Kit’s heart was pounding in her chest like the wings of a trapped bird. “I don’t believe you. You can’t just walk away. What about the cotton mill?”
“Childs can manage it for now. Maybe I’ll sell it. I’ve already had an offer.” He grabbed a set of brushes from the top of the bureau and shoved them inside with the rest. “I’m done fighting you, Kit. You’ve got a clear field now.”
“But I don’t want you to go!” The words sprang spontaneously from her lips. They were true, and she didn’t want to take them back.
He finally looked up at her, his mouth twisted in its old mockery. “That surprises me. You’ve been trying your best to get rid of me one way or another since you were eighteen.”
“That was different. Risen Glory—”
He slammed the open palm of his hand against the bedpost, making the heavy wooden spindle vibrate. “I don’t want to hear about Risen Glory! I don’t ever want to hear that name again. Damn it, Kit, it’s just a cotton plantation. It isn’t a shrine.”
“You don’t understand! You’ve never understood. Risen Glory is all I’ve ever had.”
“So you’ve told me,” he said quietly. “Maybe you should try to figure out why that is.”
“What do you mean?” She grabbed the bedpost for support as she closed in on him.
“I mean that you don’t give anything. You’re like my mother. You take from a man until you’ve bled him dry. Well, I’ll be damned if I end up like my father. And that’s why I’m leaving.”
“I’m not anything like Rosemary! You just can’t accept the fact that I won’t let you dominate me.”
“I never wanted to dominate you,” he said softly. “I never wanted to own you, either, no matter how many times I said it. If I’d wanted a wife I could grind under my bootheel, I could have gotten married years ago. I never wanted you to walk in my dust, Kit. But, by damn, I won’t walk in yours, either.”
He closed the satchel and began fastening the leather straps. “When we got married—after that first night—I had this idea that maybe it could somehow be all right between us. Then it went bad right away, and I decided I’d been a fool. But when you came to me in that black nightgown, and you were so scared and so determined, I forgot all about being a fool and let you creep right back under my skin.”
He released the satchel and straightened up. For a moment he gazed at her, and then he closed the small distance left between them. His eyes were full of a pain that pierced through her as if it were her own. A pain that was her own.
He touched her cheek. “When we made love,” he said huskily, “it was as if we stopped being two separate people. You never held back. You gave me your wildness, your softness, your sweetness. But there wasn’t a foundation underneath that lovemaking—no trust or understanding—and that’s why it turned sour.”
He rubbed his thumb gently over her dry lips, his voice barely a whisper. “Sometimes when I was inside you, I wanted to use my body to punish you. I hated myself for that.” He dropped his hand. “Lately I’ve been waking up in a cold sweat, afraid that someday I’d really hurt you. Tonight, when I saw you in that dress and watched you with those other men, I finally realized that I had to go. It’s no good between us. We started out all wrong. We never had a chance.”
Kit clutched his arm and gazed at him through the haze of her own tears. “Don’t go. It’s not too late. If we both tried harder—”
He shook his head. “I don’t have anything left in me. I’m hurting, Kit. I’m hurting bad.”
Bending down, he pressed his lips to her forehead, then picked up the satchel and walked out of the room.
True to his word, Cain was gone when she returned to Risen Glory, and for the next month Kit moved like a sleepwalker through the house. She lost track of time, forgot to eat, and locked herself away in the big front bedroom she’d once shared with him. A young lawyer appeared with a stack of documents and a pleasant, unassuming manner. She was shown papers that gave her clear title to Risen Glory as well as control over her trust fund. She had everything she’d ever wanted, and she’d never been more miserable.
He gives away his books and his horses before he can grow too attached to them . . .
The attorney explained that the money Cain had taken from her trust fund to rebuild the cotton mill had all been repaid. She listened to everything he said, but she didn’t care about any of it.
Magnus came to her for orders, and she sent him away. Sophronia scolded her to eat, but Kit ignored it. She even managed to turn a deaf ear to Miss Dolly’s fretting.
One dreary afternoon in late February, as she sat in the bedroom pretending to read, Lucy appeared to announce that Veronica Gamble was waiting for her in the sitting room.
“Tell her I’m not feeling well.”
Veronica, however, wasn’t so easily put off. Brushing past the maid, she climbed the stairs and entered the bedroom after knocking. She took in Kit’s uncombed hair and sallow complexion. “How Lord Byron would have loved this,” she said scathingly. “The maiden withers like a dying rose, growing more frail each day. She refuses to eat and hides away. What on earth do you think you’re doing?”
“I want to be left alone.”
Veronica shrugged off an elegant topaz velvet cloak and tossed it on the bed. “If you care nothing for yourself, you could at least consider the child you’re carrying.”
Kit’s head shot up. “How do you know about that?”
“I met Sophronia in town last week. She told me, and I decided to come see for myself.”
“Sophronia doesn’t know. No one knows.”
“You don’t imagine something that important could get past Sophronia, do you?”
“She shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You didn’t tell Baron about the child, did you?”
Kit mustered her composure. “If you’ll go down to the sitting room, I’ll ring for tea.”
But Veronica wouldn’t be distracted. “Of course you didn’t tell him. You’re much too proud for that.”
All the fight left her, and Kit sagged into the chair. “It wasn’t pride. I didn’t think of it. Isn’t that odd? I was so stunned by the fact that he was leaving me that I forgot to tell him.”
Veronica wandered over to the window, pushed back the curtain, and stared outside. “Womanhood has been hard coming to you, I think. But then, I suppose it’s hard coming to all of us. Growing up seems easier for men, maybe because their rites of passage are clearer. They perform acts of bravery on the battlefield or show they’re men through physical labor or by making money. For women, it’s more confusing. We have no rites of passage. Do we become women when a man first makes love to us? If so, why do we refer to it as a loss of virginity? Doesn’t the word ‘loss’ imply that we were better off before? I abhor the idea that we become women only through the physical act of a man. No, I think we become women when we learn what is important in our lives, when we learn to give and to take with a loving heart.”
Every word Veronica uttered settled in Kit’s heart.
“My dear,” Veronica said softly as she walked over to the bed and picked up her cloak, “it really is time for you to take your final step into womanhood. Some things in life are temporal and others are everlasting. You’ll never be content until you decide which are which.”
She was gone as quickly as she had arrived, leaving only her words to linger. Kit heard the carriage move off down the drive, then grabbed the jacket that went with her riding habit and threw it over her rumpled woolen dress. She slipped out of the house and made her way to the old slave church.
The interior was dim and chilly. She sat on one of the rough wooden benches and thought hard about what Veronica had said.
A mouse scratched in the corner. A branch tapped at the window. She remembered the pain she’d seen on Cain’s face before he’d left, and at that moment the door she’d kept so tightly shut on her heart swung open.
No matter how much she’d tried to deny i
t, no matter how hard she’d fought it, she’d fallen in love with him. Her love had been written in the stars long before that July night when he’d pulled her down off the wall by her britches. All of her life since birth had shaped her for him, just as all his life had shaped him for her. He was the other half of herself.
She’d fallen in love with him through their battles and arguments, through her stubbornness and his arrogance, through those sudden surprising moments when they’d each known they were seeing the world in the same way. And she’d fallen in love with him through the deep, secret hours of the night when he’d stretched her and filled her and created the precious new life inside her.
How she wished she could do it over again. If only during those times when he’d softened toward her, she’d opened her arms and met his softness with her own. Now he was gone, and she’d never spoken the words of her love. But neither had he. Maybe because his feelings didn’t run as deeply as hers.
She wanted to go after him, to start all over again, and this time she’d hold nothing back. But she couldn’t do it. She was the one responsible for the pain she’d seen in his eyes. And he’d never pretended he wanted a wife, let alone a wife like her.
Tears ran down her cheeks. She hugged herself and accepted the truth. Cain was glad to be rid of her.
But there was another truth she needed to accept. The time had come to get on with her life. She’d been mired in self-pity long enough. She could cry in the privacy of her bedroom at night, but during the day she needed to keep her eyes dry and her head clear. There was work to be done and people who depended on her. There was a baby who needed her.
The baby was born in July, four years almost to the day since the hot afternoon Kit had arrived in New York City to kill Baron Cain. The child was a girl, with fair hair like her father’s and startling violet eyes fringed with tiny, black lashes. Kit named her Elizabeth and called her Beth.
Kit’s labor had been long, but the birth had gone without complications. Sophronia had stayed by her side the entire time, while Miss Dolly had fluttered about the house, getting in everyone’s way and shredding three of her handkerchiefs. Afterward, Kit’s first visitors had been Rawlins and Mary Cogdell, who seemed pathetically relieved to see that a baby had finally been produced from the Cain marriage, even though it had taken twelve months.
Kit spent the rest of the summer regaining her strength and falling deeply in love with her new daughter. Beth was a sweet, good-natured baby, happiest when she was in her mother’s arms. At night, when she would awaken to be fed, Kit would tuck her close in bed, where the two of them would doze until dawn—Beth content with the milky-sweet breast of her mother and Kit full of love for this precious infant who’d been God’s gift to her when she’d most needed it.
Veronica wrote her regular letters and occasionally visited from Charleston. A deep affection grew between the two women. Veronica still spoke outrageously about wanting to make love to Cain, but Kit now recognized her statements as none-too-subtle attempts to prod Kit’s jealousy and keep her feelings for her husband alive. As if she needed anything more to remind her of her love for her husband.
With the secrets of the past swept away, Kit’s relationship with Sophronia deepened. The two still bickered out of habit, but Sophronia talked freely now, and Kit took comfort from her presence. Sometimes, though, Kit’s heart would ache as she watched Sophronia’s face soften with a deep, abiding love when she caught sight of Magnus. His strength and goodness had laid to final rest the ghosts of Sophronia’s past.
Magnus understood Kit’s need to talk about Cain, and in the evenings while she sat on the piazza, he told her all that he knew about her husband’s past: his childhood, the years of drifting, his bravery during the war. She took it all in.
The beginning of September found her with renewed energy and a deeper understanding of herself. Veronica had once said that she should decide which things in life were temporal and which were everlasting. As she rode through the fields of Risen Glory, she finally understood what Veronica meant. Now it was time to find her husband.
Unfortunately, that proved easier in theory than in practice. The lawyer who handled Cain’s affairs knew he’d been in Natchez, but hadn’t heard from him since. Kit learned that his profits from the sale of the cotton mill were lying untouched in a bank in Charleston. For some reason, he’d left himself virtually penniless.
She made inquiries throughout Mississippi. People remembered him, but no one seemed to know where he’d gone.
By the middle of October, when Veronica arrived from Charleston for a visit, Kit was in despair. “I’ve inquired everywhere, but no one knows where he is.”
“He’s in Texas, Kit. A town called San Carlos.”
“You knew where he was all this time and you didn’t tell me? How could you do this?”
Veronica ignored Kit’s temper and took a sip of tea. “Really, my dear, you never asked me.”
“I didn’t think I had to!”
“The reason you’re so angry is because he wrote me instead of you.”
Kit wanted to slap her, but, as usual, Veronica was right. “And I’m sure you’ve been sending him all sorts of seductive messages.”
Veronica smiled. “Unfortunately not. This was his way of keeping in touch with you. He knew if anything was really wrong, I’d tell him.”
Kit felt sick. “So he knows about Beth, but he still won’t come back.”
Veronica sighed. “No, Kit, he doesn’t know about her, and I’m not certain I did the right thing by not telling him. But I decided it wasn’t my news to share. I couldn’t bear to see either of you hurt any more than you have been.”
Her anger forgotten, Kit pressed Veronica. “Please. Tell me everything you know.”
“The first few months he traveled the riverboats and lived on what he won at the poker tables. Then he moved on to Texas and rode shotgun for one of the stagecoach lines. A beastly job, in my opinion. For a while he herded cattle. And now he’s running a gambling palace in San Carlos.”
Kit ached as she listened. The old patterns of Cain’s life were repeating themselves.
He was drifting.
21
Kit reached Texas the second week of November. It was a long journey, made all the more arduous by the fact that she hadn’t traveled alone.
The uninhabited space of Texas was a surprise to her. It was so different from South Carolina—the flat east Texas prairie and then the rougher country farther inland, where twisting trees grew from jagged rocks and tumbleweed chased across the harsh, hilly terrain. She was told that the canyons flooded when it rained, sometimes washing away entire herds of cattle, and that in the summer, the sun baked the earth until it hardened and cracked. Yet there was something about the land that appealed to her. Perhaps the challenge it posed.
Still, the closer she came to San Carlos, the more uncertain she became about what she’d done. She had precious responsibilities now, yet she’d left the familiar behind to search for a man who’d never said he loved her.
As she climbed the wooden steps that led to the Yellow Rose Gambling Palace, her stomach twisted into tight, painful knots. She’d hardly been able to eat for days, and this morning not even the mouthwatering smells that drifted up from the dining room of the nearby Ranchers Hotel had been able to tempt her. She’d dallied while she dressed, fixing her hair one way and then another, changing outfits several times, and even remembering to check for any unfastened buttons or hooks that might have escaped her notice.
She’d finally decided to wear her dove-gray dress with the soft rose piping. It was the same outfit she’d worn on her return to Risen Glory. She’d even added the matching hat and veiled her face. It comforted her somehow, the illusion that she was starting over again. But the dress fit differently now, clinging tighter to her breasts as a reminder that nothing remained the same.
Her gloved hand trembled slightly as she reached for the swinging door that led into the saloon. For a moment s
he hesitated, and then she pushed hard against it and stepped inside.
She’d learned that the Yellow Rose was the best and most expensive salon in San Carlos. It had red-and-gold wallpaper and a crystal chandelier. An ornately carved mahogany bar ran the length of the room, and behind it hung a portrait of a reclining nude woman with titian curls and a yellow rose caught between her teeth. She’d been painted against a map of Texas, so that the top of her head rested near Texarkana and her feet curled along the Rio Grande. The portrait gave Kit a renewed kick of courage. The woman reminded her of Veronica.
It wasn’t quite noon, and only a few men sat inside. One by one, they stopped talking and turned to study her. Even though they couldn’t see her features clearly, her dress and her bearing indicated she wasn’t a woman who belonged inside a saloon, even the elegant Yellow Rose.
The bartender cleared his throat nervously. “Can I help you, ma’am?”
“I’d like to see Baron Cain.”
He glanced uncertainly toward a flight of curving stairs at the back and then down at the glass he was polishing. “There’s no one here by that name.”
Kit walked past him and made her way toward the stairs.
The man dashed around the edge of the bar. “Hey! You can’t go up there!”
“Watch me.” Kit didn’t slacken her pace. “And if you don’t want me invading the wrong room, maybe you should tell me exactly where I can find Mr. Cain.”
The bartender was a giant of a man, with a barrel chest and arms like ham hocks. He was accustomed to dealing with drunken cowboys and gunslingers out to make a reputation for themselves, but he was helpless in the face of a woman who was so obviously a lady. “Last room on the left,” he mumbled. “And there’s gonna be hell to pay.”
“Thank you.” Kit climbed the stairs like a queen, shoulders back and head held high. She hoped none of the men watching could guess just how frightened she was.
The woman’s name was Ernestine Agnes Jones, but to the men at the Yellow Rose, she was simply Red River Ruby. Like most people who had come West, Ruby had buried her past along with her name and never once looked back.