Linda Castle

by The Return of Chase Cordell

  Guilt and regret flowed over Chase. He loved and wanted their baby more than he had thought possible, but to put Linese at risk was unthinkable. He loathed himself for not protecting her from himself, from the dangers of life.

  “Do you need anything? Are you thirsty?” He stroked the strands of pale hair from her face. Her eyes opened and began to focus in the flickering glow of lamplight.

  “What happened?”

  “You fainted, honey.”

  “Is the baby all right?” Alarm telegraphed through her fingers and up his arm when she gripped his hand harder. She tensed and raised a few inches off the mound of pillows as if to get up.

  “Yes, the baby is fine. Doc checked you over.” Chase gently but firmly held her.

  She smiled and sighed in relief. “Did I make a complete fool of myself?” She relaxed back into the mound of pillows and the feather mattress.

  “No. I’m just glad Ira was there when it happened.” Chase tried to smile to give her reassurance, but it wasn’t easy when his heart was lodged in his throat. “Honey, lie back down and rest.”

  “I’m terribly sleepy.” She relaxed a bit more.

  “Good. Doc wants you to take it real easy. You go back to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  She gave him a smile full of trust and love before her eyes fluttered shut. Chase continued to stroke the soft hairs at her temple until she was breathing deeply again.

  Chase rose stiffly from the rocker and tried to stretch the stiffness from his neck and back. He yawned and blew out the lamp. The sun was peaking over the eastern horizon. A flickering movement outside the window caught his eye. He rubbed his palms against them and squinted, trying to figure out what it was he saw.

  When the cobwebs began to clear from his head, he realized it was his grandfather. The old man was leading his tall black mare out of the thicket toward the barn behind Cordellane. The first rays of sun cast weak fingers of light on the unlikely pair. The horse’s head hung low and her chest and shoulders were flecked with white lather. Captain Cordell seemed to be carrying himself oddly and Chase frowned, trying to force his sleep-deprived brain to know why the old man’s movements seemed so awkward.

  A cold fist wrapped itself around Chase’s heart when it registered. Then he saw the dark stain on his grandfather’s shirt. The maroon blotch started at his shoulder and faded downward and toward his ribs. Chase had more than enough memory of war to know it for what it was—blood.

  “Oh, Lord, what has happened now?” Chase whispered. He yanked on his boots and crept silently from the room to find out.

  “Are you all right?” Chase demanded when he found the old man unsaddling the mare.

  “I’ll live. At least the slug went through clean.” His grandfather’s voice was harsh with fatigue.

  “What in the hell happened?” Chase didn’t know whether he should be furious or relieved. “What were you doing out in the middle of the night?”

  “It’s best you don’t know about what happened tonight.”

  “Damn it, there have been too many secrets, too many mysteries. Tell me what in God’s name you’re up to now?”

  Captain Cordell grabbed his bottle of whiskey by the slender neck and took a swig. His silver mustache looked droopier than usual. There were dark hollows under his eyes that made Chase all too aware of his age. “There was some trouble at the Jennings’ place.”

  Chase didn’t know where the Jennings’ place was. His frustration with his missing memory was rapidly reaching the point of combustion. The old man unwrapped an oilskin that contained all the necessary supplies to take care of his wound. Chase impatiently took over the task while he questioned him further.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  Chase packed soft cotton batting against the bullet hole and pressed until he saw a white line of pain appear around his grandfather’s lips. He bound the wound in his grandfather’s shoulder with strips of cloth he found in the bundle.

  “Some night riders tried to burn them out. Seems they thought the best way to deal with an anti-secessionist was to kill him. Luckily, somebody involved with the railroad heard about the plan. There were women and children in the house, Chase.” Captain Cordell shivered. He was a staunch Unionist, but he didn’t wage war on innocents, whether they were secessionists or not. It sent a frisson of chills up his back to know there were people who would kill without remorse.

  “Who did the attacking?” Images of the Businessman’s Association floated in his mind, but they had no allegiance—no loyalties and no convictions. Their one and only motive for anything they did was pure greed, if greed could be said to be pure.

  His grandfather shrugged and tipped the bottle to his lips again. When he finished drinking, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “They were wearing something over their heads—looked like flour sacks or some such cowardly nonsense. Too dark to see much anyway.” Disgust rang in the old man’s voice.

  He looked up at Chase and his eyes were hard. “Listen, boy, I don’t want you involved. You’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest with those editorials as it is. Calling for each man to take a stand and get this war over with has been more than enough to earn you enemies. Think of Linese. Right now that little lady needs all the peace and care we can give her.”

  “I’ll take care of Linese.” Chase bristled at the suggestion that he might not. “Don’t you worry about that.” Guilt warred with indignation. He still felt he was the reason she was lying in bed, but hearing his grandfather’s words made him angry.

  “I know you’d do everything possible to keep her safe, but things are getting mighty ugly.” Concern glowed in the old man’s weathered face. “What if something were to happen to you, Chase?”

  Chase remembered Kerney’s threats, but they held no more power over him now that his grandfather had been cleared. Still, there was the mysterious gun and gold Ira had kept for him. What if there was something else he didn’t know about? He felt the cloud of his unknown past looming over him again.

  He could not continue this way. There had to be a way to trigger the return of his memory and stop Kerney once and for all.

  “I intend to be around to raise my child. Nothing and nobody is going to take me from Linese.”

  His grandfather patted his shoulder and winced in pain for his effort. “I know how you feel, but do me a favor. Don’t ask me any more questions about what I’m doing. I’m not the only one at risk.”

  A part of Chase rebelled. He wanted to know what was happening now and what had happened in the past. The unanswered questions nagged at him daily. It kept an invisible wall between him and everyone. He had been foolish to think he could have a whole life without first having all the answers.

  “How do you intend to hide that bullet hole?” Chase asked his grandfather.

  “I’ve been feeling a bit peaked lately. I think I’ll have to take to my bed with the ague for a few weeks,” the old man said with a wink.

  Chase grated his teeth together until his jaw pinched in protest. The crazy old fool was going to get himself killed and there wasn’t a damned thing Chase could say or do to stop him. Not unless he could do something to remove Ker-ney permanently as a threat.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Linese adjusted her gown and fluffed her pillow. She had only been confined to her bed for one full day and already she was chafing to be up and busy.

  Chase was acting like a fussy old mother hen. She had woken and found herself in the dining room. In the dining room! It was enough to shame a body into never holding their head up again.

  The tender care she was receiving from Chase was flattering, but she had things to do. Linese refused to entertain the thought there could be anything wrong with her. It had just been the heat, she told herself, just the heat. She could not allow herself even to think something could happen to her baby.

  She could hear the Jones girl humming tunelessly in the kitchen. It sent a ribbon of melancholy through her. Linese wanted to
be the one who cooked for Chase. She wanted to serve him chicory in the mornings and listen to his plans for the day.

  Gold-and-crimson-colored leaves outside the dining room windows sent a shaft of longing through her. She yearned to walk along the creek with Chase and hear the brittle foliage crunch beneath their feet, to breathe the crisp, pungent odor of fall while their child grew inside her. An invisible clock ticked inside her head. It was ruthlessly marking the minutes she had been given to cherish the man God had changed Chase into—before he regained his memory and became the man he used to be.

  “I’d give anything to know what you are thinking right now.” Chase’s deep voice floated over her.

  She turned her head and watched him maneuver a huge tray through the dining room door. It was quite a picture to behold. Chase’s lean, craggy face was wreathed in a happy grin. He carefully placed the tray holding the teapot and cups on the table near her bed. An old, faded apron had been secured around his lean middle, but on his large frame it looked comically no larger than a small kerchief.

  It made her smile in spite of herself. She averted her eyes before he saw how his appearance amused her, fearing she might wound his masculine pride and embarrass him.

  “I was just noticing how the seasons are changing. Summer is gone. This is our first fall together.” Linese plucked at the embroidery on the edge of the sheet. She had decorated all their linens in the two years while she spun dreams of how their life would be when he returned from the war. This was not how she had envisioned it.

  “Where is the old Captain today, Chase?”

  “Uh, he is in his room. He’s not feeling well.” Chase turned away so she could not see his face, could not detect the lie.

  “Not well?” Linese tossed back the sheet. “Perhaps there is something I can do. I’ll go see to him,”

  Chase shook his head. “No you won’t. He said it was a touch of the ague. You are not going anywhere.” He strode across the room and pulled the sheet back over her and tucked it under her chin. Something about the way he avoided her eyes made her heart contract.

  “What is it, Chase?” Alarm snaked up her back. “There is something you are not telling me, isn’t there? It’s something bad about the baby.”

  His dark eyebrows drew together. She could see the brackets at the corners of his mouth deepen into the telltale signs of distress and her heart skipped a beat.

  “I don’t want you to get upset, Linese.”

  The minute he said that, she did, of course. “I am not upset,” she snapped. “Now tell me.”

  “Doc wants you to take good care of yourself.” Chase’s lips flinched. “You are not to be out of bed at all.” He paused and sighed.

  The impact of his words settled on Linese. “He wants me to stay in bed?” All the worry she had been ignoring came collapsing in on her.

  “Yes, and there is more. We can’t have relations.”

  “What?”

  “Doc said it could be bad for the baby.”

  “How long does he think we should remain apart?”

  “Until the baby is born.”

  “Chase, that is five months.” Her bottom lip began to quiver.

  “Linese, it will be all right. I promise I’ll keep you and the baby safe.” He managed a smile. “And I can hold you, even if we can’t do anything else.”

  A single tear flowed over her lashes and trickled down her cheek. Seeing his brave wife cry cleaved Chase’s heart in two. He wrapped her in his arms and felt his love expand and increase inside his heart. Her petite body was racked with wrenching sobs. It tore him apart to know there was nothing he could do to keep her from hurting like this.

  “Oh, Chase, I—I don’t want to lose our baby.”

  “We won’t honey, we won’t,” he promised with complete conviction.

  Chase held her until the sobs became ragged sniffles and finally gasping hiccups. She clung to him as a drowning man clings to a branch. In that march of time, while he held her, he knew he had no choice but to defy the Cordell curse, if indeed it did exist, and to defeat it with the strength of their love.

  When she was finally quiet, he leaned away and looked into her face.

  “I brought you something to eat.”

  “I don’t want it. I’m not hungry.”

  Chase stroked her forehead and cheeks. “Linese, you have got to eat. You are no bigger than a minute and I won’t have you wasting away on me.” He took her fingers from the embroidered leaf she had ripped apart. Green threads hung in tatters on the sheeting. “Linese, what can I do to make this better for you? Tell me and I’ll do it.”

  She felt the lump grow in her throat. Just having him ask was enough to make her want to cry. How could she put into words her terror? It was more than just the baby. It was the threat of losing him, the worry that his regained memory would somehow steal her happiness. It was an unreasonable fear, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not banish it from her mind.

  “I know I’m being silly. I just can’t seem to shake off the blues.” She could not reveal her fears to him. There was simply no way to tell the man she adored that she was afraid of his becoming himself again. The notion was ridiculous, yet it held her in fingers of iron.

  He took her chin and tipped it up. She had no choice but to meet his steady, unrelenting gaze.

  “I think you are the most beautiful, perfect woman in the world, and I love you with all my heart.”

  He leaned near and kissed her. It was gentle and protective, and filled Linese with a longing that started somewhere within her soul and spiraled outward until it consumed every particle of her being.

  She sighed and leaned into the hard expanse of his chest. A sprig of coarse hair tickled her nose. They sat there in silence, him holding her gently, while she felt loved and cherished.

  A knock at the front door jarred them apart.

  Chase’s brows furrowed together into a forbidding frown. Linese felt the tension in his body before he released her to rise from the edge of her bed.

  “Are you expecting anyone?” she said as she watched him jerk off the apron.

  “No.”

  She sensed an urgency in him when he flicked a quick glance out the dining room window. The sound of the Jones girl opening the front door drifted into the dining room along with the unmistakable smell of autumn leaves and chill air.

  Chase tilted his head and Linese could see he was listening hard to the murmur of voices.

  “I’ll see who it is. You rest. I’ll be right back, I promise.” His voice was light, but she knew he was concerned. He took a single step toward the door but before he could reach it, Rancy Thompson stepped inside the room. The sheriff swept off his hat and blushed pink at the sight of Linese lying in bed in the dining room.

  “Ma’am?” His voice was flustered. He turned a darker shade of rose. Linese pulled the covers up under her chin as far as they would go, but she still felt as if she were standing buck naked. Heat flooded her own face. She couldn’t remember ever feeling more mortified than she did at this moment.

  “Rancy, what brings you here?” Chase asked, but there was little hospitality in his clipped greeting. His jaw and his shoulders were rigid. Something was clearly not right, and it was more than the sheriff seeing Linese in her nightgown in bed.

  “I went by the Gazette, but you weren’t there, and Mrs. Cordell wasn’t well. So I came out here to see you.” Thompson turned slightly in her direction, but his eyes didn’t linger. “Ma’am, I hope you recover soon.”

  “Thank you, Sheriff.”

  “It’s a long ride for a social call.” Chase moved back to the tray and picked up the teapot. “Would you like some tea, Sheriff?”

  Rancy blinked and looked self-consciously at Linese again. “No, no. This isn’t exactly a social call, Major.”

  She saw Chase glance at her out of the corner of his eye. She tried her best to look relaxed under his knowing gaze, but it was difficult and she chided herself for not being a be
tter actress. The last thing she wanted to do was have him worry more about her than he already was doing.

  “I think it would be better if we talked in the other room, Rancy.” Chase set the pot down with a clink. Linese knew he was leaving because of her.

  “Chase, please.” She wanted him to know how important it was that she not be shut out of his life, but all she could manage were those two pleading words.

  He turned and stared at her. The thick black eyebrows furrowed together. She could see him considering the odds, weighing the outcome, wondering if she was too weak. The muscle in his hard, lean jaw jerked. Finally he walked back to the bed and sighed heavily.

  “All right.” He sat down in the chair and picked up her hand.

  It was a small victory that made her heart swell with love. He cared about her feelings in a way the man she married could never have understood.

  “Tell me, Rancy. Why are you here?” His voice was soft yet hard as iron.

  The sheriff frowned and looked down at his feet. He held his hat in his hand like a shield. “There was some trouble last night.”

  “Really?”

  Chase’s voice was unusually mild and uninterested, in contrast to the tension Linese could feel in the fingers he had wrapped around her hand. She had the uneasy notion he was not entirely surprised by Thompson’s visit or the news that there had been some kind of disturbance, but that made little sense.

  “What kind of trouble?” Chase inquired.

  “There was some shooting at the Jennings’ place last night.” Rancy’s eyes narrowed.

  “Sounds like something Hezikiah should put in the Gazette.” Inquisitive eyebrows rose over his gray eyes. Chase was the picture of composure but Linese felt the opposite in his hand.

  “That’s not why I’m here.” Rancy shook his head. “This is not my idea, Major, especially after that nonsense with the old Captain. I have ignored the suggestion that I arrest you. Obviously you lied to protect the Captain—and that I will ignore. But there is a rumor that you were there last night—at the Jennings’ place, I mean.”