Caroline gave him an unusually sober look. “You look like you’re the one who needs help. What are you doing?”
“Packing. I told you, we’re leaving.”
Caroline dumped everything out of his leather valise and started repacking. “Did you quarrel with Father again?”
“No,” he said curtly. “Will attacked Hassie.”
“What? Is she all right?”
“She says so, and I think she is. Scared, angry. Won’t stay here even until morning.”
Caroline finished with his bag, having fit half again as much in it, and started with Hassie’s. “I’ll help you get everything downstairs, and then I’ll talk to her.”
“Good. Maybe you’ll get somewhere. It’s like talking to a stone wall.”
“I don’t mean I’ll try to talk her into staying here. You have no idea.... I wouldn’t stay under the same roof as someone who did that to me either. I can’t believe.... What’s
wrong
with him?”
Too angry to consider his sister’s age or gender, Bret said, “He’s seems to have some inflated notion of what went on between Mary and me years ago and think he’s entitled to the same from my wife, whether she’s willing or not.”
Caroline gasped. “But you never....”
“No, I never, and he has to know it.”
“He’s not so bad when you’re not here, you know,” Caroline said almost wistfully. “Do you think envy can make a person crazy?”
“Evidently so.”
“He even envied Albert, said he was the favorite, and Albert was so good.” Finished with Hassie’s bag, Caroline strapped it shut. “Not that you’re not good, but you have no give in you, and you upset people. It would be better if you were like me. I sneak.”
Another time she’d make him laugh. This time all she did was take the urge to kill Will down a notch. Bret strapped on his gun belt and picked up the rifle and shotgun. “The only way I’m getting back down the stairs is on my ass, can you manage the bags?”
“If I can’t, we’ll throw them,” she said practically as she tied everything that wouldn’t fit in the bags inside a bed sheet. “Down is never a problem, only up.”
“Thanks, sis.”
“Will you write?”
“You bet, but just in case a letter here would get lost, check with Gabe’s family from time to time.”
Actually Bret made it down the stairs on one leg, swinging between the stair railings. Caroline did throw the bed sheet bundle down but lugged the cases. Bret had everything stowed in the buggy or on Packie and was on his way to get Hassie when his parents stopped him in the hall.
“What the devil is going on?” his father demanded. “You and William had to pick today of all days to brawl like boys again? Haven’t you any sense? Those men would have bought horses, and you’ve driven them off.”
“Talk to Caroline,” Bret said. “I’m leaving.”
“Leaving? Just like that. Your brother is going to need stitches from that dog. What if it’s rabid?”
“If I stay, my brother is going to need a coffin. I’m taking the horse and buggy. I’ll get someone in town to bring them back in the next day or so.”
Bret started to brush by them, when his mother’s hand on his arm stopped him. “Hassie wanted me to talk to you, and I should have listened. Promise I’ll have a chance to know this grandchild, all your children.”
Bret kissed her cheek. “We’ll find a way.”
In the kitchen, Caroline pressed a last pin into Hassie’s restored hair and wrapped her own pale blue scarf over it. “You can give it back next time you see me,” she said.
The two of them hugged and kissed, clung for a moment.
“You had better write,” Caroline said fiercely.
Bret gave his sister one last squeeze around the shoulders before shepherding Hassie out the back door and into the buggy. He drove away and didn’t look back.
H
ASSIE HUNCHED ON
the buggy seat, feeling dreadful. In some part of her mind she suspected she was being unreasonable. There would be no danger in staying overnight at the Sterling farm with Bret right beside her. But she didn’t care.
His leg was bothering him badly. She did care about that. She wished she could fix it, but trying to do anything for it would have to wait until they were settled in town. They had to get away from that place, from Will and Mary, even the elder Sterlings since they not only put up with Will but were going to give him everything because of which side he fought on in a war long over.
Yes. She needed to be away. Right now. Tonight.
Will hadn’t hurt her, although she was sure he had intended to. What he had done wasn’t as bad as what the Restons at the hotel and Sally Nichols and her minions at the brothel had done. But it
felt
worse.
Bret pulled the carriage robe higher and tucked it tighter around her. She leaned into his warmth, wishing she could ask about his leg, but it was too dark now, and what could he say? “It hurts like hell.” And what could she do about it? Nothing.
The night was black and bitter by the time they reached Oak Hills. Bret registered at the hotel, left her in their room, and went to take care of the horses. By the time he returned, she had a fire going in the little pot-bellied stove, and the chill was off the room.
Bret had a bottle of whiskey in the hand he didn’t need for the cane and Gunner at his heels. “No laudanum and no willow bark,” he said lofting it. “This will have to do.”
She pointed at Gunner.
“The livery won’t have him, and the clerk here is susceptible to bribes. This place already looks better than home. Used to be home.” He sank down on the bed with a groan, pulled the cork on the bottle and took a long swallow. Not his first from the sound of him.
“I’m sorry,” she mouthed.
“It’s not your fault, and we’d have been gone in the morning anyway. If we stayed, I’d kill him.” He took another swig. “It’s not true, you know.”
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “It does not matter. I do not like her anyway.”
Bret rolled his head toward her. “I noticed. We never got beyond a few kisses, and she wasn’t all that enthusiastic about that much. Since she married him only months after deciding she could never marry me, I can’t believe she had a passionate affair in between.”
Mary having a passionate affair didn’t seem likely to Hassie either. “Then why does he believe such a thing?”
“I’m not sure he does. Caroline thinks he’s crazy. I think he just needs a reason to be miserable. Some people are born like that. Just like you were born happy.” He took another swallow. “You were you know.”
No, she wasn’t. She had just learned to be happy with what she had because coveting made things worse, not better.
She pulled off Bret’s boots and then his trousers. His knee was swollen to twice its normal size and colored an ugly black, blue, and purple with occasional reddish tones.
He lifted his head enough to look and let it fall back on the pillow. “Hate purple. Makes me think of that whore’s dress every time, and it’s an ugly damned color. Except your eyes, and they’re violet. Ask anyone. Violet.”
He was asleep by the time the last word was out. Hassie eased the whiskey bottle from his hand, folded the bedclothes over him, picked up the slate, and chirped to Gunner. Surely a clerk who was susceptible to bribes could come up with another blanket and enough hot water for some compresses.
B
Y THE THIRD
day, Bret’s leg had recovered enough he could get around as well as ever with the cane. Hassie seemed to have recovered too. To his relief, she was once again behaving like her good-natured, loving self.
After considerable thought about moving Hassie to a boardinghouse while he investigated available properties, Bret decided the room at the hotel was better. The widow who owned the place had lived in Oak Hills since he was a boy, raised her children here. She was a decent sort and willing to keep an eye on Hassie while he was gone.
“Not that she needs taking care of or anything,” he explained. “It’s just that people sometimes take advantage, and she can’t complain.”
“I understand, dear. She’ll be fine.”
The first sign of trouble came when they returned to the hotel after visiting the lawyer who had made inquiries about farms for sale. Hassie had smiled at the young attorney and seemed perfectly agreeable until they returned to the hotel. That’s when she grabbed the list of properties out of Bret’s hand and tore it in two.
“No, I do not want to live in Missouri. I want to live somewhere so far away I will never see them again.” Once again her hands moved in a jerky way that was worse than shouting.
Bret rescued the halves of the list. “You don’t have to see them. None of these places is closer than ten miles. I know the land here. I know the weather and what works and what doesn’t. I’m not spending everything we have on dry land in Kansas and killing myself trying to make a living off it.”
“There is other land with good water.”
“The better the land, the more it costs. Right here in this area I know what to look for, and we can get good land and enough of it. There’s livestock and equipment and seed and a lot of other expenses too, you know.”
“You are not selling Brownie for a better horse.”
Where did that come from? Packie was the only one he was ready to sell, and knowing she’d fuss, he had never mentioned it. “Of course not. Where could I find a better horse?”
She glared at him and crossed her arms under her breasts. Bret decided to stop arguing and pretend she was still the wife he knew—the one who didn’t have a bad word to say about the illiterate, drunken first husband who left her to starve, the one who hummed when making beds after taking a menial job, the one who danced with a dog she rigged out with flowers.
Once he found a decent place with a house she could start making her own, she’d come around and be laughing in days. He’d make sure she never saw Will again in her life, but Caroline and Vicky? His parents? She’d come around.
Bret set out on the fourth day after they’d come to town. “If the weather holds, I’ll be back in a week. Even with a storm, it shouldn’t be more than ten days. I’m not going to buy anything or sign anything until after you see it. I promise.”
She didn’t look reassured. In fact she looked stubbornly opposed, but she responded to his kiss and clung to him as if a week or ten days was forever.
Determined to keep it to a week, he gigged Jasper and pointed him west.
W
HEN
D
R.
M
AC
G
REGOR
had discussed her condition with her, he had advised Hassie on a lot of things—and mentioned in passing that sometimes pregnant women became exceedingly emotional. She didn’t think she was exceedingly emotional. Her husband, the man who often understood without words, was refusing to credit her feelings now.
How much more clearly could she tell him that she was unwilling to live in Missouri anywhere near his family? If they stayed here, his father would talk him out of more money and his mother would want her grandchildren to visit at the farm. Where Will and Mary would still be living.
Hassie spent three days considering her plans before putting on the brown Christmas dress, which might be an unattractive color but which was stylish and gave her an air her plainer dresses didn’t. She used the last of the money Bret had given her for meals and incidentals to purchase a velvet hat equally as stylish and a black cape that certainly finished things off better than her old winter coat.
Gloves, Caroline’s reticule. No lady in town looked better, Hassie thought with satisfaction, twisting and turning before the mirror in the hotel room. Her slate would spoil the impression. She wrote her request with a pen in the hotel lobby, took more paper and a pencil with her, and marched to the bank.
The young man in the teller’s cage at the bank read Hassie’s note, gawked at her, and ran for help. The help he summoned looked only slightly older, an attractive, dark-haired young man with a kind face and intelligent blue eyes.
“I’m Simon Fenton, head teller and the one in charge when no one else is around,” he said with a smile. “Suppose you and I discuss this in private.”
Private was a room off the lobby furnished only with two chairs facing a big desk. Walls lined with cabinets and shelves made the small room smaller. Feeling all too much like a supplicant, Hassie perched on the edge of one of the chairs.
Mr. Fenton sat behind the desk and read her note again. “That’s a large sum of money, Mrs. Sterling.”
She nodded, pulled out her pencil and extra paper. “It’s mine. The account is in my name.”
“Yes, that’s true, but it’s unusual for a married lady to come in and make such a withdrawal without her husband along.”
“My husband told you the money is mine to do with as I wish. I saw his letter to you. I wish to make a withdrawal.”
The young man stared down at the note, avoiding her eyes, then thumped one hand on the desk and muttered something she couldn’t hear. “If you’ll wait here a moment, I’ll get the paperwork. There are forms for you to sign.”
When it was over, Hassie walked outside and steadied herself with one hand against the wall of the bank and the other clutched across her roiling stomach, almost unable to believe she’d succeeded. In her reticule she had a bank draft for two thousand dollars and three hundred dollars in cash. Everything else should be easy.
The next morning she dressed in her elegant outfit again, wrote two notes, and left them on the bed in the hotel room. The one for Bret contained only words. The one for Caroline contained words and a hundred dollars.
Carrying everything she could possibly need, she whistled to Gunner, slipped out the hotel’s back door, and headed for the livery. If Brownie hadn’t changed her mind about getting on trains without a fuss, they would all be gone before anyone noticed.
B
RET RETURNED TO
Oak Hills early in the afternoon, eleven days after leaving. No storm had delayed him. Inspecting farms for sale had turned out to be a far more time-consuming enterprise than he expected.