The relief was so great that it nearly crushed him; Susannah was alive, his daughter was safe with the housemaid; for the moment, he could think no further than that. He lifted his wife into his arms and rushed out of the room, along the corridor, and down the rear staircase to the lawn. They had barely reached the grass, crisp with frost, before a thunderous explosion hurled them both forward onto the ground. Another blast followed, and another, and debris and hot ash rained down upon them, an apocalyptic baptism in fire and fear.
Aubrey sheltered his wife with his body as best he could, and Susannah, only half conscious, whimpered beneath him. He did not need to look back to know that the house was gone, utterly destroyed—and he didn’t give a damn about that pile of brick and wood anyway. The tears on his face were for Maisie, for Jasper, for Ethan. Dear God, Ethan. Had he gotten out before the place went up? And where had Ellie taken Victoria?
He became aware, gradually, of the pain in his ribs, the burns on his hands and back, the distant clanging of bells. The fire department, he thought, and gave a shout of bitter, ironic laughter. Then he levered himself to his feet and pulled Susannah after him, farther and farther from the blazing ruins of his house.
“Aubrey!” At first, the sound was just part of the cacophony that surrounded him; a moment or so passed before it sorted itself out as his name. “Aubrey!”
The voice was Ethan’s. He dragged a soot-covered arm across his face and called back a reply. “Over here!”
Ethan materialized out of the fiery gloom, fair hair singed, clothes in tatters, and his whole face about to disappear behind a jubilant grin. “Thank God,” he said.
The two brothers embraced.
“Susannah?” Ethan asked hoarsely. “The baby?”
“Susannah is back there, in the gazebo,” Aubrey said.
“My daughter—” He choked on the words, had to stop and begin again. “Ellie took her. If they got out in time, they’re both safe.”
“We’ll find them,” Ethan said. His own eyes were glittering, and he laid a reassuring hand to Aubrey’s shoulder.
“Maisie and Jasper?”
“Safe, except for a hell of a scare and a few minor burns,” Ethan assured him. “I took them to the stable.”
“What about you?”
Ethan grinned again. “I reckon I’m doing about as well as you are, brother. No better, no worse.” With that, he went into the gazebo and collected Susannah, lifting her easily into his arms. Since his ribs felt as though they were about to spring out of his skin, Aubrey didn’t protest the liberty.
When Susannah opened her eyes, she had a thundering headache, and she was lying in a bed of loose, fragrant straw, covered with a horse blanket. Aubrey knelt beside her, and, seeing him, she let out a sob of relief and flung her arms around his neck.
“Shh,” he said. “It’s over now. You’re safe.”
“Victoria—”
He kissed her forehead. “Ellie left her with Reverend Johnstone. She’s all right, Susannah. So are Maisie and Jasper.”
She heard the noise then, smelled the dense, acrid smoke. “The house?”
“Gone,” Aubrey said. “Don’t fret, Susannah. We don’t need it.”
We? She clung to him. Was there something different in the way he’d used that word, the tone he’d given it, or was she imagining things?
He smoothed her tangled hair back from her face, kissed her lightly, chastely on the mouth. “I love you, Susannah,” he said, quietly but clearly. “Stay with me. Please.” Tears of joy stung her eyes; exultation was violent within her, like a storm. “You love me?” she echoed in disbelief.
He nodded and kissed her again, this time on the forehead. “Come on, Mrs. Fairgrieve,” he said, getting to his feet and pulling her with him. “Let’s get you to Reverend Johnstone. He’s going to put you and Maisie and Jasper up for the night.”
“What about you?” She saw her brother-in-law out of the corner of her eye. “And Ethan?” “We’ll be all right,” Aubrey insisted, but tenderly.
“Wait,” Susannah said when he took her hand to lead her out of the stable, under the orange and crimson sky.
“What?” He sounded a little impatient.
“I love you, too,” Susannah told him. “I just wanted to say it out loud.”
He chuckled. “And I wanted to hear it,” he said. Only then did she realize that she was wearing his coat, that there were burn holes in his shirt and probably in his flesh as well.
She looked sorrowfully at the house, now an inferno, beyond saving. “What will we do now?” she asked.
He smiled. “We’re going to start over, Mrs. Fairgrieve. From the beginning.”
Chapter 20
The once-grand mansion lay in ruins under a wintercool sun, and as Susannah stood gazing at the rubble, she thought about new beginnings. Aubrey, beside her, put an arm around her waist. Victoria was still at the parsonage, under Maisie’s care.
“I’m sorry, Susannah,” he said.
She looked up at him in surprise. “Sorry?”
“You’re a bride. You should be living in a house. Instead, you and I and Victoria are going to be residing above the store for a year or so while we build the new place.”
She smiled, let him hold her close against his side. “I don’t care where we live, as long as we’re together,” she said.
He brushed his lips lightly across her temple; she felt his breath move through her in a warm shiver. “I’ll make it bigger, better—”
She looked up at him. “The house?”
He nodded, plainly baffled by the expression on her face, which must have mirrored the doubts she felt.
“Isn’t that what you want?”
She searched his eyes, saw that he genuinely wanted to please her. And she shook her head. “We’ll need plenty of space,” she said with a slight blush, “because there are bound to be more children. But I’d prefer something far simpler and more—well, homey. Couldn’t we just have a modest stone house?”
He smiled. “No ballroom?”
She laughed softly. “No ballroom. I will require a piano, however.”
He kissed her temple again, squeezed her close. Then he chuckled. “As long as your students understand that your courting days are over.” He watched her responding smile with real pleasure, like a man basking in spring sunshine. It touched her heart “Let’s get in out of this cold before we freeze to death,” he said practically.
He helped her into the buggy waiting at the curb, climbed up beside her, and gathered the reins in one hand. Then he looked down at her solemnly. “I love you, Susannah,” he said.
The words made her heart sing. “And I love you,” she replied, cuddling close. Aubrey had taken a room for the three ot them at the Union Hotel, while a makeshift apartment was being set up above the general store. “What’s going to happen to Ethan?” she asked when they were on their way.
“He’s been cleared of all charges,” Aubrey said. “According to the police, those men who broke in last night were part of the gang that killed both Su Wong and Delphinia.”
“How were they connected?”
“They were partners in a smuggling ring. Opium. Like wolves in a pack, they turned on each other in the end.”
Susannah sat still on the buggy seat, taking it all in, or trying to, at least. “Mr. Su and Delphinia were part of the ring, then? What about Ellie?”
“It turns out that Su Wong was the head of the whole operation. Delphinia liked plenty of money, so it’s not hard to imagine how she got involved. And, of course, there was an element of revenge—Su wanted to get back at Ethan, and Delphinia wanted to bring me down any way she could. As for Ellie, well, I think she was forced to cooperate.”
Susannah sighed, then set her thoughts on a more cheerful path. “Maisie and Mr. Zacharias are sweet on each other, you know.”
Aubrey laughed. “That they are. I’m afraid we’ll be looking for a new housekeeper, once we get settled in someplace permanent.” He w
as quiet for a few moments, enjoying some vision in his mind. A moment later, Susannah knew what it was. “Just imagine how the members of the Benevolence Society are going to spit and sputter when they see Maisie as mistress of Zach’s house, dripping diamonds and swathed in silk.”
It was a delicious thought. “And Ethan,” Susannah speculated after some moments, “will be married to Ruby Hollister by spring.”
Aubrey nodded. “Guess you and I aren’t the only ones getting a fresh start,” he said. There was a wicked glint in his eyes as he looked down at her. “In the meantime,” he said, “everyone is safe and sound. Victoria is with Maisie. I say you and I take a trip to San Francisco, have a real honeymoon. We’ll go to Europe in the spring.”
Susannah’s eyes widened. “Could we go to the opera? In San Francisco, I mean?”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Anything for you, Mrs. Fairgrieve,” he said. “Now,” he went on, “let’s go back to the hotel and get to know each other a little better.”
Susannah’s face throbbed with heat. “What about the store?”
He gave the reins a light snap to hurry the horse pulling the rig. “The storecan wait,” he said.“I can’t.”
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Maggie jammed the woody stems of a cloud of white lilacs into a gallon jar, and some of the water spilled over onto the counter in the kitchenette of her parents’ guest house. “J. T. Wainwright,” she said, with typical McCaffrey conviction, “is a whole new twelve-step program, looking for a place to happen. I don’t need that kind of trouble.”
Daphne Hargreaves, her best friend since Miss Filbert’s kindergarten class at the old schoolhouse, now a historical monument, like the Brimstone Saloon across the street from it, watched with a wry and twinkly smile as Maggie took a sponge from the sink to wipe up the overflow. “Just as I suspected,” she mused, sounding pleased.
“What?” Maggie snapped, setting the jar of lilacs in the middle of her grandmother’s round oak table, the thump muffled by a lace doily.
“After all these years, you’re still interested,” Daphne replied, and she was damnably smug about it. “In J.T., I mean.” She sighed, and her silver-gray eyes took on a dreamy glint. “It was so romantic, the way he showed up at your wedding and everything—”
“You need therapy,” Maggie said, fussing with the lilacs. “It wasn’t ‘romantic,’ it was downright awful.” She closed her eyes, and the memory of that day, a decade before, loomed in her mind in three distinct dimensions and glorious Technicolor. She even heard the minister’s voice, as clearly as if he’d been standing right there in the guest house.
If anyone here can show just cause why these two should not be joined together in holy matrimony, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.
Right on cue, J.T. had squealed into the driveway behind the wheel of his rusted-out pickup truck, jumped out, leaving the motor roaring, the door gaping, and the radio blaring a somebody-done-me-wrong song, and vaulted over the picket fence to storm right up the petal-strewn strip of cloth serving as an aisle. His ebony hair glinted in the late-spring sunshine, and he was wearing jeans, scuffed boots, and a black T-shirt that had seen better days.
Maggie stood watching his approach from the steps of the gazebo, herself resplendent in mail-order lace and satin, her bridegroom clench-fisted at her side. The guests rose of one accord from their rented folding chairs to murmur and stare, and Maggie’s brothers, Simon and Wes, edged toward the intruder from either side. Reece, Maggie’s father, had risen to his feet as well, though the expression in his eyes as he gazed at J.T. had been one of compassion, not anger.
“You can’t do this, Maggie,” J.T. rasped, as Simon and Wes closed in, handsome and grim in their tuxedos, each grasping one of his arms. He shook them off, his gaze a dark, furious fire that seared Maggie’s heart, then and now. “Damn it, you know it’s wrong!”
He’d been right, that was the worst of it. Marrying Connor had been a mistake; she knew it now, and she’d known it then, deep down. She’d gone ahead with the wedding anyway and, having acted in haste, she had indeed repented at leisure.
Daphne snapped her fingers. “Mags?”
Maggie made a face, but a grin was tugging at the corners of her mouth. She’d missed Daphne, she’d missed Springwater, and, though she wasn’t ready to admit as much, even to her closest friend, she’d missed J. T. Wainwright.
“Sooner or later, you’re going to have to face him, you know,” Daphne observed, opening the refrigerator and peering inside. She brought out a pitcher of iced tea, jingling with fresh ice cubes, and plundered the cupboards for a glass. “Springwater is a small town, after all.”
Maggie drew back a chair at the table and sank into it. “Why did he have to come back here?” she asked, not really expecting an answer. J.T. had been seriously injured in some kind of shoot-out, everyone in Springwater knew that, and though he’d recovered within a few months, he’d turned in his badge and returned to Montana to run the long-neglected ranch that had been in his family for well over a century.
Daphne came through with a reply, as she filled a glass for herself and then, at Maggie’s nod, another. “Same reason you did, I suppose,” she said. “It’s home.”
“Home,” Maggie reflected, somewhat sadly. To her, the term covered far more territory than just the big, wonderful old house on the other side of the long gravel driveway; it meant Reece and Kathleen McCaffrey, her mom and dad. And after nearly forty years together, after three children and five grandchildren, they were sleeping in separate bedrooms and, when they spoke at all, discussing the division of property.
Daphne sat down, then reached out to squeeze Maggie’s hand. Her fingers were cool and moist from the chilled glasses. “Home,” she repeated, with gentle emphasis. “Everything’s going to be all right, Mags. You’ll see.”
Maggie attempted a smile, took up her iced tea, and clinked her glass against Daphne’s. “I guess that depends on how you define ‘all right,’” she said, and sipped.
“J.T. looks good,” Daphne observed, never one to waste time and verbiage bridging one subject with another. “Really good.”
Maggie narrowed her eyes. “There you go again,” she accused, losing patience. “What is it with you and J.T., anyway? You’re fixated or something.”
Daphne ran one perfectly manicured fingertip around the rim of her glass, her gaze lowered. In that solemn, thoughtful pose, with her dark hair upswept, she resembled the portrait of her great-great grandmother, Rachel English Hargreaves, even more closely than usual. Maggie glimpsed her own gamine-like reflection in the polished glass of the china cabinet and noted the contrast. She was thirty years old, with short brown hair and large blue eyes, and outside of Springwater, people still asked for ID when she ordered wine with her dinner.
“Daph?” Maggie prompted, when her friend failed to bat the conversational ball back over the net. Daphne was planning to marry Greg Young, whose father owned the only automobile dealership within fifty miles, in less than a month, and she’d seemed distracted lately. She’d booked the church, sent the invitations, chosen the flowers, shopped for the dress. All of the sudden, it seemed she had a lot more to say about J.T. than her fiancé. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
Daphne met Maggie’s eyes and shook her head. Her smile looked slightly flimsy, and sure enough, it fell away in an instant. “I’m not in love with J.T., if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said. “I can’t help wondering, though, what it would be like to be the object of the sort of passion he felt for you.”
Maggie bit her lower lip. She’d been troubled by Daphne’s mood ever since she’d moved back to Springwater less than a week before, h
aving sold her condo in Chicago and given up her job there, planning to turn the old Springwater stagecoach station into a bed-and-breakfast, but she hadn’t found the words to express her concern. Now she simply took the plunge. “Daph, maybe you’re not ready—to get married, I mean. Maybe you need some time to think things through.”
Daphne’s hand trembled a little, Maggie thought, as she raised her glass to her mouth and tasted the sun-brewed tea. “I love Greg,” she said, a few moments later. She glanced down at the doorknob-sized diamond on her left-hand ring finger and frowned as it caught the afternoon light. If someone onboard the Titanic had been wearing that ring, they could have summoned help at the first sign of trouble. “What’s there to think about?”
Maggie didn’t answer. With a failed marriage behind her, and a couple of dead-end love affairs into the bargain, she wasn’t exactly an authority on relationships.
“We’re going to start a family right away,” Daphne said. She’d told Maggie that a number of times already, first by long-distance telephone, then e-mail, and finally face-to-face, but Maggie pretended it was news.
“That’s wonderful,” she said. Again.
“Do you ever wish you and Connor had had a child?” Daphne ventured.
Maggie prodded the lilacs with one finger, bestirring their luscious scent. “We were only married two years, Daph.”
“That’s not an answer,” Daphne pointed out.
Maggie shrugged ruefully and hoisted her glass in a second salute. “Yes and no,” she replied. “Yes, I would love to have a child, and no, I don’t wish Connor and I had had one together.” A part of her, a part she’d never shared with anyone, not even her dear friend, wished something altogether different—that she’d left Connor at the altar that long-ago summer day, climbed into that battered old truck beside J.T., and sped away. Though she couldn’t rightly say how such an action would ultimately have affected J.T., there could be little doubt that she and Connor would both have been better off.
Courting Susannah Page 30