Quillan drew himself up. “I don’t blame you.” It was God who betrayed them, and those most of all who served Him best.
Carina celebrated the New Year with the rest of the city, crowded onto the frozen street. Torches blazed, bells of every size and sort rang out, and someone had even provided fireworks. Carina watched the sparks shoot high into the sky and explode into green and gold with a bang. She clapped her hands with each explosion, laughing and cheering as loudly as those on either side of her.
To her right stood Alex Makepeace with Mae beside him. To her left, Èmie in the crook of Robert Simms’s arm. As the last of the fireworks rained sparks from the sky, Dr. Simms turned Èmie in his arms and kissed her. “New Year greetings, Èmie. Let’s make it our best yet.”
Watching them, Carina felt a pang and chastised herself for it. Should she wish any less for Èmie? She felt a touch on her arm and turned.
“Happy ’81, Carina.” Alex Makepeace leaned close and kissed her lightly on the cheek. He did the same for Mae, but Carina sensed a difference, as though that courtesy was only to cover his gesture toward her. She wasn’t nearly as naïve as she had been.
Before she could worry, her hand was being shaken by man after man along the street. “God bless you, ma’am. Greetings, Mrs. Shepard. Best to you and yours, ma’am.” She laughed and returned them all. Who was to say that 1881 wouldn’t be her best year yet?
Her heart swelled with hope and anticipation. Anything could happen under a winter sky so filled with stars in the city that was the diamond of the Rockies. Indeed, anything could happen. She rested her hand on her waist.
They went inside to the kitchen, where Mae had whipped an eggnog to a frothy richness and sprinkled it with nutmeg. Alex dribbled rum into the bottoms of the cups, and Mae ladled the creamy eggnog atop. Carina laughed when it coated the skin above her lip. “I’ve winter whiskers like the rest of Crystal.”
Alex rubbed his own beard and laughed with her. “You’ve a way to go to match these.”
Dr. Simms lowered his cup. “I saw a bearded woman once at a side show in Detroit. The whiskers hung down to her chest.”
“Were they real whiskers?” Èmie looked into his face as though she suspected a jest.
“Had to be. A little midget hung his whole weight on it, dangled there until she thumped him off.”
Mae laughed. “Must have been a sight.”
“If you go in for such things. I prefer women without.” And his smile made Èmie blush.
Alex raised his glass. “Here’s to women without. May the new year be bounteous.”
Carina raised her cup and tapped it to his. Then she clanked Mae’s and Èmie’s and Dr. Simms’s as well. “May the new year be blessed.” She met Èmie’s eyes. “Especially for the two joining their hearts.”
Èmie gripped her hand, and they shared a smile. Carina swallowed the rest of her eggnog and silently blessed the man who’d provided the eggs laid by the chickens in the lean-to. Happy New Year, Quillan, wherever you are.
Quillan brought the spoon to her lips, the lukewarm soup dribbling in over the tongue Mrs. Shepard extended like an animal. His hand shook, and as much soup went down her chin as her throat. He brought the spoon back to the bowl as her hands jerked wildly. The moan gurgled in her throat, and he looked into her terrified eyes. What brought it this time?
She seemed to see something behind him, as her gaze was fixed over his left shoulder. These last two days she’d grown accustomed to his presence, and he no longer set her off just by walking in. He tried to put another spoonful to her mouth, but she backed away, trembling.
“There’s nothing there.” He spoke low and softly. “It can’t hurt you.”
Her wrists curled up and the hands gyrated. He remembered her fingers pinched into his ear, dragging him close to hear what nasty thing she had to say. “I only took you to save your mother drowning you in the river.” He shook the thought away and again raised the spoon. This time she lapped at it greedily. It spilled over his fingers.
“When you’ve been married long, you’ ll know why I don’t have her locked away.”
Could the reverend love her? Was it possible he held feelings for this . . . creature? The face contorted, almost as though she’d read his thoughts. She pawed his arm, petting him, preening him. Sounds that weren’t words came from her soup-stained mouth.
Quillan raised the cloth and wiped her lips clean. “Don’t talk now. You need to eat.” Quillan looked at her wrists, so thin and misshapen he could snap them with no effort at all. The next spoonful made it into her mouth. Maybe she’d remembered how it was done. Maybe it was just luck. He fed her another and congratulated himself when it, too, went down where it was supposed to. Then both her hands came up and pushed the spoon away. He started to protest, then froze.
“Quil-lan.”
His jaw fell slack at her throaty utterance. He’d imagined it. Her sounds were nothing but noise, no sense, no understanding.
She reached up and tugged at her hair, humming. Her gaze drifted to the window at the side of the room. Gathering himself, he urged her back to the soup, and like a baby she opened for him. He’d fed her half the bowl before she tensed again, gripping the neck of her nightgown and shrinking back into the pillows stacked behind her.
Quillan searched the room. It was stale and serene, nothing at all that could alarm her. “Here now, let’s finish.” He raised a spoonful, but she suddenly gripped the tray and flung it from her, spewing soup over the covers and him. Quillan caught her hands and brought them together. “It’s all right. It can’t hurt you.”
She growled and snarled and tried to bite his hands. There was more strength in her skeleton than he would have imagined, but he held firm. “Calm down.”
She started to cry, wringing her hands out of his grasp and pushing him away. Quillan stood. He picked up the bowl and tray and dug the spoon out from under the bedside table. From the washstand he snatched a towel and wiped the coverlet. Then he settled it over her as she curled into a weeping ball. He was learning the pattern. The rage, the fear, then the weeping.
Quillan carried the dish out to the kitchen. He wet a towel and rubbed his shirt and the side of his pants. The reverend would be home soon. Quillan would tell him he was leaving. He leaned on the counter and looked out across the yard surrounded by short white pickets. A cold wind blew, and he thought of Carina.
What if she hadn’t left? Would she be warm? Would she be safe? That was where he belonged, not here with an aging pastor and his imbecile wife. Yet he hadn’t left. He hadn’t intended to stay even one night, and here he’d been there two. Today when his foster father asked him to sit with Mrs. Shepard, he’d balked, then agreed.
He hadn’t known the reverend would be absent all these hours, hadn’t known he would have to feed and care for her alone. Quillan washed the bowl and spoon and put them in their places. His own soup was still in the pot, but he had no appetite for it. He dried his hands on the towel and walked back to make certain she was sleeping.
The huddled form under the covers was so small, shrunken bones and flesh, a fragile heap of misery. She seemed peaceful now, and he took his place in the chair across from the bed. Reverend Shepard had said he needn’t sit there all the time; she was too weak to stand. But Quillan sat anyway.
His feelings were awash with confusion. Why had she told him such lies? Why had she made him believe his mother would have drowned him? Had indeed thrown him away? That his father was a black-hearted, greed-infested animal? That he was doomed to be wicked as they were wicked.
Were they wicked? Was she? Could he even believe that now, when it was the illness that warped and twisted her mind? He dropped his face into his hands. Where did the truth lie? What was truth? Like Pilate before the scourged Savior, he wanted the answer.
Cain might have told him. But Cain was gone. Somehow the thought didn’t bring the debilitating guilt it had even a short while ago. Yes, Cain was dead. Yes, in a way he was responsib
le. But in a world so convoluted and inscrutable, what use was there in blaming himself? The blame lay squarely on God.
He looked at the woman lying in the bed, a woman of faith. He thought of the reverend out somewhere even now, in the cold with some member of his flock. Stoop-shouldered, shrunken, yet tenaciously serving a God who would always have the last laugh. Why?
He rested his head against the wall. Why?
FIFTEEN
A heart in love is the finest beauty treatment yet devised. I have never seen Èmie look so beautiful.
—Carina
PACKED INTO THE TINY dirt-floored cabin, while snow sparkled the air outside, Carina watched Father Antoine join his niece and Dr. Robert Simms in marriage. Had she looked at this priest with such hopeful joy when he’d joined her with Quillan? Or had her eyes held only the fear and uncertainty of their circumstances?
Could she have known then what a farce her marriage would become? She pressed her eyes closed against the ache, then opened them again, determined to see Èmie start differently. Hers would be a blessed union. It had no complications. These two married for love.
Carina forced back her tears. Hadn’t she also? Perhaps. It seemed so in her memory, but her emotions were so confused. It had been so long now since she’d even seen Quillan, heard his voice in the street. She missed him. Even in his cruelty, at least he showed that he knew she existed.
She put a hand to her belly. But did he know another one existed? A surge of hope filled her. When he knew, when he saw her belly swollen with life, would he dare suggest their union was anything less than God’s will? Though her skirts hid the slight bulging of her abdomen and she had yet to feel more than a flutter inside, she knew this child was their hope.
She bit her lip as Èmie raised her hand and Dr. Simms slid the ring onto her finger. How long before Èmie, too, carried a child in her womb? Would their babies grow up together on the streets of Crystal? Carina smiled at the thought. Was this a son she carried, strong and long of limb like Quillan, or a daughter with dark laughing eyes?
How could she have been so innocent of the early changes in her body? Thinking herself ill with some malady when she missed cycle after cycle? By the third she had guessed. Impossible as it seemed, Quillan had made her with child. Grazie Dio! She no longer felt so alone. Even in these circumstances, she couldn’t help rejoicing. God had brought good from that terrible night. Un miracolo.
Now Dr. Simms kissed his bride, and Carina clapped with the others, joy chasing all other thoughts from her mind. How Èmie deserved to be loved. Now she was free of Uncle Henri and could make a home for this man. Carina thought of her own empty room, but she pushed the sadness aside. This was Èmie’s day.
The feast was held in Carina’s dining room and consisted mostly of game and corn. She had baked a cake of soured cream and poppy seeds, the last of them in her small jar. The air outside was bitter, freezing the moisture into glittering crystalline wind. Inside, the fire’s glow and the joy warmed the room and all those present.
She sensed Alex Makepeace beside her and turned. In what short time he had become one of them. She smiled. “Last year I wondered if Èmie would ever marry. Now this.” She waved her arm at the joyful assembly.
“You’ve done well for her.”
“Not me,” Carina protested, seeing Èmie’s face aglow from across the room. “It is Èmie’s own nature.”
“And a little help from her friends.”
Carina started to argue, but he cut her short.
“Do you think she could have blossomed so, trapped in that hot spring cave day after day?”
It was true. Èmie no longer seemed dull and pale. Her lackluster eyes shone with mirth, and she was accomplished both in the kitchen and business. Carina smiled. Maybe she had helped her friend after all.
“I wish there were more I could do. I owe her so much.”
“For what?” Alex raised a cinnamon eyebrow.
“For befriending me when I was alone and afraid in a strange place with no money and hardly the sense of a chicken.”
He laughed. “In that case I’m deeply in your debt.”
She smiled. “Hardly. You know exactly what you’re doing. You didn’t come to Crystal expecting anything but what you found.”
He was silent a long moment, then, “I never once expected what I found.”
Their eyes met, and Carina felt a pang. It was wrong, this closeness they shared. Completely chaste, yet . . . She knew they had crossed a line somewhere. She told herself he was a friend, her husband’s partner. Yet the room was brighter for his presence. His smile eased her loneliness. She felt free to discuss anything—anything but her husband and their coming child.
What would Alex think when her belly grew? Would he know she loved her husband? A twisting confusion filled her. She did love her husband. Even in his absence, she longed for his mocking smile as she had first seen it, the strength of his arm as he’d carried her from the shaft, the swiftness of his wit as he’d heard and destroyed the rattlesnake. Most of all she longed for the gentle love they’d shared on their own wedding night. How had it all been destroyed? She dropped her gaze from Alex’s and felt, rather than heard, him sigh.
“If this freeze holds, I’d like to return to the cave. There are some tests I want to conduct.”
Carina nodded. She, too, wanted to see the cave again. Wolf’s pictures had haunted her, but this time she wanted to study them, to learn their story, to know it as she knew Rose’s. Somehow she felt it would make her understand Quillan. Reading Rose’s diary had increased her love for the man she hardly knew. Seeing Wolf’s pictures might do the same.
Carina glanced at the window. “If we start now we’ll have enough daylight.”
“Dare we sneak away?”
Her heart thumped, his choice of words causing a guilty thrill. Carina looked at Èmie engrossed in the man at her side, enclosed by friends and well-wishers. They might be missed, but not for long. Èmie’s joy would eclipse all else. Èmie’s joy, which ought to be Carina’s as well, for she truly loved her friend. Yet . . . Carina nodded, and they slipped out together.
Did she imagine Alan Tavish’s frown as Alex requested their horses? Did the bowed head hang lower, the shoulders stoop with more weight than usual? Carina shook herself. She was doing nothing wrong! She was going to her husband’s mine to understand more clearly the forces at work on the man she loved.
Carina shivered. On horseback with her mouth wrapped in a scarf against the crystalline air, Carina was chilled more quickly than she could have imagined. She thought of the blizzard that had stopped Quillan and her. What if another one came? What would Alex do? Would they be safe in the cave? At least it was shelter. But she couldn’t spend a night alone with him as she had with her husband. Blizzard or no, tongues would wag.
Yet he couldn’t be expected to go alone into the cave. What if something happened? Nor could she go without him unless she told someone else of the cave’s existence. She had meant to tell Father Antoine, but he’d been absent from Crystal these last two months. She would tell him, though, now that he was back for Èmie’s wedding. He would want to see for himself Wolf’s depictions of the story he’d shared with the priest that night on the mountain.
Yes, she would tell Father Antoine, take him there herself if he returned to town long enough. Then she wouldn’t have to go alone with Alex Makepeace. But today she rode beside the steeldust stallion, wondering what kept Alex so quiet.
Èmie’s wedding feast was the only meal she was preparing today. She’d posted as much on the door of her dining room. Her clientele would have to eat elsewhere, and that left her free to pursue this adventure. Funny how Alex had thought of it himself.
She glanced his way. His gaze was forward, but he sensed her movement, turned, and smiled. “Thank you for coming, Carina. That’s the first rule in caving. Don’t go alone.”
“Thank you for keeping this secret.”
“I wouldn’t break my word to yo
u.” He looked away.
Again she felt a pang, aware that his feelings might be more than her own. She rocked with Daisy’s gait and wondered if she should be riding in her condition. As she had yet to mention it to anyone, she had no medical opinion to go by. Papa had not given his opinion on the subject since Mamma never rode horseback if she could help it.
Carina sighed. She had yet to write them. Oh, what a shameful daughter to keep something so important from those she loved. One letter had arrived in answer to her earliest correspondence. With the winter roads, mail service was difficult, though not impossible.
But she had yet to tell them of her marriage, much less this child she bore. If only Quillan would return and see once and for all that she wouldn’t desert him as so many others had. That must be behind his fear to get close. He’d been rejected too many times. Now he guarded himself. But she knew he could love if he once let himself.
They climbed to the Rose Legacy and dismounted. Alex had loaded his horse with ropes, balls of string, candles in their tin holders, a box of instruments, even kindling. He, too, was a resourceful and forward-thinking man. He helped her down, and she wondered for a moment if he noticed her extra bulk without the skirts to hide it.
How could he? It was hardly enough to add weight, much less substance. She was overly aware of the baby’s presence, but it wouldn’t be noticeable for some time to others. They entered the drift and Alex lit the first candle. He handed it to her. She held its dim light for him to see as he fixed the rope to the spikes and double-hitch tied it.
Alex turned. “Ready?” Once again he’d brought a harness for her, and she stepped in more confidently than she had the first time.
“I think so.” But as she surrendered the candle and he lowered her down, she heard the moaning, and again, her fear kindled. It was only wind through the mouth of Wolf’s memorial. But she imagined worse, far worse.
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