Ardith offered a delicate shrug. "I don't think there's any stopping them."
Baird's immediate inclination was to forbid Durban to spend time with McKay, but that would only breed further defiance. "I just wish Durban could see what kind of man Cullen really is," he said on a sigh.
"I wonder," she began thoughtfully, scooping ice, "if some men aren't better for their contact with children who admire them."
Baird slid his gaze across to her, wondering if Ardith was talking about Cullen—or him. Was he a better man for the contact he'd had with his children? He imagined Ardith thought so, and he agreed. Before he could tell her that, Baird became aware of a dark, broad-featured man standing over them.
The fellow smiled and extended his hand. "Mr. Northcross, I'm Hunter Jalbert. I'd like to thank you for your generosity in giving me a place to pasture my horses, and for extending your hospitality to my family."
Baird surrendered the crank of the ice cream maker to Ardith and rose to his feet. "It's Buck Johnson you have to thank."
"Your family has made us feel most welcome."
His family. Baird liked the way that sounded. It felt so good to be part of something. Part of a group of people who laughed and cried together, who argued and sulked and shouted at each other. Part of a group of people who welcomed him home at the end of the day.
"The children look as if they're getting on famously, and I understand Ardith means to paint a portrait of Cassandra."
A shadow crossed Jalbert's face, and in a flash of insight Baird realized the man was afraid his wife would be hurt somehow by Ardith painting her.
"Ardith is a very fine artist," he found himself reassuring Jalbert. "She's very careful how she approaches her subjects."
Baird had forgotten that Ardith was seated within earshot until she spoke. "If you think that, Baird, why haven't you let me sketch you?"
Baird glanced down at where she was sitting on the step with the ice cream maker clamped between her knees. The pure contrast of staid, proper Ardith in such an indelicate pose made him smile. "Well, if your portrait of Mrs. Jalbert is successful, perhaps I will."
Ardith grinned. "Don't worry. It will be wonderful."
Just then Myra came to the kitchen door. "I'm so glad to see you two big, husky fellows standing there doing nothing. With so many of us together, I figured we'd eat out here in the yard, and I need someone to move the table."
Baird and Hunter ended up dragging the long, rock-heavy table from the mess room to the creek side of the house. Once Buck had carved the venison, they all gathered there together—he and Myra, Frank Barnes, Willy Martin, Bear Burton and the rest of the hands, the seven Jalberts, Baird and Ardith and the children. They passed around a platter overflowing with venison, crocks of beans, bread, sour cabbage, and Myra's pickles. They scooped ice cream for dessert, and the Jalbert children exclaimed over the unknown delicacy.
Lingering over a second cup of coffee, Baird sat back and watched them all. The younger children were flushed and grubby with play. Durban seemed less mad at the world than usual, and China was more animated than Baird had seen her since Matt Hastings' death. He also noticed how Buck had one arm draped possessively around Myra's broad shoulders, saw that Cass Jalbert was leaning back, secure against the wall of her husband's chest. Baird recognized the look she cast up at him. It was one of adoration that transformed her ravaged face into something unexpectedly beautiful.
The intensity of Cass's love for her husband and the warmth in Buck and Myra's eyes gave Baird pause. Even in their most fiercely passionate moments, he and Ariel had never had the contentment and deep commitment he saw in these people's faces.
It made Baird feel excluded again, somehow denied, and excruciatingly alone as he sat on the fringes of the older couples' contentment. Halfway down the far side of the table, he could see that Ardith was experiencing the same sense of isolation. For an instant he caught her eye, and a frisson of understanding flashed between them.
Then abruptly Ardith turned away. Before Baird could reestablish contact, Hunter Jalbert came to his feet. "I'm going to check the horses," he said. "Want to see them, Northcross?"
There was pride in Jalbert's voice, and Baird nodded.
As if that was a signal, everyone rose and began to carry plates and bowls and platters back toward the kitchen.
Baird followed Hunter in the direction of the far paddock. He hadn't had a chance to do more than glance at the horses when he rode in, and he had to admit that he was curious.
He braced his elbows on the fence and watched as Jalbert let himself in the gate to check the water trough. He moved easily among the animals. Several of the horses came in to butt at Hunter's back or nuzzle his shoulder. He patted them and stroked them, talking to them in some low, melodious language Baird didn't understand. A beautiful little bay whickered, and Jalbert went to check her right front foot.
"She stepped in a hole on our way here, so I've been keeping an eye on her," Hunter explained as he latched the paddock gate behind him.
"She's a beauty," Baird said admiringly.
Hunter took a place beside him at the fence and stood watching the animals grazing. "Buck tells me you've proven yourself quite a hand with horses since you've been here."
"Better with horses than with cows, I'm afraid." His self-effacing tone was more bitter than he'd intended.
Hunter's gaze swept over him. "Then why are you raising cattle?"
A very good question. He supposed he was doing it because cows were what he had. Because it was what his uncle expected. Because it had never occurred to him that he could be doing something else.
When Baird didn't answer, Hunter went on. "Buck says there are some grassy valleys tucked back in the hills that would make damned fine horse farms. If a man could manage to buy the land, and he did the training himself for the first few years, he could make a respectable living."
Baird understood what Jalbert was suggesting and couldn't have been more stunned if the man had proposed they ride to Cheyenne and rob the bank.
"Is that how you started out?" Baird managed to ask him.
Jalbert smiled, either at the memory or the pleasure of watching his horses run. "All I had when Cass and I began was a couple of saddle horses, and the mustangs I rounded up the following spring. It took damned hard work to build our ranch, but now I sell horses all over the territory. We'll never be rich, but Cass and I like what we do, like what we have. The children are healthy. We've built a new barn and added a wing to the house. The breeding stock gets better every year. From a humble beginning we've managed to put together everything we need to make us happy." Jalbert shrugged. "What more can a man ask of the world than that?"
What indeed? Baird reflected. Out here such things were possible. Men with nothing struck it rich. Men with gumption manufactured opportunities. Men built ranches and families and lives on their own determination.
The possibilities piqued the edges of Baird's imagination. Could he really make a place for himself like the one Jalbert described? Was it too big a dream for someone like him—someone who'd failed and failed again?
He dismissed the notion with a shrug, but he couldn't quite banish the pinch of envy in his heart. "You're a lucky man, Jalbert. You have your ranch, a fine family, and a wife who loves you."
"No luckier than you could be."
Baird shook his head, and took more than a modicum of comfort in complacency. "I've never been lucky. Besides," he said, "I'll be taking the children back to England later this fall. I don't know if I'll ever get back out this way."
"And what about Ardith?"
Jalbert's question caught Baird hard.
What about Ardith? Truth to tell, he'd been thinking a great deal about Ardith—what losing contact with the children would mean to her. How desperately they'd miss her. What he would do without her prodding. God knew, she'd shoved him headlong into fatherhood and showed him how empty his life would be without China's spontaneous hugs, Khy's mischief,
and even Durban's scowls. Now he was coming to realize how empty it would be without Ardith herself.
"I only thought that because Ardith is so attached to the children and they to her... " Jalbert was saying.
Baird stepped back from the fence, a shiver of wariness chasing down his back. He needed suddenly to get away from the questions this man was asking, and the sharp discomfort of facing the answers.
"Ardith will be fine," Baird insisted. "The children will be fine. We've always known this was temporary."
Baird turned and stalked away, back to the barn to check on his own animals. But even as he carried water and scooped a few more oats into Dandy's box, the kind of life Jalbert described lingered in his mind like wisps of a lovely dream.
* * *
As she posed in the ornate, high-backed chair, Cassandra Jalbert began to speak in a quiet, almost cursory way about her past. "I was fifteen and on my way to Santa Fe with my family when the Kiowa attacked our wagon train."
Ardith paused, her paintbrush poised in midair, and stared at the woman whose likeness she'd been trying to capture for the last three days. They had spoken of many things as Ardith worked, sharing hours laced with the smell of turpentine and chamomile tea. But Cass had not spoken until now about the thing that had formed her, the thing that made her the woman she was.
"We tried to fight," Cass went on, memories scudding like clouds across the bright plane of her eyes, "but there were only a dozen men among us and half that many rifles. The Kiowa trapped us in a canyon and fired down from the walls until the wagons were on fire and my parents and my sisters lay dead."
In Ardith's imagination the scene took form—the boom of guns echoing from the canyon walls, the bite of gunpowder in her nostrils, and the heat of the burning wagons scalding her face. She stood mesmerized, unable to put brush to canvas, waiting for Cass to continue.
"As far as I knew then, only two of us survived the attack—the youngest girl from one of the other families and me. We were taken captive and dragged miles to the Kiowa village. I was stripped of everything that made me white and given to an Indian woman as her slave.
"I spent several years with her, but when the other girl died, I tried to escape. I gathered what I could and I ran, but I was frightened and inexperienced at hiding my tracks. Within two days, the woman's husband found me. He beat me and took me back. It was then that she marked me—so I could never deny that I belonged to her. That I was her property."
Cass raised her hand to her cheek, her fingers skimming the tattoo as if the pain and humiliation were fresh and new. Ardith shivered, awed by what Cass had endured and deeply moved that this woman who shunned easy confidences had chosen to trust her with the truth.
"What happened then?" Ardith murmured.
Cass's eyes were wide, focused on the past. "I was lost in a wager to a man of the Cheyenne. He traded me to the whites when he tired of me.
"It was then that I met Hunter. He was a scout for the army, and he befriended me. He understood what it was to be caught between two worlds, to be watched with suspicion and hatred. And in the months I was with the army at Fort Carr, he came to care for me. And I for him."
Ardith sensed there was more to the story than what Cass had told her. A woman with a tattooed face would have been alienated from the soldiers sent west to fight the Indians. Her years of captivity would have made her a stranger in the world where she'd been born. It must have taken immeasurable courage for Cass to make a life, to forge a future for herself. Yet judging from the adoration in her husband's eyes and the way her children revered her, Cass had done it and done it well.
Ardith waited for Cass to continue, to explain how all of that had transpired. When it became clear she had nothing more to say, Ardith spoke.
"Thank you for telling me what happened." Her voice was a little unsteady, giving the proof that Cass Jalbert seemed to need that Ardith had understood and been moved by her story.
"I thought you should know since you have asked to paint me," Cass said simply and settled back in the chair again.
She was extraordinary and compelling sitting there. The dark, turned-wood-and-deep-blue shawl draped artfully behind her were the perfect foil for her sun-streaked hair and fair complexion. The way she turned her tattooed face into the light gave proof that she was not cowed by what had happened.
What Ardith had done to be deserving of this woman's confidences, she could not say. She had done her best to give form to a new friend whose myth and mystery were written so plainly on her face, and yet she'd known there was something missing. Now that Cass had told her story, Ardith could see the fortitude that made this woman unique, the nobility of the struggle she'd endured. Ardith thought that at last she might be able to do Cassandra Jalbert justice.
Ardith worked quickly after that, her senses humming, her face flushed with concentration, her skills honed sharper by what she'd heard. The changes she made in the nearly finished painting were subtle. She deepened the shadows at the corners of Cassandra's mouth, sharpened the shading at the edge of her jaw. She added nuances that deepened the subtext in what had been a painting of a strong and compelling woman, turning it into a portrait worthy of the distinction.
The light streaming in the back windows of the ranch house had taken on a decidedly golden hue when Ardith stepped back from the portrait and set her brush and palette aside.
"I think it is finished," she said with a sigh. "You may come and see it if you like."
Cass rose slowly, and her lagging footsteps gave evidence to how much she dreaded viewing the finished portrait. "I'm not sure I care to see myself as others see me," Cass said with a hollow laugh.
"I've captured what I wanted to," Ardith answered simply.
Cass came nearer in spite of herself then stood motionless, her shoulders hunched and her arms crossed protectively across her body. A full minute ticked by. Two minutes. Three.
Ardith's hands began to sweat. The thudding of her heart seemed loud in the silence. "Please, say something," she finally whispered.
"Is this truly the way you see me?" Cass asked.
Ardith turned and saw tears glistening on Cass's lashes.
"No! Oh, no!" she moaned, horrified. "I'd hoped to paint you in a way that would make you proud of who you are, that would show the strength I see in you."
"But, Ardith," Cass said, her eyes swimming. "You've made me beautiful!"
The words were filled with wonder, with hope and longing and delight. They were the words of a woman who had been given a vision of herself she had never thought to have, and was wary of accepting the truth.
Cass reached out and caught Ardith's paint-smudged fingers in her own. "You made me beautiful—in spite of the mark on my face, in spite of everything!"
Emotion prickled in Ardith's throat, and she smiled through the sting of her own tears.
Cassie gave Ardith's hands a hard little squeeze, then spun toward the door. "I can't wait for Hunter to see what wonderful things you've done to me."
"I doubt he'll be surprised," Ardith answered, but Cass was gone.
Ardith was washing out her brushes when the two of them returned. Cass led him directly to the portrait then stood wringing her hands as he considered it.
"But it's no more beautiful than you are," he finally whispered. He turned and touched his wife's face, tracing the lines of the tattoo with his fingertips. He smiled as if discovering the wonder of her anew. Then he lowered his head and kissed her. His mouth moved over hers slowly, lingeringly, with mingled tenderness and passion.
Just watching them together turned Ardith weak with longing.
When he raised his head, Cass looked soft, contented, and well-loved. Hunter smiled down at his wife, a hint of satisfaction hovering at the corners of his lips, and then he raised his gaze to where Ardith stood.
Her face flamed at having witnessed such an intimate scene between this man and his wife, but neither of the Jalberts seemed to mind.
"It's a wonderfu
l portrait," he told her.
"I am pleased that Cass agreed to sit for me."
His reply was slow in coming. "I am, too."
In those three words Hunter revealed how long he'd hoped that Cass would discover what Ardith had helped her to see—that she was lovely, worthy of the love he felt for her.
Ardith beamed at him, delighted that for all her trials, Cass had found such a man to love her.
"Shall we ask her now?" Cassandra's question broke into Hunter's renewed contemplation of the portrait. He nodded.
"Ask me what?"
Cass cleared her throat. "As you have been able to see for yourself, Meggie has inherited her father's artistic ability. She very much wants to attend the Cowles Art School in Boston. Last winter she sent them samples of her work, and she has been accepted as a student.
"We've been reluctant to let her go," she went on. "She seems too young to go so far from home, and yet we want to give her a chance to make a life for herself. What we hoped was that when you go east, you would agree to take our Meggie with you."
Ardith looked at these two people, seeing the love and concern for their daughter in their eyes and feeling the weight of the trust they were putting in her. "Are you sure that's what you want? To send Meggie away?"
Cass slid a sidelong glance at her husband before she answered. "Meggie is different from our other children. She wasn't born to this life. She isn't connected to this land the way the boys are. She is a young woman of rare accomplishments and needs more than we can give her. If you agree to take her with you, we will allow her to attend this school and see how she does."
Ardith could see how difficult this was for them and how worried they were about their daughter.
"Cowles is a well-run and well-respected academy," she hastened to assure them. "I know some of the teachers and have seen displays of the students' work. It seems like a good place for Meggie to begin her studies."
As Ardith spoke, she could see both relief and regret in Cass and Hunter's faces. "Would you like me to keep an eye on her while she's in Boston?" Ardith asked.
She already suspected how empty she'd feel once Baird and the children returned to England, and how difficult it was going to be squeezing herself into the life she'd left behind. Her time in the West had changed her, challenged her, and made her grow. She wasn't sure she'd fit in Boston anymore, but having Meggie to look after would help her find her place.
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