Rivals (19 page)

“But I saw Stuart after he was released from prison. I was there when he confronted our grandfather. I heard what he said—and saw the hate in his eyes—” Just as she saw the indifference in Elizabeth's face. None of it mattered to her sister. She was convinced those long-ago threats had nothing to do with her. Hattie knew just how wrong she was. She tried another tactic. “Have you seen where this Stuart boy lives?”

“No,” Elizabeth admitted, somewhat subdued.

“It's a shack, hidden away in the hills at the end of a long dusty road. When he was a boy, that shack was a haven for every gangster from Clyde Barrow to Pretty Boy Floyd. And during the war, when cowboys from this very ranch were dying on the beaches of Normandy, a black market business was operating from there. Ring Stuart comes from a fine, upstanding family, wouldn't you agree?”

“That doesn't mean he'll be like his father.”

“He was raised by him.”

“But Ring has plans, wonderful plans—”

“To get his hands on Morgan's Walk, just like his father tried to do.”

“That isn't true.”

“Isn't it?”

Hattie was wise enough to see that no amount of arguing, threats, or reasoning on her part could sway Elizabeth from her misplaced belief in this renegade. Romantically and foolishly, her naïve little sister saw herself and Ring Stuart as star-crossed lovers irresistibly drawn together despite the long-standing rift between their families—in the fanciful tradition of the Montagues and the Capulets. His faults and his failings didn't matter to her, convinced as she was that her love would change him. Hattie knew better. People didn't change no matter how much they might want to—not on the inside where it mattered.

Wisely she stopped short of forbidding Elizabeth from seeing Stuart again, recognizing that much of this was her fault. She'd protected her baby sister too much from the harsher side of life, trying to make life easier for her than she'd had it. She'd kept her in innocence even as she'd envied it—and used it as vicarious means of escaping from the stressful responsibility of Morgan's Walk.

No, the way to put a stop to this disastrous relationship before it went any farther was not to prevent Elizabeth from seeing Stuart again, but to pay a little visit on the one who had taken advantage of her sister's trusting innocence.

A crow cawed the alarm and swooped off an oak branch, black wings flapping as Hattie negotiated the car over the rutted track. A squirrel abandoned its search for nuts among the fallen leaves and raced to the nearest tree, chattering noisily at her, when she went by. Ahead, the thick tangle of brush and woods crowding both sides of the narrow lane retreated to form a clearing, a clearing cluttered with rusting car bodies, empty oil drums, and piles of worn tires strewn among the yellowed weeds. The landscaping matched the tumble-down house that sat in the middle of it, all the paint long since peeled from its boards, leaving them a dirty, weathered gray.

In front of the house, looking distinctly out of place, stood a hopped-up cycle, a black and shiny machine of sleek power. Kneeling on the ground beside it, tinkering with the motor, was Ring Stuart. He straightened slowly to his feet when Hattie drove in and parked her car ten feet from the big Harley cycle.

When she got out of the car, he took a couple steps forward and idly wiped his greasy hands on an equally greasy rag. With a steely calm she looked him over, not at all surprised by what she saw. A pair of faded jeans blatantly hugged his narrow hips, leaving little to the imagination for a knowing eye. A dirty T-shirt clung to every muscled contour of his chest, its short sleeves rolled up to the points of his shoulders, the right one bulging over a pack of cigarettes. Her glance touched briefly on the revolting tattoo of a knife dripping blood from the blade tip that ran down his left biceps. Then she examined his face. The devil had given him his lean, handsome looks and hell-black hair, as well as a pair of lightning blue eyes to go with them.

“Well, well, well, if it isn't the duchess herself.” His lip curled in a sneering smile. “I kinda figured you'd be paying me a visit, only I expected you to come yesterday.”

“You did,” she murmured, disliking him even more intensely than she'd expected.

“Yeah.” He sauntered a few steps closer, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet, giving a cocky spring to his walk. “I spotted that cowboy you had following Elizabeth right off. You should have seen his eyes bug out of his head when he saw the way she kissed me—and kept kissing me.”

“You're disgusting.”

His smile widened. “Elizabeth doesn't think so. As a matter of fact, she's crazy about me. She likes it when I kiss her…among other things.”

Hattie stiffened at his deliberately suggestive remark. “You know I'm not going to allow this to continue.”

“There's nothing you can do about it, duchess,” he said, his head tipped arrogantly back. “She's old enough to know her own mind. She doesn't need your consent or approval.”

“How much?”

“How much?” he repeated on a note of amusement. “Man, you really are something, duchess. You know I've often wondered what it would be like living in that big house with people waiting on you, serving you coffee in dainty china cups and fetching the morning paper for you. It must be real fine living.”

“How much money do you want, Stuart, to leave my sister alone?”

“You really think you can buy me off, don't you, duchess?”

Pointedly she swept her glance over the weed-choked clearing and the dilapidated house with its front porch askew. “What's your price, Stuart? Name it.”

“I've already got what I want. I've got Elizabeth. She's mine and you can't take her away from me. If you thought you could, you wouldn't be here talking to me now.” He paused, his confidence growing. “She was real shy with me at first, but she isn't shy anymore. It kinda surprised me at first. But after meeting you, I'm convinced that she's got all the passion in your family. What kind of sister are you, anyway? She loves me and here you are trying to make me give her up.”

“It would never work between you. Never.”

“Why? Because you think I'm not good enough for her?”

“I know you aren't.”

“She doesn't agree with you. Y'see, the difference is she believes in me, and that means more to me than all the money you could pay, duchess.”

“I'm warning you—”

“No, I'm warning you—you'd better watch how you talk about your future brother-in-law or I just might take your little sister away from you for good.”

She held his gaze for a long minute, then said, “You're a fool, Stuart,” and turned on her heel and walked back to the car.

Driving out of the clearing, she could see his reflection in the rearview mirror as he stood in the middle of the track, watching her leave and looking cocksure. At a midway point, the long lane to the shack widened. There, Charlie Rainwater waited in the ranch pickup along with a half-dozen hands from the bunkhouse. Hattie pulled up alongside the truck.

“He wouldn't listen, Charlie,” was all she said.

“I figured as much, Miss Hattie.” He turned the key in the truck's ignition, the engine grinding slowly to life. “Reasonin” with a Stuart is a lot like talkin' to a mule. First, you gotta get their attention.”

He shifted the pickup into gear and the vehicle lurched forward onto the rough trail. Hattie sat in the car and waited, listening to the lonely sigh of the wind in the trees. Fifteen minutes? Twenty? She wasn't sure how much time passed before she heard the rumble of the pickup making the return trip.

Charlie drove up beside her, a cut on his lip and a bruise swelling his cheek, but there was a smile on his face that went ear to ear. “He wasn't able t'do much talkin' when we left him, Miss Hattie, but I can guarantee that he got the message.”

When Hattie returned to Morgan's Walk that day, she said nothing to Elizabeth and went about her work as usual. Late in the afternoon, Elizabeth received a phone call from one of her girlfriends. Unbeknown to Hattie, Ring Stuart had called Sally Evans and persuaded her to phone Elizabeth with a message. Sometime after midnight, Elizabeth slipped out of the house and met Ring Stuart. Hattie didn't discover she was missing until morning. She looked for her, but she found no sign of either of them. The next day, Elizabeth called to say that she and Stuart were married, and asked if they could come home to Morgan's Walk.

“You can come home any time, Elizabeth, but not with him. I won't have a Stuart sleeping under this roof.”

“Then neither one of us can come, because I'm a Stuart now, too.”

Two months went by, two miserable and bitterly lonely months for Hattie with memories of Elizabeth haunting every room. She made no attempt to contact her, certain that in time she would come to her senses and see what a terrible mistake she had made. Then came the phone call from Ring Stuart informing Hattie that Elizabeth was ill.

Piles of dirty dishes with food caked on them covered the kitchen counters. Empty beer bottles spilled over the sides of the wastebasket and sat next to every chair and butt-filled ashtray in the filthy shack. The thought of her Elizabeth living in this germ-and dirt-infested dwelling sickened Hattie as she followed Ring Stuart down a dingy hall to one of the back bedrooms.

In the bedroom, Hattie stepped around the dirty clothes strewn on the floor. Bedsprings squealed noisy protest under Ring Stuart's weight as he sat down on the edge of it and took Elizabeth's hand.

“Honey, Hattie's here.”

She stopped two feet short of the bed and fought back the bitter tears that stung her eyes when she saw Elizabeth, her wan face as pale as the pillow slip beneath her head. “This place is a pig sty. How can you live in this filth?”

“I'm sorry. I know it's a mess.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. “I haven't been feeling too well lately, and—”

“—and he's too lazy.” Hattie hurled the contemptuous accusation at Stuart.

“Hattie, it isn't man's work,” Elizabeth chided gently.

“I never thought he was a man, and now that I've seen the way he takes care of you, I know he isn't.” She moved to the bed and laid the back of her hand against Elizabeth's cheeks, feeling for a temperature, and completely ignoring the glare from Stuart.

“That isn't fair, Hattie,” Elizabeth protested. “Ring has tried, he really has. But he can't keep a job and look after me, too.”

“He's certainly done a fine job of looking after you, hasn't he?” she murmured caustically, unable to suppress the rage she felt at her Elizabeth being forced to live in these wretched surroundings. “Have you called the doctor, yet?”

“I saw him yesterday.” Elizabeth caught at her hand, a frailness in their attempt to clutch at Hattie's fingers. A smile fairly beamed from her face. “Hattie, we're going to have a baby. So you see, I'm not really sick. I'm pregnant.”

For several long seconds, Hattie stared at the girl she'd raised since birth, inwardly revolted by the prospect of her sister having a child sired by a Stuart. She wanted to scream at her and demand to know if she realized what she had done—the terrible consequences of this.

Instead, she swung on Stuart. “I want to speak to you. Now!” She turned on her heel and marched from the room. The instant she reached the living room, she whirled to confront him, “I'm taking her out of this pig hole you call a house, today.”

“She won't go without me, duchess,” he said confidently. Hattie lifted her head slightly, eyeing him coldly. “Looks like my daddy was right all along, doesn't it? A Stuart will have Morgan's Walk.”

“Not you. It will never be you,” she vowed.

“But my son will.”

“God willing, the child will never live to cry its first breath. But you'd better pray that when Elizabeth loses it, she doesn't lose her life as well.”

“Damn you, I love her!”

“Do you? Or is it merely convenient to love her?”

“I love her,” he insisted angrily.

“But not enough to give her up—not enough to do what's best for her. You deliberately got her with child. You knew how fragile her health is yet you risked her life by impregnating her.”

“Everything will be all right. You'll see.”

“It had better be, Stuart. Otherwise, you'll answer to me.”

Although bedridden through most of her pregnancy, Elizabeth carried the baby to term and gave birth to a remarkably strong and healthy boy. Yet the ordeal seemed to have taken its toll on her own health. As the months went by, she grew weaker. Anemia was the initial diagnosis, but when she failed to respond to treatment, she was admitted to the hospital for tests.

Returning from a consultation with the doctor, Hattie found Ring in the library, his feet propped on the desk and blue smoke curling from the cigar in his mouth. “Are you wondering what it's like to run Morgan's Walk? If you are, you're wasting your time. You'll never find out,” she declared, jerking off her gloves.

He didn't move from his relaxed position as he smiled at her through the smoke. “You can't be sure of that, duchess. After all, you aren't going to live forever.”

“I swear I will see you in hell before I let the day come when a Stuart has the right to sit behind that desk. Now get out of my chair.

He pulled his feet off the desk top and bowed his head in exaggerated respect as he slowly stood up. “I return your throne to you.”

“It probably doesn't interest you at all, but the results from the tests came back.”

Reluctantly she observed the leap of concern in his eyes. “How's Elizabeth?”

Coldly, with no more emotion left, Hattie replied. “Your wife has leukemia.” Before her eyes, Stuart crumbled in shock.

“My poor darling Elizabeth,” she whispered to the girl in the silver-framed photograph, then slowly drew her hand away and pushed out of the chair. The loneliness of the old house seemed to press in on her, its weight combining with the tiredness of battling for so long. This time she leaned heavily on the cane as she crossed to the portrait above the fireplace.