High Country Bride

by Linda Lael Miller

  “I’ll take those,” she said, reaching for the buckets.

  “Concepcion wants clean linens and some scissors.”

  Rafe nodded, taking in Emmeline’s bloodstained dress, and allowed her to take the heavy buckets. By the time he returned with the items she’d requested, she and Concepcion had washed the impossibly small infant boy, wrapped him, and laid him on top of the bureau.

  Emmeline cut and tore the sheets and, once again, Concepcion packed them inside Phoebe Anne, who had already lost consciousness. Rafe lingered in the doorway for a moment, then left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Emmeline had not expected Phoebe Anne to survive the night, but when Kade returned just before dawn, with the doctor in tow, the young woman was sitting up in bed, holding her stillborn baby and stroking his downy head with slow, gentle motions of her index finger.

  “Seth and our baby, both gone,” she murmured in an almost singsong tone.“Whatever am I going to do?”

  Emmeline slipped out of the room and stood in the corridor, with both hands pressed to her face. She sagged against the wall and sobbed uncontrollably; her spirit had gone dark with sorrow, and she was exhausted.

  She hadn’t heard Rafe approach, didn’t resist when he took her arm.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  He led her into their room, where the copper bathtub waited in front of the small woodstove, the water steaming. He undressed her, garment by garment, as though she were a weary child, helped her into the tub, and carefully washed away all traces of the horrid night just past.

  She wept softly, not only for Phoebe Anne but for herself, and for all women. The realities of childbirth, she’d just discovered, bore no resemblance to the lovely experience of her imaginings.

  Chapter 7

  JEB AND ONE OF THE RANCH HANDS built two pine-board coffins, one large and one small, and Seth Pelton and his baby boy were buried side by side on the homestead. Angus officiated at the funeral, reading solemnly from the Good Book, since the circuit preacher was miles away. Phoebe Anne was well enough to attend, though just barely, and she swooned, toward the last, and had to be taken back to the Triple M ranch house before the service had ended.

  Emmeline explored the tumbledown shack of a cabin while Rafe and Kade and two men from the range crew filled in the graves and mounded them over with stones.

  It was sobering to think what it must have been like for Phoebe Anne and her husband, living in that cramped little space, with no creature comforts and barely enough to eat, knowing all along that a baby was on the way.

  Emmeline’s eyes filled with tears as she gathered the things she knew Phoebe Anne would want most—a battered Bible, a brown dress with frayed cuffs and collar, a mourning brooch fashioned of human hair, and a few letters from the family she and Seth had left behind in Iowa. The Peltons’ other belongings, pots, utensils, tools and the like—and these were pitifully few—could be gathered later.

  Rafe dusted his hands together as he stepped through the front door of the Pelton cabin to find Emmeline sitting forlornly on the bed, Phoebe Anne’s humble treasures in her lap.

  “You ready to leave now?” he asked quietly. Things had changed between them in the two days since Phoebe Anne had lost both her husband and her child; Emmeline kept to her own side of the bed at night, and Rafe didn’t reach for her.

  She nodded.“This is such a wretched place,” she said.

  Rafe held his round-brimmed hat in one hand and ran the other through his dark hair. “You blame me for this, don’t you, Emmeline?”

  Her attention had wandered; now she looked directly at her husband.“No,” she said.“It’s not your fault that the baby died, or that Seth Pelton shot himself.”

  “Then why, Emmeline? Why are you keeping your distance? Even hen you’re right beside me, it seems you’re a thousand miles away.”

  She lifted her chin, unable to answer the question for him because she had yet to answer it for herself. “No one from town came to the service, even though Doc Boylen surely spread the word when he went back to town. None of the neighboring ranchers were here, either. Why is that, Rafe?”

  “The Peltons were squatters,” Rafe said in a calm, matter-of-fact tone.

  “Phoebe Anne wasn’t, and neither was that poor little baby. They were on this land because Seth brought them here.”

  Rafe thrust out a heavy sigh. “You do blame me,” he said.

  “You could have been kinder,” Emmeline told him. Their arms brushed as she passed him, carrying Phoebe Anne’s things, headed for the surrey waiting outside.

  Rafe followed, but he didn’t speak. He helped Emmeline into the rig and walked around to climb in beside her and take the reins. The drive back to the ranch was a silent one, for Emmeline was lost in the landscape of her thoughts.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Kade told Rafe, in an earnest undertone, when Emmeline had gone into the house and the two men were out by the barn, unhitching the surrey. “Emmeline’s scared, that’s all. Hell, any woman would be, after watching somebody go through what Phoebe Anne Pelton just experienced.”

  Rafe knew well enough what horrors Emmeline had seen; he’d washed the blood off her, carried her to bed, and soothed her until she slept. He’d held her, when she woke sobbing from a nightmare, and in the morning, he’d helped Concepcion scrub down the spare room from top to bottom. He’d burned the mattress and brought another one in from the barn, where he and Kade and Jeb used to sleep on hot summer nights, when they were boys.

  He shook his head, but the remembered horrors of Phoebe Anne’s ordeal held fast to his mind. “I’m damn near as scared as she is,” he admitted, “but like I said, it’s more than fear. Emmeline thinks none of this would have happened if I’d welcomed Seth Pelton, told him sure, go ahead, take a piece of our land—”

  Kade laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “She’s upset,” he said.“Give her some time.”

  Rafe sighed, then nodded. The brothers finished their work, then headed into the house.

  Concepcion was busy at the kitchen stove, getting an early supper ready, and Emmeline was preparing a tray, probably for Pelton’s young widow, who was most likely settled again in the spare-room bed upstairs. Emmeline wouldn’t look at Rafe when he tried to catch her eye.

  Kade hung his hat beside the door and shrugged out of his coat. Then he gave Rafe an almost imperceptible push toward Emmeline.

  “Let me take that,” Rafe said, reaching for the tray.

  She shook her head, still refusing to meet his gaze.

  Concepcion added a chunk of wood to the fire in the cookstove. She was still wearing her funeral clothes, as Emmeline was, though they’d both donned aprons. “Emmeline will be all right, Rafe,” the older woman said quietly.“Just let her be for a while.”

  Rafe wanted to take Emmeline aside and tell her that she’d never suffer the kind of horrors Phoebe Anne had, that he’d keep her and all their children safe, no matter what. The only problem was, he couldn’t rightly make such a promise—no honest man could. Life was just too damn unpredictable.

  He took in what Concepcion said and nodded grimly.

  Twenty minutes later, he and Kade and Angus and Concepcion were seated around the table, dining on cornbread and beans, when Emmeline finally descended the stairs.

  Kade, who’d been to town most recently, was in the middle of telling them about the new arrival in Indian Rock, a Mrs. Charles Fairmont, from Kansas City, who already had practically everybody in town calling her by her given name, which was Becky.

  The color drained out of Emmeline’s face. Her hands trembled and, before Rafe could make a move to help her, her tray tilted and a full load of crockery clattered to the floor with a reverberating crash.

  Becky Harding—alias Mrs. Charles T. Fairmont III—was indeed registered at the Territorial Hotel, just as Kade had said at the ranch the night before, after the funeral. In fact, when Emmeline entered the
lobby, Rafe having gone on to the livery stable to leave off the horses and wagon, Becky was right there, holding court, clad in an exquisite day dress of royal blue, with a fine coat to match. She stood square in the center of the room, a statue of Aphrodite brought to life by means of some wicked magic, looking positively ageless.

  Catching sight of Emmeline, she narrowed her eyes and swept toward her, admirers, gentlemen, and ruffians alike falling back in her wake, like a sea divided.

  “Well,” she said, in that familiar, imperious voice. There was no embrace, as one might have expected—anyone besides Emmeline, that is—after a separation. “Emmeline. I was just on my way to see you at the Triple M. What a stroke of good fortune to find you here.”

  Emmeline took in the bevy of prospectors, fancy men, cowboys, and farmers assembled to pay homage to her aunt, and whispered,“What are you doing here?”

  Becky took her hand in a grip tight enough to fuse her knuckles together. “Why, I came to see you, my dear,” she trilled, and proceeded to drag Emmeline toward the stairs. “We will discuss our business in private. I’m sure these gentlemen will understand.”

  Emmeline wouldn’t have dared to object; she had too much to lose if Becky were to explain their affiliation in too much detail. She looked back at the crowd of spectators, all of them staring up at her and Becky, and wondered how much they already knew about Mrs. Rafe McKettrick’s scandalous past.

  Becky pulled her into a spacious room at the rear of the hotel and slammed the door hard. Emmeline had never seen her aunt cry, not even in the worst of times, but there were tears in her eyes now, furious ones.

  “I wouldn’t have believed you’d actually leave!” Becky raged, in a whisper. “How could you, after all—” She paused, took a breath. “Emmeline Harding, if you knew the things that went through my mind—”

  “I wrote you a letter,” Emmeline said softly. She regretted the terms she and Becky had parted on, and she was very glad to see her aunt again. Still, she’d come to the Triple M to live with Rafe as his wife, and, hard as it was, she wated to make the marriage work. If Rafe ever found out what she’d done that night in Chloe’s old room, with a complete stranger, and for money, she’d be run out of town on the proverbial rail.

  Becky was in a position to ruin everything, and she clearly knew it. She pointed imperiously at a chair. “Sit,” she said.

  Emmeline sat, but grudgingly, and with a little flounce of her skirts. She folded her hands and held her head high, though a part of her, the little-girl part, wanted very much to fly into Becky’s arms and cling to her, to say she was sorry. “If you’re planning to ask me to come back to Kansas City,” she said instead,“please don’t.”

  Becky had been pacing, arms folded, but at Emmeline’s words, she stopped and flushed to her hairline. “That,” she snapped, “is just about the last thing I’d ever do.”

  “Then why did you come here? Obviously, you’re still angry with me.”

  “Angry? The word hardly suffices. I’d like to throttle you,” Becky said, and then began pacing again, even faster than before. “Have you any idea of the things that couldhave happened to you between Kansas City and this godforsaken outpost? Women traveling alone have been robbed, kidnapped, and even killed. More than a few wind up in Indian camps, slaves, tattoos covering their entire bodies, or find themselves in the hold of some riverboat, bound for New Orleans and a kind of life you couldn’t imagine in your worst nightmares!”

  Emmeline swallowed, squirmed a little, waited for the diatribe to cease or at least subside. There would be no reasoning with Becky until some of the steam had escaped.

  “Emmeline, I was out of my mind with worry!” Becky cried, coming to a standstill at last. “If you’d only stayed, we could have worked things out—”

  Emmeline sighed. “You know what would have happened, and so do I,” she said quietly. “And as much as I love you, I don’t want to be what you are.”

  She had not meant the words unkindly, but she saw that their impact was shattering to Becky, even though she shouldn’t have been surprised. Becky had always wanted a different life for Emmeline; that was why she’d sent her to school, encouraged her interest in books and music, and kept her strictly separate from the family enterprise.

  Until the Texan arrived, that is.

  Becky’s face took on a grayish cast, and Emmeline felt every bit as guilty as if she’d drawn back her hand and slapped her aunt with all her strength.“And what, exactly, am I, Emmeline?” she asked.

  The ensuing silence was shrill.

  “You are my aunt,” Emmeline said. “You are the only blood relation I have.”

  “And I am—or have been—a prostitute.”

  Emmeline’s stomach turned over, and though she tried to speak, she couldn’t utter a word. She’d tried many times to separate what Becky did for a living from what she was—a strong, vital, intelligent woman and a determined survivor—but it was hard, given society’s attitude in general. And Rafe McKettrick’s in particular.

  “Do you feel superior to me?” Becky asked mildly. Her elegant nostrils had reddened a little, and there was fire in her eyes.

  Emmeline shook her head. Whether a woman sold her body once or a thousand, times, she was still a whore. Emmeline had a stack of gold coins to remind her of her own fallible nature; she was in no position to throw stones. “Of course not,” she whispered, but she couldn’t meet Becky’s gaze, even though she felt it burning into her.“I was never ashamed of you. Never. Only of myself.”

  Becky started to speak, then stopped. She raised both hands, signaling a respite from their discussion, swept over to the door, opened it, and called for someone named Clive. A few moments later, he arrived, and Becky slipped out to speak with the man in the hallway, ordering hot tea, with plenty of milk and sugar, and cookies, if there were any to be had.

  “Mr. McKettrick’s here, asking about his wife,” Clive said, in response.

  Emmeline thought she’d exhausted all her sorrows, but now tears threatened once again. As soon as Rafe heard the complete story, and Becky was in just the mood to tell it, she might have no choice but to follow in her aunt’s footsteps.

  “I’d like to meet him,” Becky said to Clive, but taking care to make sure Emmeline heard.“Do send him up.”

  The door closed. “Do you love him?” Becky asked. “This husband of yours?”

  Emmeline nodded, then shook her head, then blew her nose in the starched handkerchief Becky provided. “I don’t know,” she said. She knew what she’d always imagined love to be, but what she and Rafe were building together was something different, and not so easily named. “I think we could be happy together, given time.”

  “And you’re afraid I’m going to spoil that for you?” Becky had returned to her chair now, and she looked deeply into Emmeline’s eyes.

  “I hope not,” Emmeline said, glancing nervously toward the door.

  Becky sighed and settled back, her elegant hands resting gracefully on the arms of her chair. “I would never do such a thing to my own child,” she said.“But the truth has a way of coming out, Emmeline. That’s the sad fact of the matter.”

  My own child.

  Now it was Emmeline’s turn to be stunned. She had considered the possibility before, of course, but always dismissed it. It was as if the sky and the earth had just changed places; nothing, whether Rafe ever learned what she’d done or not, would ever be the same. She put one hand to her mouth.

  “I didn’t plan to tell you this way,” Becky said, her usually straight shoulders stooping a little. She met Emmeline’s gaze steadily, even proudly, but with a sheen of tears glimmering in her eyes. “Not so bluntly, in any case. But now I’ve said it, and there’s no turning back. You’re my child, Emmeline.”

  Emmeline hardly dared ask.“My father—?”

  Becky smiled sadly. “Charles T. Fairmont III,” she said. “I get a small measure of satisfaction out of using his name whenever I need an alias, as you know. He wa
s a business associate of your grandfather’s. A sophisticated, older man, very charming and handsome. I thought he would marry me when I told him about you.” She sighed and, for a moment, an old grief shadowed her eyes.“I was wrong. He had already married someone else, and of course he promptly denied any involvement with me. My father pronouncd me a trollop and threw me out of the house for good.”

  Stricken to silence, Emmeline could only stare at the other woman. Her mother. On one hand, she felt pity for that long-ago girl, frightened and spurned by her family as well as her lover. She had made some terrible choices in order to make a home for herself and for Emmeline. On the other hand, Emmeline resented, bitterly, all the years she’d been led to believe that she was an orphan.

  “You kept your secret for so long,” Emmeline managed, after some time had passed.“Why?”

  A knock sounded at the door, and both women fell silent. Becky rose and admitted Clive, who was carrying a tea tray. “Mr. McKettrick said he’ll be along in a while,” the anxious little man said. “He’s gone to do some business at the Western Union office.”

  Emmeline closed her eyes, almost dizzy with relief. She would have to face Rafe eventually, but she was grateful for a brief reprieve.

  Clive went out, after glancing curiously at each of the women, and Becky made a ceremony of pouring tea. A minute, two minutes, the silence seemed to go on forever.

  “Why, Becky?” Emmeline repeated.

  “Why didn’t I tell you sooner? I guess I was afraid—I thought you’d be ashamed to have a—to have me for a mother.”

  “There’s something more,” Emmeline said. She had always been perceptive where her aunt—her mother—was concerned, but apparently not perceptive enough.

  “Yes,” Becky admitted. “A great deal more, but quite enough has been said about the past, for one day. I should like to speak of happier things.”