If he hadn’t tantalized her with the same smoldering gaze she’d almost given in to days ago, they could have passed the afternoon in a civilized manner.
That was her way, wasn’t it? Civilized. Silent. Run over.
No more. It was time she stopped playing the part of a helpless little girl to men who cared little for her feelings. It was time she took matters into her own hands and told Barrett how badly he had hurt her.
“You accuse me of infidelity?” Resentment ruled her tongue. “I am not the one who moved away for a dozen years.”
“No, you’re the one who married another man before my prints in the dust had blown away.”
“What did you expect when you left me no choice?”
“I didn’t force you to marry Lamar, Edy.”
“You didn’t stop me.”
“Because I didn’t know.” He leaned closer. She leaned back. “You should have waited for me.”
“You promised to write.”
He ran a hand over his hair. “I did write to you, Edy—three times that first month.”
He wrote to her? The need to lash out withered. “I received no letters. Not one.”
His brow furrowed. “I’m telling you the truth.”
With his denial, a horrible suspicion took hold. “My father.”
Barrett glared at the building clouds as if her father hid in the midst of them to eavesdrop on their quarrel. “I should have expected it. I waited for a response that never came.”
“I had no address to write you.” If only she had taken the initiative to collect the mail first. “Why didn’t you take me with you? We could have married.”
His voice softened. “I wanted nothing more than to marry you. One day. That wasn’t the right time for us. With my schooling, I couldn’t support us in the way you deserved. I thought you understood that. Then when your father sentenced Wynn to prison—”
Edythe pushed to her feet, her attempt at composure drowned by a wild surge of exasperation. “You blamed me.”
Barrett’s scowl turned fierce. “I blamed the judge, never you. But forgive me if I didn’t understand that you were so eager to escape your father that you’d marry someone else within two months.”
She’d never wanted to marry Barrett simply to escape life with her father. She’d wanted him. Only him. “I had no choice.”
“Of course, you did. I told you I’d come back for you. When I received no response to my letters, I returned to Riverport to learn why. That’s when I discovered you’d married Westin. That’s when I blamed you. Why didn’t you wait for me, Edy?”
“You always spoke of justice...swore to bring justice to those who were innocent. Didn’t you think to grant me that same justice? Did you even ask yourself why I had a sudden change of heart?”
“I asked.” Pain lined his face. “I asked myself over and over. I assumed you—”
“You assumed I was too weak to fight my father. I can’t deny it.” Too tired to argue any longer, she turned her back on him. “It’s in the past, Barrett. All that concerns me right now is Andrew’s future.”
With a hand on each shoulder, he turned her around. “Well, it’s not all that concerns me. We’ve started this conversation. Let’s finish it. What happened, Edy? What did I miss?”
A line of ants paraded through the dirt at her feet as though she and Barrett were nothing more than tunnel walls for them to pass through. “Twelve years and three children?”
“Sarcasm isn’t helpful.” With a curled finger under her jaw, he tried to lift her chin, but like a mule sitting on its hindquarters, she rejected the attempt. He dropped his hand and picked up the bicycle from where it had fallen on the ground. “Forget it. I think I’ve had my fill of lessons today.”
As he walked away from her, possibly for good, Edythe’s stubbornness melted. Maybe Barrett was right. Maybe it was time they cleared the air. “After you left, my father tried to convince me you weren’t coming back. When I didn’t receive any word from you, I believed him. Then, he said if I didn’t marry Lamar, he’d send me to my grandfather in California.”
Barrett stilled. “Your grandfather? You were terrified of him after the day he locked you in the cellar.”
She nodded, unable to express how the dark and musty-smelling hole in the ground had petrified her as a five-year-old. Even now, her stomach often twisted at the smell of fresh dirt turned with a gardening spade. When her father found her trapped by her grandfather’s cruel joke, his curses against the old man had blistered the air. She hadn’t seen her grandfather since that day.
Her father may have bluffed with his threat, but she hadn’t had the courage to test him. “I’d rather have married a stranger than live with that man, Barrett.”
He walked the bicycle back to her and laid it down. “I remember him pushing a courtship between you and Westin. I never dreamed he’d go so far.”
What she said next either would drive a deeper wedge between them or help them move past the hurt. “I discovered something about Lamar that my father wasn’t aware of. He had a weak heart. For years, he believed he wouldn’t live long enough to marry and raise a family.”
“You married him and had his children out of pity?” Disgust flooded his voice. “Or was it because you figured it wouldn’t last long?”
She deserved that last part, because the thought had crossed her mind at the time. She swept blowing hair from her face. “Lamar was a kind man. He wanted me as his wife.”
“I wanted you.” He shook his head. “I thought long and hard about coming back here, knowing I’d see you again—see you with Westin. I didn’t realize he’d died.”
“But you returned for Wynn’s sake.” Not hers.
“I owed him.”
“You still believe the judge sentenced Wynn to prison because of us?”
“That’s part of it.” He stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets, his gaze aimed at something over her shoulder. “I’d promised to meet him the night of the robbery.”
Edythe gasped. “You and Wynn planned to...?”
His features contorted as though he considered her question ridiculous. “No. I had no plans to rob anyone and neither did Wynn. We were to spend time together...checkers or something.”
“Instead, you met with me.”
Barrett sighed. “If I’d kept my promise, there would have been no charges against Wynn, and your father would have had no excuse to send him to prison where he contracted consumption.”
So he’d returned to Riverport out of guilt.
The tip of Edythe’s tongue ached with the desire to tell him of Wynn’s confession, to erase a portion of that guilt. She would if she hadn’t agreed to let Wynn tell him in his own way and time. Clearly, the man hadn’t followed through yet. If he didn’t tell Barrett soon, she would tell him herself rather than see him continue to beat himself up.
“It was never my intention to desert you, Edy. You’re right. I was angry over what happened to Wynn, but I should have given you the benefit of the doubt and guessed your father was behind your decision.” His fingers combed through his hair. “After the way he treated my brother, I shouldn’t have put it past him to do something evil where you were concerned.”
She’d never considered her father truly evil, just callous and domineering—a man wanting his way in everything. Maybe that was a definition of evil.
But keeping Barrett’s letters from her? She’d been foolhardy not to consider it before now.
“I loved you and appreciated that you worried about your brother. If I’d been sure of your love, Barrett, I would have given you all the time you needed, despite my father’s threat and Lamar’s poor health.” Even if meant remaining in her father’s house until Barrett came for her.
“The truth is, I waded so deep in my own guilt and misery, I couldn’t focus on much else. I’ve always loved you, Edy, ever since that first day I saw you sitting forlorn on the riverbank. I wanted to carry you away and protect you.” He eased her into
an embrace so firm, yet tender, that she could barely breathe for the emotion it wrought. “Will you forgive me for not trusting that you returned that love and for acting like a cretin since my homecoming?”
She and Barrett wasted years of happiness because of her father’s interference—years better spent growing together, loving one another, raising children. There was no reason to waste more time when the prospect of a future together lay ahead.
“Will you forgive me for not seeing how deeply Wynn’s situation affected you, for letting my father convince me you didn’t love me enough to remain with me, and for marrying Lamar out of fear?” Edythe snuggled closer. “You were my bold knight, Barrett. I never felt so safe, so loved as when we were together.”
Another sigh blew past her ear. “And I failed you, just as I failed Wynn.”
She couldn’t let him continue to flog himself unnecessarily over his brother’s guilt. “Barrett, there’s something you should—”
“No knight worth his salt fails to protect his lady from the dragon. It’s the way I see that father of yours, Edy, and I’ll never forgive myself for leaving you to suffer through his dominance.”
He cupped both sides of her face with hands that were big and stalwart. Hands that warmed and soothed. Those hands whisked away her every thought, except the reminder that he held each corner of her heart and always had.
When he leaned in, brushing her lips with his own, Edythe welcomed the kiss that resurrected all the love she’d stuffed deep inside, the type of love she’d thought to experience no more except in her dreams of him.
Freedom. Joy. Passion. And a beautiful hope that had lingered in the background for too long.
SOMEWHERE IN THE BACK of Barrett’s mind a voice shouted that if he didn’t gain control over this raging thirst for Edy—one he’d never imagined feeling a second time—there would be no turning back for either of them. He wanted more for her and for them. Much more. He always had.
He eased away and inhaled a lungful of the country air that had grown more humid as the afternoon wore on. His words spilled out in a breathless manner. “Never again say you have no talent, Mrs. Westin, because I’ve found something you excel in.”
She stroked the hairs of his beard, her trembling fingers revealing nerves that were every bit as raw as his. “The last time you kissed me, you didn’t have a mustache and beard.”
“If they’re a bother, I’ll shave.” He’d do anything to please her. How was it that she shrank from most everyone, but her comfort and confidence with him could twist him around her little finger like he was a limp strand of yarn?
“Don’t. I like the new look. It’s a reminder that so much has changed over the years, that we’ve grown and...”
“We’re different.”
She pulled away. “In some ways. In other ways, our circumstances have not changed. What about my father? He won’t welcome a relationship between us now any more than he did before. I don’t want him making things difficult for any of us.” Her furrowed brow foreshadowed her tumble into the old fear.
“You’re an adult, Edy. He should have no control over your life, and I know he has no control over mine.”
He overrode the impulse to ask her to marry him. Right here, right now. It was too soon. She had a point. They had changed. What if he had changed too much for her? What if they found their individual growth had produced differences too insurmountable for a lifetime together?
“I want to court you. This time it will be out in the open. I won’t sneak around behind the judge’s back. When I take you home, I’ll talk to him.”
She pushed against his chest. “No. Give me time to talk to him first. I don’t care about me, but I can’t afford to make life worse for my children.”
It pained him to see her give her father power over her for any reason. Contrary to his claim otherwise, would they fall back into their previous pattern of hiding their relationship from the judge and everyone else in Riverport? “I heard you plead Andy’s case for freedom.”
“You were at the house?”
“Out back with the twins after Timmy waylaid me. The kitchen window was open.” Barrett straightened her hat. It had tipped sideways with her fall to the ground. What he longed to do was remove it, along with the pins that held that silky hair on top of her head—a number of which had worked loose, promising to relieve themselves of their burden.
“What if my father had seen you? He threatened to have you arrested for trespassing.”
“He saw me.” Why hadn’t he followed through with his threat? Had Edy’s argument shaken his confidence?
“He never said anything.” She chewed on her lip. “That worries me.”
“Maybe he never mentioned it because you’d stood up for yourself and Andy. Your courage didn’t get past your other children. We were all proud of you.”
“I had to do it for the good of my son.”
Years ago, she’d often fixated too much on herself and her circumstances. He liked seeing this motherly side of her—the concern for her children. “And you won. In fact, you put up quite an argument. Have you ever considered becoming a lawyer?”
She scoffed. “Not for a moment.”
“You have something against lawyers?”
A spark of humor lit her face. “Not at all. In fact, I have great respect and...admiration...for one particular lawyer.”
“Only admiration?” That wasn’t exactly the term he’d hoped to hear.
“It’s never been just admiration, Barrett. It never will be.”
A drop of rain landed on his hand, another in the dirt at their feet. She looked up. “Maybe we should return to town before we become drenched.”
Barrett enclosed her in his arms, unable to stop himself. “Rain brings cleansing, Edy. It brings a freshness to everything it touches.”
“Sometimes, it brings a storm.”
“I choose to see this shower as a sign from God. He’s telling us we’ve been given a fresh start, a cleansing from the past and a new beginning.”
Her sigh expressed doubt, but she burrowed closer to him. “I hope you’re right, because I couldn’t bear the beginning of another tempest.”
“I’ll give you time to talk to your father, but don’t take long.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Edythe entered her father’s house with her clothing and the ends of her hair dripping from the rain. A glance at the face of the grandfather clock in the foyer revealed it was later than she’d realized—almost time for supper.
She touched her lips, astounded by the fact they still tingled from Barrett’s goodbye kiss. Astounded and ever so thankful for new beginnings. She hoped—no, she prayed—he was right in saying God had given them a new start.
In some ways, Barrett was a different person from the one she remembered—stronger, more serious and self-assured. No doubt the years, the circumstances of their separation, had changed both of them, but their attraction remained, one that transcended time.
She frowned when it occurred to her she hadn’t told him about the robbery involving his brother. Perhaps it was for the best. That story belonged to Wynn.
“For Pete’s sake, Edythe.” Her father’s voice yanked her from her thoughts. His mouth gaped as he observed her sodden appearance from the doorway of the drawing room. “Where have you been?”
“I helped a friend learn to ride a bicycle.”
“In the rain?”
She stood mute while the deluge drummed against the roof.
I want to court you. This time it will be out in the open. I won’t sneak around behind the judge’s back.
Edythe had told Barrett she would do nothing that might cause more hurt for her babies. That included blurting out her activities that afternoon without concocting a reasonable argument against her father’s objections.
Her smile wobbled like Barrett’s bicycle. Normally a capable man in control, seeing him struggle to master something new exposed his humanity and endeared her to him even m
ore. Now, it was her turn to show that determination and control. “I’d like to speak with you, Father.”
He waved a hand. “Another time. Go upstairs and change into dry clothes before you flood the foyer.”
She looked down. Water puddled on the marble floor around her. She hurried to the stairs, remorseful over having made more work for Mrs. Cameron.
“And Edythe.”
She paused on the stairs without turning. “Yes, Father?”
“Wear something worthy of a guest. Ansel is here. I’ve invited him for supper.”
She restrained a groan. Ansel was the last person she wanted to see today of all days.
Edythe would worry about her father’s obsession over her relationship with the banker later...when she sat him down and told him about Barrett.
EDYTHE PUSHED THE CAULIFLOWER around her plate. Mrs. Cameron knew she despised the vegetable, but the judge had ordered it, the housekeeper told her, because it was Mr. Treadway’s favorite, providing an additional—if not irrational—reason not to court the man.
After her time with Barrett, she didn’t care what Ansel Treadway liked or didn’t like and would have preferred eating with her children. At another order by her father, Andrew and the twins were fed in the kitchen earlier and sent to their rooms, forcing her to dine in the company of the two men.
Since joining her children wasn’t possible and the men talked business, she occupied herself by reliving the time spent with Barrett on that secluded wagon path, paying little attention to the conversation taking place in the room.
“You find it amusing, Edythe?”
At the mention of her name, the warmth that flowed through her a moment before turned to a chill. “Find what amusing, Father?”
“I hardly think Ansel’s story of losing his parents as a child called for a smile.”
Oh, how awful if Ansel had mistaken her happiness as being directed toward his misfortune. “No, of course not. My apologies, Ansel. I...” What excuse could she give for her blunder? Perhaps it was better to not offer one than open her mouth and spout something imprudent.
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