She still tried. “They’ll probably have one of their men stand guard now just to make sure no one is sneaking around late at night.” If they didn’t, she’d suggest it herself—if anyone came back alive today. . . .
She blanched with that thought, but the boy had turned so he didn’t see it. “I’ll fetch the soup pot from the cellar to get it simmering again.”
Such an ordinary thing to do when she was so frantic with worry for her family that she couldn’t think straight. Was there no way to stop the Callahans?
She suddenly heard the sound of horses galloping past the kitchen. She ran down the hall to the front porch to see four men with rifles riding away. She sat down on the porch swing and put her head in her hands. “I hate this damn feud!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
ROSE’S EXPRESSION WAS BLEAK as her coach moved along the streets of Chicago. She felt the same way she’d felt the first time she had gone to the grand mansion fourteen years ago. Nervous, afraid, desperate. She didn’t have much hope that she would succeed this time when she had failed so miserably before.
The hatred this man harbored was crazy. Every time she had gone to his home over the years to try to make Parker see reason, she’d been turned away. He refused to hear her pleas a second time. He refused to give her back her life. She had hoped time would make this go away, but it never did. The threat still hung over Frank’s head—and hers. God, wasn’t fifteen years long enough for the bastard to savor his twisted revenge?
She was still the only one who knew. That had been Parker’s stipulation for letting her husband live. Frank could never be told the real reason she’d left him. She guessed that Parker had hoped Frank would die of a broken heart—history repeating itself. But Frank was too strong for that.
Every time she came here, she ended up reliving Parker’s first act of vengeance and how Franklin almost died because of it. She’d blamed herself for so long, but was it really her fault?
She’d raced to Nashart to get the doctor herself that night. She’d screamed at him to hurry. She was in shock. Frank’s wound had looked so serious. The doctor ran to get his horse at the stable. Before she could remount hers, she was stopped and dragged to the side of the house, a hand over her mouth. The man didn’t take her far, just into the shadows. She didn’t recognize his voice. She never saw his face.
“This was a warning,” he told her. “Leave your husband or he dies.”
She didn’t understand. She’d thought one of the Callahans had shot Frank. Everyone was going to assume that. But what the man had just said had nothing to do with that damn feud.
“You’re not a Callahan?”
“No.”
“Then what do you have against my husband?”
“Nothing personally. I work for Parker—”
“My old neighbor from New York?” she interrupted incredulously. But she realized that was a crazy conclusion on her part even as she said it.
Only it wasn’t. “I see you understand.”
“No, I don’t. I was engaged to his son Mark!”
“An engagement you should have honored instead of breaking. The boy is dead—because of you. His father wants revenge.”
“That makes no sense. I broke that engagement five years ago. If Mark just died, I’m sorry, but how could his father possibly blame me for that?”
“You don’t know?”
“Know what? I haven’t seen that family for years. I know they sold their house and left New York not long after I married Franklin, but I don’t know where they moved and I never saw Mark again after I told him I couldn’t marry him.”
“Parker moved his family to another state because he thought it would help his son get over you. It didn’t. The boy turned to drink to forget you, then recklessness when that didn’t work. He finally killed himself. The note said he couldn’t bear the heartache anymore. Parker sent me to kill your husband. He’s in a grief-stricken rage.”
If she wasn’t already horrified, that last statement tipped the scale. “You said it was a warning! Now you’re saying you were paid to kill him?!”
“Not paid. I’ve worked for Parker for years. He did everything he could think of to pull Mark out of the despair you left him in. So did I, for that matter. Nothing worked. And now he’s dead. But I’m not a cold-blooded killer. Neither is Parker—usually. Wanting to kill the man who stole you from his son was his first reaction, but I managed to talk him into a less bloody revenge.”
She struggled in that moment, rage finding her. “You call what you did tonight less bloody!?”
He swung her around. The gun that had been pressed deeply into her back to keep her from screaming was now pressed to her belly. She still couldn’t see his face in the shadows, not that it mattered when it sounded as if he was just Parker’s lackey.
“Would you rather he be dead?” he hissed at her. “Make no mistake, Parker didn’t get where he is today without having a ruthless streak, and he blames you and your husband for his loss. He will have revenge. I couldn’t dissuade him from it. It’s just a very simple one now. If Mark couldn’t have you, no man will. So are you willing to save your husband’s life?”
“By leaving him?” She started crying. “Please don’t ask me to do this.”
“Someone has to pay, Mrs. Warren, by death or despair. The choice is yours.”
She couldn’t stop crying, but it got even worse. “There is one stipulation,” the man added.
“This isn’t enough?!”
“No, the pain of your desertion has to cut deep. So you can’t tell your husband the real reason you’re leaving him.”
“Then I’ll need a little time. If I go while he’s recovering from that wound, he’ll never believe it’s what I want.”
“Three weeks, not a day more.”
She’d hoped in that time she could find some way out of that nefarious bargain, but she didn’t. Every time she saw Frank favor his side where he’d been shot, she was reminded that his life was in her hands. She left. She didn’t have a choice. But at least she’d taken a part of Frank with her, their little daughter, and she’d protected her sons before she snuck off, arranging that truce with their neighbors. She would have gone insane with worry if she still had to worry about the Callahans, too.
Rose stared out the coach window. Such an interesting city, one she could have enjoyed if she didn’t hate it so much because her tormentor lived here. And her view was blurred. Tears again. Every single time the memories surfaced, she cried.
It had taken her nearly a year to find out where Parker had moved. He had so many interests and businesses across the country and was constantly traveling between them. She wasn’t surprised he’d picked a more central location in Chicago. And she was going to kill him. She’d thought about it long and hard. He was causing too much pain and suffering. He wasn’t the only one who could enact revenge.
She hadn’t been sure he’d even see her when she’d called on him. A butler had shown her to his study. He was sitting behind his desk, his arms crossed. His short, brown hair was starting to gray, but that was to be expected of a man in his late forties. Rose was disappointed to see that he still looked quite robust. If he was sickly, she might have considered waiting for him to die naturally. But she wanted her husband back! She wanted her family to be whole again.
He didn’t offer her a chair. “Still calling yourself Mrs. Warren?”
“I haven’t divorced him.”
“It doesn’t matter. Him, some other man—you do understand you’re to have none? Ever.”
“You’ve had your revenge. Let it go.”
“I’m curious,” he said. “Did you really never tell him the truth?”
“No, I protected him with lies. He was devastated!”
“You say that with such anger when all of this points to you.”
“You’re insane to blame me for your son’s weakness.”
“You dare! He loved you! He’d always loved you! You gave him hope, then rip
ped it away.”
“Mark and I were childhood friends, nothing more. I shouldn’t have let him talk me into marrying him. I had doubts from the start, but he was so sure we’d be happy, I didn’t have the heart to turn him down. I did care about him, I didn’t want to hurt him. Finding real love showed me the difference. Mark even agreed with my decision to end our engagement!”
“No, he didn’t, he only pretended to. It was a lie! He never stopped loving you, and that love destroyed him. So how do you think it isn’t your fault, when you did say you’d marry him and then dropped him for another man?”
“I think I’ve suffered enough. This has to end. Now.”
She pulled the pistol from her pocket and pointed it at him. She didn’t get the reaction she’d hoped for. He actually laughed at her.
“Go ahead. My life lost all meaning when my only child died. But my death doesn’t end this for you, Rose Warren. The men I pay to follow you now will continue to follow you after I’m gone. It’s in my will. And the very day you try to live with your husband again, or take another, is the day your line ends, just as you ended mine.”
Oh, God, it was worse than she’d thought. She’d hoped that his death would be the end of it.
Nonetheless, over the years, she’d still tried to make him see reason. She’d come back here so many times, but all uselessly. She’d never been let back into the house again. He’d only agreed to see her that one time to ascertain for himself whether his vengeance was successful.
As the coach drew up to the Harding mansion, Rose steeled herself for disappointment. She had to try again to convince Parker to give up his vengeful bargain. She would keep trying until the day she or Parker Harding died. As she stepped down to the street, she saw that she was still being followed. . . .
Chapter Twenty-Nine
TIFFANY SOMEHOW MANAGED TO bake bread that morning and make lunch for the household when most of the household wasn’t there to eat it. She barely remembered doing anything she was so preoccupied and worried about what was happening between the Callahans and her family. The men hadn’t yet returned, or maybe they had and were out on the range. She was dying to know what had happened. Were her brothers all right? Had anyone been wounded? She wished she could ride over to her father’s ranch and find out. But all she could do was hope that no one would shoot before any questions could be asked.
As if she weren’t already fretting enough, she nearly had a crisis with the upstairs maid that afternoon. She had merely wanted to make sure Luella was doing her job properly, but the moment Tiffany mentioned changing the bedding daily, Luella threw up her hands. “I quit!”
“Wait!” Tiffany quickly followed the maid out of the bedroom she had been cleaning. “Why?”
Luella swung around. Short, chubby, possibly twice Tiffany’s age, the woman was bristling. “It already takes a full day to wash all the bedding from up here. A full day! Then I have clothes to wash, too. All these rooms to clean, beds to make, and Mrs. Callahan to see to. You will not give me even more to do!”
Good grief, that was three separate jobs the woman had just described. Tiffany had never heard of one servant doing two of them, much less three!
Appalled, Tiffany said sympathetically, “I quite agree. I had no idea.”
Yet she should have. She’d already seen that servants were far too scarce in the territory. She wouldn’t be in this house enacting this charade if they weren’t.
But her response had the maid giving her a suspicious look now. “My sister told me about you housekeepers. She said you just stand around cracking whips all day, and you even get paid for it.”
Tiffany had to bite back the urge to laugh. “That’s not true, really it isn’t. But as you may have heard, without a large staff to manage here, I’ve been given other tasks myself, same as you.”
But she was suddenly reminded that she was going to have extra time on her hands, now that she had a kitchen helper. Aside from an occasional ride, she had thought she might try fishing for the family’s dinner, so she could provide something other than beef and more beef. Cowboys might not expect anything other than that meat since it was what their jobs were all about, but she did. Yet riding and fishing wouldn’t be daily outings.
Impulsively, she offered some of that extra time to this overburdened woman. She couldn’t dust, not when the slightest stirring of it made her sneeze, but how hard would it be to make up some of the beds, straighten up some of the rooms, even help carry the dirty laundry to the washing shed? She said as much. And left the maid incredulous.
Luella admitted, “Pearl does share half the wash load—when she’s here,” but then she added in disgust, “and when she’s not cleaning her nails instead of getting them dirty.”
A bit of rivalry there? Tiffany wondered. Or had she just been warned to expect some trouble from the downstairs maid when she returned to work?
“For now, I’ll finish the room you were in,” Tiffany offered. “And in the morning, I can make the beds on this side of the stairs.”
Luella gave her a brilliant smile. “Hunter was due fresh sheets. I brought them. I really appreciate this, Miss Fleming.”
Hunter’s room? But Luella had already hurried off before Tiffany could take back her offer. She made a face. Going into his bedroom probably wasn’t a good idea. But as long as he wasn’t in it, what harm could come from it?
It was a masculine room. A rack of rifles hung on one wall. The three paintings on the other walls each depicted a Western scene—a herd of cows, a cowboy trying to ride a bull, a group of cowboys sitting around a campfire. An ornately carved wood chest, quite lovely, was at the foot of the large bed. With the clean bedding left on top of it, she guessed it contained more bedding and peeked inside. She was wrong. It was filled with cowboy gear, ropes, chaps, spurs, some extra long-barreled guns, another gun holster much more fancy looking than the plain one Hunter usually wore.
Two wide-brimmed hats were hung on pegs next to a dark-wood wardrobe, one black, one cream colored. She resisted opening the wardrobe. A brown stuffed chair sat with its back to one of the two windows, faded, worn in the seat; it looked entirely too comfortable. She pictured Hunter sitting in it reading and eventually nodding off. Had he taken naps in it? Had this always been his room? If it was, no evidence of his childhood was left in it.
She recognized the two medium-size crates stacked in a corner as the ones John and Cole had picked up at the train station the day she’d arrived. So it was something Hunter had ordered shipped in? Then why hadn’t he opened the crates yet? But she’d snooped enough, too much. She shouldn’t be so curious about the man.
Luella had already stripped the bed and tucked in the bottom sheet. Tiffany grabbed the folded top sheet. A lovely knitted coverlet in dark browns and blues, thin for summer, was to go on last. She wondered if Mary had made it and decided to ask her when she saw her next.
She was opening the top sheet and letting it flutter across the bed when she heard Hunter remark, “I’d wondered where you’d gone off to. Never expected to find you waiting for me in my room.”
Tiffany jumped. He’d startled her enough that she’d let go of the sheet. It floated across the bed and landed on the floor on the other side. It should have been obvious what she was doing there, so he was just being him with a remark like that. She glanced behind her to tell him that her being there had nothing to do with him. She gasped instead and looked away immediately. He was standing in the doorway wearing nothing but a towel!
“Good God, why aren’t you dressed!?”
“Got knocked on my ass and I was a little too muddy to wait for a bath. That rain came down hard this morning. It will take a few days to dry up.”
She hadn’t been outside to notice—did he get muddy fighting with her brothers? “What happened when you went to the Warrens’ ranch?”
“Don’t know. We ran into Degan coming home from town while we were riding over there. Pa decided to just take the guard dog with him and sent the re
st of us back to check on the herd. If the Warrens are on the offensive, rustling would be another kind of attack.”
“Are you missing any cattle?”
“Doesn’t look like it. We’ll have to wait until dinnertime to learn what Pa found out today. If you didn’t start that fire, and a Warren didn’t, that just leaves our new neighbors to the east.”
“Once again, we are in complete agreement. I am becoming quite amazed by it.”
“Surprise and sarcasm in the same breath, Red?” He chuckled, but then asked curiously, “When was the first time you agreed with me?”
Why did it sound as if his voice was getting closer to her? Nervously she said, “Never mind that, I’d like to know why you didn’t say that to your father this morning? After everything I’ve heard about the miners, and what I witnessed yesterday for myself, they were certainly my first guess, not my second. It’s not just the owner of that mine who would benefit from driving your family off, but every miner who works there. Doesn’t your father know that?”
“He knows, but we got a judge involved who made a ruling. They have to clear out as soon as that lesser vein is gone, which won’t be long now. So while they might be angry enough to start something, they don’t stand to gain from it.”
“Anger was enough to drive your family over to the Warren ranch this morning, wasn’t it?”
He chuckled. “Point made.”
“There are a lot of variables to consider. Which is why you might want to post a watch here at night.”
“Intended to,” he said. “But no need for you to get worried about it.”
After the worry she’d gone through today, that statement just annoyed the heck out of her. “Don’t be obtuse. I work here. So what happens here does affect me.”
“But I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. Did you think I didn’t mean it?”