“Sure,” she answered, still gazing at him.
Clay wasn’t so sure that was a good idea, him being alone with her. In his mind, when she wasn’t near, he could think of her as his ward, but when she stood in front of him she became a woman he wanted to get to know, intimately. During the matinee, while everyone else was enthralled by the actors, he’d been consumed by the stick of dynamite that had all of a sudden planted itself between his legs. He’d never had this kind of reaction to a woman before, not even Miranda, and it wasn’t right. Kit was his responsibility, and if another man was thinking the things he was about her, Clay would have him on the first train out of town.
“I’ll get my jacket,” Kit said, though it sounded almost like a question.
He nodded, following her out of the room, and cursing Oscar.
They exited through the front door, and as they walked down the steps she said, “Clarice said she’d talk to Alice Asher in the morning, see if she’ll take over the job of teaching school until someone new can be hired.”
“That’s good,” he replied, smiling at her obvious attempt to make small talk. He’d already witnessed her genuine concern for the children, above and beyond climbing a tree to save baby birds. “She’s filled in before.”
They were at the gate, but as he opened it for her to walk through, she stopped.
“This is about Sam, isn’t it?” she asked. The moonlight glimmered in her eyes and enhanced the apprehension there.
Clay’s insides sputtered and spit. He wasn’t sure if it was because he was losing steam or gaining it. He let the gate spring closed, took her hand and didn’t stop until they arrived at the swing he’d put up a few weeks before.
She sat, and when he was settled next to her, said, “That’s what you and Clarice were whispering about, and why you’ve been so quiet tonight.”
“Yes, it is,” he admitted. This shouldn’t be so hard. Wouldn’t be if his mind wasn’t so tangled up with his heart.
“Is it bad?”
“No, Kit, it’s not bad.” I just wish someone else had told you, he added to himself. He’d never been this hesitant about telling someone the truth before. The thought of putting her through more pain gnawed at him. Theodore Watson had sent messages last year about how the deaths of Oscar and his wife had left her distraught—to the point she rarely left the house. Clay had saved those telegrams, had them in the same envelope as the will, and had reread them today. No wonder the bridges had scared her; she’d probably never ridden over one before. Watson had said he checked on her once a week, made sure she had provisions. It was perplexing, because the woman sitting next to him didn’t act like the same one the solicitor had described. She was more like the one Oscar had always spoken of, and that, too, left Clay confused.
Pushing the swing into a gentle rocking motion with one foot, he said, “There are several stipulations to Oscar’s will. Did Mr. Watson tell you any of them?”
She sighed. “Yes, he told me the stipulations about getting married before I turn twenty-five, and if I try to challenge anything, everything will be sold to a former partner. Other than that, he said I had to talk to you.”
The marriage aspects didn’t seem to bother her, if the tone of her voice told him much.
As if reading his mind, she added, “My mother married young. She was only seventeen when I was born, and Grandma Katie always said they wanted to make sure I was more mature when I got married.” A waning smile arrived and disappeared just as quickly. “My mother died when I was a baby, my father before I was born.”
Clay couldn’t stop from reaching over and curving an arm around her. As if it was the most natural thing on earth—and it did feel that way—she scooted closer and laid her head on his shoulder. He rested his chin on the top of her hair and kept the swing swaying until Clarice waved from the side of the house. During that time, he should have been thinking about how to tell Kit the truth, but he hadn’t. Instead he’d just held her, not really thinking of anything other than how right it felt. How good it felt to be connected with someone. Something he hadn’t had in a very long time—if ever.
The urge to kiss her, even briefly, was consuming him again, something else he hadn’t experienced in a very long time. He drew in a sigh and let it out, distressed that it didn’t lessen his frustration. “Are you ready to go in?”
“Not really,” she answered. “But I don’t suspect I have a choice.”
He wanted to tell her she did, but couldn’t. “Let’s go.”
Once inside the house, he led her to the lumpy velvet sofa the same shade of green as her skirt, and continued to hold her hand after sitting down next to her. He wanted to pull her close, have her snuggle against him as she had outside, but that wouldn’t make anything easier.
“Kit,” he started, once Clarice and Jonathan sat on the chairs flanking the sofa. He’d rather cut off his right arm than say this, but didn’t have a choice. “Your mother didn’t die when you were a baby.”
A tiny frown formed between her brows as she nodded. “Yes, she did.”
He took hold of her other hand, squeezing them both with his. “Oscar and Katie’s daughter, your mother, Amelia,” he said, emphasizing the woman’s name so Kit would know he knew what he was talking about, “lived not twenty miles from here until she died ten years ago.”
Kit glanced to Clarice and Jonathan, who nodded sympathetically. The entire town knew about Amelia’s death and how badly Oscar had tried to persuade Sam to go to Chicago with him once he’d found the boy. Once again Clay wanted to curse the man for never telling Kit.
Her troubled gaze landed on him. “My mother was alive?” Shaking her head, she pulled a hand from his hold and pressed it to her throat. “All those years, my mother was alive?”
Like when a bolt broke and a brace beam fell unexpectedly, something let loose inside Clay, spewing compassion for her pain throughout his system. He wrapped an arm around her. “I’m sorry, Kit.” It was insignificant, but he couldn’t come up with anything better.
“Did Gramps know?”
“Yes, he knew.”
Utter disbelief shimmered in her eyes. “W-why didn’t he tell me?” she asked, as if he should have all the answers.
“I don’t know why.”
“All these years?” The blood had drained from her face, leaving her white and her voice little more than a faint and quivering whimper. “Why?” She pressed a hand to her forehead and then pulled it off, as if she didn’t know what to do with it.
“Clarice, get a glass of water,” Clay said, taking the trembling hand in his.
“No …” Kit said between little huffs of air. “I—I need to return to the hotel.” Tears were now dripping onto her cheeks. “Clay, I …” She squeezed her eyes shut.
“Shh,” he said, guiding her to her feet. “Clarice has a place you can lie down for a minute.” He held her tightly. “It’s going to be all right.”
“Here, I’ll take her,” Clarice said.
Clay found the ability to step aside, though he really didn’t want to.
“We’ll go right in here,” Clarice said. “It’s my room and you can rest for a bit.”
Feeling as useless as a broken smelter hammer, he watched as the two women entered the bedroom at the end of the hallway and shut the door.
Chapter Eight
Clay waited for what seemed like hours before Clarice entered the hall, quietly closing the door behind her.
“She’s sleeping,” his sister whispered.
“Is she all right?”
“I’m sure she will be. It’s just been a shock. Go on home. I’m sure come morning she’ll want to ask you a few more questions. I told her what I could, but I don’t know much.”
“Neither do I,” he admitted. Though he wanted to say he’d sleep on the lumpy velvet sofa, he walked to the door, with his sister gent ly pushing on his back. It was doubtful he’d sleep at all. There was a frustrating poison, as lethal as the eighty-pound canisters of mercury
over at the stamp mill, eating at his very soul. He’d always respected Oscar—owed the man for all he had—but right now he wished he’d never met him.
Clay climbed the hill behind the house, to the second level of Nevadaville, and used that street to make his way toward his office. He’d witnessed people in pain before, stricken with disbelief, but it had never affected him this way.
“Damn it, Oscar, why hadn’t you told her?” he said, or maybe just thought it. Either way, the words echoed in his head, and then, out of the blue, he heard Oscar’s voice. But the man wasn’t talking about Kit. The words Clay heard were from when Oscar had told him Miranda wasn’t the girl for him.
Clay paused, looking ahead to where the steady beat of the stamp mill echoed in the night air. Demons were hellish creatures, and clever. They hid, acted as if they’d moved on, whereas they never really did.
The air left his chest, leaving him empty and pitiful. Never had another person touched him in that vulnerable spot Miranda had left open, until Kit. And this time it was worse.
“Damn it to hell,” he muttered. Being infatuated with a woman he could never marry—never love in that way, but had to take care of—was worse than one that had left him.
His office, straight ahead, had a back room, with a cot and a little potbellied stove, all he needed to get by. But beyond his office, up the hill, was his house, complete with all the furnishings and appliances it took to fill a place that size. He kept walking. If he was going to fight demons, he might as well fight them where they lived.
Kit took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the walkway to the big house still lay before her. Dawn had barely broken, yet the streaks of light made every window sparkle, almost as if they were excited at the possibility of company. It was in such contrast to the way she felt. Another shiver hiked its way up her spine, and she glanced over her shoulder. The entire town seemed to still be asleep, but she’d been awake for hours, and needed answers.
Moments later she knocked on the door, which held a piece of beveled glass etched with a scene of pine trees nestled below a mountain.
A thud sounded on the other side, and she planted her feet on the porch, refusing to allow herself to turn about. Something dark and heavy, a drape of sorts, covered the beveled window inside, making it impossible to see behind it. If indeed anyone was home.
What seemed an eternity later, the knob turned and the door opened a few inches.
“Cla—” She cleared her throat and willed her voice to remain stable. It was incredibly hard. Just looking at him made something inside her open up, begging for him to wrap his arms around her and hold her so she could release all the pain burning inside.
“Kit?” He pulled the door open wider.
She bit her lip, unable to speak. He still wore the same clothes as yesterday, a white shirt and black trousers, minus the vest he’d worn at Clarice’s last night, and one suspender was dangling at his side. His dark hair was going in all directions, as if he’d just crawled out of bed. Heat rushed into her cheeks at the thought. Perhaps it was too early, but she’d been unable to lie in Clarice’s bed any longer, and the hotel room had been worse.
Pulling the door all the way open, he stepped aside and waved a hand for her to enter. As she walked in, he hooked an arm through the suspender and snapped it over his shoulder, and then combed his hair flat with both hands.
“I was hoping,” she said, “maybe you could answer some of my questions.”
As soon as the door closed the house became so dark she couldn’t see. The shock and depth of the blackness caused a startled gasp to ripple from her throat.
“Oh, um, I haven’t opened the drapes.” His hand wrapped around her elbow.
The heat of his touch was like fire against the numbness that had overtaken her body since last night, yet at the same time, it reminded her she was still alive.
He guided her across what she assumed was the foyer and then pushed open a door, allowing light to splay around them. With his hand still holding her elbow, he led her into a kitchen painted bright white and boasting several wide windows.
“Would you like some coffee?” he asked, releasing his hold.
It was a moment before she could speak, remember her mission. “If it’s no problem, that would be nice.”
“It’s no problem.” He ran his hands through his hair again. “It’ll just take me a minute to get the fire started.”
She glanced at the big stove he gestured toward. Black with shiny chrome handles and decorative swirls, it looked as if it had never been used. Actually, everything in the room looked brand-new. “It’s really not necessary. I—”
“No, it’s no problem. Here—” he took her hand “—have a seat while I get things going.” He led her to the table and pulled out a chair. His touch once more chased aside the numbness that had been with her all night—as if she couldn’t feel anything on the outside with so much happening on the inside. The fact that her mother hadn’t died while she was a baby was utterly unbelievable. Kit had asked Gramps and Grandma Katie—their spirits, anyway—several times while tossing upon the bed at the society house and pacing the floor at the hotel, why they hadn’t told her. Of course, they hadn’t answered, and now, after hours of crying, wondering and brooding, she was no closer to understanding the whole affair than she’d been last night.
Clatters and thuds made her glance up. Clay had got a fire started and was now opening and shutting cupboard doors. After the last one, he scratched his head and then walked across the room to a door on the opposite wall. When he opened it a pantry was exposed.
He entered the space and quickly walked out again, carrying two packages. “I have both tea and coffee. Which would you prefer?”
“Either is fine, but really, I don’t need—”
“I said it was no problem.” He carried the bags to the stove, set them on top of the warming ovens and started looking in cupboards again.
His behavior held her attention, made the troubles overcoming her slip aside. “Do you not live here?”
“I have a cot in my office. I usually stay there.” He pulled out a copper pot and, smiling as if he’d just discovered he owned the coffeepot, carried it to the sink. “I’m still getting used to where everything is. Clarice stocked it, cleans it once in a while.”
“She said you built this house two years ago,” Kit said, having had a conversation about the intriguing house yesterday afternoon, while visiting after the play. To her disappointment, Clarice hadn’t offered additional information.
“Yes, I did.” He pumped water into the pot, dumped it out and filled it up again.
“And you’re just learning where things are?”
He scooped beans from one of the bags into a metal coffee grinder, and turned the crank. The noise filled the room, and Kit’s mind circled back to the reason she was here. Would he know why Gramps had never told her about her mother? She didn’t know who else to ask.
Clay pulled out a chair and sat next to her, his eyes so sad they tugged at her already bruised heart.
“Kit,” he said solemnly. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what more to say than that.”
A heavy sigh left her chest. “You know, when I was little, I used to dream she wasn’t dead, and neither was my father, and that someday they’d return and I’d have the family I always wanted.” Accepting a mingling of guilt welling inside her, she tried to explain, “Gramps and Grandma were wonderful to me, but I remember other kids and …”
“They loved you,” he said softly.
Nodding, she kept the tears at bay. “I know. I loved them, too, and as foolish as it sounds, I’d hoped Gramps had another family out here, one that would want me.”
“Aw, Kit …” Clay laid a hand on her arm.
“It was silly, I know. My imagination got away from me. And I was afraid. I kind of liked being Katherine Ackerman. She was brave. Braver than me, anyway, and she’d …” Not knowing exactly how to explain it, she let it dro
p, simply said, “I was just so lonesome and I thought …”
Clay’s hand roamed up to rest on her shoulder. “You do have family out here.”
Another burning sensation took over her throat. “I know. Clarice told me Sam is my brother.” It was so hard to explain, but that almost hurt worse. “Do you know why no one ever told me?”
With deep blue eyes full of compassion, Clay shook his head. “I thought about it all night. I can’t say for sure, but I can tell you what I think.”
“I’d appreciate it.” Before she lost her nerve, she added, “I am sorry to put you in this spot, but I don’t have anyone else to turn to.”
He removed his hand from her shoulder and used it to cup her cheek. “It’s all right. I’ll help you in any way I can.”
The sincerity in his tone warmed her heart and made her smile. “I bet there’s a part of you that wishes you’d never met Oscar Becker.”
He chuckled kindly as he pulled the hand from her face and shoved it through his hair again. “I owe everything I have to Oscar.”
She nodded, then flinched inwardly while admitting, “But I bet you wish you’d never met Katherine Ackerman from Boston, Massachusetts. That I’d have just stayed in Chicago.”
A wayward, but charming smile formed on his lips. “No, I don’t wish that,” he said. “But I do have to admit you and Katherine Ackerman from Boston, Massachusetts, smell a whole lot better than Henry did.”
A tiny giggle tickled her throat. “Sorry about that.”
He let out a brief, but nice-sounding laugh. “The more I thought about it last night, the more I realized the Kit Oscar always talked about would have dressed like a boy and pretended to be a rich woman from Boston.” A glimmer sparked in his eye as he added, “He always said you were an adventurer.”
A tingling wave of joy washed over her. “He did?”
“Yes, he did.”
Another lump formed in her throat. “I don’t know why he would have said that. I rarely left the backyard. But thanks for telling me.”
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