A Woman of Choice

by Kris Tualla

  “You did well tonight, son. I’m proud of you. Tell Addie to give you some bread and honey before you go to bed, eh?”

  Nicolas hesitated, then kissed Stefan’s forehead before setting him on the floor.

  “Addie!” Stefan shouted as he ran toward the kitchen.

  “I heard!” Addie poked her head around the door jam. “Are you ready for supper?”

  Nicolas clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “I believe we are.” And to Sydney’s horror, he did what any good host would do. “Mr. Kilbourne, will you join us?”

   

  Dinner was excruciating.

  The main dish was suspicion, sides included curiosity and speculation. The tension in the air was thick enough to be sliced and served with coffee for dessert. And everything was beautifully presented on a façade of politeness.

  Through it all Sydney was silent, staring at her plate.

  The three adults concentrated on their apple pie and fresh brewed coffee, for which Nicolas offered brandy as well as cream and sugar. In the midst of dessert came an urgent pounding on the front door. Addie lumbered past the dining room and Sydney jumped from her seat, eager to get out of the room. Before they reached it, the door opened and Rickard stepped in, soaked from hat to boot and dripping a pool of water on the polished wood floor.

  “Is it raining?” Sydney asked. There wasn’t a more ridiculous question to pose at that moment.

  “Um, yes?” Rickard laughed.

  Sydney stepped past Rickard to peer outside. “I didn’t see lightening or hear any thunder.”

  “There isn’t any. Just a good old Missouri summer downpour.”

  “Rick! What on earth? Is it raining?” Nicolas’s booming voice filled the entryway as he approached his sopping friend. Rickard looked at Sydney and they both burst into gay laughter. Nicolas shook his head when he realized what he asked.

  “Why are you on my doorstep, wetting down my floor, on a night like this?” Nicolas also looked out at the unexpected weather.

  “I was in town until about half an hour ago. I thought I’d head home, but it started coming down hard. I almost got lost coming this far!” Rickard’s home was another mile and a half down the road.

  “Go on up to my room and get some dry clothes. Then come down and have some dinner. We’ve got plenty!” Nicolas offered.

  “I’ll make him a plate before Addie puts it all away!” Sydney grabbed Addie’s arm and pulled her toward the kitchen.

  Devin Kilbourne emerged from his isolation in the dining room and came down the hall toward the men. Spying Rickard’s condition, he asked, “Is it raining?”

   

  The torrential rain prevented both Rickard and Mr. Kilbourne from going home to their own residences. Sydney was surprised when Nicolas gave the teacher the locked room across from hers; she had not seen that door opened once during the three months she lived in this household. Rickard, of course, spent the night in his regular room.

  She sat in her bed, the lamp turned as low as it would go, and tried to discern why the presence of the teacher was so upsetting. And why her shifted gaze found him staring at her with a cold intensity that sent shivers slithering down her spine. Even though he had been nothing but polite, she didn’t feel safe around the man.

  A soft knocking at her door prompted her to climb from her bed and tiptoe across the floor. She wondered why Nicolas would choose this particular night—when the house was full of guests—to come to her. She opened the door, careful not to let it squeak.

  But it was Devin Kilbourne that awaited her.

  Sydney tried to shut the door, but he blocked it with his foot. “Do you want to tell me anything? Have you changed your plans? Can I count on your silence?”

  “What?” she gasped. He repeated the questions.

  Sydney narrowed her eyes. Her fingers gripped the edge of the door. She intended to keep him from pushing it farther open. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  Sydney tried again to close her door, but Devin still stopped her. “Do you truly not remember?”

  How did he know? She pushed harder on the door without gaining purchase.

  “Your silence is worth your life, you understand that, don’t you?” he whispered.

  The threat terrified her, echoing through a part of her she didn’t recognize. A soft sob broke away from her and she fought to shut the door. This was the second time in quick succession she wished it had a lock.

  “Do you have business with her?”

  Nicolas’s deep voice quaked through the dark hallway. He stood in the doorway of Kilbourne’s room, barely visible in the pale moonlight that seeped through the hall windows. He was a hulking, malevolent ghost. And the most welcome phantom Sydney could imagine.

  “I—I thought she was someone else,” Devin stammered. “I was obviously mistaken.”

  Nicolas stepped forward, becoming more visible. “Let me be crystal clear, Mr. Kilbourne. I hired you for one purpose, to tutor my son. You’ve done an admirable job in a very short time and for that I’m well pleased. But let me be clear about this as well.”

  Stepping forward again, Nicolas towered over Devin. “If you speak to her again, your position here will be terminated and I’ll personally escort you from my property. Do you understand?”

  Devin tilted his chin in a salvaged semblance of dignity.

  “Stefan is an able pupil and a pleasure to work with. But considering that he is your son, and no relation to Miss Sydney, I see no reason for me to have any further discourse with her.”

  He stepped around Nicolas and returned to his room. Sydney closed her door.

  The next day, there was a lock on it.

  June 29, 1819

  Half-a-week later, Nicolas announced at breakfast: “I need to go into Cheltenham. Will you be all right?”

  No, of course not. How could she be? Until she regained her memory, she floated without an anchor through increasingly perilous waters.

  “Sydney?”

  She stood and shrugged. “I’m going to work with Sessa. I won’t be near Mr. Kilbourne.”

  “Has he said anything more to you?”

  “No.”

  Nicolas reached for her hand. She met his navy gaze, dark with concern. “You will tell me if he does.”

  She nodded, then left the kitchen without another word.

  Sydney found the corral far too constrictive for her restless and hopeless mood, so she led Sessa almost a half mile into the forest.

  Her thoughts meandered through the trees along with her path. What if she never, ever got her memory back? Or what if she created a new identity for herself—and then found the old one after it was too late?

  “Oh!” she grunted in frustration, smacking the palm of her hand hard against a tree. She shook out the sting. “Stop thinking!”

  In spite of her trainer’s distraction, Sessa did very well. She let Sydney rest her body weight across her back for quite a long time without protesting. Sydney was tempted to try and sit her, but thought better of it.

  No one knew where she was, and she most certainly couldn’t take the risk of being thrown. It was best to head back to the estate.

  As she approached the stable, Sydney heard urgent voices drifting from inside. Bits of intense confrontation were carried toward her on sporadic breezes.

  She put Sessa in the paddock, disinclined to interrupt. Then she stopped outside the stable, a few yards from the back door, and waited.

  “… doing here?”

  “…to warn…St. Louis!”

  “…big risk…know you?”

  “…don’t think so…”

  With a start, Sydney realized she recognized the voices. One was Mr. Kilbourne. The other sounded like Dark Skinny, the man she and Nicolas met in St. Louis. Sydney’s skin puckered in gooseflesh, standing every hair on her body at attention. The shadow of black, bottomless dismay
invaded her soul.

  “…care for me, Devin…”

  “You know Rodger… no question…”

  “Come… begging you…”

  “… paid tomorrow… leave Cheltenham.”

  The voices stopped.

  Sydney’s heart trip-hammered in her chest and she began to shake. Something hideous, something familiar, something caustic, bore down on her. She lurched toward the stable door, drawn toward the horrible truth that she knew, without a doubt, waited inside. She stepped inside the doorway and forced her eyes toward the dreaded revelation.

  Devin Kilbourne was kissing Dark Skinny.

  On the mouth.

  Sydney could not draw a breath. Her heart pounded so hard that her whole body jerked with each beat. Pinpoints of black and white threatened to overtake her vision before a surge of red did so. She was numb, yet she remained standing, rooted in place. She forced her lungs to inflate; the inhaled air seared her throat. Sydney heard screams, raw and primal. As her vision cleared, she knew that she was the one screaming.

  And then it came.

  Sydney’s memory hit her with all the physical force of the flood waters that nearly took her life; the horrific awareness it brought pounded her with the same violence. She staggered with the impact and grabbed the stable door for support. The rush of knowledge exploded, excruciating and unbearable.

  Devin Kilbourne was her husband.

  And Skinny was his lover.

  She remembered seeing them hold each other and kiss once before. In the back of the Cheltenham schoolhouse. It was the day that she forgot she was Siobhan.

  She remembered running away in shock. She remembered heading into the woods, insensible of where she was going. She remembered the vicious argument with Devin on the footbridge and

  pulling off her wedding ring, saying she was leaving him.

  And she remembered saying she would tell others the truth.

  Then Siobhan remembered being hit in the chest and falling backward into the icy, rushing water. She felt her frantic struggle to reach air. She knew the burning in her lungs and the beating of the rocks. She remembered giving up, as the blackness of unconsciousness overtook her.

  Then she remembered waking up in Nicolas’ house, and the frustration and terror of not knowing. And she realized, with a loud sob, that Devin didn’t come after her. That realization was what broke her spirit.

  And once broken, she had no fear.

  Devin and Rodger stared at Siobhan. Panic overfilled their eyes. Siobhan grabbed the hoof-trimming knife from a shelf by the stable door. She squeezed the unyielding curved wooden handle and held its arched steel blade and wicked hook in front of her. She was glad she wore the breeches; they allowed her to move freely.

  Nicolas blasted into the stable with John in his wake. He shifted his gaze to the two men facing Sydney.

  “What’s going on?” he thundered.

  “I remember.” Sydney ground the words out between clenched teeth. “Devin Kilbourne is—was—my husband.”

  She adjusted her stance, crouched, and found her balance.

  “And this man, Rodger,” she jerked the knife, “is his—”

  “SIOBHAN!” Devin shouted.

  “Sho—vahn?” Nicolas repeated. “Your name is Sho—vahn?”

  She didn’t answer him. She remained in the ready position, the knife an unambiguous threat.

  “You knocked me off the bridge, Devin.”

  Devin blanched. His gaze flicked away, then back.

  “You didn’t try to save me…”

  Devin opened his mouth, wordless, red-faced.

  “You knew I was here, didn’t you?” When he didn’t answer, she shrieked at him, “DIDN’T YOU?”

  Devin nodded. He stared at her—the transformed apparition that was once his wife.

  “That’s why you’re here now, isn’t it?”

  Devin didn’t answer. He glanced at Rodger.

  “LOOK AT ME!” she shouted again.

  He did; his medium brown eyes sank into a bloodless face.

  “For three months I’ve been here… And you never came for me! HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO ME?” she screamed.

  The force of it tore her throat, setting it on fire and turning her voice to a screeching howl. In the edge of her vision, she glimpsed Rodger moving toward her.

  Nicolas leapt across the stable, flinging himself between her and Devin. He hit Rodger in the chest with his shoulder and slammed him against the wall. Nicolas grabbed the stunned man by the front of his shirt, pulled back and threw a punch into Rodger’s face with all the force of his ample size. Rodger spun around and dropped to the floor like a rag doll. Nicolas shook out his hand and turned back to her.

  “Rodger!” Devin cried out like the worried lover he was.

  Rational bits of her mind cried, NO! God, no! Not him! What about me? Your WIFE?

  Hatred born of anguish blotted out all further deliberation. With a feral cry, Siobhan lunged toward Devin. Blinded by insane anger, she slashed with the knife in wide, wild arcs. She pushed the blade toward him, cursed him, followed him, and tried to get around the huge blond obstacle that stayed in her way. She despised the man whose unspeakable infidelity turned her life inside out. And then left her for dead.

  It was his turn to die today.

  Siobhan went berserk with torment and rage. Thrust after thrust, she failed to connect with the personification of her pain. Grief-stricken, and exhausted by the effort, she glared at Devin as she crouched, panting, in the middle of the dusty stable aisle. Still, she would not give in. She shifted her balance for another swipe.

   

  Nicolas saw the slide of Kilbourne’s hand.

  He perceived the next movements in horrified, dream-slowed motion as he tried without success to reach the man in time. The crack of the pistol deafened him. The explosion made his ears ring and lent an incongruently angelic quality to the hell around him.

  With a raucous roar of denial that left him unable to breathe, he spun around to see if Sydney yet lived.

  The force of the ball had tossed her back against the wall. Her right arm fell limp at her side and her hand relaxed. The knife dropped to the floor with a dull thump as her shirt bloomed bright red. The iron smell of blood mixed with the odors of hay and manure in the thick air.

  Nicolas was at her side to catch her.

  Devin stared at her, wide-eyed. “Oh my God…”

  “John, take the pistol and lock Kilbourne in the root cellar until I decide how to deal with him!” Nicolas barked. “You can let the other one rot for all I care!” He cradled Sydney in his arms and tried to staunch the flow of blood with his palm.

  He lifted stunned eyes to the housekeeper who had somehow appeared and knelt beside them. “Addie, we need to save her!”

  “We’ll do our best,” Addie assured him.

  “Sydney, can you hear me?” With obvious effort, she looked up at Nicolas. “Don’t leave me.”

  Siobhan shifted her focus to Devin. He stared at her, his face taught and gray, arms hanging at his sides. The pistol lay impotent on the ground.

  “Rodger has another lover,” she rasped. “Ask him about the actor.”

  Her eyes closed and she was no longer there.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Moving through a nightmare, Nicolas carried Sydney to her room and laid her in the bed. Addie pulled off her bloodied shirt and the disfigured corset without asking him to leave. The wound blazed angrily in the hollow of her shoulder beneath her right collarbone. It still bled and Sydney’s face was a blue-tinged pale.

  Gud, lar henne ikke dør, Nicolas prayed. God, don’t let her die.

  “Go find Maribeth and ask her to bring the laudanum,” Addie told him, “Along with my needles and thread. And the pinchers. And a sharp knife.” Nicolas bolted downstairs.

  John waited for him at the bottom of the stairs. “That Kilbourne fellow is safe in the root cellar. What else you need, Nick?”

  “Ride
to Atherton’s and bring Rickard straight away,” Nicolas instructed. “And his housekeeper Betsy, if Rick will let you. She knows healing.”

  John nodded and left immediately. Nicolas found Maribeth and they rushed back to Sydney's room with Addie’s supplies.

  Addie leaned close and told Sydney she was administering the opiate. “I must get the ball out and it’s going to hurt. This’ll help.”

  Nicolas lifted Sydney’s head and shoulders. She winced, grunting her pain. Addie poured the bitter liquid into her mouth. She tried to turn away, but Nicolas wouldn’t let her. When she swallowed enough, her eyes rolled back and she went limp.

  With the knife, Addie enlarged the wound, probing for the lead ball that could still kill Sydney. Nicolas held the lamp overhead and watched. He waited for Addie to tell him what she found. For once in his life, the housekeeper was enragingly tightlipped.

  “Addie?” he finally ventured. “Tell me.”

  She looked up as if she was surprised to see him there. “It’s cracked the bone, but it’s not broke through. That seems to have knocked the ball sideways. I can feel it. Hand me the pinchers.”

  Nicolas did so. He held his breath. Addie chewed her lower lip, intent on retrieving the lead. Then she smiled. Slowly her hand retreated, the pinchers exited the wound, and the ball gleamed dark and bloody in the lamplight. She dropped it into his hand.

  “Is it all together?” she asked.

  Nicolas rolled it in his palm. The lead ball was dented—most likely from its collision with bone—but it was whole. A sigh cleansed his chest. “It is.”

  Addie nodded. “I’ll flush out the wound and set to stitching it, then.”

  Even with the laudanum, Sydney jerked and twitched when the needle went into her skin. Nicolas held her as still as he could. When she whimpered, insensible, tears rolled down his tensed cheeks and dampened the blood-stained sheets. He experienced her agony so strongly, he wondered if his blood mixed with hers on the bed.