Chapter 9
“You’re not hungry, Miss Walker?” George inquired, waving to one of the servers for another helping of seared steak and roasted potatoes. Some cream gravy had dribbled down his round chin, but he seemed oblivious to it as he poked his fork toward Kari’s near-untouched plate. “Such delicious food, too! Say, if you’re not going to eat your corn pudding—”
“Please, help yourself,” she murmured, struck that a man so young would already be leaning toward corpulence, but then again, one had only to look at his portly parents.
The buttons nearly popped from George’s waistcoat as he leaned toward her and transferred the corn pudding to his heavily laden plate, licking his lips. Kari had all she could do not to shudder, George’s table manners truly atrocious, but it seemed that no one else had noticed. Most conversation had ceased as soon as the steaming hot food was served, everyone intent upon enjoying their meal.
Everyone, that is, except for herself and Seth, who stared at her with the darkest look upon his face from the opposite end of the table.
He couldn’t have been seated any further away from her, Kari thought with a sinking heart, realizing that must have been at Caleb’s behest. Crisp white place cards were propped at every place setting, so it wasn’t as if there simply weren’t any other chairs available by the time Seth got to the table. Clearly Caleb’s ire hadn’t fully cooled against Seth, but at least she found some solace in that he had been invited to the dinner party.
He looked so handsome, too, no matter his scowl that appeared to have only deepened. Kari couldn’t have been more startled to see him, fearing that he wasn’t in attendance when she’d first descended the stairs. Then he’d come striding toward her as if out of nowhere, not looking at all the cowboy in his dark evening clothes, and making her heart leap in her breast. At once her keen disappointment at his absence had been swept away…until she realized she would have no chance to speak to him before supper.
How could she eat when all she longed to do was ask him to explain his puzzling behavior? Were they still courting? He hadn’t once taken his eyes from her, so surely he hadn’t abandoned the idea altogether.
To her dismay George again leaned toward her, even closer this time. Kari gasped when it appeared that Seth might lunge to his feet, only to be restrained by his mother’s hand on his arm.
Seated with her husband at Seth’s right, Molly had cast more than a few concerned glances in Kari’s direction, but now her anxious expression was focused upon her son.
“My dearest Miss Walker, may I have the distinct honor of calling you Kari?” George asked her, clearly sated enough with food to focus upon her rather than his plate. “Especially now that we’ll be seeing so much more of each other in the days ahead—and you must call me Georgie.”
Georgie? Staring in confusion at his plump face framed by brown curls and his ingratiating smile, Kari had absolutely no idea what he was talking about until she felt a sudden sickening realization.
At once she glanced at Caleb seated at the middle of the table, but he appeared to be deep in conversation with Big Bill Saunders. His wife, Gilda, though, inclined her head at Kari, the same syrupy smile on her face though no warmth reached the woman’s dark eyes.
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Mr. Saunders,” Kari said pointedly, refusing to utter his pet name. “We’ve no such understanding at all—”
“Oh, no, my dear, it’s all been arranged,” George interrupted her, sliding his chair closer and resting his pudgy hand upon her forearm. “Ours couldn’t be a finer match, the Saunderses and the Walkers, the most affluent families in the county! Tonight’s dinner is to celebrate our courtship—well, that’s a mere formality, too. By month’s end we’ll be married and on our way to Paris for our honeymoon—or perhaps you’d prefer Venice instead? The food is wonderful there, oh, yes, I’m most partial to Italy—”
“That’s it, enough!”
Seth launched himself from his chair amid shocked gasps from the guests. Kari gaped at him as he strode to her end of the table and yanked George to his feet by his starched white collar.
“She’s Miss Hagen to you, Saunders, and there’ll be no understanding because I’m already courting her—isn’t that right, Kari?”
She blinked, so relieved, such immense joy flooding her, Kari could but nod even as Caleb pushed his chair from the table and stood up.
“What the devil…?”
“Yes…yes, it’s true,” Kari said as she rose, too, albeit shakily, finding her voice. “We announced our courtship two weeks ago—Seth and I—to his mother. We were going to speak to you first thing the next morning, Caleb, Seth and his parents and myself, but then I was hurt and…and…” She faltered, glancing at Seth, who released George so abruptly that the young man stumbled in his haste to scramble away, and then Seth moved to Kari’s side.
“We postponed everything until she was better,” Seth finished for her, taking her hand and lacing his fingers tightly with hers. “So we’re telling you now, any other arrangements you’ve made are impossible, given the circumstances. I love her—”
“And I love him!” Kari blurted, glancing up to find Seth staring at her so intensely that her cheeks flushed with heat, her heart racing.
“Which calls for a wedding as soon as we can arrange it,” Molly interjected, coming around the table to join the two of them and face her brother squarely. “Kari has the right, Caleb, to make up her own mind as to whom she chooses to marry—”
“Get out of my house. Molly, Charles, Seth. Now.”
A chill plummeted down Kari’s spine at the small pistol Caleb had pulled from his coat to level directly at Seth’s heart.
Everyone else in the room, hushed, staring, suddenly burst into panic and jumped up from the table to rush from the room until once more, it was silent.
Deadly silent.
Caleb extended his arm as if preparing to shoot. “I said for you to get out—”
“Caleb, this is madness!” Seth’s mother broke in, but Charles rushed forward to take her by the arm.
“Molly, let’s go. Seth, please…”
To Kari’s mounting horror, Seth didn’t move an inch as if daring Caleb to shoot. His fingers only tightened around hers.
“Uncle Caleb, you’d be a fool to pull that trigger.”
“And you’ll be dead if you don’t leave now. Get out!”
Her heart breaking, Kari eased her hand from Seth’s grip as she looked up at him. “Seth, please listen to him. If anything were to happen to you…oh, God, for me, please go!”
It seemed no one breathed, no one moved for the longest moment…and then Seth turned from her and walked stiffly from the room, his parents with their arms around each other right behind him.
Leaving Kari to face Caleb alone, tears stinging her eyes as she slowly shook her head.
“You can’t be the man my mother loved, you can’t be. You would do this to me? Force me to marry someone I don’t love? It’s just like what happened to her and look what it’s done to you! You’re not my father, you’re a monster!”
As if her words had struck him, he flinched, his face suddenly grown ashen as he lifted the gun and pressed the muzzle to his temple.
“You’re right, Kari…look what it’s done to me—”
“Papa, no, please!” She lunged for him at the same moment the strangest light seemed to fill the room, a shimmering form appearing next to Caleb that seemed to knock the gun away from him.
Yet in the next instant, Kari stared down at the pistol clutched in her hand while Caleb crumpled to his knees, weeping.
“Forgive me, Kari. Forgive me!”
She dropped the gun and threw her arms around his quaking shoulders even as Seth burst into the room followed by his parents, their faces stricken.
“Kari, we were outside and heard a shot! Are you all right?”
Stunned, she looked up at them and then back to her father. “There was no shot. Somehow I grabbed the pistol, I do
n’t know how…”
Seth came around the table, gesturing to the broken glass on the carpeted floor where a bullet had shattered the window.
Only a few feet from where Kari knelt beside Caleb, cradling him in her arms.
“I still don’t know how I grabbed the gun in time,” Kari murmured in disbelief, her cheek pressed against Seth’s coat as he held her tightly. “I heard nothing, no shot, just a whooshing in my ears and then I saw the most brilliant light—”
“It’s the storm coming, see?”
Kari glanced behind her from where they stood together on the front porch, jagged lightning streaking the dark sky as thunder rumbled to the west. Yet she shook her head, trying to explain something that to her, seemed all the more inexplicable the more she tried.
“No, it was something else…and then I saw my mother’s face, Seth!”
“You were in shock, everything happening so fast. It’s all right, Kari. It’s all right.”
Seth’s voice so soothing, his embrace so warm and comforting, that she could but nod, Kari knowing she had been wholly taken by surprise when Caleb lifted the gun to his head.
No, not Caleb, she told herself, the bodice of her dress still wet from his tears.
Her father.
Calling him Papa still echoed in her mind, his inconsolable cries for forgiveness still making her want to weep herself. His red-rimmed eyes had moved from her face to Seth’s, her father reaching up to desperately clutch his hand as if begging him for mercy, and then to Molly and her husband. Meanwhile, servants and what few guests hadn’t fled out the front door to their carriages stood watching in stunned silence just outside the dining room.
Finally Seth and Charles had helped him to his feet and half-carried him upstairs to his room, where Seth’s father still attended to him and Molly remained at his bedside along with Reverend Thomas.
Only Seth’s insistence that she accompany him outside for some air had made Kari leave him just moments ago. Her father intoning hoarsely over and over, “Lara, stay…don’t leave me,” made her fear that what had happened had broken him and he was losing his mind.
A shiver coursed through her, not of fear but sheer amazement. Had he seen her mother’s face, too? Was that why her father kept repeating Lara’s name? Heaven help her, how was she to make sense of it?
“Uncle Caleb’s strong, Kari, he’ll recover,” Seth murmured, guessing the direction of her thoughts. Then he sighed heavily. “As for him pleading for forgiveness, only time will tell if he truly meant it. We can hope.”
She nodded, still stunned that her father would have arranged a marriage for her without her consent after he’d been so solicitous of her while she recuperated. He had given no indication that such a thing was on his mind when he’d visited her while bedbound, instead telling her stories about his grandparents founding Walker Creek in what had then been the Republic of Texas.
He’d also relayed about his forebears fighting off Indian attacks, which no doubt had fueled his prejudice against Seth—yet Seth had said her father had once laughed and played with him until he’d received that letter from her mother. Oh, how she hoped that Caleb had undergone a change of heart, please Lord, let it be so!
“Kari, I have something to tell you.”
She glanced up at Seth, half of his face in shadow and the other illuminated from the light shining from the window, her breath stilling at how somber he looked.
“That’s why I brought you out here, so we could talk alone.”
He released her and took a step back from her, which made Kari feel as if everything had stopped around her, her heart suddenly clamoring in her breast.
Was he preparing to go down on one knee and propose to her? Though they were no longer embracing, he held both her hands tightly, her fingers begun to tremble.
“I must also ask for your forgiveness.”
Forgiveness? Expecting him to have said something else entirely, she felt a rush of disappointment, blurting, “If it’s about you going away without saying goodbye, I knew you must have a good reason—”
“No good reason, I’m ashamed to admit. Remember when you asked me if I was courting you to spite my uncle?”
Kari gaped at him, her heart plummeting into her slippers as she sensed what he was about to say.
“I was going to deny it, but that wouldn’t have been the truth. I had thought of how good it would feel to see my uncle’s face when he heard the news, but that wasn’t at the heart of me wanting to court you—”
“Oh, Seth, no.” Kari took a step back from him, though he still held fast to her hands. “First my father intended to marry me off to someone I don’t love…and now you planned to use me as well to get back at him?”
“That’s not what I said at all—Kari, what in blazes?”
She’d yanked her hands away so abruptly that she staggered backward, but caught herself on a porch swing. Not soon enough, though, to prevent a sharp twinge in her ankle. Wincing, she tried to brush past him, but Seth pulled her into his arms.
“Kari, listen to me! I know it wasn’t right, that’s why I’m asking your forgiveness! I was so disgusted with myself that I rode out of here as fast as I could, but I should have come to see you instead and told you the truth. I said tonight that I love you, and I do! From the moment I saw you, I knew you were the woman I’ve been waiting for—”
“And surely no better one to wield like a knife against your uncle! Let go of me, Seth! Let go!”
He did so reluctantly, his face darkened even in the dim light while Kari felt blinded by the tears welling in her eyes. Yet she choked them back and rushed to the front door as a deafening crack of thunder made the house seem to shake.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Seth start to come after her, but then another ominous thunderclap and the wind picking up made him turn instead and run down the steps.
From a distant barn she heard the frantic whinnying of horses, Seth disappearing into the night as Kari ducked inside and slammed the door behind her.
Chapter 10
Lucius running as fast as his spindly bowlegs would carry him toward Seth was warning enough that what he’d feared had already happened.
“He kicked his way out of his stall, Seth, that new stallion! A couple of ranch horses, too!”
The wind’s intensity increasing, Seth judged from the ear-splitting thunder and flashing lightning that the storm was nearly upon them. “Get all hands to the barns to make sure none of the other horses escape! Go!”
Lucius’s reply lost to a fierce gust that half spun the old-timer around, Seth lowered his head against the buffeting wind and sprinted toward the barn where he kept Henry.
He heard the big bay whinnying nervously as soon as he ran inside, but Seth knew his horse had a steadier disposition than most. It took only a couple moments and he had him saddled and ready to go, no time for Seth to change out of his fancy duds into sturdier clothes. He kicked Henry into a gallop and rode straight out into a lashing downpour, hoping that Uncle Caleb’s prize stallion hadn’t run far.
He wasn’t worried about the ranch horses since they were familiar with the lay of the land. But that high-strung stallion—doggone it, Seth didn’t even want to think about him careening in the dark into a creek bed and breaking a leg! Hadn’t there been enough trouble for one night?
Kari immediately jumped to mind, Seth wishing he’d had time to go after her to pull her into his arms and kiss the anger right out of her.
He didn’t blame her at all for her reaction, the hurt in her lovely blue eyes hitting him like a blow. She had proclaimed earlier that she loved him, though, which gave him hope that she’d forgive him, maybe not right away but eventually. He had a whole lot of making up to do, but right now his job as foreman of Walker Creek Ranch was to find that scaredy-cat of a racehorse before it was too late.
“It’s been years since I’ve heard such wind!” Kari cried out at the top of the stairs to Sarah, wondering if the storm might even sp
awn a tornado.
She had witnessed one of those frightening funnels years ago as a child, her parents hustling her and her sisters and brother to the shelter built into the ground next to their house. By some miracle, the tornado had veered past their homestead, but other folks hadn’t been so fortunate. Oh, no, please not a tornado!
“Easy now, miss, like I told you, it’s best to stay busy to keep your mind off the storm,” Sarah said as calmly as if the windows weren’t rattling and a draft wasn’t whistling through the house. “Your father is finally asleep, thank goodness, but you’re the lady of the house and you’ve overnight guests to attend to. Why don’t you go tell them we’ve rooms prepared when they’re ready to retire? And tell the good reverend that his wife is already settled in, no need to be concerned about her. Miss Walker?”
Kari had turned to look downstairs, the sturdy front door actually bowing from a sudden fierce gust of wind. Dear God, Seth was out there somewhere!
She had been so upset when she’d rushed into the house, so deeply crushed, but the storm’s rising ferocity had made her run back to the nearest window to peer outside after him.
Distantly she’d sworn she saw Seth talking to a skinny ranch hand and then both men had bolted deeper into the darkness in different directions.
She had only to imagine the tasks that must be done to protect livestock and property during such a strong thunderstorm. Yet she hadn’t stood there long, Sarah appearing and insisting Kari accompany her upstairs to help her to get some rooms ready for their guests—
“Miss Walker! It’s not the wind you have to fear, but the rain causing flash floods that’ll rise up out of nowhere and carry you away, especially during a frog-strangler like this one. Now go tend to your guests, please!”
Grateful, actually, that Sarah was keeping her occupied, Kari nodded and hurried toward her father’s room at the end of the hall. She heard low voices beyond the door and took a moment to compose herself before she rapped gently and entered.
Kari (Walker Creek Brides Book 1) Page 7