by Peggy Webb
Perhaps the baby was the catalyst that had thrust him on this course of marriage, or perhaps the attack on Elizabeth was the thing that had made Hawk see how precious she was to him. For whatever reason, he knew that he could not endure a life without her.
After he had cleaned the kitchen, he went back to the bedroom and sat in a chair beside the window to think. And then his gaze fixed upon her diary. It lay on her bedside table, closed and locked.
He walked across the room and picked it up. What were the hard lessons of Elizabeth’s past? What terrible things had happened to her that made her refuse to acknowledge or even consider a future with him?
He turned the diary in his hand. The temptation to read it was great. But he would never violate Elizabeth’s privacy that way. There was only one thing to do—find the man who had betrayed her, and then he would find the truth.
o0o
When Elizabeth got home she knew Hawk was not there. The house had an empty, echoing feeling.
“So much for undying love,” she muttered as she climbed the stairs.
She was more exhausted than she had expected to be. She supposed the combination of pregnancy and a recent hospital stay had sapped her energy—that, or a broken heart. Did people die of broken hearts?
She walked into her bedroom, pulling off her jacket and her skirt as she went. As she stretched across the bed, she saw the note propped on her bedside table.
“I will be back,” he had written in a bold hand. “I promise you that. Hawk.”
Elizabeth pressed the note to her lips, then she folded it and slipped it inside her diary. She wondered if all the important events in her life would eventually end up between the pages of a locked diary.
o0o
Luck was with Hawk. Mark Laton was still teaching at Yale, and he was willing to talk.
On the long flight north, Hawk tried to imagine what the man would look like and what his own feelings would be at seeing the man who had taught Elizabeth the art of love.
“Is something wrong, sir?” a passing flight attendant leaned down to ask.
Hawk loosened his grip on the seat handles and relaxed the muscles of his face. “No. Everything is fine.”
“Good.” The flight attendant smiled. Maggie, her name tag said. “We like all our passengers to be comfortable. Enjoy your flight, sir.”
The only thing enjoyable about the flight was that it put him closer to achieving his goal. All in all, he’d rather have been on a horse. He fought the crowds at Kennedy Airport, then rented a car and drove to New Haven.
Mark Laton was waiting for him at the appointed place, in front of the towering Gothic structure on Yale’s Memorial Quadrangle. Although the autumn air was much nippier in Connecticut than in Mississippi, Hawk preferred to meet this adversary out of doors. He believed it would give him a home court advantage.
Mark Laton was smaller than Hawk would have guessed, and much older. What had Elizabeth ever seen in such a man? Involuntarily Hawk’s hands curled into fists, then he forced himself to relax.
“Professor Laton.” Hawk sat on a bench without extending his hand. He might have used subterfuge to get this interview, but he was no hypocrite.
“Professor Black Hawk...”
“Just Black Hawk.”
“I can’t tell you how flattered I am that you would come all the way from Mississippi to see me.”
“The paper you did on the Boethian influence on the Clerk’s Tale is well-known. Every scholar of Chaucer should read it.”
“Indeed they should. Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy is just as relevant today as it was then.”
The man was pompous and very susceptible to flattery. The sooner Hawk dealt with him, the better. He stood up so he would tower over the professor.
“At one time or another, all of us deal with adversity.” Hawk gave the professor time to preen and get comfortable, then went in for the kill. “How did you deal with Elizabeth McCade?”
Mark Laton jerked his head back as if he had been slapped. Then his eyes narrowed.
“Are you another one of those pesky newspaper reporters?”
“No. This is personal. I am Black Hawk, and I will have answers.”
“But you said you were a professor... that you taught Chaucer.”
“You made that assumption yourself. I merely talked about Chaucer.”
“This is unconscionable.” Mark Laton stood up to leave, and Hawk caught his collar. Mark looked like a worm caught on a hook.
“I am in a violent mood,” Hawk told him. “If I get answers, I might restrain myself.”
“Put me down.”
“Only when you start to talk.”
Mark took Hawk’s measure, then his resistance crumpled. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
Mark sank back onto the bench and told how he had seduced the brightest student in his class. Hawk sat through Mark’s tale of introducing Elizabeth to the ways of love. He saw Mark only dimly through a red curtain of rage.
Mark embellished the story, sliding his gaze sideways at Hawk to see how much punishment he could inflict.
“Enough,” Hawk roared. “Tell me why she left.”
“Because I wouldn’t marry her.” Mark puffed out his chest and scored another point. “She loved me, you see.”
“Did you love her?”
“No.”
Hawk caught Mark’s shirtfront and hauled him close. “You lie. No man could possess Elizabeth and not love her.”
Hawk fought a long, hard battle for control. Finally he eased his hold. “Elizabeth told me that she once wanted to kill you. If you don’t tell me the truth, I might oblige her by doing the job myself.”
“It happened a long time ago.” Hawk waited. The man was finally going to speak the truth. Hawk could sense it.
“She came to me after class one day. I could tell that she was unusually excited. She waited until all the other students had gone, and then she sat in a front row seat, facing my desk. I remember how prim she looked, how virginal. At that moment, I wanted her more than I had ever wanted any woman in my life.
Hawk was as still as death. Don’t let passion control you now, he told himself. Not when the truth is within reach.
“She told me she was pregnant.” Mark paused for breath, wringing his hands. In the telling, the sins of his past had come alive once more. He felt like a very old man.
“I panicked,” Mark continued. “I opened the desk drawer and pulled out my wedding ring. ‘How can I marry you?’ I said. ‘I already have a wife.’ She went very pale. I thought she was going to faint. I felt sorry for her, but I knew I couldn’t give her any hope. My job, indeed, my very life here at the university was at stake. ‘Surely you knew,’ I said. ‘Nobody can be that naive.’ But she was. I could tell. She had never known I was married.” His voice trailed off, and he became silent.
“What happened next?” Hawk prompted, his voice lashing out like a whip.
“I toyed with the idea of running away with her, of chucking my job and divorcing my wife and setting up another life with Elizabeth McCade.” Mark sighed. “But I didn’t. Instead I laughed at her. ‘You’ve made two terrible mistakes,’ I said. ‘Your first was in trusting me, and your second was in getting pregnant.’“
Suddenly Mark’s shoulders slumped, and he sat staring into space.
“What did Elizabeth do?” Hawk asked.
“She stayed on here a while, but she dropped out of my class. Of course, I steered clear of her. I couldn’t continue our secret liaisons after that.”
Hawk refrained from remark. Nothing he could say or do would be adequate punishment for a man like Mark Laton.
“There was talk around Yale. She lost her scholarship. Some said she’d gone back to Mississippi.”
“What happened to the baby?”
“I don’t know.”
“She carried your child, and you don’t know what happened to it?”
“It was not my res
ponsibility. I made that perfectly clear to her.”
“Killing you would be too merciful.” Hawk stood and looked down on his adversary. “I think living with that guilty secret must be the worst punishment you could have.”
Mark looked stricken as he glanced up at Hawk. “You have no idea what a relief it is to finally tell someone about this. I guess it’s been gnawing at my conscience for many years.”
“Is there more?”
“No. I’ve told you everything.” Mark stood up and faced Hawk like a man. He even squared his shoulders. “Will you keep my secret?”
“Only the three of us will ever know... Elizabeth, you, and I.”
“When you see Elizabeth, tell her I’m sorry.”
Hawk didn’t want to mention this man’s name to Elizabeth. He didn’t want her to know that Mark Laton still existed. But a rational side of him said that there could never be healing without forgiveness.
“Maybe you should tell her yourself.”
“Perhaps I should.” The color came back into Mark’s face, and Hawk saw a flash of nobility that would have attracted Elizabeth so many years ago. “I suppose it would do me no good to offer you my hand.”
“No. Nothing has changed between us.”
“Perhaps you can answer a question now? What’s your interest in Elizabeth McCade?”
“That’s between Elizabeth and me.”
o0o
Elizabeth hadn’t seen Hawk in almost a week. His absence brought memories of another time, another pregnancy, another man who had also walked out on her.
She entered her front door and carefully placed her purse on the hall table. That wasn’t fair. Hawk was nothing like Mark, nothing.
Taking her time, she removed her jacket. It seemed that the only way she could hold herself together these days was to do everything deliberately and methodically. If she held her life in a tight pattern, perhaps she could keep control.
She reached up and tucked a pin back in her hair. Loose ends. She hated loose ends.
“Take the pins out, Elizabeth. I like your hair free.”
Her head jerked at the sound of the voice, and she spun around. Hawk was leaning in the doorway leading to her den, looking handsome and lethal.
“What are you doing here?”
“I told you I’d come back.”
He closed the small space between them in three strides. When he was standing in front of her, so close his jeans were touching her thighs, he reached up and began to take the pins from her hair. She didn’t move; she could scarcely breathe.
When all the pins were out, he laid them carefully on the hall table, then put both hands in her hair. The heat from his hands made her scalp tingle.
He didn’t speak, he just stood there staring down at her with eyes as dark and unfathomable as the bottom of an ocean. The tingling sensation spread from her scalp to the rest of her. It was like wildfire. She closed her eyes against its onslaught.
Hawk knew. She could tell by the tenor of his breathing and the way his hands tightened.
There was a deep murmuring sound, like distant thunder in the mountains. Suddenly he lifted her and carried her through the kitchen and down the cellar stairs. She could hear the sound of her own heart beating in her ears. Hawk entered the passageway, and still Elizabeth didn’t speak. Her mind told her to protest, but her heart said be still.
When they reached the mouth of the tunnel. Hawk carefully handed her out. His black stallion was waiting. He mounted, taking her with him, then wrapped her in a blanket that was draped across his saddle horn. The wind whistled in her ears as the stallion galloped through the forest.
Hawk was taking her captive.
They rode for a long time, climbing high into the hills, winding through trees turned scarlet and gold by the paintbrush of autumn. Elizabeth felt the steady thrum of Hawk’s heart against her back as she leaned on him.
When they reached the highest point on the ridge. Hawk dismounted and carefully helped her down. He caught the edges of the blanket and drew her close.
Hawk cupped her face, tipping it upward, so their lips were almost touching.
“I want you more than I’ve ever wanted another woman.” He tenderly traced her cheekbones and the full shape of her lips. Then he turned her around so her back pressed against him. She could feel the tension in his body.
“What do you see, Elizabeth?”
“I see a stretch of forest, clean and beautiful, untouched by human hands.”
“You see your future.”
“Where are we?”
“Deep in Chickasaw tribal lands.” He held her without speaking for a long while. “I want you to be a part of my life, Elizabeth. I want these to be your lands too. I’ve already made you my woman; now I want to make you my wife.”
“The baby—”
“—might have opened my eyes,” Hawk said, interrupting her. “But he has nothing to do with my love for you, with my desire to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“I can’t.” She twisted around, and there were tears in her eyes. “Oh, Hawk, I can’t. Don’t you see? Right now while our passion is still bright and hot... while the idea of being a father is new to you, you think marriage is what you want.”
“It is.”
“I know you, Hawk, perhaps better than anyone else. I know the passions that control you.” She turned away and gazed across the vast reaches of forest once more. “There will always be a cause that sets you aflame, a battle that needs a commander. Something inside you would die if you didn’t have those things, Hawk.” She faced him once more. “I won’t be the cause of your discontent.”
He cupped her face.
“I’ll change my lifestyle.”
“No.... Right now perhaps you think you will, but you won’t.” She traced his lips with one finger.
“You’ve given me a lot, Hawk—a beautiful summer of passion, the courage to take up my place in the community again, this baby.” She paused, pressing her hands possessively over her womb. “From now on, my life will be what I make it. I won’t run away, I won’t shut myself into a shuttered house, and I won’t be persuaded by a lethally passionate man on a black stallion.”
“I want you, Elizabeth. I need you. I love you.”
“I have never had any doubts that you wanted me, Hawk. But passion is not enough.”
“Elizabeth...”
“Don’t you see?” She held her hands stiffly at her side. “I put my trust in a man once. I can’t... I’m not ready to do that again.”
Hawk walked away and stood with his back to her. He looked every inch the noble savage as he gazed fiercely out across his ancestral lands.
“You like to be in control of things, Hawk. I can’t let you take control of my life—no matter how I feel about you.”
“How do you feel about me, Elizabeth?”
She drew the blanket around her. Suddenly she felt the chill of October creeping into her bones.
“I have never wanted a man as much as I want you. I lie awake at night dreaming of the way you kiss me, the way you hold me, the way you touch me.” She opened her hands and held them up to him. “I love you, Hawk.”
“And yet you would deny us a chance because of him.” Hawk stalked toward her and gripped her shoulders. “I won’t let you, Elizabeth.”
“See? That’s just what I’m talking about. You like to give commands.” She drew out of his reach. “Well, I was a slave to love once. I won’t be again.”
“I am not Mark Laton.” Hawk’s voice thundered with anger. “I will never turn away from you the way he did. I have never lied to you or betrayed you.”
She sucked in her breath, and her face got pale.
“And I would certainly never deny my child.”
“How did you know?”
He reached for her hands. “He told me.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“Yes. I flew up to talk to him.”
“You had no right.” She jerked her han
ds free and banged them against his chest. “What happened to me was private. It has nothing to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with me.” He pulled her into his arms and pressed her head against his chest, gentling her with his hands. “I had to know the enemy, Elizabeth. How can I ever win a battle if I don’t know the enemy?”
“He’s not your enemy, he’s mine.”
“He’s sorry. He told me to tell you that.”
“Sorry? Sorry!” She jerked her head up. “Does he think that makes up for all I went through. He’s sorry!”
“Shhh, shhh...” He held her tightly, caressing the tension from her body. “It’s over, Elizabeth. The past is over and done with.”
She shuddered once, twice. The past was over and done with. That had been another time, another man, another child. Gripping Hawk’s shirt, she gazed up at him.
“Don’t you want to know what happened to the baby?”
“My only concern is you. I had to know how Mark Laton hurt you in order to know how to heal you.”
“You can’t make up for him, Hawk.” She pulled herself out of his embrace and walked away. “I was young and scared and alone. At first I thought about... going to some back-street doctor. But I couldn’t. It was my child. Flesh of my flesh. So I decided to have the baby. Other women supported families without a husband. I could too.”
Drawing the blanket tightly around her neck, she turned back to face him.
“I never got a chance to find out if I could. I miscarried before anyone even knew I was pregnant. Mark was spared the embarrassment of having an illegitimate child.”
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth. If I could erase your past and take away your pain, I would.”
“You can’t. Please take me home.”
“I brought you here for a purpose, Elizabeth. I wanted to get us both away from a place that had any memories. I wanted you to see the ancestral lands from this viewpoint. I wanted you to know the kind of heritage our child will have.”
“You can show the child when he is old enough. I won’t stop you.” She started toward the stallion. “I’m leaving. You can stay if you like.”
He caught her around the waist and lifted her into his arms. “I will not let my child grow up without a mother and father, without a sense of family.”