Linda Castle

by The Return of Chase Cordell

  No. There was nothing to worry about, she told herself. Just be patient. She swallowed her fears and forced herself to put one foot in front of the other. A deep intake of breath brought the familiar scent of him to her nostrils, and she experienced a thousand forgotten sensations. She was filled with joy and apprehension at his return.

  There was something odd about him though. He seemed different in a way that was hard to explain. Her eyes told her that Chase Cordell had indeed returned, but her instincts told her something was missing. Something had changed drastically in the two years he had been gone, and it wasn’t only a maturing of his face and body. There was a reservation between them that signified more than just the time he had been away. He was different.

  Chase should have been in his element with the whole town cheering his return. He had always adored admiration and praise, but he seemed anxious to leave the idolization of Mainfield’s populace. Even now, while he smiled and nodded to the people they passed on the way to the Gazette, Linese sensed a strain in him. His behavior was most puzzling, not at all like the brash young man who had swept into the Ferrin County social and demanded her heart.

  He hesitated slightly and appeared to be waiting for her to lead the way to the office, but Linese dismissed that notion as folly. She walked beside him and tried to match her step with the cadence of his limp, without making it obvious she was doing so. His injury was probably the reason for his halting progress. She well remembered his pride. Chase would have walked through fire rather than admit he was in discomfort. Yes, that was surely the reason he kept her fingers tightly within the crook of his arm and glanced at her from time to time.

  After she settled into Cordellane, she had realized that Chase had felt compelled to be a better man than most men, to make up for the mental frailty of his sweet grandfather. In the time he had been away, she had come to understand his need to prove his physical prowess. He had been trying to prove, to himself and everyone else, that he was not afflicted with weakness, not the way Captain Cordell was.

  She understood why Chase felt the way he did. Captain Cordell was ignored and kept out of the mainstream of life in Mainfield, particularly during this conflict about slavery and secession. He was patronized and overlooked, treated like a harmless nuisance by most. Yes, Linese understood what drove Chase Cordell.

  Chase gritted his teeth together and tried to block out the maelstrom inside his mind. The combination of heat, the strain of racking his brain for memory, and trying not to limp beside Linese, made him tired beyond belief. He longed to sit down, to be alone, to find some peace.

  Linese sighed and he knew he should speak to her. He knew he should be making small talk, to find some way of reassuring her obvious fears, but he had little confidence that he could do so without exposing himself as a fraud, so he remained silent. By the time he and Linese had walked the three short blocks to a newspaper office with Gazette painted on the window in bold black letters, he was limping stiffly.

  A wave of embarrassment swept over him when he was forced to place his butter-colored glove against the building for support. Linese pretended not to notice, but Chase knew she did. It sent a bitter feeling through his soul, one he did not understand but found impossible to ignore.

  She unlocked the door with a key she pulled from inside the small cloth reticule dangling from her wrist. When the door opened, the pungent odor of ink and paper permeated the still summer air. Chase filled his lungs with the odor and felt his senses sharpen, but still no memory came from the black abyss of his mind.

  Linese turned to him as soon as they were inside the musty, warm office. Fire sparked inside blue eyes that had appeared as calm as pools only a short while ago. Chase was puzzled and fascinated by the transformation in her.

  “Chase Cordell, I know it goes against your grain to admit any kind of physical weakness, particularly in front of anyone, but it is obvious to me that you are not fully recovered from your injury. Why didn’t you say so? If you have no objection, I’m going to send for Toby Sillers to take us home—immediately.”

  Part of him knew instinctively, without actually remembering, that what she said was true. The man he had been did not easily admit to weakness. But the man he was now, the broken shell of himself, was sensible enough to know he was not fully healed. He also realized with a jolt that his wound could save him further humiliation for a short while.

  A wave of relief surged over Chase, followed by mortification. He realized he did not like to feel vulnerable in front of this woman. His cheeks and neck flushed. He didn’t want to appear weak in her presence, but he would have to swallow his pride and accept her offer—or risk exposing himself. The choice was not a comfortable one for him to make.

  “I am a bit unsteady on my feet these days. I think that would be a good idea—Linese.” Her name sounded odd coming from his lips. He said it silently in his head a few times to accustom himself to it.

  She nodded curtly and walked out the door. He slumped into a chair beside a table rigged with a large roller and dragged off his wide-brimmed hat in frustration.

  How could he hope to keep up this pretense when he could not even remember his wife? How in God’s name was he going to accomplish this deception when he didn’t even know the way home, or what that home looked like?

  Chase didn’t know when Linese returned, but he looked up to find her studying him from the open doorway. She stared into his eyes and he felt his soul laid bare. It was a sensation like nothing he had ever experienced, not even in the horror of war.

  He stared at the face of the woman he had married, had known intimately but could not remember, and died a little inside.

  His gaze sent a frisson of confusion threading through her heart. Here he was, willing to accept help, admitting to his obvious injury, something she would never have thought possible. A wave of compassion flowed over Linese at the new depth she saw in her husband.

  “I’m sorry, Chase. I never meant to imply that you were not able to drive us home. I—I only meant that it would give me pleasure to do a little something for you—if you would allow it.”

  Chase experienced a strange contest of emotions. He’d had the same sensation when, two days after he was wounded, soldiers came to his bedside to visit. Major Cordell’s quick temper and iron-fisted control of the men beneath him was a constant topic of the lopsided conversation. He had found it disconcerting, but it was nothing compared to what the expression in Linese’s blue eyes was doing to him.

  Each time she fastened that open, trusting look on him, he felt trapped in a skin too tight, too confining. He was consigned to a life of uncertainty, having to live up to expectations created by himself in a past he no longer knew.

  Chase Cordell was in a living hell.

  Toby kept the horses at a good pace all the way out of Mainfield. Linese was grateful for the breeze wending its way through the hickory trees and for the shady spots dappling the lane. Soon she was considerably cooler than she had been in Mainfield, but no less troubled.

  She found herself sneaking glances at Chase whenever he wasn’t looking her way, which seemed to be most of the time. She watched him, puzzled by the enthusiasm he displayed over the most ordinary and mundane things along the old road. He leaned out of the carriage and virtually drank in his surroundings. The gristmill, the same mill he had ridden past a hundred times before, captured his interest.

  For a full ten minutes he asked Linese strange, halting questions, then he lapsed into stony silence and fidgeted with his gloves beside her.

  Linese accepted the fact he was just plain uncomfortable being with her. By the time they pulled up in the graveled lane leading to Cordellane, she was nearly ill with anxiety, sure that she had done something to betray her secret to him.

  Toby halted the horse and she turned to look at Chase, who seemed frozen in his seat. He was staring up at the stately old house with an expression of confounded awe in his smoky gray eyes. It pierced her heart to see such a poignant look on
his bleak face. It occurred to her that a man’s home would take on great significance in the face of war and possible death. He must have often thought fondly of his home while he was away.

  “Big, isn’t it?” he said in husky whisper. He continued to flex his fingers inside the thick gloves.

  Chase wondered how a man could completely forget his home. The two-story rambling structure was nothing more than board and stone and mystery to him.

  He knew with a bitter certainty that he should be seeing an artist’s colorful palette of recollection inside his head, but all he found was a dark gray void of emptiness and desolate feelings of loss.

  “I told you Cordellane was too big and empty the first time you brought me here. Remember?” Linese gently reminded him.

  She saw a muscle in his rock-hard jaw flinch and she cringed inwardly at his reaction to her words. It was as if an invisible wall lay between them in the surrey.

  “No. I don’t remember that.” His words were short, his tone harsh.

  Linese tried to ignore the sting of his abrupt reply. Mentally she vowed to do more to make him feel at home and less like a stranger.

  Chase jumped down to the dusty driveway and she saw him wince in pain. He reached up his mustard-colored glove and she froze in place, unable to move while she savored the sight of him. She realized, with some awe, that until this moment his return had not fully registered in her heart. She had known he was home, had prepared for it, longed for it, but up until now she had not believed it.

  Now, while she stared at him in front of Cordellane, she allowed herself to embrace the happy truth.

  Chase was home—he had returned to her.

  The dark blue uniform hugged his lean, muscular body. The wide-brimmed hat sent complimentary shadows over his craggy jaw and full, determined lips. New lines were deeply carved around his eyes to add character and depth to his countenance.

  He grasped her hand tightly in his own, and her heart fluttered in the same old way it used to. Chase Cordell was still the handsomest man in Tyron County.

  She’d loved him from the first moment he’d spoken to her. She loved him now. Linese wanted to make him a good wife and fill up the old house with a passel of laughing children—children that would make him proud and drive the silence from Cordellane’s big, empty rooms. Her pulse quickened a little at the thought.

  Two years had been taken from them. The sooner she and Chase could begin a family, the better she would like it. No matter how many changes she had to make, no matter how many adjustments, it would be worth it to have Chase home again.

  Her young husband’s eager lovemaking on their wedding night had been almost frightening to her; now she longed to know his touch, to return his passion, to bear his children.

  “Marjorie? Marjorie, is that you?” Captain Cordell’s voice rang out. He appeared at the corner of the stables and interrupted Linese’s thoughts. Chase deposited her on the ground and she followed his line of vision to the old man.

  He was dressed in a dark green coat and high-topped boots. Sunlight glimmered along his silver hair and long mustache. He was a fine figure of a man, for his advanced years. His body was still straight and tall, and only the slightly blank look in his eyes would give anyone a clue that he was not like any other landowner and ex-Texas Ranger.

  “No, Captain, it’s me.” Linese gestured at him and urged him forward to join them.

  Chase watched the old man. Suddenly he felt the sensation of his scalp shrinking around his skull while a hot tingle crept up his spine.

  Two things crystallized into painful clarity in one painful heartbeat. His aunt Marjorie had died from consumptive fever, and his grandfather had been crazy since the day she had been laid to rest in the family plot behind Cordellane.

  Pity, responsibility and embarrassed shame all welled up inside Chase. He fought to understand the source of the emotions.

  He heard a sound and glanced at Toby Sillers. The boy ducked his head and sniggered before he turned away. He had been laughing at Chase’s grandfather.

  Realization dawned on Chase in a rush. He did not truly know the man who stood before him, but he shared his humiliation at their mutual flaw. Something else imprinted it-self upon the empty slate of Chase’s mind.

  Nothing had changed while he had been away. The Cordell madness was apparently still the object of ridicule in Mainfield.

  Chase felt resolution harden in his chest like a great chunk of ice. He would never let anyone know of his defect. He would not allow another person to suffer under the weight of a curse that they had no part in creating.

  He had no way of knowing with any certainty why he had lost his memory, but the thought that it might be, the hint that it could possibly be inherited loomed thick and dark before him.

  Chase swallowed hard.

  Would he continue to lose more and more of himself, until at last he was like the man who stood before him? Was he doomed to go slowly mad until he had no reason left at all? He gulped down the horror that washed over him and made a silent promise to himself.

  Unless, or until he could be sure this affliction was not the result of Cordell blood, he was determined to do whatever was necessary to make sure he did not sire children—no matter how great the sacrifice, or temptation, might be.

  At supper the tension increased. Captain Cordell asked no less than six times who Chase was. Linese had always marveled that his mind seemed to weaken even more when people other than Cordells were at Cordellane. The oldest Jones girl, Effie, had stayed around to help Linese lay out a big dinner to celebrate Chase’s return home and her very presence sent the poor Captain into mumbling fits, followed by prolonged periods of vacant-eyed silence.

  Linese watched Chase grow more sullen with each word his grandfather uttered. She finally gave up trying to make the old gentleman understand who Chase was, and simply allowed the heavy strain to fall like a dark curtain between them all.

  Consequently, the celebration meal was a total failure. She sighed and thought about the days she had spent procuring fresh milk. It had taken all her cunning, but she had even managed to get hold of a smoked ham for the occasion. More food than she or the Captain normally saw in a month sat in front of Chase, yet he picked at his food with little interest. The fact he did not even appear to be aware of her efforts to lay a nice table just for him bruised her deeply. His indifference to her hard work stung almost as much as his peculiar moodiness.

  She choked back frustrated tears, refusing to let Effie see her cry, when he abruptly stood up from the table and stalked from the room without a word to either her, or Captain Cordell.

  Linese knew Chase Cordell had been known as a bold man around Mainfield, one with a short temper and quick fists, but he had never been regarded as a rude one, and she was not going to give the local gossips any cause to begin saying so now. So she bit her tongue and smiled while she chewed and swallowed, never tasting a thing she put in her mouth.

  Two hours later, the lamp illuminated Linese’s path up the stairs. Her temples throbbed and every muscle in her body cried out for rest. The chirping of crickets down in the hollow seemed deafening in comparison to the silence that hung in the walls of Cordellane. She put her foot on the stairs and wondered again what had gone wrong with Chase’s homecoming.

  “Linese?” His deep voice drifted down to her from the darkened landing above and startled her from her musings.

  “Yes?” She halted and peered up at him, half-concealed in the quivering shadows cast by her lantern. She had not realized he was standing above her, watching her approach. Her pulse quickened a bit at the notion that Chase had been upstairs waiting for her to come to bed. She caught herself smiling in the dim lighting.

  “Linese, I have decided… I’m going out for some air. I didn’t want you to feel you had to, that is, you shouldn’t wait up for me. I will be late.” His voice was hollow with meaning.

  The impact of Chase’s blunt words settled on Linese like a blanket of ice. He did
not wish for her to wait up. In fact, in his own Texas gentleman’s way, he was telling her not to wait up. She had walked on eggshells around him all afternoon, wondering what was the matter.

  Now she knew. It was not some slip in her letters that revealed her surreptitious work at the Gazette that had him frowning at her in annoyance. It was not his grandfather’s ramblings, or the food she cooked.

  No. His dark and depressed mood had nothing to do with any of those things. Chase did not wish to share her bed, but did not know how to tell her. The dawning realization sent cold gooseflesh climbing along her arms.

  Linese fought to control the trembling of her hand lest she drop the lamp and let Chase know how much his rebuff wounded her. Bruised pride and feminine ego forced her to reply as if nothing were wrong.

  “Now that the subject has come up, Chase, if you would not be too inconvenienced, I would prefer to move my things into the adjoining room. You’ve been gone a long time. We both have a considerable adjustment to make.” She lied to cover her own hurt and humiliation at his rejection.

  The last thing she wanted was to force herself on him if he did not want to be with her. Better to cry alone in her own bed than feel unwanted in his, she told herself sternly.

  A wall of conflict rose up inside Chase while he listened to Linese’s steady voice. He watched her face in the glow of lamplight, searching for he knew not what.

  He should be relieved at her willingness to comply with his wishes, but his male pride was offended. No, not offended—hurt?

  Could he really be sorry?

  Sadness twined its way around his chest and threatened to squeeze the breath from his lungs. For some reason that defied logic, Chase wished things could be different between him and Linese. He longed to salvage a single memory of the love they must have shared, but found only the formless void of deprivation in his mind.