Rage blazed in her chest like a comet. It roared in her ears and stained her face with heat. She'd vowed to keep a hold on her emotions for the children's sake, but the feelings that swept her were too raw, too overpowering.
She stepped toward him, taut and quivering. "I know it's been years, Baird, but surely you haven't forgotten me."
"Ardith?" he breathed, blinking in confusion. "Whatever are you doing here? Where's Ariel?"
Ardith paused, savoring the moment, avid to read his reaction to what she was about to say. "I'm afraid I have some very sad news..."
"Oh, Papa!" Fresh tears spilled down China's porcelain cheeks. "It's the most tragic thing!"
Fear flashed across Baird's sharply cut features.
"M-M-Mama died!" Khyber sobbed, tightening his hold around his father's neck.
Baird let out his breath in a low, sharp groan. He looked to Ardith for confirmation.
A hot, sweet bolt of satisfaction flashed through her at the pain and disbelief in his eyes. She inclined her head, ashamed that she was taking such pleasure in his anguish.
Baird staggered back a step, his face gone slack.
China stepped in close and threw her arms around him. Khy sobbed louder.
Baird stared past them, not seeming to hear them, not seeming to see them. Then he carefully disentangled himself from his weeping daughter and lowered Khy to the ground.
Ardith's mouth went dry with shock and outrage. Wasn't he even going to try to comfort those children? In that moment, Ardith recognized the truth: He doesn't have any better idea how to do that than I do!
Baird ruthlessly bore down on her. "What happened to Ariel?"
Cullen McKay stepped between them. "It's not as if any of this is Ardith's fault."
"Get out of my way," Northcross snarled and pushed past him.
Ardith steeled herself to face him, raising her head, feeling her cheeks burn with fresh emotion.
"Is Ariel really dead?"
"Yes," she confirmed.
"Goddamnit, Ardith, tell me what happened."
Ardith had honed the words, whetting the edges until they gleamed, until she was sure that when she wielded them they would slice like a blade to the core of him. But as she opened her mouth to speak, she became aware of the children standing weeping only a few feet away.
She wasn't someone who could deliberately destroy a man in front of his children, was she? Yet the temptation was fierce, a long-banked fire that had burst into flame. He'd earned this. He deserved it.
Then she deliberately blunted the thrust, fumbling for less damning words, holding back the accusations she had been about to make.
"I—I think it's best that we discuss this later."
"Later? Why?"
He might not care what the children heard, but Ardith did. She didn't want them hurt by something that was between their father and her.
"We need to get everyone settled," she said, glancing toward her niece and nephews. "I'll be glad to answer your questions in private."
The reason for her reluctance seemed to penetrate Baird's rancor. His shoulders shifted, losing a bit of their rigidity. "But why are you here?"
She swallowed hard, his ingratitude one more mark against him in the tally she was keeping. "I'm here because Ariel asked me to bring the children to Wyoming. It was her last request."
Baird's eyebrows angled down over the bridge of his nose. "You were with her when she died? I didn't know she meant to see you on her way through Boston."
Was it possible Baird didn't know she and Ariel had made their peace some years before? That they'd been corresponding? But then, he'd been gallivanting from one end of the earth to the other. How much could he have known about Ariel's life?
"Ariel came to my uncle's home in Concord when she fell ill," Ardith explained.
"Hell, Northcross," Cullen McKay broke in. "Let the woman alone. She's gone to substantial difficulty to bring your children to you. Show a little appreciation."
To underline her sacrifice, Ardith gathered Khy up and dried his tears. She slid a comforting arm around China's waist.
Baird scowled and turned toward the house.
"Papa?" China slid out of Ardith's embrace and scurried after him. "Papa, is this really going to be our new home?"
Baird looked down at his daughter as if he was not certain why she was here. Then, as if returning to himself, he nodded and led them across the covered porch. "Perhaps until fall."
Once inside Ardith was charmed by the rustic grace of the structure—the peeled log walls and mammoth stone fireplaces, the beamed roof and zigzag-patterned rugs scattered across the scrubbed pine floor. The place smelled resinous and welcoming, like fresh-cut lumber and baking bread.
They'd had no more than a minute or two to admire the house when a broad, wind-burned woman came bustling from somewhere out back. "Has your family arrived safe and sound, Mr. Northcross?"
Baird turned abruptly. "This is Myra Johnson, my cook," he said in a cursory introduction. "Her husband is foreman here at the ranch."
"Good to have you," Myra said, her gaze sliding over each of the children and coming to rest on Ardith. She gave the slightest of nods, as if she liked what she saw.
"You must be hungry," she continued. "By the time we get you settled, I'll be serving supper. Now, Mrs. Northcross, I'll have one of the hands bring your bags up to Mr. Northcross' room so you can—"
"This is not Mrs. Northcross!" Baird all but barked. "My wife is dead."
Myra Johnson's broad face puckered up like a drawstring pouch as she turned to Baird. "I'm so sorry for your loss, sir," she quickly responded. "And that these poor lambs are left without a mother before they're half grown."
Khyber gave a teary sniff. China leaned closer to her father as if she hoped to absorb his warmth. Durban bowed his head, and Ardith saw Cullen McKay lay a hand across the boy's sagging shoulders.
Baird shifted uncomfortably, obviously not accustomed to having demands of such an intimate nature made on him.
Ardith watched his withdrawal, appalled.
A frown pinched hard at the corners of her mouth as she turned to address the housekeeper. "I'm Mrs. Northcross's half-sister, Ardith Merritt. Mrs. Northcross died some weeks ago at my home in Massachusetts."
"Such a pity," the housekeeper put in.
"Indeed," Ardith acknowledged. "Did I understand you to say, Mrs. Johnson, that you have rooms prepared for us?"
"Sure enough, Miss Merritt." Myra Johnson gestured as she spoke. "We'll put you in the room to the right of the fireplace, and the young lady to the left."
"Mr. Northcross' daughter is China," Ardith picked up the introductions Baird had not thought to make. "His older son is Durban, and this is Khyber." She tightened her arms around her nephew. "But we all call him Khy."
Myra nodded again. "Then we'll put the boys together in the room under the stairs—if that's all right with you, Mr. Northcross?"
Baird shrugged, staring at the floor. "Whatever makes sense, Mrs. Johnson."
"And perhaps Mr. McKay will be willing to spend the night in the bunkhouse."
"May I stay in the bunkhouse, too, Papa?" Khy begged. "Durban and I stayed in a bunkhouse with Mr. McKay on our way here and—"
"I'm afraid Mr. McKay won't be accepting your hospitality," Cullen put in. "If I hurry, I can make it back to the Double T before nightfall. They need these supplies as soon as I can get them there."
Baird hesitated, then nodded to the other man. "I appreciate your delivering my children to me safely, McKay."
"It was all any gentleman would do, Northcross."
Ardith had sensed the animosity between the two men out in the yard, but she'd been too distracted by her own concerns to give it more than a passing thought. Now she wondered at the cause.
"I want to add my thanks, Mr. McKay," Ardith said with considerably more warmth. "We might never have found the ranch if it weren't for you."
"It was my pleasure to escort you, Miss
Merritt. I hope you and the children have a lovely visit."
"I'm sure the children will enjoy their stay, though as you know, I won't be here long myself."
"That's a pity," McKay said as he made his way to the door. "You would have made a pleasant addition to our society."
As McKay turned, Baird shifted on his feet. "Perhaps I should go see about getting your baggage unloaded."
"Can I come, Papa?" Khyber asked, trailing after him. Baird made it out the door before Khy caught up.
Durban glared after his father. "He's never been able to stand being around us for long."
As Ardith herded the children toward their rooms, she couldn't help wondering if what Durban said was true. Was there going to be more to keeping her promise to Ariel than she'd ever imagined?
* * *
Ariel was dead—his porcelain doll of a wife was shattered and gone.
After a noisy, difficult meal with the children, Baird finally had a chance to ease himself into one of the chairs before the fire and pour a glass of whiskey. God only knew how much he needed it. He needed time to absorb the news of Ariel's death, to turn it over in his mind, to contend with his bewilderment and loss.
Ariel had certainly seemed well enough when he'd left her a little more than three months before. She'd been curled in the magnificent, silk-draped bed at her father's London townhouse, her face flushed and soft with sleep. The ivory curve of her throat and the arch of one bare shoulder had been limned by the first pale light of dawn.
He wished now that he'd awakened her to say goodbye, but he hadn't wanted to argue with her. Ariel had had every right to be angry. He was leaving for America barely a fortnight after he'd returned from Burma and asking her to follow him halfway around the world. So he'd bent above her and brushed her brow with a kiss. He'd stroked her cheek, breathed the mingled scents of rosewater and last night's champagne. He'd gone downstairs and hailed a cab to the train station, never dreaming he had seen his wife for the last time.
Baird drank down the whiskey in his glass. Had Ariel been ill and afraid to tell him? he wondered. Had she contracted some disease aboard the ship? Had there been some kind of accident? What was it Ardith had refused to discuss in front of the children?
Baird frowned and filled his glass a second time.
Ardith. Dour, bitter Ardith. How could anyone have changed so much? Once he'd admired her as a plain but touchingly eager girl. Now she'd become a woman as dry and brittle as stale bread. She stood taller and more robust than he remembered, straight as a carpenter's rule and every bit as rigid. Her eyes, when she'd looked at him out there in the yard, had been both bright with fury and hard with a resolve single-minded enough to send a shudder running through any man.
It must be living in New England that had changed her so, Baird told himself. Spending years shut up in her uncle's library and being part of a community that valued rumination more than reality was bound to wring any woman dry.
But she'd learned to be resourceful; he'd give her that. Without his help, without a governess for the children, and without a proper escort, Ardith had managed to get the children to the ranch. She'd arranged their transportation, found McKay, driven a carriage four full days across miles of wind-blown countryside. And once they'd finished their dinner, she'd swept the children off to bed.
Gotten them out from under his feet—thank God.
A man couldn't properly toast his dead wife with that passel of children watching him. All during supper, he'd seen the unanswerable questions in their eyes, seen them wanting things from him that he had no idea how to give.
It wasn't that he meant to deny them, he just had no damned experience being a father. He'd been at the back of beyond when each of them was born—as the names Ariel had given them ironically indicated. He'd been farther away still while they were learning to walk and talk and cipher. That had been his choice he supposed, and he didn't regret it.
He'd never even considered it necessary to learn to dry his children's tears and wipe their noses. He'd hired people to do that. Now that Ariel was dead, he didn't want to face the implications of the children's arrival or acknowledge the effect their mother's death was bound to have on them.
Let Ardith handle it, he thought and tipped the bottle above his glass.
Just then the very woman he'd been considering emerged from the door to the boys' bedchamber. He felt more than saw her enter the room, the wave of her contempt washing over him.
She crossed the floorboards with deliberate strides and stopped when the toes of her shoes were a precise six inches from where his booted feet were stretched out and crossed at the ankles. From her hem to her hairpins, it was obvious what she thought of him and that she was preparing to share her opinions.
Baird didn't give her a chance. "Are the children tucked up tight and fast asleep?"
"Indeed they are," Ardith answered crisply. "You might have come in to bid them good-night."
"I might have—except that I had things I wanted to do."
His flippancy brought color to her cheeks. "And what might those have been?"
Baird raised his brimming glass and took a deep, satisfying swallow. "The first was drinking a toast to my dear wife. Would you care to join me?"
Ardith fluttered like a quail just flushed from cover. "No! Of course not! I never touch ardent spirits."
"Not even for Ariel's sake?" he cajoled. The whiskey was beginning to blur the edges of his regret, and Baird was glad. His marriage to Ariel hadn't turned out the way either of them wanted, but he mourned her anyway. "Come along, Ardith. Do join me in a drink to the most gloriously beautiful and infuriating woman a man could ever hope to possess."
He hadn't meant for her to hear the throb of emotion in his voice, but he could tell she had.
"Good God!" she exclaimed. "You really did love her, didn't you?"
Ardith settled herself on a footstool not three feet away and stared at Baird as if he were some specimen pinned to a mounting board. He took a long pull of whiskey, embalming himself to endure her scrutiny.
"Of course I loved her," he admitted, wishing his voice wasn't so raw, that his regrets weren't so evident. "Ariel was my grand passion, and I was hers. I thought you understood that."
At least, he had convinced himself Ardith understood.
He and Ariel had been smitten the moment they met at the betrothal party her father had thrown for Ardith and him. He and Ariel had been stealing kisses on the balcony before the evening was over. They'd met at a hotel for a private dinner a week later and adjourned to the bedchamber before dessert. Their love had been forbidden, secret, out of control. At the beginning it had been like existing inside a living flame. They'd been too wrapped up in each other to spare a thought for anyone else. Especially Ardith.
"If you loved Ariel so much," Ardith demanded, "why did you abandon her for months at a time?"
Why indeed? Baird took another swallow and thought about his wife. For all that he had cared for her, she hadn't met his needs, nor had he met hers. After the wildness and the passion had burned out, their flame had flickered to an ember.
That was why his clearest memories of these last years were not of his wife and family, but of the rustling grass on the savannah, the bitter cold dawn in the mountains at the top of the world, the scent of saffron and curry rising from a cauldron of steaming rice. Memories of the chase and the danger.
Ariel had never been part of that, part of what kept the blood pumping in his veins and his reflexes sharp. She'd never understood that it was the traveling and the hunting and the adventure that gave his life a purpose—however hollow, however vague.
"I was offered opportunities I couldn't refuse," he finally answered, then continued. "And sometimes grand passions don't wear well."
It was a more honest answer than he'd given anyone in years. Ardith, with her resolute mouth and uncompromising eyes, seemed to demand that of him. Now what he wanted was to be answered in kind.
Baird took a sha
ky, whiskey-flavored breath and asked, '"What happened to Ariel? How did she die?"
Ardith pinioned him with her gaze. He could see the anticipation in her eyes.
"Ariel died of a miscarriage. She bled to death."
Baird thought he had prepared himself to hear what had happened to his wife, but the words tore through him. He remembered just how eagerly he and Ariel had come together when he returned from Burma. He'd needed succor after what had happened to Bram. What Ariel had offered was diversion, and he'd tried to convince himself it was enough.
Even as they were making love, he'd known it was dangerous. Ariel had suffered miscarriages twice since Khy was born and nearly died with each of them. Yet since she'd invited him to her bed, Baird assumed she'd taken precautions. These were modern times, and modern women knew about such things. But apparently Ariel either hadn't known or hadn't done what was necessary.
Now Baird was forced to acknowledge that his baser nature had killed his wife. The whiskey soured in his belly, and he wasn't deep enough in his cups to ignore the searing heat of responsibility.
"So did Ariel curse me with her last breath?"
Shock at his cynicism flickered across Ardith's features, but she refused to back down.
"She must have forgiven you," she answered. "The last thing Ariel said was for me to bring the children to you."
"Didn't her parents—your father—have anything to say on the matter? I would have expected him to demand that you send the children to England immediately."
"He did." Ardith's face was expressionless.
"And you chose to bring them here to me?"
She glanced away, tight-lipped and scowling. "I promised Ariel."
Baird lifted his glass and toasted her. "Well, you've discharged your duty most admirably."
He meant the words as a dismissal. He wanted her to leave him alone so he could go to hell in his own way.
Ardith refused to budge. Instead she stared at him with even greater intensity. "Now that the children are here, what do you mean to do with them?"
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