“Then he stands a good chance of killing John.”
“That’s what I’m thinking—and that’s where Harry is putting his money.”
Horrified, Abbie looked at Jessye who nodded solemnly. “Yep. That’s right. They’re wagering on the outcome like it was a game or something. I’m thinking these Englishmen ain’t got a heart among ’em.”
He’d known she’d come. Or at least he’d hoped desperately that she would. But then he’d hoped last night and the night before, ever since he’d been hit with the discovery that she carried his child.
His child. His bastard, Westland had called it, and it had taken every ounce of willpower he possessed not to kill the man then and there. If he had any control over it at all, his child would never hear that despicable word directed his way.
He stepped out of the shadows as she pulled the horse to a halt and dismounted. He drew her into his embrace. “Abbie—”
She pounded her fists into his chest, and he staggered back. The light from the lantern hanging at the side of the saloon sent an eerie glow over her face. He saw the anger burning in her eyes, almost as brightly as the flames in a fire.
“I realize that you are no doubt upset about tomorrow’s confrontation—”
Tears shimmered in her eyes, caught by the lantern’s glow. “Tell me that you don’t want the land.”
Confused, he could only stare at her. “Of course I want land. What man of ambition wouldn’t?”
“Enough to tell me you love me? Enough to kill my husband to obtain it?”
“Where did you get such an absurd notion?”
“From a scoundrel,” she spat. “Didn’t you tell your friends that you’d always fancied yourself a landowner?”
He slammed his eyes closed. Ah, Christ, Harry. He’d seen him drinking last night, drinking and playing cards with Jessye. His tongue loosened to excess when he was in his cups. He opened his eyes. Imploringly, he held out his hand. “Abbie—”
She slapped it away. “Deny it!” she ground out through clenched teeth. “Tell me you don’t want the land.”
“My wanting land has nothing to do with my wanting you.”
She backed up a step. “Prove it.”
“How? Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
“Leave Fortune and never look back.”
“That, sweetheart, is the one thing I cannot do. I am not going to leave my child to suffer the degradation of being unwanted nor am I going to leave you in the hands of a man who obviously has no affection for you.”
“John is my husband and I will honor the vows I exchanged with him until the day I die.”
“And what of the child? Will you hand him over to me when he is born?”
He saw her visibly pale as she backed up another step. “No!” Her hands formed a protective barrier over her stomach.
“Don’t demand that I give up you and my child.”
She thrust up her chin. “If you kill John, I will not marry you—and this child will be well and truly born a bastard.”
“Abbie, you don’t know the life to which you are condemning this child.”
“You condemned this child with your lies.” She spun on her heel, strode to the horse, and mounted.
“Abbie!”
Ignoring him, she jerked on the reins and sent the horse into a gallop. He staggered back, dropped to the steps, and buried his face in his hands. How in the bloody hell had the potential for happiness turned into anguish?
16
With her arms wrapped around her knees, Abbie rocked back and forth in the corner of the loft. The moonlight spilled through the opening, casting its pale glow over the pallet she’d sewn for Grayson, the place where she’d first learned the true wonders of love. Or so she’d thought.
Damn the rogue.
She wanted to hate him, but she only felt bereft. John had never told her that he loved her, but he’d always been honest about his feelings. The land was his mistress. Guilt allowed Abbie to tolerate his love of the land. Guilt because she cared for him, but didn’t love him.
She heard the ladder creak and moan, the sound too loud to be created by one of the children. She held her breath, her heart hammering. Had Grayson followed her home?
“Abigail? You up here?” John called out.
She considered holding her silence, hoping he’d leave without ever seeing her hidden within the shadows, but nothing was to be gained by making him fret and sending him on a wild goose chase looking for her.
“I’ll come into the house directly, John,” she said quietly.
She felt the loft quiver beneath her and saw his shadowed form moving toward her. He hunkered down, just inside the loft opening, the moon framing a portion of his face in light.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked.
“Just…” She swiped the tears from her cheeks. “Just needed to be alone for a minute.”
“Thought you took a bath outside when you needed that.”
Unblinking, she stared at him. Before the war, she’d always taken her baths after he’d fallen asleep. Since his return, she’d taken none outside. “How did you know about the baths I took outside?”
“I always feel you leaving the bed.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She saw him shrug in the moonlight, pick up a piece of straw, and slip it into his mouth. “Figured if you’d wanted me to know, you woulda told me. So I just pretended to sleep. Figured it was a secret you wanted to keep for yourself. No harm in it.”
“And if you had thought there was some harm in it?”
“Reckon I woulda said something.”
Or come searching for her. He’d been asleep when she’d left to confront Grayson. At least she thought he’d been asleep. “Do you always feel me leave the bed?”
“Always.” He jerked the straw from his mouth and tossed it out the opening. “You go see him tonight like you did the other night?”
Him. He didn’t have to speak the name for her to know to whom he referred. Guilt swamped her. He knew she’d left his bed, knew she’d gone to see Grayson. “Not quite. The other night I asked him to leave Fortune. Tonight I told him.”
“Is he gonna leave?”
She released a quick burst of harsh laughter. “I don’t know. I only know that he doesn’t love me…and it hurts.”
She rasped the last phrase, her throat tightening against the anguish.
“Ah, Abigail, don’t go to crying.”
“I can’t help it.” She felt the tears burn her eyes and spill over onto her cheeks. “John, will you…will you please hold me?”
He hesitated a moment before scooting across the loft and awkwardly putting his arms around her. She didn’t fit against him as snugly as she did Grayson, but she took comfort where she could. He patted her shoulder as though she were a horse who had given him a good day’s work in the fields.
“John, I’m not only sad about Grayson, I’m sad about this baby.”
“You don’t want it?”
She was surprised to hear the disbelief mirrored in his voice. “I do want it, with all my heart, but I’m afraid he’ll grow up feeling unloved.”
“You’ll love him.”
“Yes, but he’ll think you’re his father.”
“You’re not going to tell him about Rhodes?”
She took a deep sigh. “Not until he’s old enough to understand and accept the sins of his mother.”
She had hoped John would deny that she’d sinned, but he was too God-fearing for that. Yet the question he asked her went straight to the heart of her sadness.
“You’re wanting me to love the baby?”
“No, I’m only asking you not to hate him.”
“Only a cruel man would hate a child for things that weren’t his doing. You think I’m a cruel man?”
She tightened her arms around him. “I know you’re not a cruel man, John.”
“’Sides. He’ll give us another pair of hands in the fields.”
Abbie pressed her cheek against his chest, not certain if she should laugh or cry.
While dawn waited at the edge of the horizon to make its appearance, Abbie sat in a chair beside a hearth as empty as her heart. She watched her husband disassemble his gun, clean and oil the various parts, and put it back together with calm precision. Black dots swam before her eyes, and she thought she might swoon from what his actions served as evidence for. She swallowed the bile rising in her throat. “John, surely you’re not going through with this.”
“He give me no choice, Abigail,” he said, his gaze never leaving the gun.
Abbie rose onto trembling legs, crossed the space separating them, and knelt before him, placing her hand on his thigh. His movements stopped, but he didn’t look at her.
“He doesn’t love me,” she said softly. “He never did. He wanted the land. All along, he only wanted the land.”
He shifted his gaze to her. His fingers, scarred and roughened from years of picking cotton, lightly grazed her cheek. “That day you learned I was alive, you were comin’ back from the cotton gin.”
She nodded slightly. “Yes.”
“I was walking through the fields, listening to the wind rustling the leaves, and then I heard the sweetest sound…It was you…laughing. In all the years we was married, I never heard you laugh.” He turned back to the weapon and began putting the pieces into place with audible clicks. “I gotta do this, Abigail. I just got to.”
She pressed her forehead against his thigh. “Please don’t do this. I won’t stray from my vows.”
“I got no choice.”
She surged to her feet. “If you kill him, I’ll hate you until the day I die.”
“Do you love me now?” he asked, slamming the gun onto the table.
Reaching out, she wrapped her hands around his, stilling his actions. “I care for you, John. You gave me a roof over my head, food in my belly, and children. You gave me everything I needed when I had nothing.”
“But I never gave you the one thing you wanted. I never gave you love. Well, now I aim to give it to you.”
He shoved to his feet and stalked across the room toward the door.
“Killing him will not show me that you love me!” she cried out after him.
He staggered to a stop. “You’ve changed, Abigail.”
“I think the war changed all of us.”
“Made you stronger. Made me weaker. Now I gotta be strong.”
“You’re not weak, John.”
His only response was to slam the door behind him. A few minutes later she heard the sound of galloping hooves and knew a terror greater than any she’d ever known.
Abbie stood on the front porch, watching the sun ease over the horizon. Was it over yet? Was one man dead, another alive? She hadn’t been able to bring herself to go, to watch men die uselessly.
What did they hope to gain? To prove? Damn male pride.
Lydia came around the corner, dragging her feet in the dirt, her basket filled with eggs.
“You did a fine job gathering the eggs this morning,” Abbie said as she stepped off the porch and ran her fingers along Lydia’s braid. The child simply looked toward the barn. “Your brothers seem to be working a bit slow this morning. Why don’t you tell Johnny to hurry up with the milking and then you help Micah with the kindling. Maybe we’ll go on a picnic—”
“The boys ain’t here,” Lydia said.
“What do you mean, they aren’t here?”
Her daughter pursed her lips and studied her toes with great interest. A sense of foreboding ricocheted through Abbie. She wrapped her hands around Lydia’s arms. “Where are your brothers?”
Lydia didn’t lift her gaze as she answered, “They wanted to see the gunfight so they went to town.”
“Oh, God.” She cupped Lydia’s chin, forcing the child to look at her. “I have to go to town. I want you to go into the house. Ivanhoe is in my room. I want you to sit on my bed and look at the book while I’m gone.”
Lydia’s eyes brightened. Even though her daughter couldn’t read, Abbie knew she took pleasure in turning the pages of a book.
After Lydia disappeared into the house, Abbie straightened and raced for the corral, knowing even as she did so, she’d be too late. She saddled a horse, mounted, and galloped toward Fortune.
As she neared the edge of town, she saw the two men standing in the street. For a single heartbeat, she thought perhaps she’d arrived in time to stop them, to return sanity to an insane situation.
But then she watched in horror as both men slid guns from holsters.
“No!” she cried.
She heard the solitary gunshot echo through the stillness of dawn. As her horse reared up, she saw Grayson stagger back, bright red blood bursting forth over his white shirt like cotton exploding from the boll. Her heart plummeted as she lost her balance and tumbled from the horse. She felt a sharp pain at the back of her head before the darkness engulfed her.
John studied his wife, who was lying so still on the bed at the doctor’s house. For one horrifying moment as the horse had reared up and he’d watched her topple, he had known a fear far worse than anything he’d experienced in battle: his sweet Abigail might die.
But the doctor had assured him that she would be all right. “Just a bump on the head,” he’d said.
The baby wasn’t in danger either, and if John were honest with himself, he had mixed feelings about that. He knew it would break Abigail’s heart to lose the child. She so loved children. They were the only thing he knew how to give her, the one way he could show her that he cared for her.
“I want lots of children,” she’d told him after he asked her to marry him. He wasn’t quite sure how many lots were, but he figured she’d tell him when she had enough.
“For God’s sake, man, at least hold her hand.”
John snapped his head around. Pale, his lips pressed into a straight line as though he were fighting the pain, the Englishman leaned against the door frame. His left arm was in a sling and through the hole the bullet had created in his shirt, John could see the white of a bandage that stood out in direct contrast to the red streaks staining his shirt.
John turned his attention back to Abbie. She had yet to wake up; her face was almost as pale as the Englishman’s. Tentatively, as though afraid she might jerk away, he wrapped his hand around hers. Her hand was so small that it made his look like a giant’s.
“Why didn’t you shoot?” he asked quietly. “Your gun was out of the holster long before mine was. You had a clear shot—”
“It dawned on me with startling clarity that I would prefer to live the remainder of my life with Abbie’s dislike rather than her hatred. And she would have no doubt hated me had I killed you.”
“She said you wanted the land.”
“In the beginning, yes.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “And now?”
“I want her happy, and I want the child—her child—never to carry the label of bastard.” Rhodes shifted his gaze to Abbie, his eyes roaming over her as though he were painting a portrait of her. “I shall walk from this room, from your life and hers—never to return—if you will promise to honor two conditions.”
“What would those be?”
“Accept the child as your own. For the child’s sake and Abbie’s. I will send you funds periodically so nothing is taken from your own children—but this child must never doubt his place in the world.”
“And the other condition?”
“Have some tender regard for Abbie’s heart. Her loyalty to you was commendable. Had she known you were alive, she would have never turned to me, regardless of what her heart wanted.”
John slammed his eyes closed, his throat tightening until he thought he might choke. “I’ll see to takin’ proper care of the child and Abigail.”
“I prefer to keep this bargain between us.”
John opened his eyes, met Rhodes’ gaze, and gave a brusque nod. “What do you want me to
tell her?”
“I think my leaving will say it all.”
He thought Rhodes looked unsteady as he shoved away from the door and walked from the room.
Grayson thought it might have brought his father a measure of pride to see the way his son walked, albeit a bit crookedly, out of the physician’s house. Kit and Harry had their horses nearby, saddled and waiting. He wasted no time in joining his friends.
“Shall we be off?”
“The doctor said you shouldn’t travel for a few days,” Kit said.
“Yes, well—” With a low moan, he pulled himself into the saddle. “—he doesn’t know what’s best for my health.”
“How’s Abbie?”
“She hasn’t woken up yet, but the physician assures me that she will.”
“And the baby?”
“No harm done there.”
“How far shall we ride today?” Harry asked.
“At least until the town is out of sight,” Grayson suggested. At which point, he thought he might be able to give into the pain and allow unconsciousness to claim him.
Abbie was vaguely aware of her surroundings. A soft bed. Deep voices, male voices, rumbling in and out, causing the pain in her head to increase. Then the blessed silence.
A man’s hand wrapped around hers. At first, she thought it was Grayson’s. Had he died? Was he taking her to heaven? She remembered the thunder of a gun, remembered the sight of him staggering back, the blood just before the blackness.
But this hand was warm. Wasn’t his. It was too large. The fingers weren’t as long and they were thicker. She forced her eyes open to find John sitting beside her, his face anxious. “Grayson?” she croaked.
“He left.”
“He’s not dead, then?”
Understanding dawned in his eyes, and he shook his craggy head forcefully. “No, no. Took a bullet in the shoulder, but it’ll heal.”
“You said he left?”
“Went to Galveston with his friends.”
The pain streaked across her chest like lightning in the midst of a storm, even though she knew it was for the best. She turned her face toward the window, away from John. “The boys?”
Rogue in Texas Page 23