believe what they want.”

She shook her head again. Colt stared at her, realizing suspiciously that the despair and terror in her eyes had gone. She looked—what? Relieved? Triumphant? “That’s our story,” he said with finality.

She moved to him, touching his cheek with loving fingertips. Voice soft, she proclaimed, “No, Colt, it won’t work. We’ll just elope. We’ll go away for a few days, and send a message home so they won’t worry—”

“No!” He grabbed her wrist as he declared icily, “No, we are not getting married, Charlene. I’ve told you over and over, but you won’t listen. I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry anybody. I’m not going to be roped into marriage because of what happened last night. It was my fault for taking you to bed, but I didn’t invite you here, and I’m not going to be suckered into anything because of it. So you just get that fool notion out of your head right now.”

He flung her away from him, and she saw how mad he was. It was starting to dawn on him that maybe, just maybe, she had planned the whole thing. It made sense.

Charlene’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils began to flare ever so slightly, ominously. Her fists clenched and unclenched at her sides, and Colt realized he’d never seen her look that way before. How could he have thought her beautiful? She looked like a demon, her lips curling back in a snarl, her face contorted with rage.

“You
will
marry me, John Travis Coltrane! You have used me like a wife and so you will make me your wife. I will not have my honor defiled. I will not walk the streets of the town I grew up in with my head hung in shame because of you. You owe me marriage. I will have marriage, or so help me, you will rue the day you were born!”

Colt shook his head slowly. Images flashed before his mind’s eye, images of her writhing beneath him, begging him to take her…begging him to penetrate her…over and over. She had wanted it as much as he had, by God, but he’d never promised marriage, never even told her he loved her. He hadn’t used tricks to get her into bed, and he didn’t figure he owed her.

Voice icy, he looked her straight in the eye and announced, “No. You can take your honor and go straight to hell!”

He was immediately sorry he’d been so harsh, but it was too late. The scream that ripped from Charlene echoed throughout the house.

“Charlene, wait—”

He held out his hand to her, but she turned and fled the room. Her sobs were not of pain, he knew, or of sorrow, but were the sobs of rage of a woman scorned.

Colt slammed his fist into the wall, and didn’t feel the skin tearing or see the blood. What in hell was going to happen now? There was no telling what she would do. Damn it, it was his fault for blowing up, but she had pushed him over the brink.

He heard crashing hoofbeats and looked out the window in time to see Charlene on her horse, whipping the animal mercilessly into a furious gallop, headed for town. God only knew what she meant to do.

Colt sighed. He knew what he had to do. Face up to it. Be a man. Ride into town and talk to Carleton Bowden. He didn’t know what he was going to say, but he knew he couldn’t stay on the ranch as though he were in hiding. He’d have to tell the truth, then let the chips fall where they might.

Be a man. That’s what his father had always told him. Right or wrong, be a man. That way, no matter what happened, he could hold his head high.

Travis Coltrane, Colt well knew, had never lowered his head in shame in his whole life.

But in that moment, his son was having a hell of a hard time lifting his.

Chapter Four

Alaina Barbeau deBonnett appeared serene as she sat in her favorite chair, an oval-backed Louis XVI with tapered round legs. But she was not serene. In fact, she hadn’t been so upset in longer than she could remember.

She fingered the elaborate tufting, tassels, and braids of the chair arms, absently thinking that no matter what color gown she wore, the warm, ivory brocade upholstering never failed to enhance her and her gown.

Claude had hated the chair as much as she abhorred his taste. He had furnished the rest of the drawing room in the Biedermeier style, in vogue in the earlier part of the century. But Alaina knew that vogue had been confined mainly to middle-class homes. Alaina had never considered herself middle class. She found the classic simplicity of the furniture much too severe, and she detested the rosewood tables with metal inlays, considering them cheap.

Her dream had been to redecorate the entire château in rococo. A beautiful style, it borrowed the curvilinear elements of the French Louis XV, especially the cabriole leg, which was reinstated in heavier idiom. Entire suites were available in walnut, rosewood, and mahogany. The more intricate the carving on the frames, the more expensive the piece, of course.

After Claude’s death, she had been forced to sell almost everything of value—paintings, silver, jewelry. Now, with the heavy burden of unpaid taxes, it looked as though the entire château might have to be sold.

“Oh, Claude, I hope you’re burning in hell,” she whispered to the empty room. She wished now that she had never married him, but his proposal had been the only way out of another desperate situation.

And all because of Travis Coltrane. She hoped one day she could see Travis writhing in fire and brimstone.

She closed her eyes, taking herself back to those golden years when her life had been paradise. The image came to mind of her magnificent home in Kentucky. Oh, it had been the grandest house in all the county. Built of gray fieldstone, it stood four stories high, with a turret at each corner. Even the landscaping had been extraordinary. There were six separate gardens, each laid out in a different pattern. And so many trees—maples, oaks, pecans, stretching regally to the sky. It had been glorious, and remembering it brought tears to her eyes.

Yes, life had been good. But Poppa was involved with the Ku Klux Klan, and had become their secret leader. The government sent Travis Coltrane, a federal marshal, to Kentucky to investigate the Klan. When he finished, a tornado ripped through the Barbeau empire, destroying everything in its path.

Her hands gripped the armrests tightly as she remembered the day Travis killed the only man Alaina had ever truly loved. In a blind rage, she had tried to kill Travis, but she’d blown off her father’s arm when he leaped in the way.

God damn you, Travis Coltrane, for all the misery you have caused me in my life!

Poppa lost his spirit and withered away. She made a mess trying to salvage what was left of the family enterprises after it was discovered that Jordan Barbeau had been the leader of the infamous Klan. To add a final insult to the hell he had already wrought, Travis had married Marilee and taken her off to that godforsaken wilderness in Nevada where she died giving birth to the child they had conceived before the wedding.

When they married, Alaina recalled with a surge of nauseous resentment, she had hated her sister, hated her because Alaina too had known passion in Travis Coltrane’s arms. True, she now believed Stewart Mason was the only man she’d truly loved, but Travis had made love to her in a way that still haunted Alaina. It had been grand, glorious, magnificent. There had never been anyone before him or since who could take her to that pinnacle. Damn Travis.

When Marilee died, Alaina had seized upon a way to make Travis pay for what he’d done. Plotting carefully, she succeeded in stealing her niece’s love and loyalty. Oh, how sweet was revenge! Never would she forget the look on Travis Coltrane’s face the day she triumphantly took Dani away from him.

Soon afterward, Claude came along and solved her financial woes. Spineless, weak, unattractive, Claude was no real challenge. In a short time, he was on his knees proposing to her. Then they were off to France for what she thought would be a lifetime of opulent luxury.

Now, she told herself dismally, she was right back where she’d started. This time there would probably be no easy solution. True, she was still attractive, still had a shapely figure, but any eligible, wealthy man was seeking a young woman, not a matron.

She pressed trembling fingertips to her throbbing forehead. Oh, dear Lord, what to do? When the château was sold, what did not go for taxes would be seized for Claude’s debts. There would be nothing left. Nothing. How could she support herself? Become a servant? To the very people she had recently entertained so lavishly? She would sooner die. Prostitution? She was too old to command a good price. And, she reminded herself proudly, she’d always felt it was the man’s place to service the woman, not the other way around. That would be as degrading as servitude.