Claire, Angela - Heart of Stone (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Angela Claire

  “No need to be shy, girl. You and I are going to have a little fun before I do my business.”

  “Jake will kill you!”

  “If he ever found out, maybe. But we’re not going to linger around hereabouts and give him the chance. You’re coming with me, you whore. I have just the place where you and I can be alone.”

  She made a wild lunge for the doorway, and Winthrop caught her around the waist, swinging her around and knocking her to the floor. Her head banged painfully against the wood.

  “Don’t make me kill you here, girl, and have to lug your body around to get rid of it. I like tail as much as the next fella, and I’m too old to be carting a hundred pounds of deadweight around, but I’ll shoot you here if I have to.”

  Holding her throbbing head, she noticed he had drawn his gun and had it pointed right at her.

  “Get up now.”

  “You’re insane,” she muttered, but she got up.

  “Now put that gown on over there. Can’t have you dying of exposure before I get my turn.”

  She picked up the nightgown on the foot of the bed where Jake had thrown it when he took it off her that last time. Jake. She felt a terrible pang of loss. Lord, by the time he and Ginny got back and saw she was gone, who knew where Winthrop could have her hidden away? She pulled the gown on, eager at least in this to cooperate with him so she could shield her naked body. Once she’d complied, he grabbed her arm and started leading her out of the house. His grip was bruising for an old man, not to mention the cold barrel of the gun he kept on her back as they walked.

  Outside by his horse, he took a length of rope from the saddle and tied her hands and legs. Her brief struggle at the beginning earned her a backhanded slap that nearly whipped her head off. When she was tied, he hoisted her up to the saddle, laying her face down and climbed up in front of her.

  “This will all be over soon, girl.”

  * * * *

  Jake couldn’t ever recall feeling quite this good. The sun was shining, the sky was clear blue, and he was on his way to pick up his baby girl. He hummed a long forgotten tune. Of course the fact that he’d just had the best sex of his life didn’t hurt his mood none either.

  He heard the riders before he saw them, the hard pounding of hooves telling him somebody was riding fast this way. He slowed the horse at the head of his wagon. In no time flat, Jesse reigned in a huffing beast right up next to him, Regina Winthrop right behind him. What the…?

  “Where’s Melinda?”

  “She’s back at the house. Why?”

  “You left her alone? Jesus.”

  “What is this, Jesse? What’s wrong?”

  “Get on behind me, Reggie. Jake, take her horse and follow me back to the house as fast as you can. We may already be too late.”

  The speed with which Regina transferred herself from her horse to Jesse’s and they took off was damn worrisome. Jake jumped down from his wagon and up onto the saddle of the big mare and spurred her on after them, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was just a split second behind them when they got to the house and jumped off the horses, not bothering to tie them up. The door to the house was open.

  “Melinda?” Jake called, heading to the bedroom. The blue quilt lay in a tumble on the floor, the side table was knocked over, and Melinda was nowhere to be seen.

  Jesse crouched down and touched his finger to a dark stain near the discarded coverlet. He looked at his finger and then up at Jake. “It’s blood.”

  “Goddamn it, Jesse. What the hell has happened? What’s wrong? Where’s Melinda?”

  Regina Winthrop hesitated in the doorway.

  Jesse stood up. “Tell him.”

  “It’s my father, Jake. He’s gone insane. I’m afraid, well, I’m very much afraid he’s taken Melinda and…and will hurt her.”

  “Melinda? Why would he hurt Melinda? What’s going on?”

  “I’m sorry, Jake.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “When your wife died—”

  “What does Victoria have to do with this?”

  “Well, when she died, I, well, I worried that it was a little too convenient. My father, he-he talked all the time about how nice it would be if she passed and you could marry. I, well, I told myself that daddy had nothing to do with it. Everybody said she was sick, and I…I decided to put it out of my mind and just do what he wanted so nobody else would get hurt. So I tried. I tried to make you want me.”

  Jesse swore. “Tell him about today, Regina.”

  Regina took a deep breath. “Ever since the dance last night, Daddy’s been crazy, saying things about Melinda, acting…well… and when he called this one worker into his study this morning, this awful man who just showed up a few months ago and makes my skin crawl just to be in the same room with him, I listened in outside the door. I was worried, you see. They were shouting. This man said it was one thing smothering an invalid, but…”

  “Fuck.” Jake felt such a rage, but he clamped down on it. He had to find out what this all had to do with Melinda, though he very much feared he knew.

  “He said smothering an invalid and making it look like a natural death was one thing, but abducting and—” Regina’s voice cracked. “—killing a woman and getting rid of her body was another. He wouldn’t do it because there was too much risk of getting caught. So Daddy said he would just do it himself and then he burst out of his study and saw me there. He knocked me out cold before I could say a word.”

  Jake suddenly noticed the purpling along Regina’s cheekbone.

  “When I woke up, he was already gone. I came here as fast as I could, and I saw Jesse on the way and thought he could… he could…” She started a soft pitiable weeping. “But we’re too late.”

  “We’re not too late,” Jake said fiercely. “They can’t have been gone long. I just left a little while ago. Think. Where would he have taken her if he wanted to kill her? There’s not enough blood for that to have happened here.”

  Regina whispered, “I think I might know…”

  * * * *

  They were in some sort of a cave in the corner of a rock ledge. Winthrop had left the horse a while back and, for all his talk of being an old man, carried Melinda the rest of the way. Her hands were still tied behind her back, but when they’d gotten there, he flopped her onto the dusty ground and untied her legs. He reached a clammy hand between them. “I got to have these open, don’t I?”

  He stood over her and took off his gun belt.

  “Why are you doing this? Can you at least tell me that? What have I ever done to you?”

  “You fucked Stone.”

  She didn’t bother to deny it. “Why would you care?”

  “I don’t, long as he keeps you just as a whore. But when he starts to talk about making you his wife and looks at you the way he did last night, like the sight of that no-good Jesse Whelan taking a turn with you around the dance floor was like to kill him, well then, I got a problem. Cause Jake Stone ain’t gonna marry no one but my Regina. See, for all he plays at being just some rancher, working his spread, hiring a few cowhands, that man has a shitload of money back in some Boston bank, money that could save my spread, could build my spread into something. Money that’s gonna be mine once Regina marries him, and then of course he’s gonna have to have a little accident of his own.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “You’ll pardon me, Missy, if I don’t much care about your opinion of me at this point.” His hand was on his zipper. He didn’t appear to be an old man in this respect either. She could tell from the bulge in his pants and the lascivious look in his eye that he was capable of raping her. With her hands tied behind her back, the most she could do was try to place a well-aimed kick. That might slow him down. He had flung his gun belt to the side. If she could just unman him and then get to it in time, she might have a fighting chance.

  “You touch her, Winthrop, you’re a dead man.”

  She had never been so happy to hear another human
voice in all her born days.

  “Jake.” But before she could even get the single syllable out, Winthrop rolled to the floor and grabbed her, pulling both of them to their feet, and suddenly her throat was in his big rough hands. She gasped as he squeezed a little, apparently just to show Jake who was in charge.

  “I don’t think so, Stone. I can snap her neck before you can even shoot me, I swear I can.”

  “Just let her go. It’s over, Winthrop. I know what you did to Victoria, and you’ll hang for that, let alone what you tried to do to Melinda … if I don’t shoot you first.”

  “Big words, Jake. But I seen how you look at this whore.”

  Jake’s mouth tightened, but he held the gun steady, pointed right at Winthrop’s head.

  “I kill her, what good’s it gonna do to kill me? You love her. Any fool can see that. That’s why she had to die in the first place.”

  “If you let her go now, I’ll give you a fair start on trying to get away. You have my word.”

  “Get away to what? I can’t start over all again. I got my place here. I got my daughter.”

  He had no sooner uttered the words than Regina Winthrop was suddenly in the mouth of the cave, standing right beside Jake. She looked dusty and shaken, so different than Melinda had ever seen her. Her voice shook as she reached her arms out to her father. “Don’t do this, Daddy. I’m begging you.”

  “Stay back, little girl. I’m sorry I had to belt you one back there, and I don’t want to do what I got to do in front of you, but I will if I have to.”

  “Please, Daddy…”

  “Stay back! I’m warning you.”

  Winthrop backed away, dragging Melinda with him, farther into the cave. Jake advanced slowly as well, the gun still trained on Winthrop. The shot disoriented her, because it came from behind where she and Winthrop were standing, not in front. Winthrop let go of her abruptly and collapsed with a cry, and there was Jesse Whelan, gun in hand, behind them. He’d come out of the darkness of what she had assumed was a closed cave.

  Melinda was in Jake’s arms a second later. Whether he had come to her or she had come to him, she didn’t know. It just felt so good to be safe, to be leaning her head on his shoulder, comforted by the warmth of him.

  “My God, Melinda. I could have lost you.”

  Jesse leaned over Winthrop, turning him over brusquely. “It’s in his shoulder. He’s not going to die, Reggie. Not yet anyway. We’ll see what the law has to say about him though.”

  Regina approached, her hand over her mouth, but before she could get there, somehow Winthrop grabbed the gun he’d thrown to the ground earlier.

  Jake quickly pushed Melinda behind him. Winthrop put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Jesse rushed to Regina and turned her away, but Melinda didn’t know if she had seen the terrible remains of what had once been her father. Melinda knew she had, and with half his head blown away, she hoped his daughter had been spared that image.

  * * * *

  They left Winthrop’s body in the cave. The undertaker would have to retrieve it later. For now, it was as much as they could do for all four of them, Melinda on the back of Jake’s horse and Regina on the back of Jesse’s, to ride into town and tell their story to the sheriff. Regina’s halting, tear-choked admission of what she had heard from her father chilled Melinda almost as much as her own recount of Winthrop’s violent abduction did. In the end, there wasn’t much to be done for it, except to try to catch the man who Regina had heard talking to her father in his study. She and Jesse rode away with the sheriff to the Winthrop spread to try to do so, but all involved assumed the man had long ago ridden off, probably never to be found.

  As they sat in the sheriff’s office, preparing to go home, Jake’s arm still securely around Melinda, he said to the deputy, “Can we have just a minute here?”

  The deputy nodded. “’Bout time for my dinner anyway. I’ll head over to the hotel. You take care, Jake. Ma’am.” And with that, they were alone.

  Jake rested his head on hers. “Melinda, I can’t say how sorry I am for all of this.”

  Melinda pulled back to look into his tired eyes. “None of this was your fault, Jake. You have nothing to feel sorry for.”

  “It was. I was spouting off to Winthrop when we were in town how I might marry you. I did it just to get him off my back. I had no idea he’d—”

  She held a finger up to his lips. “Shhh. Don’t be silly. This isn’t your fault.”

  He kissed her fingertips but then pulled them away. “Let me finish. I was spouting off about marrying you, not believing for a minute that I meant it, but Winthrop was right. I did mean it. I was just so much a God-awful fool I didn’t know it. When I thought I lost you today… Melinda, I love you. I do. Will you marry me?”

  It wasn’t exactly the typical scene for a marriage proposal, her shaking in her dirty, tattered nightgown, both of them dazed and exhausted from the events of the day. But it was about the sweetest thing she’d ever heard.

  What she had to say in response was just about the saddest, to her anyway. “I love you, too, Jake. I have from the first. That’s why I made love to you, because I couldn’t face living without having just, just been with you. And I don’t regret a second of it.” He leaned down, a smile on his face to kiss her, and she let him. But when it ended, she said. “I can’t marry you, Jake.”

  It hurt her to say it, and it looked like it stunned him to hear it. Part of her smiled at his arrogance even while she was crushed she would have to disappoint him. “I would give anything to marry you, Jake. I would. I’m more honored than I can say that you would ask me. But I have to say no.”

  “Why?”

  She hesitated, but she knew she was going to have to explain, going to have to tell this man she loved the secret that she wanted no one else, especially not him, to ever know. It just wasn’t fair otherwise. She owed him an explanation.

  “I suspect I know why,” a familiar voice at the door said. They both turned in surprise.

  “Lil.” Jake stood up and went to the doorway, kissing the withered, paper-thin cheek of the tiny woman who had entered, a young man holding a suitcase behind her. “Jesus, what are you doing here? Could this day get any more bizarre?”

  “I expect not,” she said sternly, “from what I’ve been hearing around town and what the deputy just told me. You alright?”

  “I’m fine, Lil.”

  “Good. And you?” She turned her bright blue gaze on Melinda, who rose and went to take her hands. “You look a little worse for wear, but you’re a hardy young thing. I told my boy here that, and I can see it’s proven true.”

  “She’s amazing,” Jake said, a little muted.

  “But she says she won’t marry you, eh, Jake? Not something you thought you’d ever hear, you conceited young rascal, is it?”

  Jake smiled. “Not something I wanted to hear from Melinda at any rate. And I’m still waiting to hear why, when she says she loves me.”

  “Jake, can we just go somewhere for a minute? I need to tell you something.”

  “Oh, hogwash. I know what you think you need to tell him, my dear. That your mother went insane, that she was insane even before she delivered you, and that’s it’s hereditary, so you’re any moment likely to go stark raving mad. That’s it, right?”

  Melinda blanched. To hear it said out loud, for the first time since she had heard it herself those many months ago, shocked her.

  “Lil,” Jake said, putting a protective arm around Melinda. “Just wait a minute here.”

  “No, I’m an old woman, and I can’t wait even a minute. Once I heard that tomfoolery—”

  “Hogwash,” the young man with her interrupted mildly, drawing their attention for a minute. Now who was he?

  “Hogwash, tomfoolery, whatever you want to call it. Once I heard it, I had to come out here right away. And I brought this young fellow with me, a fine young doctor I’m pleased to say who was good enough to fill in for us at the orphanage for a
while, but who had a hankering to go west. Jake and Melinda, I want you to meet Dr. Scott here.”

  Doctor? He looked too young to be a doctor, certainly in comparison to the old doctor at St. Michael’s, the lecherous old sod. Dr. Rathbone. Even the name was distasteful to Melinda.

  Melinda and Jake looked at Dr. Scott, speechless. They turned back to Lil, who continued.

  “Melinda, I know what that ass who called himself a doctor told you back in Boston, but he was lying. Dr. Rathbone told you that your mother was institutionalized after she had you and died shortly thereafter in an insane asylum. That the neighbors who brought you to the orphanage gave him your mother’s files and he confirmed she had a type of hereditary insanity that you would surely inherit any time now. That you could never risk having children or marrying, that’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, he said I should stay there where he could keep an eye on me.”

  “His hands on you more likely. Melinda, he used this ruse more than once with one of our unsuspecting girls. It was only when one of them, after years, came forward and told me that I realized what was going on under our very noses. He was preying on girls, only a few, only the ones he wanted, and filling them with this horrible dread so that they would become dependent on him and, well, I’m sure you can guess the rest.”

  She remembered his leers and clammy hands on her shoulders, and she didn’t doubt that was what he meant to do to her. But thanks to Lil, she unwittingly escaped him.

  “Is…was, any of it true? What he said about my mother?”

  Dr. Scott came forward, digging a file out of the side pocket of the suitcase he carried. He handed it to her. “Your mother died in childbirth, Miss O’Chauncey. Unfortunately a common occurrence, especially when a woman has a doctor as incompetent as the one who attended your mother. Dr. Rathbone, as I’m sure you guessed. A pathetic doctor, but rather a good record keeper, unfortunately for him. It’s all here. Your mother was Brigid O’Chauncey, and she wasn’t sixteen as he had told you. She was twenty-two, and she was married.”