Maverick Heart (32 page)

“He’s a man, with a mind of his own. He knew the danger. He made his choice, and I respected it. I understand what you’re feeling, Verity. He’s my son, too.”

She hissed in a sharp breath. Her eyes glowed with fury. “No. No, he’s not yours. Not in any way except that you planted the seed. You were never there when he was a baby who needed coddling, or a youth who needed comfort for a skinned knee, or a young man who ached with hurt because the other boys taunted him about his—”

She cut herself off.

“Taunted him about what?”

She turned her back, heading for the bedroom, but Miles caught her arm and swung her around to face him.

“Taunted him about what?”

“About you,” she snarled.

He was so shocked he let her go. “What?”

“Oh, not you, precisely,” she said, shoving a hand through her hair and making pins fall helter-skelter. She began pacing again, back and forth, back and forth, as though she could find some escape
from the nightmares of the past, the pain of the present. But there was no escape.

She stopped abruptly and rubbed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “I don’t know how many fights Rand fought. I only saw the results. He would arrive home for holidays with black eyes, cut lips, bruised jaws. And always some rousing tale of why he had fought the battle. And I believed him.” She rubbed her forehead. “I think I must not have wanted to know the truth, so I didn’t press him for it.

“The fights stopped after a while, I think because the word had spread that Rand was the very devil with his fists. But as he got older, things weren’t settled with fists any longer. Three years ago he threw down a glove to a young man who impugned my honor and challenged him to a duel.”

“Good God.”

“Of course the young man’s mother came to me and begged me to get my son to apologize and release her son from the obligation. Naturally, Rand should be the one to back down, because everyone knew he wasn’t Chester’s son. Everyone knew he was another man’s bastard.

“You may imagine my shock.” She smiled bitterly. “I had imagined myself so clever to have hidden the truth. And all the time everyone had been snickering behind my back.”

“What did you tell her?” Miles asked.

“I told her that if Rand had issued the challenge, he must have believed the insult. I was full
of pride in my son for defending me, and I sent the woman from my house in righteous indignation.”

She turned to Miles. “You see, I was sure no one could really know the truth. Who was there to tell? You were gone to America. I had said a word to no one. And Chester, why he had the most to lose from such a rumor. He never would have confirmed it. I felt justified in denying the story, certain I could never be proven wrong.

“But I spent the rest of the morning remembering all the times Rand had fought over the years. And wondering how such a rumor could have gained such credence.

“And I remembered all the times Chester had sat in the library with an empty bottle of port at his elbow, ranting at me for giving him another man’s son for his heir.

“And I knew. He must have done the same thing once upon a time … perhaps even more than once … at his club. The men who heard him must have gone home to their wives with the story. Children must have heard their parents discussing it at the supper table. That explained why Rand had been in so many fights as a boy. And I knew I had to stop him from fighting that duel.”

She paused and looked Miles in the eye. “I didn’t believe my honor was worth my son’s life.” She smiled ruefully. “Of course, I had missed the point entirely, which Rand was quick to inform me when I confronted him.”

“You tried to stop the duel?”

She nodded. “I pointed out to Rand that the rumor
had no power to hurt me. Do you know what he said? ‘It hurts me, Mother.’

“I realized then he was fighting for his honor, as well as mine. If he was not acknowledged as Randal Talbot, what right did he have to become the Earl of Rushland?”

“Did he fight the duel?”

She shook her head. “I asked him to do one thing for me before he proceeded further with his plans. I asked him to speak with his father—with Chester—about the subject.”

“Why would you do something like that when you believed Chester was guilty of starting the rumor in the first place?”

Her face was ashen as she admitted, “I thought Chester would lie.”

“Oh, no.”

Her eyes brimmed with tears. “He told Rand the truth. Oh, not the name of his father. He refused to give Rand even that much of you. But he took great relish in divulging to me that he had told my son I was a slut and a whore and that I had tricked him into marriage while I was carrying another man’s brat.”

Miles started toward her, but she stopped him with an outstretched palm. “Please, don’t touch me, or I won’t be able to finish. And I want to finish this.”

Miles stood frozen like a marble statue, his face implacable. “Go on, then. Tell me the rest.”

“When Rand came out of the library, I knew something had gone awfully, terribly wrong. He
looked at me with … It wasn’t loathing, although after the garbled truth his father had told him, it should have been. Perhaps disappointment. And of course, disillusionment. I was not as perfect as he had always given me credit for being.

“He said, ‘I will apologize to Griffith Wilkerson at my earliest opportunity, madam.’ And he left the house.”

“So there was no duel,” Miles said, “because he apologized for throwing down the glove, thereby admitting to the world—to all of London society—that he was a bastard, after all.”

“Yes. And he has never once, in the years since, mentioned the subject to me again, not even to ask your name. Until today.”

“Bloody hell!” Miles shoved all ten fingers through his hair. “What a mess we’ve made of it, Verity.”

“I can’t argue with you about that. All I’m concerned about now is getting him back alive.”

“There’s nothing we can do until this storm ends. We can go after him then, if that’s what you really want. But he’s not a boy any longer, he’s a man. He deserves the chance to be treated like one.”

Verity moaned. “He’s a babe in the woods in a place like this.”

Miles thought of the incidents with the rattlesnake and the bucking bronc when the Muleshoe cowboys had tested Rand’s mettle. And all the fights he had endured as a boy. And the twisted lies about Verity he had heard from Chester years ago
and accepted. His son could handle adversity better than most men he knew.

“We have to trust Rand to come back when he’s ready—when he’s found Freddy, or given up trying.”

“What if he’s lying somewhere hurt?”

“If he is, he’ll be dead long before we can get to him,” Miles said, giving her the brutal, unvarnished truth.

“I’ll never forgive you if he dies.”

Miles’s jaw tightened. “I made a choice, Verity. I couldn’t save you and Rand both. I chose you.”

He was telling her she was everything to him. But she was so distraught she didn’t hear what he was saying.

“Rand is my whole life.”

What about me, Verity? Where do I fit in?

“You should stop worrying so much about your son and start thinking more about what you want for yourself,” Miles said.

“I wouldn’t know how to put my needs first.”

“Then don’t you think it’s about time you gave it a try?”

Before she could move, before she could anticipate what he had in mind, he picked her up in his arms, and headed for the bedroom door.

Willow awoke when a blast of cold air hit her. She rose instantly at the sight of Hawk in the arms of the white man she had helped escape barely a moon ago. Her glance flickered beyond him. Her heart sank to her toes. Somehow Hawk had found the woman and brought her back.

“Lay Hawk down here,” Willow said, pointing Rand to the sleeping pallet she had just left. She didn’t ask how badly Hawk was hurt. She would know in a moment when she examined him. But it must be serious. Otherwise, Hawk would never have allowed the white man to carry him like a child.

“Your wound has healed?” she asked Rand as she began to undress Hawk.

He rolled his shoulder gingerly. “It’s fine,” he said. “You did a good job.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Were only seeking shelter from the storm,” Rand said. “Then we’ll be on our way.”

“The woman is mine,” Hawk said in Sioux. “Do not let her leave, no matter what he says.”

While she tended Hawk, Willow instructed Rand, “You must take off your outer clothing and sit near the fire. Not too close,” she warned. “It will do harm to warm up too quickly.”

She eyed the white woman. Even with a nose as bright as a chokecherry, she was very beautiful. And a threat to Willow’s peace and happiness. Hawk had been furious when he returned to find the white woman gone. Willow had told him he did not need another wife. And she had promised to kill the next white woman he brought back with him to the village.

He had scoffed at her and said he would do as he pleased. He had promised to find the white woman and return with her.

He had kept his promise.

She intended to keep hers.

With the many medicines Willow had at hand, there were ways the white woman could die that none would know of her part in it. Except Hawk. She would tell him what she had done, so he would never bring another woman to take this one’s place after she was gone.

She would prepare a sleeping draught, she decided, one that was strong enough to keep the white woman from ever waking again.

* * *

At first Freddy tried to resist Rand’s efforts to free her from the several wool blankets she had been using in lieu of a real coat. “I’m cold. Rand. I need these blankets to stay warm.”

“You heard Willow,” Rand said. “You’ll warm up faster without them. Come on, sit here by the fire—not too close—and get warm.”

Freddy couldn’t believe how good the heat felt. She held out her hands in front of it. First the palms, then the knuckles. She inched her toes toward the circle of rocks that rimmed the fire and gave off heat of their own. It wasn’t until she began to warm up that her teeth started to chatter.

“I never realized a person could get so cold.” She had only been making conversation, but she saw Rand responding to what he must have thought was a complaint by wrapping one of the wool blankets back around her. She tried not to flinch when he touched her, but couldn’t help herself. She knew he wanted to put his arm around her, but she did nothing to encourage him. Then she caught sight of his hands. He quickly tucked them into the waist of his trousers.

“Let me see your hands,” she said.

“I’m fine, Freddy.”

“Let me see them,” she insisted.

He held them out to her.

“Oh, Rand.” She reached out, as though to touch him, but pulled her hand back before she made contact. It was infuriating to feel so … frightened … when she knew Rand would never
hurt her. She simply couldn’t bear to touch—or be touched by—another human being right now.

“Your hands are frostbitten,” she said at last.

“A little.”

It was more than a little, Rand conceded. He had given Freddy his gloves to help keep her hands warm, and alternated the hand he used to hold the reins, putting it inside his coat pocket to warm it. Both hands had gradually gotten colder and colder. From the look of them, he could expect to be plagued by chilblains in the future.

At least they had a future.

But he was worried by Freddy’s behavior. He was trying to understand and accept her sudden aversion to being touched by him. But it made him feel like a villain, and he knew he wasn’t. He felt sure that if she would only let him hold her—gently—in his arms, they would both feel better. But he didn’t know the words to persuade her fear away, so touching her right now was out of the question.

His eyes strayed to the other couple in the tipi.

Rand made it a point not to watch what Willow was doing to Hawk. He had endured the same surgery himself recently enough to empathize with the pain he knew was involved. Hawk had to be in terrible agony as Willow dug out the bullets, but he never made a sound.

At last Willow left Hawk’s side and joined them by the fire.

She heated water and threw a mixture of herbs into it. Rand thought it was some potion for
Hawk’s injuries until she poured out a small amount and offered it to Freddy.

“This will bring you comfort,” she said.

“What is it?” Freddy asked.

“Something to warm you inside and out. Drink,” she said, urging Freddy to take a swallow.

Freddy took a sip, murmured at the sweet taste, and said, “Here, Rand, you should drink some of this, too.”

Willow took the cup from Freddy to hand it across the fire to the Rand, but she tripped and it spilled before it got to him. “I will make more,” she said.

Willow put more water on the fire and settled beside them to wait for it to boil.

“How is Hawk?” Rand asked.

“Neither bullet hit more than flesh. I have removed them. He is strong. He will be well again.”

“We owe him our lives,” Rand said.

“I do not understand,” Willow said, holding a handful of herbs over the water on the fire. “Did you come with him willingly, then? Are you not captives?”