“Miranda?” he said softly and the baby turned and smiled at him, her eyes brilliant. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a necklace of glass beads and handed it to her. She immediately put the necklace in her mouth and her father laughed with her.
“Well, little daughter, you now have a father. I’ll bet your name is Miranda Tyler. How about if we change it to Miranda Macalister?” He swept her into his arms and she laughed at the motion.
“Miranda. Silly name, but I guess if your father can give you the Macalister, your mother can choose whatever name she wants.” The baby hit him with the bead necklace, and he hugged her to him. “I think I like being a father.”
Linnet saw them walking slowly from the forest, hand in hand. Devon stopped in front of her and Miranda went to look at the kittens under the porch.
“Is it true? Is she my daughter?”
“Yes, Miranda is your daughter.”
He sighed and then took a deep breath. “All right,” he said with resignation. “I’ll marry you.”
Chapter Fifteen
“MARRY ME?” LINNET SAID INCREDULOUSLY. SHE felt such anger in her head that she thought something might burst. “So, you will marry me. After two years and one daughter, you vile, insufferable creature, you now say you’ll marry me!”
“Now hold on a minute—”
“No! You just hold on a minute. I have listened to you for a long time, but now you’re going to listen to me. When you first walked into that little hut where Crazy Bear’s people held me, when you risked your life for me, I fell in love with you. Yes, you should look astonished. I fell in love with you so hard that it has taken sheer hell to make me realize what a fool I was. What do you think it’s like loving someone who’s always angry with you, always accusing you falsely?”
“Falsely hell! I watched you with man after man.”
“Man after man!” she gasped. “There was only Cord and he was as eaten with jealousy as you are. The two of you used me to repeat a game you’d already played. You lost one woman to him so you weren’t going to let your pride be hurt by losing a second woman.”
“How was I to know which man you wanted?” he said softly.
She threw up her hands. “There were times when you barely spoke to me. Cord dragged me away from the town and rather than stay with him I went into a snowstorm and nearly died. But did you care? No! All you thought of was that perhaps your rival had touched me.”
“Why did you call me your brother?” he whispered.
She laughed, an ugly, mocking laugh. “You were everything to me—brother, father, mother, sister—all. I loved you so much. You in your selfish ways could never know how much. Why do you think I let you make love to me? I was such a fool about you that I would have lived openly with you at any time. All you had to do was snap your fingers and I would have come. It’s not possible for you to know what I felt when you left me that day. Well, it’s all over now. I’ve finally come to my senses. What I felt for you is gone, killed, bit by bit, by your suspicions, your accusations, your constant anger. Now I want you to get out of my life. I never want to see you again. And I assure you it will take me no more than ten minutes to rid myself of your unpleasant memory.”
She stepped past him, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her to face him.
“I’ve been a fool, haven’t I?” he said simply, a new knowledge in his eyes.
“Yes, you have,” she said, her voice heavy, still angry.
“That’s what’s been wrong with me since I met you, ain’t it? I’ve been in love with you and didn’t even know it. I was afraid to love anybody again. After what happened with Amy, I was afraid. You knew it, probably ever’body in Sweetbriar knew it, ’cept me. I’ve been in love with you for a long time and I was too big a fool to see it.”
She jerked away from him. “And now am I supposed to fall into your arms and forgive you, and we live happily ever after? It just doesn’t happen that way. Do you realize what you’ve done to me? Not an hour ago you accused me of marrying someone for money. Has it ever occurred to you that I might want some kindness in my life, that I might want someone who can even say, “Good morning,” to me without sneering, without some hidden meaning that was supposed to insinuate that I’m a woman of the streets? You’ve accused me of going to bed with every man who ever looked at me, but I’ll tell you that you’re the only man who has touched me.”
“Linnet, I—”
“Don’t give me that look. I can tell you now because I plain do not care any longer what you believe of me.”
“But I love you. I just told you that I loved you.”
“And that’s supposed to make everything all right? Why didn’t you say that the night you gave me Miranda? Why couldn’t you have said it the day you found me after Cord had taken me away?”
“I didn’t know then. You must forgive me.”
“Oh, I must forgive you!” she said sarcastically. “You always accused me of wanting Cord and now, years later, you walk into my life and accuse me of sleeping with the Squire. The Squire!” she gasped.
“Linnet, please.” He took her arm. “Miranda is my daughter.”
She jerked away from him. “By what right is she your daughter? Were you there when I went through a sixteen-hour labor bringing her into the world, when I lay in a fever for two weeks after her birth, or were you just there for one afternoon’s fun when you proved to yourself what kind of woman I really was?”
Their eyes locked for a moment and Devon knew the truth in her words. His voice was very quiet when he spoke. “I never realized before what I was like, how I’ve treated you. And it’s worse for me because I know the thoughts I’ve had about you. You’re right. I can’t ask you to forgive me, but can we start again? Can I make things up to you?”
Her eyes flashed at him, her mouth hard. “What a clever little idea, start again, erase all the past. It can’t be done. I could never trust you again, never love you again. You could never change. The first time I said, ‘Hello,’ to another man, you’d be accusing me of everything you could think of. I’m sure that someday you’d wonder if Miranda was your child or some other man’s. Cord has blue eyes.”
He looked as if he’d been struck, and he stepped away from her. “Then there’s nothing I can do or say?”
“Nothing.”
“Then someday someone else will be a father to my daughter?”
“My daughter. You have no claim on her.”
He stepped very close to her, put his hand to her cheek, the warm, hard palm against the smooth, soft skin. “I love you, Lynna. Doesn’t that mean anything? I’ve never said it to anyone else before.”
She stared at him coldly. “Once it would have meant the world to me, but it comes too late now.”
He moved away from her. “Do you want me to go away from here and leave you alone?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Let me find the pieces of myself and make a new life for Miranda and me. I think I can do it now, now that I’m rid of you.”
He nodded, his long-lashed eyes blinking rapidly. “If you ever need me,” he whispered, but he choked, then turned and left her.
Miranda was frightened when she heard her mother’s voice, so angry and loud. She held the kitten over her arm and looked up from under the porch. Her mother was shouting at a tall man, the man Aunt Nettie knew. Miranda’s eyes teared as her mother’s anger grew and grew. She didn’t like the sound and wanted it to stop.
The tears rolled down her little cheeks and she opened her mouth to let the sound escape, but the kitten suddenly leaped from her arm and scampered out from under the far side of the porch. Miranda closed her mouth and sniffed as she watched the little black and white kitten chase a big, blue butterfly. Miranda dropped to her hands and knees and crawled from under the porch, following the kitten. She pushed herself up and ran across the clover toward the kitten and the butterfly, the fear her mother’s anger had given her forgotten.
The door to the schoolhouse was open,
and Miranda forgot the kitten as she climbed the three stairs, one at a time. She knew the schoolhouse, knew it had something to do with her mother and the games of the older children. She tripped on the rough floor and sat down heavily. She started to cry and then realized there was no one there to hear her, so she stopped and stood and walked toward the big desk at the back of the room. She peered behind the chair and saw a snug little cave, warm and secret and she climbed inside. She sat down and looked about her, liked the little place and lay down on her side and went to sleep.
“See, I told you ain’t nobody here,” the boy said. “Now you gonna do it or you too afraid?”
“I ain’t afraid!”
“Ssh. Somebody’s comin! Let’s get out of here.”
The two boys ran from the schoolhouse to the edge of the woods. “See, there ain’t nobody.”
“Well, just the same, there could ’a been. Hey! What’d you do with the lantern?”
The boy looked at his right hand as if amazed that the lantern wasn’t there. “I guess I left it inside.”
“You gotta go back and get it.”
“Not me. I ain’t goin’ in there at night.”
“When my pa finds out I took one of his lanterns, I’m gonna tell him it was you what done it.”
“Me? You’re a liar then.”
The boys jumped simultaneously toward one another and rolled together in their fighting.
The kitten saw the open door to the schoolhouse and padded softly inside. On the floor sat the lantern, its little blaze flickering, up and down, orange and yellow, moving, enticing the kitten. It watched the flame a moment, head to one side, and then stuck out one white-tipped paw toward the heat, but the kitten soon realized it would take some strategy to control this foe. Quietly, it jumped onto one of the school benches, studied the flickering light, getting to know its erratic movements and then pounced, its little body upsetting the lantern, spilling its contents on the floor.
The fire burned the kitten’s left leg and it screamed and ran outside into the cool night air. The clover helped to ease the pain and the kitten sat down to lick the wound, glad the hair was only singed. Repaired and its dignity regained once again, the kitten walked away from the schoolhouse, its tail in the air, never once looking back.
The boys continued to wrestle, not really serious, until one of them saw the flames.
“Look! The school’s on fire.”
The other boy paused with his fist drawn back as he looked at the fire beginning to show through the side window. “You did it,” he said as his arm dropped. “You left the lantern in there.”
“But it was you that give it to me.”
“Whatever happens, both of us is gonna get skinned.”
“You know it! Look, it’s just the schoolhouse, ain’t like it was somebody’s house or there was somebody inside. If it burns down we get out of school for a long time, maybe even forever.”
The other boy looked on in wonder. “You’re right. The school burns down, won’t be no more school. We better get out of here ’fore somebody comes and we get blamed for what was only a accident.”
The Squire was the first person to see the glow of the flames and he rang the bell on the end of his porch, the bell that was sounded only in times of emergency.
“What’s up? Injuns again?” Butch Gather waddled toward the Squire’s house.
“The schoolhouse is on fire! Let’s get a bucket brigade going.”
“Hmph!” Butch muttered as he wheezed after the Squire. “Why not let it burn? Then there wouldn’t be no more trouble with that schoolteacher.”
The flames already covered one side of the building, long skinny tongues of orange slithering out the window, trying to reach the roof. It seemed that many people of Spring Lick thought as Butch did and were reluctant to help. They didn’t want school to take their children away from work anymore, and no one regretted seeing it burn. It was only the anger and the orders of the Squire that made any of them scurry away after their buckets.
The front door of the school burst open, and a sheer wall of flame showed inside, and many people smiled because they knew they wouldn’t be able to save much of the building.
Linnet came running through the night toward the blaze. She ran to the Squire and put her hands on his arm, stopping him from passing the bucket of water. “Miranda. I can’t find Miranda,” she yelled over the noise.
He pushed her away. “There isn’t time now to look for her. We’ll find her later. Get in line and get a bucket.”
Linnet looked toward the blaze, the dancing lights showing her red and swollen face. The school meant nothing to her while Miranda was everything. She turned and walked away from the people who tried to douse the fire.
Nettie came running across the field, her two daughters behind her. “Oh, Linnet,” she said. “I’m sorry about the school. I know you were proud of it. It looks like it’s too far gone to save.”
“Yes,” Linnet said absently, her eyes searching the oddly illuminated night.
“At least Miranda got out,” Rebekah said.
Both Nettie and Linnet turned to her.
“I didn’t mean nothin’.” The ten-year-old girl stepped back from the intense scrutiny of the adults.
Linnet grabbed the girl’s shoulders. “What did you mean about Miranda?” she demanded.
“Ain’t you got her?” Rebekah stammered. “I mean I seen her in the schoolhouse just a while ago.”
Nettie pried Linnet’s fingers from Rebekah’s arm. “Now, Rebekah, I want you to tell us exactly what you’re talkin’ about.”
“I was goin’ to the spring and I saw Miranda goin’ into the schoolhouse. The door was open so I thought Mrs. Tyler was in there.”
Linnet turned, picked up her skirts and began to run back to the fire. The people had stopped throwing water on the building, but stood ringed around the blaze, ready to stop any flying sparks. Only the back of the cabin remained whole.
Linnet ran straight toward the flames, not pausing for a second, not noticing the brilliant heat.
“Linnet!” the Squire yelled and grabbed her waist. She began to kick and claw at him, writhing, doubling as she fought against him, more animal than human.
“My God, Linnet! What’s wrong with you?” He couldn’t believe anyone so tiny could have so much strength. He held her with both arms about her waist and the pain as her heels struck his shins was no little matter. They were too close to the searing heat of the fire.
“It’s Miranda,” Nettie yelled at the Squire over the roar. “Linnet thinks Miranda is in there.”
He understood and he frowned, but if the child was in there, she couldn’t be alive any longer, not with the front of the cabin a wall of flame. “Linnet!” He tried to get her attention but could not. She still kicked, and his hands were raw and bloody from her nails. “Linnet! You can’t save her. Listen to me! She is in God’s hands now.”
Later it was said that the scream Linnet gave was more horrible than anything anyone had imagined before. It was a long, hollow wail of agony and pain, and of hopelessness. It sounded above the fire, above the shouts of others, above the sounds of the dark, bleak night, and not a person or creature hearing it did not stop and shudder.
Devon seemed to appear instantly and from nowhere. “What is it?” he demanded of the Squire.
“Miranda,” the man said, a limp, senseless Linnet in his bleeding arms. He motioned his head toward the fire.
Devon did not lose a second. He tore the shirt from his body, wet it in a bucket, rolled it into a lump and put it to his face. He then ran straight into the flames. Only Nettie reacted enough to scream “No!” at him but he didn’t hear her.
The child lay huddled on the floor, her face wrapped in her long skirts, the desk over her head having given her some brief protection from the fire. She slept, drugged by the smoke and the heat. Devon took the little body and wrapped her completely in his shirt and she did not waken.
Quickly, he looked
about him. There was as yet no fire in the back of the cabin, but the solid log wall offered no means of escape. The windows on either side were both aflame and too small for him to carry his daughter through. The only exit was the front, the way he had entered, and already he felt the skin on his back and arms as it pulled and burned.
He held the unconscious baby to his chest, holding her firmly into a tight little knot, sure that her body was protected by his. He took a breath of the smoke-filled air, put his face against the lump that was Miranda and ran straight through to the outside, his moccasined feet little protected from the burning, red-hot floor.
The Squire shook Linnet to make her look up as Devon held the bundle out to her.
“I think she’s all right,” he said huskily.
Linnet didn’t look at him but greedily snatched her daughter from Devon’s grasp. She pulled back the shirt, the skirts covering the child’s face. Miranda lay perfectly still for one long, breathless moment and then gave a little cough, her eyes opening slightly and then going back to sleep.
Linnet began to cry. Great huge globules of tears of relief tore their way through her body. She clutched Miranda to her, rocking her, holding her, aware of nothing but that her daughter was well and alive and in her arms.
Nettie and the Squire hovered over her, both of them relieved that the child was unhurt. No one noticed the tall, dark man slip away past the crowd, the fire and the noise. He walked steadily to his horse, breathing lightly, his mind concentrating on the single objective of reaching his horse. He came very close to making it. He fell, face forward, his hand clutching the reins.
“Ma.” Rebekah tugged her mother’s skirt.
“Not now, Becky,” Nettie said. “Let’s help Mrs. Tyler get Miranda to her cabin.”
“Ma, it’s that man.”
“What man?” Nettie demanded of her daughter.
“That man that saved Miranda. He just fell down.”
Sweetbriar Page 13