He knew not where this strength and determination had suddenly come from, but it seemed that being needed had invigorated her.
Landon turned to the sheriff with a shrug. “You see how much say I have in this.”
Sheriff Connelly replaced his hat, grimacing slightly as he did. “If you intend to make a call at the ranch, allow me to warn you that you might have to work your way through a few screeching sisters in order to reach your wife.”
Landon recalled his surprise meeting with Molly, chuckling as he did. “I would expect nothing less.”
24
Cate walked up the porch steps in a daze. Her legs carried her of their own accord, without her telling them to do so.
All she wanted in the world was to lock herself in her bedchamber and never, ever emerge again.
If only she could sleep and be alone. If only everyone would leave her alone.
She knew better than to expect any such thing, for the moment she stepped through the door she was descended upon at once.
They fired questions at her, their voices overlapping as they removed her coat and hat.
“Where have you been?”
“What brings you back?”
“What happened?”
“You look a fright!”
“Are you ill?”
“Did something happen to you?”
She stood in the center of this, swaying slightly. Looking at them but not truly seeing them. All she could see was Landon and Violet. Just the thought of them was like a hand closing around her throat, squeezing until she could not breathe.
They would never understand this. They all had what they wanted, who they wanted. Who they loved.
How had she ever believed herself to be above the sort of love they knew? She’d always thought of herself first as an actress, unable to tie herself down with such petty concerns. She’d certainly not intended to lose her heart as she had.
Strangely, Molly seemed to understand best. With an arm around Cate’s waist, she led her to the stairs. “It seems you need a great deal of rest,” she murmured, gentle and soft.
“Do you not even wish to know where I have been?”
Molly scoffed. “Do you honestly not think I knew where you are? Why do you think I had Mason look for that Ida Thomas?”
Cate stopped halfway up the stairs, her mouth falling up in surprise. Not many things could have shaken her from her stupor. “That was you? How did you know?”
“So he made good on his promise,” Molly murmured, smiling to herself. “Let us say I have met your husband.”
“Please don’t call him that.”
Molly shrugged, offering no reply, and they continued up the stairs. Somehow, she had spoken with him. She understood. At the very least, she tried to understand and to be gentle with Cate. That was more than enough to be grateful for.
“I am so tired.”
Molly opened her bedroom door and stepped aside to allow her in. Cate could have wept with relief at the sight of her own bed, her own washstand, her own dressing table. She supposed someone would have to go back for her clothing and such, but that could be arranged. Nothing had mattered so much as escaping before any blame-filled eyes had turned her way.
It would have been difficult enough saying goodbye to Landon and Violet without bearing up under the shame.
“How did it end?” Molly asked.
“As bad as it possibly could have. I do wish Mason had caught up to Ida before she arrived at the house and announced to all present that Violet was her baby.” Cate sank onto the bed, bending to remove her shoes.
“She did not!” Molly gasped, I hand over her heart. “Of all the brazen, callous—”
“It doesn’t matter now. I can only hope Landon settled things with his family.”
“But you do not know whether or not he did?”
“I left before things were settled.”
Molly fixed her with a stern look.
Cate shrugged. “What was I supposed to do?”
“You could not have run away, to begin with.”
“That is easy for you to say. You do not know his parents. You did not come to care for his mother as I did. How was I supposed to bear her disappointment?”
“So, you left Landon to bear it alone.”
“It was his to bear! I am not the one who brought the child into the world. It was not I who came up with the notion of lying to spare them the embarrassment of an illegitimate grandchild. What was I to do?”
“He cares for you, you know.”
Cate scoffed, shaking her head. “No, he doesn’t. Now that everything is over, he doesn’t need me anymore.”
“I would not discount him so quickly if I were you. He impressed me a great deal when I went to see him. He gave me quite an earful about you, too.”
Though Cate did her best to close her heart off to this, to build a wall around herself that nothing could penetrate, curiosity soon got the best of her. “What did he say?” she asked, averting her gaze that her sister might not know how eager she was.
“He told me I never gave enough you credit, that none of us did. That he trusted you with his daughter, that he trusted you completely. He told me what a fine person you are, and how well you handled yourself up to that point. He admires you a great deal.”
While this warmed her considerably, it did not mean anything real. “Admiring someone is not the same as truly caring for them.”
Molly shrugged. “That could be so, but I have my suspicions.” She crossed the room, sitting beside Cate on the bed and taking her hand. “What he said made me think. I have not been fair to you. None of us have. We all should have known better than to attempt to dissuade you from your intended course of action. You have always been the most determined person I’ve ever known, and I respect that,” she added. “That is not meant to disparage you in any way. I admire your determination a great deal, along with your imagination and your talent and your open, loving heart. I have never said these things, not even when you were sick. Remember? When you ran away when we first got here?”
Cate chuckled ruefully. “How could I forget? I lost my sight for a short time.”
“I was so afraid I lost you then, but it took no time for me to fall straight back into my old habits. Being hard on you, so stern and disinclined to understand your desires. Forgive me for that, please.”
Cate hugged her impulsively. “There’s nothing to forgive. I can only imagine how difficult I’ve made things for you, for all of you.”
“Now we have you back, which is a blessing at least. The house is not been the same without you.”
Yes, she was back, and things could go on as they had before. She was far too distraught to even consider her theater at the moment. She supposed that could come about when she had gotten over her grief.
It just the thought of getting over him—of getting over both of them, Landon and the baby—was too much. She burst into tears, unable to conceal the depth of her disappointment any longer.
Instantly, her sisters joined them, surrounding her with love and understanding. Even in the depths of despair, she could appreciate the blessing of their love. Whether or not they agreed with her, they would always be there to bolster her when she needed them most.
“I don’t know what to do without them!” she mourned. “I know, I know. I have made a great deal of excitement over very little in the past, but this is different. This is real.”
Phoebe wiped away her tears, tears of her own standing in her eyes. “Perhaps all is not lost. Remember, I teased you at first. I suggested the possibility of a man such as Landon falling in love with you after your marriage. Perhaps he did!”
Cate sniffled, shaking her head. “Yes, I felt there might be a moment, but I think that was a matter of me convincing myself of what I wished were true. Surely he is glad to be rid of me now.”
“You sound as if you are guessing,” Holly informed her. “Did you ask him if he was glad to be rid of you?”
&nbs
p; She shook her head again. “Of course not. I ran soon as I could. It was humiliating, his parents knowing what I had done.”
Rachel clicked her tongue, shaking her head in disapproval. “That doesn’t mean anything. What you did, you did for their son. If they had the nerve to condemn you for that, they are terrible people who do not deserve your patience or understanding.”
“Too right,” Molly agreed.
“I do wish I’d had the chance to say goodbye to the baby,” she whispered. “I should have thought before I fled. I should have waited so I could say goodbye to her.”
All five of them looked to the open door at the sound of commotion downstairs.
“What on earth?” Holly asked, rising from her kneeling position on the floor. “Is there any end to the excitement around here?”
“Cate!” It was Lewis, calling to her from downstairs. “You have a visitor!”
Her heart leapt, though she did what she could to keep it in place. No sense in getting herself excited. In fact, for all she knew Landon had thrown her things into a trunk and sent it behind her.
Even so, there was a great deal of murmuring and excitement as the girls descended the stairs and walked out to the porch.
She could not believe her eyes. A shining, black coach sat before the house, drawn by a pair of magnificent, snow-white horses. They pranced proudly, tossing their manes and swishing their tails, while someone opened the door from inside.
She let out a muffled sob as Landon stepped down from inside the coach, then turned and extended his arms. She saw Hermione lean out, handing Violet over to him.
Phoebe squeezed her arm. “I told you,” she whispered excitedly.
Cate took one step forward on trembling legs, then another. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“You might not know this about me, but I do not take well to people who run away before I have the chance to say what’s on my mind.”
She nodded, breathing deeply in a vain attempt to keep her pulse under control. It was like fighting a losing battle. “All right. What is on your mind? Now that you are here, what is it you wish to say?”
He looked behind her, his gaze traveling over her sisters. It was clear none of them had any intention of going inside, just as the coach containing his parents sat behind him. Whatever he had to say, he would say it in front of an audience.
He cleared his throat. “You left something behind at the house which belongs to you.”
“I told you I would send for my things—”
He shook his head. “That is not what I meant. You left your ring.” With his free hand, he reached into the pocket of his topcoat and withdrew the gold band. “I did not tell you I wished for it back. Why did you take it off?”
Did he not understand how this crushed her? How just the sight of him made it difficult to keep from collapsing into tears? Why did he insist on torturing her this way? “Because it isn’t mine, not really.”
“But it is. You are my wife, or have you forgotten?”
She looked over his shoulder to where his parents watched from inside the coach. Oliver at least had the decency to pretend he was not listening, though Hermione made no such effort. “I thought their train was at ten o’clock,” she remembered.
“They decided to wait until tomorrow. They would not leave until this was settled.” He thrust his hand toward her, still holding the ring. “I want you to have this. I want you to always have it.”
“You could do better than that,” Hermione hissed from inside the coach.
“I quite agree,” Phoebe added from the porch.
He looked and sounded utterly harassed but continued. “I want you to wear this ring, and to be my wife. My real, true wife. I wanted to tell you that last night, but you made it impossible. I wanted to tell you that I did not want what we had to end simply because my parents were leaving.”
She hardly dared believe it. “You did? You do?”
“Of course I do. I know ours has not been a conventional story, but I will never not be grateful that you came into my life. I thank providence for bringing you to me, but I know now that it is up to me to keep you by my side. And I want you by my side, always.”
“What about my plans? About my dreams?”
She heard one of her sisters, perhaps more than one, gasp when she said this. She knew they would disapprove, but that was not her concern.
To his credit, he did not gasp or even appear surprised. “I want you to have what you want. If you want your theater, you shall have it. So long as I can, to have you. No, so long as we can, to have you.” He looked down at Violet, who giggled as if she understood.
Cate was laughing and crying and rejoicing as she walked into his embrace, his arms around them both, while her sisters wept loudly and openly. Hermione sounded as though she was overwrought, as well, the sounds of happy tears coming from inside the coach.
Landon smiled down at her, and there was no longer any question as to the love in his gaze.
“I love you,” he whispered. “I’ve loved you from the start, though I didn’t know it for certain until I lost you. Please, don’t ever leave me again.”
“Never. Never, ever.” She stood on tiptoe, close to his ear. “I love you, Landon Jenkins, and I am proud to be your wife.”
He slid the gold band over her finger once again, before pulling her close. “And do not ever remove that again,” he warned.
“I might.”
“You what?” he gaped.
“Well, what if I’m called upon to play the part of an unmarried woman?”
His laughter was music. “Fair enough. I should have known.”
He bent then, sweeping her up into their first true, proper kiss.
Not the brief kiss before the Justice of the Peace, nor a peck on the cheek for the sake of appearances.
This kiss left her clinging to him for fear she might fall, left her breathless and dizzy and wishing for nothing more than to kiss him every day for the rest of her life.
He was right.
Theirs had not been a conventional story.
They had married, and then had fallen in love.
Then again, what about her life ever been conventional?
Epilogue
Six Months Later
“Now, all that’s left is the matter of your signatures. All five Reed heiresses will sign here, on these lines.” The lawyer dipped his pen into the inkwell. “Who would like to go first?”
All five of them looked to each other. “I suppose I should,” Molly suggested. She handed baby Cordelia off to Lewis, who watched with great interest as his wife signed the deed to the ranch now that the will’s terms had been fulfilled.
Next came Holly, holding Edward’s hand. He was nearly three years old now and had attached himself to Holly. Rarely could she leave a room without him wanting to be with her. She signed her married name with a flourish, smiling up at her husband just after doing so.
Rachel followed next, her belly swollen with the babes she carried—Doc Perkins had heard two heartbeats when he’d last checked on her, and Mason had walked around like a man in a daze ever since. They’d just settled into their new home, one block away from Rance and Phoebe.
The only thing that could have gotten Phoebe out of the house at her advanced stage of pregnancy was the signing of the deed. She had only a handful of weeks to go and seemed to be counting the days. She signed her name, breathing a sigh of relief when she did. Yes, they were all relieved now that the thing was settled.
Cate was last. She looked to her sisters, all of them keenly aware of what this meant. They’d done what they had never imagined possible.
How could any of them have predicted the turn their lives would take? How, when they’d arrived in Carson City, could they know their husbands—their happiness—waited for them? At the time, it had been nothing but an inconvenience.
Now, it meant nothing less than their entire lives.
Cate looked down at the deed, seeing ev
erything it symbolized. Their security, as Lewis had no intention of allowing anyone to buy what he still regarded as his land, the land he’d poured his life into. And none of them intended to sell, either, for they had all come to love it too dearly.
Little had their father known what he would set in motion when he’d willed his daughters across the country.
She signed her name. Catherine Reed Jenkins.
“That does it, then.” She turned to Landon, who held Violet in the crook of his arm. The baby laughed, causing everyone in the lawyer’s office to laugh along with her.
Even Mr. Brown chuckled as he reviewed the signatures and declared the matter settled.
They were landowners, the five of them, and need never fear again for the future of their ranch.
Cate knew Lewis hoped his children would one day take over, and Roan felt the same for Edward and any children he and Holly might be blessed with. It was in their blood, their love of the land, and that sort of love tended to carry on from one generation to the next.
“It seems there is a great celebration being prepared at the house,” Lewis reminded them as they gathered themselves in preparation of setting out for the ranch. Their neighbors, the Beltons and Furnishes, had arranged a grand feast in honor of the signing of the deed. Ryan Belton’s sister, Lena, had taken everything into her very capable hands, assuring them they need not worry about a thing.
Not a quarter mile from the lawyer’s office sat the location of Cate’s theater, where ground had just been broken a month earlier. The men were hard at work there, and she smiled with deep satisfaction when she imagined the palace that would soon rise where there was now nothing but empty space.
“You did it,” Landon murmured, taking her arm as they walked to the carriage.
It was a beautiful day, much like the day they’d arrived on the train. To Cate, it seemed the entire world shone with a new freshness. New possibilities.
A Bargain For A Bride (Westward Hearts Book 8) Page 17