Not again. No, not again.
She stood beside Laura’s bed. Her empty bed, bare and accusing in the darkness.
When she’d first awoken to find her gone, she figured it had to be a mistake, another one of Laura’s larks. It was not the first time the girl had gone hieing off in search of adventure and freedom. Laura had never seemed to understand how much danger existed for unwary young girls.
Intellectually she understood that Laura felt confined, desperate to break free of the restrictions that bound her. But Lucy knew what it was like out there. She’d tried over and over again to explain it to Laura. It became her primary goal to ensure Laura appreciated that safety and security and warmth were to be cherished, not escaped. Because the alternative was simply too awful.
She sank to the edge of Laura’s bed, trailing her fingers over the pillow.
She hadn’t taken her pillow. They’d taken a fair number of things, so many that Lucy had burst into a furious rant when they’d tallied it all up. How could that horrid man have stolen all that away, and Lucy, too, without alerting Hoxie and Peel?
But she knew it was mostly her fault. She knew Laura was susceptible to the man. Knew even more how young and blossoming women could fall under the spells of handsome and fascinating men with charmingly dangerous edges. It was a flaw in the character of many women that they were romantic fools over roguish and inappropriate men, the lure of reforming them darn near irresistible.
She’d known, and she hadn’t stopped it. How could she ever have believed that merely getting rid of the fellow would be enough? Young passion just wasn’t extinguished that easily. Forbidden desire was one of the most treacherous illusions on the earth, and if anyone knew that, Lucy did.
Oh, Laura undoubtedly believed what she’d written in the letter. She had gone of her own free well. That did not, in any way, ensure that she was out of danger. He could have her in bed right now—
No. The image was too terrible. She would not think of it.
The compartment suddenly constricted around her, the air becoming heavy and precious. She jumped up and dashed out of Laura’s cabin, through the beautiful sitting room that she’d come to hate at least three hundred miles ago, and out into the still, empty yard.
The fresh air filled her lungs, settling her nerves enough that she no longer felt she might scream at any moment. Her gaze traced the horizon, her spirits rising, until she realized she was searching for a horse, a figure. Waiting for Laura to come home.
She started to pace, back and forth over the rocky ground.
Most of the day she’d clung to the thin hope that Laura might return momentarily. That she’d come to her previously reliable senses and realize what she’d done. If not for her own good, than for Sam Duncan’s. Because if anything happened to Laura—and in this case anything could be something as minor as a hangnail—Leland Hamilton would ensure that Duncan never took another easy breath as long as he lived. If he lived very long at all.
But as the night descended, too soon, too dark, she’d understood that Laura wasn’t going to show up with apologies so they could be on their way and forget that the whole thing ever happened—
She screamed as she went down. Pain stabbed in her ankle, her palms as they hit the ground. She lay there, stunned.
Stupid, lumpy, holey ground. In Newport they had a lovely, smooth lawn, and—
“Are you all right?”
Hiram charged from his car, sprinting toward her like a bull in the streets of Pamplona. “What happened? Is it Duncan? I—”
“No, nothing like that.” Oh, yes, of course it would be Mr. Peel who saw her sitting ignominiously on her rear on the ground. “I just fell in a hole.”
“Oh.” He extended a hand. “I’ll help you up.”
“That won’t be necessary.” She hid a wince as she put a bit of weight on her ankle.
“Don’t be stupid.” He stepped about her, clamped underneath her arms, and hauled her to her feet with all the grace of a shearer wrestling a ram.
“Thank you,” she said grudgingly. She whacked her gritty palms on her skirts as she turned to face him.
“What the hell are you doing wandering around out here in the night?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” She kept forgetting how big he was. If the ox had lumbered at her out of the dark when she wasn’t expecting it, she would have been frightened out of her boots. “Suppose you didn’t have that problem.”
“I—Yeah, that’s right,” he said with enough edge in his voice that even Lucy felt a spurt of guilt. Absurd. It wasn’t as if the man’s feelings could possible be hurt. One must have them to hurt them. “I dropped right off, not a worry the world. It’s not like I care the least bit for Laura. It’s just a job.”
“You’re right.” She touched him gently on the sleeve. “That was unfair. I’m sorry. It’s just…” She felt the press of emotion high in her throat and swallowed hard. She refused to fall apart in front of people. Most of all, she refused to fall apart in front of him. “Where’s Mr. Hoxie?”
“He left.”
“What do you mean, he left?”
“He headed into town.”
“But…Sam took all the horses!”
Hiram shrugged. “He decided to walk. It’s only a few miles.”
“But—but—” Did everybody around here plan to go gallivanting around the countryside without clearing it with her first? “We talked about this: we were going to wait here in case she came back, then we were going to go on into Ogden, just like Laura suggested!”
“We didn’t talk about it. You talked about it.” He had his feet planted wide, sturdy and grounded. Solid. It would take a runaway coach slamming into him at top speed to get him to budge an inch.
“But we agreed!”
“Nope. We just didn’t disagree. Not much profit in it. Easier to let you say your piece, then go ahead.”
“But—but—” She was not unreasonable, dammit. Not obstinate and unwilling to listen. Why did they persist in treating her like she was?
“Why didn’t you go?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it again. Red suffused his cheeks, the tips of his ears. His gaze skittered off into the darkness. “Somebody had to stay here in case Laura found her way back.”
“Mm-hmm.” All the fight whooshed out of her. She was here. And he’d stayed because he didn’t want to leave her alone.
“What’s Mr. Hoxie planning to do when he gets back to Silver Creek?” she asked.
“Ask around. Maybe someone saw them, or—”
“No one saw them,” she said flatly.
“They could’ve.”
“No. He’s not that stupid. He wouldn’t have taken her anywhere that they could be seen and noted.” Worry again had her by the throat, a relentless squeeze. “Sh-she’s g-g-one.”
“Aw, no, don’t do that.” He patted her on the back, nearly sending her back to her knees. “Don’t cry.”
“Too late.” Dammit. She would have rather burst into tears in front of the entire staff of Sea Haven than in front of Hiram. But it seemed she wasn’t to have a choice. The tears rolled over her, unstoppable as a tidal wave, as elemental. It was almost a relief to surrender to them.
“Crap.” He grabbed her by the back of the neck and hauled her up against him, driving an oof out of her as she slammed up against the solid wall of his chest.
“I can’t lose her, too!” she wailed. Tears spilled out of her eyes, dripped out of her nose. Maybe she should be grateful that it was only Hiram witnessing this after all. She could feel her eyelids swelling, and it wasn’t going to be a pretty sight. But since he already thought the worst of her, it shouldn’t matter if he saw her looking like death warmed over. “Not another—”
“You won’t,” he said. One huge hand cradled the back of her head, gentler than she would have expected him capable of. The other rested at the hollow of her back, pressing her to him, his fingers widespread, so long that the smallest reached to the upper curves
of her rump. With another man, in any other situation, it would have been a wildly sexual posture. “Wait. Another, ‘too’?”
Had she said that? Fifteen years, and she’d never slipped once.
She opened her mouth to deny it. But she didn’t want to. To deny it would make it seem unimportant, as if it had never happened. As if she had never happened.
“I had a daughter,” she said.
She felt his surprise in the reflexive tightening of his arms around her. But he didn’t comment, just waited patiently for her to continue. Who would have thought Hiram knew when to keep his mouth shut?
“It’s not an unusual story, I suppose.” The fury of tears receded, leaving the deep well of loneliness. She was surprised how easily the story spilled out after so many years of being bottled inside. “I fell in love, and I believed him when he said he meant to marry me. He was so handsome, so charming. He was from a far richer family than mine, and I thought every wish I’d ever made in my whole life had come true when he began to court me.”
When she stopped talking she could hear Hiram’s heartbeat, she realized, loud and very steady. Comforting.
“I believed him when he said he had to prepare his family before they met me. And when he said it would be no sin to anticipate our vows a bit, and that he couldn’t survive another day if he didn’t have me.” Thump. Thump. Lovely heartbeat. “I believed him a lot. Except when he said he didn’t want me anymore. Or our child.”
He bent down, his chin rubbing soothingly across the top of her head. “You lost her?”
“I—” Her voice shook. She took a deep breath and steadied. “I gave her away.”
She waited for the shock. The recriminations. But all she got was the slow circle of his hand on the small of her back, the rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek as he took a deep breath.
“I had no money. My parents didn’t want to…didn’t want to see what I’d done.”
“Bastards.”
Her shoulders lifted, fell. “No, they—” She started to say they were just parents, parents who were ashamed that their daughter had gone against everything they’d taught her.
But she had needed them then. She never would have turned Laura out in a similar situation. If she—God forbid—came back from her adventure with Duncan in the family way, Lucy would move heaven and hell to help her. And she wouldn’t say “I told you so.”
At least not more than once.
“I couldn’t take care of her. I had no money. I had no way of making any.” She ran through the reasons, all those justifications that had played through her mind then, and every day since. Though she knew in her head they were right, knew it, in her heart they still felt like excuses.
“They were a lovely couple. I worked so hard to find the right ones. He was a doctor. She taught school because they hadn’t been able to have any of their own, and she wanted to be by children. And when I gave her to them—” She squeezed her eyes shut. It hurt, the burn behind her lids, the ache in her chest. Hurt so bad that for a long time she’d thought she might die of it. “She said I was her hero.”
He was swaying, back and forth with her in his arms as if he were holding a baby. The rhythm eased the tight twist of pain, if only a little.
“You are,” he whispered gruffly against her hair.
She blew out a long breath.
He smelled good. Like sweat and horses and grass, but still good. Manly.
“It was two years before I found my way to Sea Haven. There wasn’t much work, but I didn’t care very much, either. But then I became a ‘widow’ and a nurse and went to work for the Hamiltons. Laura saved me.”
“You’re not the only one,” he murmured. She remembered when Hiram had showed up at Sea Haven. He’d been young and wild when he’d come to work for them, angry at the world, and she really hadn’t thought he’d stay. But he had, and after a while all the anger had seeped out of him.
“I can’t lose her, too.”
“You won’t.” His voice was absolutely sure. “I won’t let you.”
Heavens, but it felt good to have a man’s arms around her. She’d blocked it from her mind. Had punished herself for ever having enjoyed it. But oh, that intoxicating oblivion that overwhelmed worry, blotted out hurt, swept away anything but pure physical drive—what a wonderful thing it was. At least for a while. She hadn’t forgotten that, much as she’d tried to.
She turned her head and pressed her mouth—open, damp—against his chest. The cotton fabric was thin; her lips could detect the springy texture of the hair on his chest, the searing heat he carried within that huge frame.
“Mrs. Bossidy?”
“Lucy,” she murmured.
“I don’t know if I can call you that.”
She arched her back and tilted her head up. The move pressed her lower regions against him, and the ache settled, strengthened. Heavens, but it felt good. Wonderful. How had she managed to ignore this for so long? “Try.”
He cleared his throat. “Lucy.” His head came down, closer, closer, until she could feel the wash of his breath on her lips.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” she warned him. “It can’t. It’s just…distraction.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he murmured. Which didn’t really sound like agreement.
But then his mouth came down on hers, and she forgot everything.
Chapter 16
Laura didn’t understand why she kept dreaming about men.
Sam, yes, that was self-explanatory. What woman wouldn’t dream about Sam? And that Chinaman; that really wasn’t that surprising, given how much she’d worried about him at the time.
But this one…big and bulky and unfamiliar, in her bedroom, moving around, clumsily ruffling through her things.
She blinked…blinked? And came to full wakefulness.
Reflexive self-preservation froze her in place, afraid to breathe, wishing she could turn her head to follow his movements.
He was in the corner of her room where her work supplies were stored. A mouth-breather, loud and heavy, as if he were under a great strain.
He dropped something. She heard the thud on the floor, the creak of his knees as he bent to pick it up.
She could just stay there, unmoving, and hope he went away. But those were her things, and…oh, she’d had enough of waiting and hoping.
And screamed.
He whirled, gaping at her. It was far too dark to see him well. A moon-round face, a build like a bear ready for hibernation.
He charged out of the room, the door slamming against the thick walls, the report like cannon fire.
She heard the thunder of feet. They burst into her room. Haw, Ben, Clem. Lupe, carrying a lantern that swung in her hands, throwing eerie undulating shadows on the walls. And Sam, only a few seconds later, skidding in behind them and pushing through the group to stand by her bed.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine.”
His face flooded with such relief that she softened inside; he must care for her, in some way more than merely a means to an end.
“What happened?” Crocker asked.
“There was someone in my room.”
“Someone in your room?” He strode over to the bed. Laura yanked the covers up, glad she’d worn a high-necked, long-sleeved gown despite the warm evening.
Ben, Clem, and Lupe were in their nightclothes, too. Clem, a white nightshirt the size of a sail, the trunks of his legs sticking out beneath it. He was of a size to be her nighttime visitor, but there was no way he could have changed that quickly.
Lupe wore silk—creamy, shimmering, and surprising.
Only Mr. Crocker and Sam were fully dressed. Evidentally Mr. Crocker worked late. Sam wore black, giving him a dangerous edge. He’d been working, too, Laura thought, and couldn’t help but worry.
And he was far more likely to be recognized in those clothes. She inclined her head to him, trying to encourage him to slip out of the room before anyone took too close
a look at him.
“Didn’t you see him in the hall?”
Haw and his son glanced at each other. “Nope.”
“Then he’s got to be here somewhere! You all arrived too quickly, maybe he ducked into—”
“That’s ridiculous,” Crocker interrupted.
Sam scowled and stepped forward. She shook her head, trying desperately to signal him with her eyes. Get out, get out. Get safe. Finally, he slipped out of the room and she flopped back against the pillows, releasing a relieved breath.
“Are you prone to…vivid dreams?” Crocker asked her.
“No, I—” They were arrayed by her bed. Clem had his arms crossed in front of his chest, threatening even in that ridiculous nightshirt. Crocker’s face was suspicious. Only Lupe appeared sympathetic.
What good what it do her to insist? The man was likely long gone. Clearly Crocker had no intention of searching the house or calling an alarm in the yard.
“Well, perhaps,” she admitted softly, lowering her lashes.
“There’s a good girl.” Crocker patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “Would you like Lupe to stay with you until you get back to sleep?”
“That’s very kind of you. But no. I’ll be fine.” Let Lupe get back to whatever assignation she was heading to—no woman wore a gown like that for herself. Idly she wondered who he could be; she could not picture the striking Lupe with any of the men in the house.
“I’m fine,” she repeated, and yawned to prove the point. “I’m sure I’ll sleep better now. If nothing else, I know how quickly you can all get here if I need you.”
“I promised your father I’d take good care of you,” Crocker said, just before he went out the door. “I intend to.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, as if she were already surrendering to sleep.
Lupe hovered by the door, the lantern in her hand. She was a lovely woman, with her vivid coloring and generous curves, and she appeared to be genuinely concerned. “Would you like something to drink? I’d be pleased to fix you something.”
“No, thank you.” Her curiosity got the better of her. And perhaps it would be useful to form a bond with the woman. Who saw more and heard more of what went on in a house than the housekeeper? “Your English is excellent.”
A Wanted Man Page 18