A Husband Returned: Men of Wicked Sorrow, Book One

by Wynne Roman

  She blushed again, remembering it all in vivid detail. She had never spoken to anyone about her nights with Nathan. Not broadly and certainly not in any detail. Giggling, adolescent whispers were all she’d ever heard, and that had been long before she and Nathan married. After their wedding night, she had never been tempted to pursue the topic any further.

  Why would she? Living on the ranch, opportunities for feminine gossip had been few and far between. Sundays at Reverend Samuels’s church had hardly seemed an appropriate time for sinful talk. Later, the heartbreak of war and Nathan’s supposed death had made bedroom talk simply cruel, unnecessarily so.

  Now, she wished she had known someone with whom she could speak. Ask such personal questions.

  The thought came again unbidden, as it had done so frequently over the last several days. It had become almost a prayer of sorts, her guiding light to finding a renewed, satisfying marriage. What else did she have to give besides her complete commitment?

  She couldn’t be Susannah for him. Mariah couldn’t give him the child he deserved. Neither could she take back those few nights she’d spent in Gabriel’s bed. But she could, and would, do and be anything else that Nathan wanted.

  She covered the rising bread with a flour sack and watched the men through the window. Nathan waved his hands, occasionally pointing around the yard. He gestured toward the barn, the bunkhouse, the henhouse. The other men looked, nodded, and a discussion seemed to ensue. Finally, Nathan stalked toward the house, with Gabriel following a pace behind.

  “Rye?” Nathan called as he stepped inside through the back door.

  “Yes?” She kept her gaze guarded and focused entirely on her husband.

  “Harley and Luis are here for a while. They’ll stay in the bunkhouse.”

  “All right.” She nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll check to see they have everything they need.”

  “They brought provisions. Sort through what you want to store in the house. We’ll put the rest in the root cellar.”

  “Of course.”

  She nodded again, trying to ignore the unexpected heat from Gabriel’s gaze. She refused to look at him, but she could feel his eyes on her all the same. They hadn’t spoken since Nathan’s return, and she regretted that now. If they had, perhaps during that second day when Nathan had gone off by himself, the moments now wouldn’t be so awkward.

  With her nerves rattled suddenly, she babbled without thinking. “What else did they bring? Any chickens?”

  Chickens?

  What a silly question, and whyever had it occurred to her now? Worse, she’d said it aloud.

  But she knew. Anxiety pushed her into trying to create some unthinking diversion to the tension that sizzled through the room. Having Nathan and Gabriel in the same place unnerved her.

  And why not? She was an adulteress, and she deserved any retribution that God chose.

  Nathan didn’t respond, but Gabriel’s mouth lifted near one corner. “Yes, we brought chickens, Mari—Missus Fairchild,” he corrected, and quite deliberately, or so it sounded. “I picked out a couple of good layers for you.”

  Mariah paled and found herself suddenly unable to move. Gabriel’s words carried an undercurrent of animosity that hurt, even as she understood it. Worse, the way he’d cut off her name and replaced it with a far more sarcastic version of her married title had made his disdain for her so very plain.

  What could he possibly expect of her?

  Worse, why had he said what he did? Good layers? Had he meant what it sounded like on the face of things? Hens who could provide a good number of eggs that were surely needed to feed herself and the men? Or did he have some ulterior, salacious meaning?

  Something about the intimate time she had spent with him?

  Nathan was frowning, and Mariah’s heart began to pound. Her husband knew nothing about what had gone on between Gabriel and Mariah. He couldn’t know, she reminded herself insistently, and with an unmistakable desperation even she couldn’t deny. But, could he suspect something? He’d all but said as much in the cemetery that first day.

  “Finding you in another man’s arms?” he’d said to her then. “I saw you. His arm was around you.”

  In that instant, her path forward was clear. She had no other choice. She could only ignore Gabriel and his comments—in perpetuity—and she would be glad to do so.

  The chicken coop was in better condition than Mariah had expected. She’d sorted through the provisions delivered in the wagon and then gone straight to inspect the henhouse. If she wanted her good layers to settle into their new home, she needed to get them started immediately.

  The chicken wire that fenced the perimeter all appeared to be intact. She moved to the back of the enclosure where she normally wouldn’t think to look. Today, she wouldn’t take that kind of chance. The place had been empty for nearly three years, and she wanted to be certain.

  She’d have Nathan or one of the hands check a second time, but for the moment, she’d satisfied herself that it seemed only a few boards needed to be secured and new straw spread. After that, her chickens could settle in.

  A small smile curled her lips. What was it about having chickens that made her father’s house—the Double C, Nathan was calling it—seem like home again?

  The Sangre Real had been her home for more than four years, and she supposed she’d always been comfortable enough there. In those early days, she’d been a newly wedded bride who didn’t know where or how she fit in. After Nathan had left for the fighting, she’d settled in wherever her father-in-law had allowed her, and insisted to anyone who’d asked that she was happy. She may not have been, but she’d known better than to allow anyone else to even suspect such a thing.

  Things had gone along well enough until her father had passed. Not that many months later, Jordan had died, and she’d had few choices by then. She’d made a place for herself that was as much maid and caretaker for Carolyn as anything else.

  Admittedly, she’d done so with some deliberation. Once Tristan married, as Mariah had fully expected he would, she would have even less of a place. Better to make a place for herself by becoming essential to her mother-in-law’s daily life.

  Now, though . . .

  Mariah smiled again, though it came out a bit crooked this time. A part of her felt bad that she’d left Carolyn virtually helpless by moving to the Double C, but she couldn’t completely regret it, either. This was about her future. Nathan’s future. She had the chance to make her childhood home the special place she’d always dreamed of.

  A home for her husband and herself. A place where they could be happy.

  “Hello, Mariah.”

  She spun on her toes, wobbling in surprise, but managed to steady herself with one hand on the chicken wire fencing. Gabriel stood an arm’s length away, reaching for her, but she held a hand up, palm outward, to indicate one word.

  Stop.

  She swallowed around her pounding heart. “Gabriel.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’m fine.” Her voice sounded more snappish than she meant, but she let it stand. It was better that way. Still, a counter-question escaped her. “How are you?”

  He closed his good eye for a moment, and that made the eyepatch stand out in stark contrast. He shook his head as he looked at her again. “You don’t want me to answer that.”

  “Gabriel—”

  “No.” He shook his head once, sharply. “There’s nothing to say. He’s your husband.”

  She took a breath but couldn’t look at him. “He is. And I love him very much.”

  “You always have.”

  “Yes.” She nodded.

  “We never had a chance, did we?” He tried to pin her gaze with his, but she refused to look him in the eye. “Even if he hadn’t come back from the dead.”

  Mariah’s stomach stumbled, churned. “I don’t know. There’s no way to say for certain.”

  He gave a short, bitter laugh. “That’s a no, then.”

  “Ga
briel . . .” She swallowed. A coward clear through to her bones, she hadn’t ever wanted this conversation to take place, but that was wholly unfair. He deserved the words she hated to have to say, but maybe she needed to actually express them.

  And Nathan? Certainly, he was entitled to a wife who did everything she could to put her sordid past behind her.

  “Gabriel,” she started again, daring a quick look at him. He stared back at her, pain darkening his normally bright blue eye. “You are a wonderful man. Our friendship was very special to me. You helped me during a difficult time.”

  He made a disbelieving sound, but she ignored it as best she could. “I don’t know what the future might have held for us, but it no longer matters. Nathan is my husband, and I love him very much.”

  It was the second time she’d said the words, and she’d repeated them a little more harshly than she’d intended. Again. It didn’t matter. She needed to make Gabriel understand.

  “I know.” His voice sounded sorrowfully hoarse. He shook his head with another bitter laugh. “I want be sure he’s treating you well.”

  “Yes.” She smiled softly, without thinking. Memories of Nathan’s touch, his caresses, his kisses immediately warmed her. “He’s been very good to me.”

  “Goddamn it!” The words burst from him, and Gabriel spun on his heel, presenting her with his back.

  “Gabriel! What?”

  He shook his head, a jerky movement that made her heart ache, but he didn’t look back at her. “I saw that look in your eyes. You were remembering him. Remembering making love with him.”

  Her breath all but deserted her, leaving Mariah struggling for words.

  “Gabriel—”

  “Don’t say anything.”

  But she had to. “He’s my husband.”

  Slowly, almost as though he were old and arthritic, he turned back to face her. A man who showed so little to others, even during his most open moments, he now appeared to have shut down completely.

  “I know. You’re right. I knew it was coming, but I thought, hoped, that he might not be on you right away.”

  His choice of words sent a chill through her. “He wasn’t on me.”

  That earned a surprising glare. “Wasn’t he?”

  “No.” Her voice came out as a snap of sound that satisfied her deeply. “You make it sound like he would attack me.”

  “Wouldn’t he? You said your time with him wasn’t pleasurable.”

  She understood the ugliness in Gabriel’s voice, but she hated it all the same. Hated the things she’d admitted to the other man.

  “Things are very different now than when we first married,” she insisted stiffly.

  “Now he makes love to you.”

  Mariah closed her eyes long enough to gather every bit of strength she needed. While this discussion with Gabriel might be necessary, it was also completely inappropriate. If she wanted to end any uncertainty the Segundo might have, she needed to make it even more so.

  “Yes.” She looked at the man who had been her friend and lover, allowing him to see nothing in her but the truth of her words. “Now he makes love to me, and it is as glorious as anything I’d ever hoped for.”

  17

  The Rancho de Sangre Real was located straight ahead of him, just beyond the distant horizon. Even knowing that, Nathan didn’t alter Clancy’s pace. He remained as apathetic about this meeting with Tristan as he had been since he’d first gotten word that his brother wanted to see him.

  No. Nathan shook his head irritably. Apathetic wasn’t the right word. He did want to meet with Tristan. He wanted details about this rustling operation and what kind of a plan Tristan had to fight it, if he had one at all.

  The other problem was that Nathan wanted to offer up his own insight and opinions. He hated being forced to wait and watch and follow orders while others made the decisions. He’d had enough of that in the army.

  Still, he had begun to find ways of managing his temper quite nicely, he thought with a cocky half-smile. It had surprised him to learn that living at the Double C had helped his attitude immensely. It hadn’t been apparent at first, but now that he and Mariah had been there for nearly a week, he’d gradually begun to notice a difference. Nathan, Luis, and Harley had ridden out each day to check on the herd, and no one from the main ranch house had troubled them.

  Until today, that is, but he could deal with Tristan well enough.

  He’d rather consider the other advantages of his and Mariah’s move to the Double C. Nathan allowed himself a satisfied smile that showed a certain amount of pride, as well. He and his wife had slowly begun to discover a new, relaxed comfort with each other. He wouldn’t go so far as to say that they’d actually grown close, but that possibility in the future wasn’t entirely out of the question, either.

  Alone, they’d had no choice but to begin to work their way through all kinds of awkwardness and confusion. Whether or not either of them had intended it, they had found themselves creating an entirely new relationship.

  Both in and out of the bedroom.

  Nathan could admit the truth to himself now: since he’d come home, he had used sex to bind Mariah to him. More than that, he’d come to realize that he’d done it far more deliberately than he’d initially realized. They’d had so little else between them, after all.

  And whose fault is that?

  He swallowed a self-deprecating sigh. It was true; he could blame no one but himself. He hadn’t allowed them even the chance of finding anything more in those early days of their marriage. Now, it felt almost right that he paid the price for that selfishness.

  It also meant that he didn’t regret seducing Mariah. Not that first night, and not every night since then. His heart filled with relief every time she came to him with open arms and offered him her body.

  So why did you behave like such an idiot when you first married her?

  It wasn’t the first time he had asked himself the question. It occurred to him whenever he watched Mariah without her noticing. Times when she prepared his meals with a contented smile on her face. When she turned down the bedcovers each night with such a delicious pink blush on her cheeks. When she strode across the yard each morning after collecting eggs in the henhouse, her expression adorably serious and satisfied.

  He remembered again the myriad possibilities that her mere presence had promised in those early, awful days when they were first married. Worse, he recalled how he’d turned his back on her time and again. Mariah had had no more control over the situation than he had, but she had kept her wedding vows. She’d promised to love, honor, and obey him, and she had.

  Nathan, meanwhile, had allowed pride and fury to goad him into breaking every one of them.

  His behavior frustrated and shamed him now, when he couldn’t do anything about it. The truth of it was, he’d been so caught up in the pain and heartache and—he could admit it now—the fantasy of loving and losing Susannah Reade, Mariah had never had a chance. Instead, he’d been so goddamned sanctimonious in his grief, he’d allowed himself to see nothing else.

  Since then, other deaths, destruction, and virtually the loss of everything he’d ever held dear had opened his eyes and his mind. Experience had colored his memories of both women with a different hue; he had somehow learned to find the subtle shades of gray that black and white created.

  Or perhaps it was the head wound, the amnesia, and recovering his memory that had changed him. He wondered about that from time to time. Every doctor he’d seen had given him precisely the same diagnosis: the mind was a mysterious thing, and they could explain none of it.

  That left him with questions that persisted ruthlessly even today, and rarely did they offer the slightest answer. Now, a new one had begun to plague him.

  Is there any possibility that I can learn to love my wife?

  Nathan stiffened his spine so sharply, it tightened his shoulders with military precision. He had come to hate the question, didn’t want to ask or answer it. There was
no way on God’s green earth that he wanted to fall in love with Mariah Carpenter Fairchild.

  Love weakened a man. Ruined him. Made living without his woman a holy hell that he never intended to experience again.

  Loving Susannah had made him pray for the release of death when she’d been killed. And loving Wren had pushed him to the point where he’d actually considered turning his back on family and honor just to have her.

  Wren.

  His heart clenched, but Nathan rode on for a few more minutes, trying desperately to shove back every thought of the woman, her farm, and even Illinois. He pretended to watch the cactus and occasional copse of trees as he passed them, but the memories refused to allow him even a moment’s peace.

  When he could manage it no longer, he pulled Clancy to a halt. They had stopped just shy of the ranch cemetery, and Nathan allowed the quarter horse to amble slowly closer.

  How appropriate, he decided, flicking an almost curious gaze over the fenced-in plot of ground. It was the final resting place for generations of Fairchilds, or so the intent had been. For a while, and perhaps prematurely, it had been his final reward, as well.

  It had all been so very wrong.

  Today, though, he wanted to admire his premature headstone for a moment. Not in a ghoulish way, but as a reminder of the two halves of his life. The man who had been Nathan Fairchild had died on May 12, 1864. The man who returned to the Sangre Real was someone else entirely.

  He’d only compounded the sins of his youth.

  He’d taken things that didn’t belong to him. He’d killed. He’d committed adultery. And he’d left Wren behind to fend for herself.

  “Dammit,” he snarled, but Clancy took no notice. Nathan simply couldn’t seem to escape thoughts of Wren Gardner and what she’d meant to him. She’d taken pity on a poor, confused soldier and treated him with her own brand of feminine kindness. She’d given him work—manual labor—that had kept his hands busy and allowed him to rebuild his strength. She’d provided him with food to eat, a place to stay, and the most amazing promise of a sunny future, if only he believed.