Polly swung her feet to the floor and stood, smoothing her skirts. “Honestly, Devon, you're behaving like a spoiled child.” The last word stung, pertinent as it was, and she drew a deep, tremulous breath. “I have something important to say, and by God I'm going to say it, whether you object or not.”
Devon turned his head, looked at her with fierce, Viking-blue eyes. Once, he'd regarded her with gentleness and love. Now he could barely tolerate her presence. He said nothing, he simply stared at her with that expression of challenge in his battered but still handsome face.
The whole world seemed to pulse, like one giant heart, and there was a roaring in Polly's ears. She forced herself to gaze directly into Devon's eyes, and said, “I'm going to have a child. In January, I think.”
A series of emotions moved in his face, but he'd brought them under control before Polly could identify them. “Congratulations,” he said.
The word stabbed Polly like an arrow, but somehow she found the strength to say with dignity, “You are the father of this child, Devon.”
He turned away again, to stare out the window. “How convenient,” he said, after a long silence that was pure torture for Polly.
She closed her eyes, gripped the side of a table to keep from sagging to the floor. She had guessed what his reaction would be, and yet it came as a brutal shock, too. Polly had not entirely abandoned the hope that he would remember that he'd loved her once, that he'd remember all the plans they'd made together.
Now, however, there was nothing left to say.
Devon reached out, snatched something from the top of his washstand. Then, laboriously, depending on the cane to keep himself upright, he turned and flung one hand out.
Currency swirled toward her in a storm. “Here. This is what you wanted, isn't it?” he growled. “Take it—take any goddamned thing you want—and get the hell out of my life!”
Polly had done some pretty questionable things in the past, and she knew the days and years ahead might be bitterly difficult for both her and the baby. All the same, she would have starved before taking that money. She lifted her chin, tried frantically to think what Lydia would do.
At the moment of that decision, a peculiar thing happened. A new strength poured into Polly, and she said something she hadn't planned, hadn't even consciously thought before. “I won't make it so easy for you, Devon. I'm staying right here in Quade's Harbor. I'll marry the first man who asks me, and every day for the rest of your life you'll either see me, or the child you denied. Your child.”
With that, Polly turned and left the room.
At noon Brigham came down from the mountain. His clothes were stiff with dried sweat, pitch, and ordinary dirt. His best bullwhacker had quit in a drunken rage, he'd been stung on the back of the neck by a wasp, and he was so obsessed with thoughts of Lydia that he was more a hindrance to the men than a help.
Reaching the cool sanctity of his tree-trunk office, he ladled a big drink of water from the bucket and scowled at Harrington, who was sitting at his worktable on the opposite wall, going over papers.
“There's a problem, sir,” Harrington announced bravely, after clearing his throat twice and rustling things.
Brigham touched the sting on his nape and cursed. “There are a number of problems, Harrington,” he answered in a curt tone.
“This one is rather urgent, Mr. Quade. Two women arrived on that freighter that came in last week. They're missionaries.”
Missionaries. Brigham took a bottle from the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk and, despite the fact that he rarely took a drink before six in the evening, tossed back one fiery swallow and then another. “Where have they been staying?”
“I gave them my cabin,” Harrington answered. “But I'm afraid I can no longer tolerate living up in camp with the other men.”
Brigham could well imagine how the skinny, earnest clerk would fare among the timbermen; they would bait him mercilessly. He sighed and rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “These women have come to save our souls?” He sighed the question, already convinced of the answer.
But Harrington surprised him. “Not exactly, sir. I believe they think we're hopeless pagans, all things considered, and expect a better harvest among the Indians. They're searching for Reverend Matthew Prophet, too.”
The reverend had packed up his bags and left on one of the mail-boat runs some days before, and Brigham hadn't given the wild-eyed fanatic another thought since. He had hoped, in passing, that the old man wouldn't do too much harm to the good Lord's cause before someone lynched him out of annoyance.
“What do they want with Prophet?” he finally asked. He didn't give a damn about the answer, but he knew Harrington would not rest until he'd related it.
“The older one claims to be his wife,” Harrington said. “The younger, his daughter.”
At last Brigham was interested. “Great Zeus,” he muttered. “Prophet abandoned his own family?”
“Yes,” Harrington said, and this time there was a grudge in his voice.
Brigham smiled. “Is she pretty? The daughter, I mean?”
The clerk flushed and looked away. “Yes.” He pushed his spectacles up to the bridge of his nose. “It's not right, a girl like that wandering around the frontier with only her mother to watch out for her.”
The sting on Brigham's neck was still burning. “Maybe not,” he conceded impatiently, and headed for the door, “but it's common enough, since the war. Tell the ladies they can put up in one of the Main Street houses, temporarily.”
“Yes, sir,” Harrington said, with a note of good cheer.
Brigham started toward home, thinking he'd have a cool bath and put a paste of baking soda and water on the wasp sting. Maybe then he'd be able to concentrate on his work.
The musical sound of laughter reached him long before he came to Lydia's gate and stopped there to watch the game going on in the side yard. Lydia was blindfolded with a bright red bandanna, staggering about in the grass, her arms outstretched, while six delighted children dodged her grasp.
Brigham was enchanted. Along with the hot and elemental needs he felt whenever he saw Lydia, there was a sense of tender magic. He wanted to join in the game, to capture Lydia in his arms and kiss that laughing mouth.
As he watched, Millie purposely allowed herself to be caught and as a result became “it.” Lydia removed her blindfold and fastened it carefully over the little girl's eyes. Only when Millie was groping after the other children, who taunted her good-humoredly, did Miss McQuire look toward the fence and catch Brigham staring at her.
He saw her draw herself up, smooth her hair and skirts. The womanly gestures were habitual, he knew, perhaps even unconscious. She was obviously gathering her thoughts as she approached.
“Just in case you're about to say blindman's buff is a waste of lesson time—”
Brigham raised one hand, palm out, to silence her. “I wasn't going to say anything of the kind,” he said. “The truth is, I was thinking how good it is to see children playing together.” It was the truth, he reasoned to himself. It just wasn't the whole truth.
Her brows puckered together in a frown, and she tilted her head to one side. “Is your neck swollen?”
Brigham felt foolish, wanting her sympathy and gentle touch the way he did. So he tried to hide his feelings. “It's just a wasp sting, that's all,” he said.
She stood on tiptoe, bending over the fence. “Such things can be quite serious. Let me see.”
He turned his head to give her a better view of the wound, taking unreasonable pleasure from her concern.
“I don't like the looks of that,” she said. “Come sit on the porch. I'll take out the stinger and apply some disinfectant.”
Brigham opened the gate and followed her obediently up the walk, while the exuberant game of blindman's buff went on without interruption. He sat on the top step and Lydia went into the house, returning in a few minutes with a basin of water, a cloth, and a bottle containing some tinctu
re. She had washed her hands, and the scent of soap was about her.
Her manner was gently efficient. Brigham couldn't remember the last time a woman had touched him with tenderness—passion, yes. Anger, yes. But not in a gentle, caring way.
He went weak at the softness of her attentions, as dazed as if he'd just swallowed half a bottle of laudanum in one gulp.
She made a tsk-tsk sound, full of sympathy, and Brigham couldn't help thinking of her steadfast refusal to marry him. He'd wanted to bed her almost from the first, but now he mourned something else even more deeply. He ached with the knowledge that he might never be entitled to wifely ministrations like this. So many times, his back was sore when he came out of the woods after a long day's work, and it would have been a glorious thing to feel her strong hands rubbing away the weariness and the pain. She might have cut his hair for him, and listened in soothing silence while he told her about things that had gone wrong, and washed that hard-to-reach place between his shoulder blades when he bathed.
“There,” she teased briskly, breaking the spell. Leaving Brigham with no ready excuse to linger. “I'm sure you'll survive your injury.”
Brigham turned and looked into her blue, blue eyes, and immediately lost his equilibrium again. He spoke sternly, so she wouldn't know how she'd shaken him, just sitting there, smelling of plain soap and touching him with gentle fingers. “Harrington tells me a woman and a girl came to town last week, looking for Reverend Prophet.”
Lydia looked toward the children, soft tendrils of hair dancing against her cheeks, watching with a half smile as Anna became “it” and the others pursued her. The pure gaiety of their laughter did something peculiar to Brigham's heart, as did the close proximity of this woman.
“I know,” she said. “I called on them after they'd settled into Mr. Harrington's quarters. Quite a situation.”
“Harrington is sweet on the girl, I think,” Brigham said. He didn't give a damn about his clerk's romantic interests, but he wasn't ready to stand up and walk away, either.
Lydia's smile was more medicinal than the stuff she'd applied to the insect bite. It made his heart bunch up in his chest, then expand with a painful rush. “Love seems to be in the air,” she said. “Mr. Feeny has been calling on Elly Collier of late, and a day doesn't go by that some suitor doesn't leave me a present.”
A quiet, poisonous rage surged through Brigham's system, virulent as the wasp's venom, and he stood. “I don't want you accepting gifts,” he said flatly. “It isn't proper.”
She looked up at him without so much as a hint of timidity, and a little yellow-gold cat wriggled over to make its way onto her lap. “Since when have you troubled yourself over what is or isn't proper?” she countered, unruffled. She stroked the kitten, and Brigham was sore with envy.
He had no answer. Brigham Quade had never given a rat's ass about propriety, except where it concerned his daughters, and Lydia obviously knew that.
“Has Joe McCauley come calling?” he asked, his voice gruff. The place where the wasp had struck didn't hurt half so much as the bite Lydia had taken out of his pride.
Lydia nodded. “Yes. He's made no secret of his intentions, Brigham. Not even to you.”
That was true enough. McCauley had gone to Seattle just the day before, in fact, looking for a loan to build himself a combination office and house in Quade's Harbor. Brigham had offered to put up the money, since the town needed a doctor if it was going to grow into the kind of place he envisioned, but McCauley had politely refused. He'd said straight out that he didn't want to be beholden; the building and the practice had to be under his own governing.
Brigham had understood that, being of like mind himself, and his respect for the man had risen accordingly, but he'd had a crazy desire to run McCauley off like a stray dog, too. If Lydia married the doctor, she would be all around Quade's Harbor on wifely business, and he would see her everywhere.
Presently, her belly would swell with McCauley's child, and he would have to live with the knowledge that she shared another man's bed, took pleasure beneath another man's hands and mouth and hips.
Brigham didn't think he could stand that, and yet he'd be damned if he'd leave. He'd worked too hard and suffered too much to give up his holdings on account of some saucy little Yankee.
Her laugh, sudden and bright as a bell on a clear morning, jolted him out of his thoughts.
“For goodness sake, Brigham,” she scolded, standing beside him on the dirt path in front of her porch steps. “You look as grim as a thundercloud. Are you sure you're all right?”
“I'm fine,” he barked. Then he turned and strode away toward the gate.
When Brigham arrived at the house, he went immediately to his brother's room. Devon was sitting up in bed, smoking a cigar and playing poker with Jake Feeny.
It lightened Brigham's black mood a little, seeing his brother looking almost like his old self.
“I guess I'd like to have some of that raisin cake now,” Devon said to the cook, the cigar bobbing between his white teeth as he spoke.
Jake took the hint and left, with a cordial nod at Brigham.
Devon reached out and caught the neck of a whiskey bottle in his fingers and a glass in the curve of his thumb.
Brigham frowned.
“Don't say it,” Devon warned, before his brother could offer a comment on the early hour. The bottle clinked against the rim of the glass as he poured himself a double shot—not his first of the day, from the smell of him. “I need this. It controls the pain.”
Brigham eyed the liquor warily, only too aware of what it could do to a man's life once it took a stranglehold. “Maybe it's time you got out of this room, Dev,” he said quietly, pulling up the chair that usually contained Polly. “I'll have a crew finish the general store, and you can send to San Francisco for stock—”
Devon drained the glass and set it aside with an unsteady motion of his hand, bumping it against the bottle. “I won't be needing the store,” he said. “I'm leaving Quade's Harbor, Brig. For good.”
The words struck Brigham like the trunk of a three-year-old sapling swung hard at his midsection. The dream of building a decent town, a place for people to live and work, had not been his alone. Devon had shared it once.
“What?” he asked stupidly, still reeling on the inside.
“I can't stay here and watch Polly get fat with that bastard's baby,” Devon growled.
Brigham stared at him for a moment, amazed. “What bastard is that?” he asked after a long time.
Devon reached for the bottle again; Brigham got up and pulled it from his hand. For a long moment the two brothers glared at each other in fury, and Brigham knew they would have fought under any other circumstances.
“The child isn't mine,” Devon finally said, on a long, ragged breath.
Brigham slowly lowered the whiskey bottle onto the marble top of Devon's bureau. “Did she tell you that?”
“Hell, no,” Devon answered in an acid rasp. “She says I'm the father.”
Brigham struggled for patience. He hadn't been able to help hearing some of the sounds that had come from this room as he'd passed by in the hall in the days after Devon's return from San Francisco. “You probably are.”
Devon sighed, and there was something broken in the sound, for all its bitterness. “No. She lied before, and she's lying now.”
“What makes you so sure of that?” Brigham wished to God he had Devon's problem. If he'd made Lydia pregnant, she might have married him. Might.
His brother ran his tongue over dry, cracked lips. “I'm sure, all right. Miracles like that only happen in those storybooks of Charlotte's, and I don't believe in fairy tales anymore.”
“You're a damn fool. That baby is a Quade, Devon, you can't just turn your back!”
Devon said nothing. Nothing at all.
Brigham suppressed an urge to grip his brother by the shoulders and thump his head against the headboard until he'd pounded in some sense. Instead he made a silent
decision of his own and walked out.
If Devon wouldn't take responsibility for that baby, which was as much a Quade as any of them, then he himself would. Even if it meant putting some of his own dreams aside forever.
Lydia dropped the potato she'd been peeling and stared at Polly, who was perched on the porch step beside her. It was twilight, the mail boat had come and gone, and the mill saw was blessedly silent, but the peace had been shattered by a few simple words.
“You're what?”
Polly wouldn't look at her. “I'm marrying Brigham. He called me into his study a little while ago and asked me. We aren't going to live together, of course, but the baby will have the Quade name, and Brigham has promised to help me get started in business as soon as the general store is finished.”
Lydia made no attempt to pick up the naked potato, which was now brown with dust from the path, even though the idea of never wasting food was ingrained in her. She was dizzy with bewilderment and shock, and the fact that Brigham and Polly didn't plan to share a bed was of no comfort at all. Brigham was a vital, healthy man, and Polly was a beautiful woman. It would only be a matter of time before Brigham claimed his rights as a husband.
“What about Devon?” Lydia asked when she could manage to speak.
Polly bent down, picked up the potato, and tried to wipe it off with her skirt. A tear rolled down her cheek and dropped off onto her bodice. “Devon is leaving Quade's Harbor. He thinks I'm lying about the baby.” She turned her head, looking so despondent that Lydia couldn't be angry with her. “I—I wouldn't have said yes to Brigham's proposal,” she added, “except that you've made it so clear you won't have him for a husband.”
Lydia was undergoing a major shift in attitude in those moments. She loved Brigham Quade, ornery and hard-headed as he was, and the rest of her life loomed long and lonely without him. She wished she'd accepted his suit, and left the winning of his more noble affections until later.
“I see,” she said.
Polly rose to leave, shaking out her skirts. “I'm not strong like you, Lydia,” she told her still-stricken friend. “I couldn't make my own way in the world, not with a baby to look after.”
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