It would be the end of it, too—the end to a career she'd barely begun.
"While I thank you for your opinion, Baird," she answered, her voice frosty enough to condense on glass, "I'll do as I see fit in this."
"Fine, Ardith! Fine!" he shouted at her. "Do what you like! God knows you've had a great deal of practice!" He wheeled away and stalked out the door.
The children stared after him owl-eyed, then turned to her. Until now she and Baird had managed to shield China and the boys from their disagreements, and Ardith couldn't think what to say to them.
"Aren't you going to cry?" Khy finally asked. "Mama always used to cry when Papa yelled at her. Then she'd throw things."
Durban elbowed his brother to silence.
"Of course I'm not going to cry," she assured them with far more conviction than she felt. "I save my tears for things that are important. Now, if you promise to take the plates and forks to the kitchen when you're done, you may have your pie out on the porch."
Given the opportunity to escape, all three children grabbed their desserts and scrambled for the door. Once they were gone Ardith sagged like muslin on a humid day. Only gradually did she realize Myra was standing over her, a sly smile on her lips. Myra had just seen her ambushed, complimented, and upbraided, and Ardith was mortified.
"Seems his lordship's got his dander up," Myra observed.
"I can't imagine what set him off."
"Oh, can't you now?" Myra flashed her a grin. "I'd say you just knocked that poor man's world off kilter again."
"This has nothing to do with Baird's world!" Ardith fumed. "This is about my paintings, my opportunities. My future."
"Oh?" There was something smug in Myra's smile. "Then why do you suppose he felt obliged to tell you you're pretty?"
Myra knew. Sick humiliation that started at Ardith's toes sluiced upward. Myra understood the way only another plain woman could what that word meant to her.
"It must be very satisfying to hear him say it," the older woman went on, "after all this time."
Fresh horror intensified the heat in Ardith's face. "How did you know?" she gasped. "Surely Baird didn't—"
"No, of course not." Myra pulled out a chair and lowered herself to the seat. "For whatever else his lordship's done, he's a gentleman. No. Buck heard Cullen McKay poking at him the night of the party—something about him running off with your sister when he was set to marry you."
Even at this late date, Ardith felt marked by the stain of what had happened years before.
"Is that why they were fighting?" she asked incredulously. Wouldn't that be the ultimate irony—Baird Northcross defending her honor?
Myra shrugged. "Buck didn't hear the whole of it."
Ardith knew there was no sense denying what had happened. "Baird and I were betrothed. He and Ariel ran off together the night before we were to be married."
"Is that why you left England?"
"I refused to stay and bear the scandal of being Baird Northcross' cast-off bride."
She could see both compassion and approval in Myra's face. "Yet you forgave your sister. You took in her children when she died and brought them to their father."
Ardith nodded her head. "Even after everything, I loved Ariel. But forgiving her took some time. She wrote me after Khy was born, and we made our peace. When Ariel died, I felt honor-bound to keep the promise I had made to her. And when I saw how aloof Baird was with the children when we arrived, I couldn't just abandon them."
"He's better now."
"I know." During their stay at the summer camp, Baird had changed. He'd cradled Khy so tenderly when he was hurt. When Matt was killed, Baird had been the only one able to comfort China. He was still trying to make peace with Durban, no matter how hard the boy shoved him away. Up in those mountains, he'd become a father to these children, whether he wanted to be one or not.
"How are you going to manage by yourself when he takes the children back to England?"
The question made Ardith want to bury her face in her hands and weep. "I don't have any rights where the children are concerned," she answered, her voice raw with misery. "And I'd forfeit everything I've worked for if I followed them. In Massachusetts I have a position with my uncle. I have a publisher, and books to write. And now there's this opportunity to have my paintings exhibited."
There was something else, too, something she wasn't sure enough about to discuss with anyone. "And what about him?"
"Who?"
"His lordship. You forgave your sister for what they did. Have you forgiven him?"
"He hasn't asked me to."
Myra's smile was sly and knowing. "Yet you've come to care for him anyway."
Lying to Myra would be like lying to herself. Instead of answering, Ardith got to her feet. "Let me help you take these things into the kitchen."
Myra made a shooing motion. "Go drink your coffee on the porch and enjoy the breeze."
Ardith didn't argue. Between Baird's bluster and Myra's probing, she could use a little solitude. She picked up her cup and found a place for herself on one of the benches that faced the mountains. Scattered above a darkening lavender landscape, the clouds glowed fierce, coppery pink, raging like live coals against the slowly encroaching night.
While she could still see, Ardith took out Gavin's letter and opened it to the second page.
Every day, my dear Ardith, I find my esteem for you growing. I don't know if you have changed in the months we've been apart, or if I have. I'm not sure if it is your absence, or the intimacy of communicating our thoughts and feelings in these pages that has made me so aware of you. I find you constantly in my thoughts. At night I lie awake here in Boston and try to imagine you lying awake there in Wyoming, thinking of me.
What I propose when you return is that we take some time for ourselves. I would like to show you my family's summer home. The shore is not so gay in the fall as it is in high summer, but there is a melancholy beauty about the dunes that pleases me.
Then, too, after your months in Wyoming, I will need to reintroduce you to culture. We will attend some concerts and the theatre. I want to make the time between us something wonderful.
Please give me some hope that these letters have affected you as they have affected me. I am most eagerly awaiting your reply.
Your affectionate friend,
Gavin
Ardith sat staring at the letter in her lap, much as she had this afternoon. She knew now that she hadn't mistaken Gavin's meaning. His feelings for her were deepening.
She curled her fingers around the page, wanting to be elated by what he'd written. She'd had a tendre for Gavin Rawlinson from the moment he spread her sketches across his desk and laughed out loud over her creatures' antics. He was witty and genteel and sophisticated, and just the touch of his hand had turned her warm inside. He'd sent a bright beam of light into her lonely spinster's life, given her hope and an income and a future. Now he was offering her even more.
But Baird said she was pretty. The words had such lovely resonance inside her head. Of course, other things mattered more. That Baird had held her when she cried, that he stayed with her when Khy was hurt. That he talked to her and argued with her and told her his secrets. And there was such satisfaction hearing those words on his lips—just this once.
"Isn't it too dark to be reading out here?"
Ardith all but jumped out of her shoes at the sound of Baird's voice. He ambled toward her down the length of the porch.
"Or are you committing that letter to memory?"
She jammed the pages into her pocket and scrambled to rearrange her hair, her expression. And especially her thoughts. She squared her shoulders and turned those errant thoughts to the question they had been so heatedly debating at dinner.
"Is it so hard for you to understand why I'm excited that one of Boston's most reputable art dealers is willing to show my work?"
Baird settled on the porch railing opposite her and crossed his arms. "I do understand," he
told her, "and I'm pleased for you. I know recognition like this comes hard, especially for a woman. What bothers me is that this dealer has asked you to change your name."
"I wouldn't be the first woman to deny her femininity for her art," Ardith argued. "Take George Eliot, for example."
"Mary Ann Evans, you mean."
"Would we have Middlemarch if she hadn't taken a masculine pseudonym?"
He frowned thoughtfully and curled his hands around the railing. "To my way of thinking, this gallery owner has asked you to negate part of what makes your paintings special."
"What do you mean?"
He shrugged a little self-consciously. "I think you have a vision of the West no man could see. Men see grass and timber and money to be made. You see history in the folds of these hills, emancipation in the breadth of the prairie. And the portraits you've been doing of Myra and the hands... "
"You think they're good?"
"I think they're exceptional. You seem to see beyond their faces somehow, into who they are. Those portraits are your vision, Ardith. A woman's vision. Not a man's."
He leaned back and laughed a little, seeming almost embarrassed by his own observations. "Does that make sense?"
"In a way." His words warmed her, almost as if he saw her paintings more clearly than she did herself. But life had taught Ardith practicality. "As much as I appreciate your reasoning, I still mean to sign my work as 'A. E. Merritt.'"
"I never for a moment thought you'd take my advice," he replied with a wry twist to his mouth.
"And that's what had you so wrought-up at dinner?"
"Part of it." Though he lowered his head, Ardith saw how grim he looked. "We've lost more of our cattle."
"Oh, Baird, what happened?" She rose and went to lean against the railing beside him. Even the simple, consoling brush of her palm against his sleeve sent a strange tingle dancing between them.
"They're just gone."
"It's not Indians or wolves this time?"
He shook his head. "Buck says he can never remember so many cattle going missing in a single season."
Had Buck called it what it probably was?
Ardith hesitated, weighing her words, trying to see into Baird's shadowed face. "Is someone rustling our cows?"
His shoulders tightened. "I'd like to tell you you've been reading too many of your Western novels."
"But you can't?" When he shook his head, she continued. "Are the other ranches having losses like ours?"
"No."
"Have they had trouble with wolves or Indians?"
"No."
She saw the stubborn cant of his jaw and knew he wasn't willing to admit what seemed obvious to everyone else. Still, she tried to make him.
"Then isn't it time you considered that Cullen McKay might be behind us losing cattle?"
Ardith felt the quiver of tension shoot through him. "It can't be Cullen."
"Why can't it?" She tried to keep her voice gentle. "Is it because he's Earl Northam's bastard son? Because he's got Northcross blood in his veins, and the Northcrosses never do anything dishonorable?"
"You know better than that." He cast her a glance beneath his lashes. "It's because we've been looking long and hard, and we still can't figure out what's happening to the cattle. We haven't found animals with fresh brands. We haven't caught anyone with a running iron. It's like those cows evaporate."
He pushed to his feet. "And we don't have any indication that Cullen's involved. Even if he was, how could I go to my uncle and ask him to excuse my failure because his son has been rustling Sugar Creek cattle?"
"So you mean to ignore what's happening and blame yourself!"
She was exasperated enough to get up and slam into the house except that Baird stopped her. He leaned closer, gripping the porch railing to her right and left, holding her in place.
"Why shouldn't I accept the blame? God knows I've never been called to account for half of what I've done."
She sensed a shift in his mood, one of those odd alterations in him that left her feeling confused and breathless.
Though he didn't move, he seemed suddenly nearer. His boots ruffled the hem of her skirt. She could smell the sun and dust and wind on him. She thought he might try to kiss her, and she knew she wouldn't shy away from him this time.
"Ardith," he said, his voice deep and serious. "I want to apologize."
"For what?"
"I want to accept the blame for what Ariel and I did to you."
She was so surprised she said the first thing that came into her head. "You're a bit late doing that, aren't you?"
He nodded, but refused to back down. "More than a bit late, I'm afraid. And I apologize for that, too."
In an instant, Ardith was flung back in time. She stood in the window at her father's London townhouse, the rain tracking down the windowpanes like the tears she refused to shed. She balled Baird's letter more tightly in her fist, clinging to the very thing that had torn her life apart. She'd tried to find some less devastating meaning in those carefully penned words, but Baird had been merciless in his clarity. He'd run off with her sister—proving once more that Ardith wasn't good enough.
"Ardith, I'm sorry."
From more than a decade away, Baird's voice reached her, calling her back to Wyoming, back to where cows lowed in the dark, and the wind off the mountains was cool and scented with pine. Back to where the man who had wounded her so horribly was trying to make amends.
She stared at him, seeing the knot of concern between his eyebrows and the taut sincerity in the line of his mouth.
"When Ariel and I ran off," he murmured, his voice rough and low with regret, "we were in love and desperate to be together. We didn't think about how you would be hurt, how people would look at you afterwards. We didn't think about anything—or anyone—but ourselves."
Ardith felt the press of hot, angry tears at the backs of her eyes. "Would it have made a difference if you had?"
He stood over her, his shoulders hunched, his head bent close to hers. "I'd like to believe that if we'd tried, we could have found a better way—a more honorable way—to deal with the situation. What we did was contemptible. I'm so sorry you were the one who paid for our mistakes."
Ardith had never expected an apology from Baird Northcross, never dreamed he even understood the pain he and Ariel had caused her.
"Why are you telling me this now?" she asked, her voice gone thready.
"Because you deserve the truth, and because I've finally managed to scrape together enough courage to face you with it. I'm sorry, Ardith. I'm sorry for everything we did, and everything that happened afterwards. And I'm especially sorry that it's taken me so long to see how badly I treated you."
She looked up into that shadowed face and saw the wild, beautiful youth he'd been—and the man he had become. Just tonight Myra had asked her if she'd forgiven him, and Ardith had said he hadn't asked her to.
He was asking now, and she was suddenly glad to have the question resolved between them. In truth, she'd begun to forgive him when she realized how much he'd loved Ariel and how truly he mourned her. A little more of her anger had melted away every time she'd seen him struggling to be a father to his children. The night he'd held and comforted China had loosened the last hard knots of her resentment.
It was time to let him know that she'd forgiven him. This had haunted both of them for far too long.
"I won't deny how desolate I was when you and Ariel ran off together. I'd always been second best in my father's eyes, and having you choose her over me buttressed everything he'd made me believe about myself. It made me feel betrayed—again."
"Is that why you left England?"
There had been more to it than that, and to be fair, she had to tell him all of it. "It's true that I didn't want to face the scandal, but I also knew that when you and Ariel returned from Scotland, Father would welcome you back. I couldn't stay and be humiliated by seeing the two of you together, so I packed my things and left.
/> "Uncle Franklin was kind enough to take me in for my mother's sake, and in the end, I can't say I regret the way things worked out. I wouldn't be the person I am if I hadn't left. I'd never have started painting or written books or gone out into the world. I'd never have come to the West."
She covered his broad, sun-browned hands with her own and looked up into his face. "It's all right, Baird," she whispered. "I'm glad you told me all of this, but I've gained far more than I lost. So don't feel sorry anymore."
She could see the gleam of emotion in his eyes. "Ardith, are you sure? You have every right in the world to tell me to go to the devil."
"Would you feel better if I did?" she asked him.
"No." He stepped back and gave a shaky laugh. "Well, maybe I would, but I'm glad you didn't."
"It's settled, then," she said and got to her feet.
He stopped her, catching her hand on her way to the door. "I really am glad about the paintings. I hope this A. E. Merritt sets the art world ablaze."
She grinned at him. "So do I," she said. "So do I."
Chapter 13
Khy tore into the house just as Ardith and China were finishing breakfast. "There are real live Indians putting up a tepee down by the creek!" he reported.
"How do you know they're 'real live' Indians?" Ardith asked, somewhat unsettled by the news.
"I know because the man has feathers in his hat, and the woman is wearing war paint!"
Ardith and China exchanged startled glances. Except for a few cattle being appropriated for food, there hadn't been Indian trouble in this part of Wyoming for years. Still, it seemed prudent to investigate.
"Who do you think these Indians are, Aunt Ardith?" China asked, more interested in their unexpected guests than she had been in anything since Matt was killed.
Ardith shook her head and wished that Baird was there instead of off at the summer camp. "I don't know, but let's go find out what's happening."
Myra was already down at the tepee when Ardith and the children arrived. She hastily made introductions. "Miss Ardith Merritt, I'd like you to meet Hunter Jalbert," she began. "He was a scout at Fort Carr when Buck was in the army."
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