The Bad Luck Wedding Dress (33 page)

“Constance eventually told him the truth?” she asked.

“Indirectly.” Tye’s face creased with pain. “More than a year passed before good old Cousin Lord Howard found me in Brussels. He sobered me up to the point where I’d listen to him, then dropped his little bombshell. Constance had recently delivered a daughter—my daughter—whom Trace believed to be his, and she had sent him with the demand I return home and claim my child.”

Outside the wind continued to howl and Jenny slowly became aware of the even colder chill seeping through the cracks in the cabin walls’ chinking. “So Constance continued to live with Trace after you left?” she asked, snuggling down into the quilt. When Tye answered her question with a nod, she added, “Because of Emma and Maribeth, of course.”

“Not hardly,” Tye scoffed. “It was at that point where my dear sister-in-law showed her true colors. It seems that a solicitor had contacted the family with information concerning an inheritance due the eldest offspring of the eldest offspring. I’m eight minutes older than Trace. Katrina, not Emma, was the McBride daughter who met the terms.”

“Oh,” Jenny said.

He nodded. “I didn’t want anything to do with it. I’d already bedded my brother’s wife. I wouldn’t take his daughter from him, too. I told Cousin Howard to forget it.”

A muscle worked in Tye McBride’s jaw as he stared straight ahead and said, “That’s when it got ugly.”

The wind moaned through the chimney, the eerie wail seemingly a portent of things to come. Jenny waited for Tye to continue, almost wishing he wouldn’t. “What happened?”

“It was a lot of money. A whole lot of money. Constance was determined to claim it on behalf of her daughter. So Cousin Lord Howard relayed her threat.” Tye jerked himself out of bed and crossed to the fireplace. Ignoring the pain such movement caused, he lifted the kindling from the woodbox and chucked it into the hearth. Then abruptly, he turned. His eyes were tortured, his voice stark, as he looked at her and said, “If I didn’t return to Oak Grove before Katrina’s first birthday, she promised to kill the baby.”

Shocked silence followed his declaration. To Jenny, the night had never seemed so cold.

She shuddered, her hand clenching the blanket, when she finally found her voice. “What? No, she wouldn’t! You believed her?”

Heedless of his wound, he lifted his arms and held his hands palms out. His voice weak with pain, he said, “I couldn’t be sure. After I thought about it, I began to suspect she’d set me up, that she knew about the inheritance before the night of the ball. If she’d gone to such lengths …” He shuddered at the memory. “I couldn’t risk the child’s life. So I went back.”

A spot of bright red stained the bandage on his shoulder. “Lie back down, Tye,” Jenny said. “You’re bleeding again.”

He sat next to her and took her hand in his. “I wanted to kill her, Jenny. For what she’d done to me and my brother, for what she’d threatened to do to the child. I’d dream of wrapping my hands around that slender, graceful neck of hers and snapping it like a chicken’s. I always woke up smiling.”

“My God, Tye!”

“She had seduction in mind when she met me in one of the old cabins on the plantation, a little place not much different from this, in fact. I played along with her for a bit, just to see how far she’d hang herself.” A lopsided, sneering smile lifted his lips. “She hanged herself, all right. As soon as I related to her all that I’d been thinking for months, her temper exploded.”

His eyes took on a faraway look. Jenny took his hand, sensing he’d welcome the connection to the present while lost in the misery of the past.

“She screeched at the top of her voice,” Tye said softly. “She said the baby was mine, and that I couldn’t deny her. I told her I intended to make certain she’d never hurt my daughter. I told her I’d take Katrina away from her.”

Tye’s eyes glistened as he looked at Jenny imploringly and said, “I intended to kill her, you see. I had my hands around her neck when I felt his presence.”

“Trace.”

Tye nodded. “Standing in the doorway. He never said a word, just pulled a pistol from inside his jacket and took aim at my heart. Constance shouted for him to stop—she wouldn’t get the money if I were dead, you see—and she ran toward him. After that, I’m not sure what happened. Either she tripped or he jerked his aim, or something. She was in his arms when the gun went off.”

Staring past Jenny, Tye cleared his throat. “I knew one of them had been shot, but they just stood there, frozen like statues. It took an eternity, but finally Constance folded to the floor. Her face. The bullet…”

Jenny closed her eyes.

“Trace stood staring at his hands. Covered in blood. I looked at him, and for just a moment I thought he was me back on the battlefield. He had that same look on his face that I carried inside me—that look that I used a bottle to wipe away. But then, he turned to me and it was like looking in a mirror.”

Tye’s voice caught. “He hated me as much as I hated myself.”

“How awful for you both,” Jenny whispered, lifting her hand to touch his cheek. She was crying, now. With him. For him. For Trace.

“He took aim at me again. I waited. Hell, I wanted to die, Jenny.”

Sitting up, she wrapped her arms around him. She held him, rocking him like a child, as she offered her comfort and support.

His voice dropped to a murmur. “His hand shook— I’ll never forget how it trembled—but he didn’t do it. He flung the gun away and hit me instead, a solid chop to the jaw. It knocked me against the fireplace. I hit my head on the mantel and blacked out. When I awoke, he and the girls were gone.”

Bitter cold swept into the cabin. Jenny looked up. Hinges squeaked and the door closed with a thump. A shadowed figure paused in the doorway, then slowly moved forward. She knew a sudden fear as thoughts of Frank Bailey’s ghost flashed through her mind.

Lamplight reflected off the barrel of the gun in the glove-covered hand, and paradoxically Jenny found it reassuring. This ghost was of the earth.

As a boot thudded against the puncheon floor, a log in the fireplace rolled. Flames flared briefly, long enough to illuminate the face of the gunman.

“Trace?” Jenny asked, the gun in his hand causing her to doubt what she had seen. At Tye McBride’s muttered expletive, she knew she’d not been mistaken. The tale of love and betrayal he’d just repeated burned like a brand in her mind.

Trace cocked the pistol, the click cracking like thunder in the room.

Jenny knew how the situation looked. She and his brother embracing on a bed. Tye without his shirt. Extending her hand toward Trace, Jenny simply said, “Trust me.”

Tending a ladybug brings good luck.

CHAPTER 20

TRUST HER?

Trace sucked in a breath, bracing himself against the chaos of pain threatening to consume him.

Hell, no, he didn’t trust her. She was his wife, goddammit! What more was required to doubt every lying, cheating word that dripped from her mouth? And if that weren’t enough, he need only look as far as the dog she was lying down with.

Tye. His brother. His twin. Betrayal was the salt that spilled upon a wound both fresh and ages old. God, it hurt. His grip tightened on the gun, and when finally he spoke, his promise swept through the cabin like an ice-tipped wind. “This time I
will
kill you.”

Tye pulled away from Jenny. “It’s not what you think. Not now, and not then, goddammit!”

Trace almost laughed. “How do you know what I’m thinking?” he asked, scorn coating his voice. He walked closer to the bed, into the lamplight. He wanted his brother and his wife to see the disgust on his face.

He wanted them to see the murderous rage.

“Oh, I know.” He snapped his fingers and showed them a twisted, mocking smile. “You think I’m recalling another time when I walked into a rustic cabin and found my wife and my brother in each other’s arms.”

Tye tried again. “Trace, I—”

“You could be wrong, you know. I might be thinking of another tender moment. You know which one I mean, don’t you, Tye?” Trace flicked his words like a whip. “The one I didn’t witness firsthand, but the one that haunts me every time I see the sunshine in my daughter’s smile, every time I hear her laugh, every time I kiss Katrina good night. Surely you remember the occasion to which I refer, hmm? The time you—”

“I’m sorry, Trace!”

He paused. He lifted the Colt, aiming it at point-blank range at his brother’s face. This man stole his woman. This man stole his daughter. Trace’s hand trembled with the force of his fury.

His voice was flat and cold as death. “The time you fucked my wife and gave her a baby.”

Tye flinched, his expression a stricken grimace. An unaccustomed pressure pulsed at the back of Trace’s eyes. Silence yawned between them. Brother and brother, betrayer and betrayed.
Goddamn you, Tye. Why!

“Trace?”

Jenny’s voice surprised him, confused him, and he turned a furrowed brow toward the sound without shifting his gaze from his brother. For a moment he’d been lost between present and past.

“Trace, put down the gun. You don’t need it.” The tenderness in her tone beckoned him. Tempted him.

Trace resisted. “Yes, I do. I won’t let him take Katrina away from me.”

“He hasn’t come to do that.” She shifted her body, swinging her legs around to dangle from the bed. “Tye helped me, Trace. Big Jack had started shooting. He intended to kill me. Your brother saved my life.”

She rose from the bed and stepped toward him, blocking his aim. He lifted a hand to shove her out of the way, and then he saw the blood.

It stained her dress from her breast to her thighs, and the tenuous hold he had on the present faded as he was catapulted into the past.

My brother fucked you. He fucked you and gave you my baby! I killed you for it. Oh, God, I killed you.
“I loved you,” he said, his voice cracking.

“You still love me,” she said. “I know you do. You love me, and you trust me. You know I have not betrayed you.” She reached for the gun.

Blond hair was black. Blue eyes, brown. He didn’t believe her. He couldn’t believe her. He yanked the gun back and away from her questing hand. “He betrayed me, goddammit! It didn’t matter if you and I had problems, he shouldn’t have done it. It’s him I want dead. Him I want to kill. That blood should be his!”

“It is his!” she cried. “Big Jack Bailey shot him in the shoulder.” She threw herself at him, wrapping her arms tightly around his middle. “Don’t do this, Trace. For me. Believe in me, in us. I love you. I
love
you.”

She lifted her face and gazed into his eyes. Blue eyes, not brown. Hair the color of Spanish gold. Not Constance, but Jenny. His Jenny. His treasure.

She gripped his lapels and implored him. “Listen to me, Trace. Time and again you have saved me. You protected me from the disaster of a marriage to Edmund. You gave me your name in order to salvage Fortune’s Design. You’d have saved me from Frank if the scorpions hadn’t got him first.”

Tears trickled down her cheeks. “Most of all, you offered me a family, your family. Something I’ve wished for all my life. You healed me, Trace. Let me help you in return, please?”

Trace looked toward Tye. His brother remained seated on the bed, unmoving, an enigmatic expression on his face. Their gazes met and held, and for the first time in years Trace felt the pull of the bond between them. He heard his brother’s voice in his mind.
Kill me if you wish. It’s your choice. Your right. I won’t fight you.

Trace’s body trembled as Jenny touched his face, luring his attention. “I love you, Trace McBride,” she said. “I have not and I never will betray you. Let me tell you what happened here this afternoon. Trust me.”

Trust me
. How could he? Did she have any idea what she asked of him?

Kill me if you wish
. His brother. His daughter. Pain rent his heart in two.

Trace pulled away from Jenny’s embrace, putting space between them. His heart pounded and his palms were damp. His breaths came in shallow gasps.

Trust me
.

He’d been through this before. He’d given a woman his love, his trust, his faith. Look where it had gotten him—on the run and hiding from his family. Only now, his family had found him. Tye. Here to collect his daughter.

Oh, shit. Trace closed his eyes against the soul- destroying thought. His voice was just a whisper. “I won’t give her up.”

“Neither will I,” Jenny insisted, imploring him with her gaze. “She’s our daughter, Trace. Yours and mine. It doesn’t matter who provided the egg and the seed. No one will break up our family, I promise you. Believe me.” She extended her hand, palm up. “Trust me.”

Trace stared at her hand and what it represented. Despite the chill in the room, sweat beaded on his upper lip. He glanced at his brother.

Tye had tears in his eyes. The brothers communicated silently: Trace’s glare a challenge; Tye’s a confusion of wariness, hope, and guilt. And maybe the faintest hint of love.

Oh, hell. Trace drew a deep breath, filling his lungs with air as his wife whispered his name. He looked at her and exhaled in a long, slow sigh.

He could drown in those eyes of hers, he thought. Blue as the Caribbean waters. Sparkling like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Warm as the emotion swelling in his heart.

He believed her. God help him, he believed her.

But what of the lessons of his past? What of the pain? Dare he give her that gift? Dare he offer her his trust.

She is Jenny, your good Fortune. Your treasure. How can you do anything less?

He holstered the gun.

Her smile chased the last rays of darkness from his soul and offered him a little piece of heaven. Trace lifted his hand, cupped her cheek in his palm, and voiced the words in his heart. “I love you.”

Her eyes glistened. Her entire being radiated joy. Then, with the barest hint of smugness in her tone, she replied, “I know, McBride. I’ve been waiting for you to realize it.”

She lifted her head as he lowered his. Their lips melded in a kiss filled with promise and with love. A kiss sweetened with the honey of trust.

NEITHER TRACE nor Jenny noticed when Tye hoisted himself from bed, his teeth clenched against pain both physical and emotional. Tugging the quilt along with him, he grabbed his boots and slipped outside.

The boards beneath his feet may as well have been ice, and bitter air hit him like a fist. Crossing the passageway between the shelter’s two rooms, he told himself he’d rather spend the night in the outhouse than be a third wheel to his brother and his wife tonight. He’d played that particular role before.

Pushing open the door, he stumbled inside. “Black as a tomb,” he muttered. It took a few minutes, but his eyes eventually adjusted to the darkness enough for him to make out the big stone fireplace on the opposite wall. Cast-iron skillets and a big Dutch oven indicated this room had served as the kitchen. Now to get a fire going before he passed out.

He found wood stacked near the hearth and matches on the mantel. Twice the pain in his shoulder caused him to halt his efforts, but finally he managed to create a small blaze. He tugged a rocking chair close to the fire, then gratefully sank into its seat. Spreading the quilt over his body, he sighed and closed his eyes.

For the first time in years, a flicker of hope warmed his soul as he drifted toward sleep. Trace had fallen in love again. Jenny Fortune McBride had helped to heal the wounds Tye and Constance had inflicted. She’d convinced him to trust again.

As he waited for heat from the fire to displace the chill of the night and of the scene just past, he acknowledged his deepest desire. Maybe Jenny Fortune McBride could work another miracle. Maybe she could convince Trace to forgive. Maybe she could help him get his brother back.

He floated in the haze between dozing and full sleep when the squeak of door hinges warned him he was no longer alone.

“Tye?” Trace whispered.

Too tired and too weak to face any more upheaval at the moment, he feigned sleep. He heard the sound of footsteps approaching, then the scrape of one log against another. Opening his eyes in a narrow slit, he watched as Trace added wood to the fire. One, two, three large logs. Lifting the poker from a hook mortared into the stone, Trace prodded the logs until the flames began to roar and warmth eased into the room like summer sunshine. He replaced the poker, then assessed the shelves built to one side of the fireplace. Removing three jars of preserved food, he turned to leave. Tye quickly shut his eyes.

Footsteps passed him, paused, and then came back. For more than a minute Trace stood beside the rocker, silent and still. Tye’s mouth went dry as he waited; for what, he didn’t know.

A brush of a hand against his bandaged shoulder. A whispered curse.

Then gently, soundlessly, Trace McBride tugged up the quilt and tucked his brother in.

JENNY SAT on the bed waiting for Trace, knowing the time had arrived to tell him about the baby. She’d been married to Trace McBride long enough to know that the kiss they’d shared moments ago was, in Trace’s mind, a prelude to lovemaking. Under the circumstances, they dare not indulge themselves, no matter how much they wanted to.

And Jenny wanted to. He’d told her he loved her, after all. Hearing those words had been her fondest fantasy while dreaming of how to tell him about the child. She’d pictured Trace verbally declaring his love while demonstrating it physically, after which she’d share her most special news.

Needless to say, her imaginings had never taken the route presented to her tonight.

He returned to the room with jars of food in his hands. “You found him?” she asked, referring to Tye.

He nodded and shrugged out of his fur-lined leather coat, tossing it onto a chair. “He’s asleep in the other room. He’d started a fire and I added to it. He’ll be fine. Rest is what he needs most.”

Relief washed through her. “Rest and food,” she replied, eyeing the jars in his hand. “We haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“I come prepared as you can see.” He twisted the lid off the jar of peaches and offered some to his wife. “I didn’t see a spoon or fork. Can you manage with your fingers today?”

“I could manage with only my tongue.”

The look he shot her could have set the bedsheets on fire. “I was counting on that.”

The heat of a blush warmed her cheeks as she rushed to forestall any further suggestive comments by asking about the girls. His measuring expression told her he’d heard her unspoken request to slow things down.

“I’m a bit worried, to be honest,” Trace replied with a shrug. “It’s been a difficult day for them. It’s been a difficult day for all of us.”

“You didn’t leave them alone?”

“No, the marshal promised to take them to Mrs. Wilson.” He paused a moment then asked, “Jenny, there’s nothing… wrong with Mrs. Wilson, is there?”

She licked the sweet nectar of peach juice off her fingers. “Of course not. Why do you ask?”

Trace tore his gaze away from her mouth. “It’s just that I went through so many caretakers for the girls. I mean, some of them didn’t last a day. And here’s Mrs. Wilson, she’s been as tickled as a two-tailed pup to watch over my Menaces since the very beginning.”

“
Our
Menaces,” Jenny corrected with a smile. She set down the peaches. “Don’t worry about Mrs. Wilson, Trace. The answer is simple. She loves them. I daresay that after all your concern over providing them a mother, they’d have done fine without me as long as Mrs. Wilson was in your employ.”

Trace scowled at her. “Don’t think that for a minute, Mrs. McBride. All of us would be lost without you.” He sat beside her on the bed and gently smoothed her hair away from her face. “Me, especially. It scared the hell out of me when you turned up missing.”

Jenny turned her head to press a kiss against the palm of his hand.

“What happened, sweetheart? How did you end up in Jack Bailey’s clutches?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She smiled ruefully. “That’s what I told your brother a little while ago.”

He winced as if he’d tasted something extremely sour. “You know, Jenny, I said I trusted you and I mean it. My brother is another question entirely. Would you care to tell me why I found you two curled up in bed together? It wasn’t that cold in here.”

She tugged on his arm. “Come lie beside me. There’s something I need to tell you, and I’d rather do it while I’m in your arms.”

He rubbed his hand across his jaw. “Am I going to hate this?”

“Oh, no.” Happiness put a smile on Jenny’s face. “It’ll make your heart sing, I feel certain.”

He arched a brow. “My heart sing, huh?” He reached down to yank off his boots. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you if I find I’m overcome with lust.”