Angel in My Arms (4 page)

Celeste sat perfectly still, her hands clenched in her lap. "My
relationship?" Stalling, she repeated Fox's phrase as if she hadn't
heard him correctly.

"Yes, your relationship." He slid back his chair, making a wood-scraping-wood sound.

Silver looked up in response to Fox's movement, and Celeste dropped her hand to the dog's muzzle to reassure him.

The kitchen seemed darker than before. A cloud must have passed over
the sun. She watched Fox pace with swinging arms and a long stride, the
identical way John had paced the same floorboards.

"I don't mean to be rude but what is…
was
your relationship
with John MacPhearson? Why are you in his house? Why do you speak of
him in such a familiar way?" He paused, seeming dread to ask the next
question. "You weren't his wife, were you?"

She blinked, surprised by his possible conclusion. Who would marry a
whore? Even a whore with a good reason for her fall from grace? But
then she remembered that Fox didn't know she was a lady of the evening.
"N… no. We weren't man and wife."

Celeste could have sworn she saw relief wash over Fox's face. She
got the distinct impression that he was pleased that she and John had
not been husband and wife because Fox himself was attracted to her.

"So you were… ?" He raised a dark eyebrow, making a motion for her to complete his sentence.

Only Celeste didn't know how to finish the sentence. She wanted to
be honest, but didn't want to just blurt out that she had been his
paramour. Nor did she want to say that the first night she'd met John,
he'd been nothing more than a well-paying customer who, to Celeste's
good fortune, bathed. But their relationship had quickly changed. She
had become more than that to him, and he more to her. To say she was
only his whore would have trivialized their relationship… even John's
life.

"I… I was his friend," Celeste said finally. "His very good friend."

"I see." Fox appeared even more relieved. "You watched over the house?"

"I took care of John during his illness." She lowered her lashes,
softened her voice. "I moved in with him when he could no longer care
for himself. I bathed him, dressed him, read to him. Sang his favorite
songs to him."

Expecting further grilling, Celeste was surprised to look up and find Fox standing beside her.

He rested his hand on her shoulder. "Then I thank you."

Though Celeste had shared many intimate acts with men, his touch
seemed more personal. She was so confused by how Fox was affecting her.
By her reaction to him.

"I appreciate your doing what I couldn't," he said with a gentleness she had never realized a man was capable of.

She wanted to ask why he hadn't come to Carrington sooner… why he
hadn't been here for his father's last days. Yet she wasn't sure she
wanted to know why.

"He was never any trouble. Not even in the end." She smiled, feeling
a catch in her throat and tears welling behind her eyelids. She wanted
to cover Fox's hand with her own because she felt the need to comfort
him in return, but she didn't. "Even in the end. He was still laughing
and teasing. It was a gentle death… for a gentle man."

For a moment both Celeste and Fox were silent, each lost in their
own private memories. The silence seemed to bind them together as two
people who had both lost a great deal when John MacPhearson had died.

Fox lifted his hand from her shoulder and stepped away from her.
"Would you mind taking me to his grave, Miss Kennedy? I'd like to see
it."

It amused her to be called Miss Kennedy. It had been a long time since she'd heard the phrase. "Now?"

He glanced at the window. The room had turned bright again. "There's
still plenty of daylight left. If you don't mind, I'd like to go now.
And then, if you'd be so kind as to indulge me, I'd like to take you to
supper."

She rose from her chair. Silver moved with her. "You don't have to do that."

"It's the least I can do, considering how well you cared for John."

She gave a nod. "I'll be right back then. Just let me grab my bonnet."

Upstairs in her bedroom, Celeste closed her door and leaned against
it. Her heart beat erratically, her breath was irregular, and for once
she wasn't faking it. She stared at the yellow-rose vined wallpaper
that covered three walls of the bright room. On a fourth wall, behind
the white iron bed, the paper was yellow striped. John had had the wall
coverings sent from Boston just for her, because he said the yellow had
reminded him of her, of everything that was good and bright. Of an
angel come down from the heavens.

Comforted by the familiarity of the room, she went to her chiffonier and removed a straw bonnet.

Silver leaped onto the bed and lay down.

Celeste studied her own reflection in a floor-length oval mirror as
she tied the bonnet to her head with the wide, pale green ribbons.

"It's wrong not to tell him who you are," she whispered to herself.
"What
you are." But there was another man in her life who didn't know the
detestable truth either. She turned away from the mirror and her own
admonitions. "Stay, Silver. I'll be home directly."

Celeste found Fox outside on the front porch, seated on the swing,
his bowler hat in his lap. "Do you want your coat?" she asked as she
tossed her sage green cape over her shoulders. "It gets rather cool
quickly here in the mountains, and it looks like rain. I could fetch it
for you."

He shook his head. "No, thank you. I think I'll be warm enough without it."

She stood at the steps leading down off the porch and waited for
him, but he seemed in no hurry to leave the swing. "It's nice here,
isn't it?" she asked.

"Peaceful," he murmured.

She wrapped her arm around a white pillar and stared off into the
mountains beyond the tiny town. Carrington was situated in a bowl,
surrounded by mountains with a river running through the valley. It was
that river that had brought the town its success in the form of gold,
until it had eventually played out and produced nothing but fresh water
again.

Celeste glanced at Fox from around the pillar. The air was cool and
fresh and the scent of the surrounding pine trees mingled with her
neighbor's apple pie, and a hint of rain. Though the sun was bright,
somewhere in the distance a thundercloud rambled. "I suppose after your
city life in San Francisco, you would find the beauty of nature rather
boring."

Warmth spread from her ears to the tips of her toes as his gaze met hers.

"I have never been a man to find beauty in anything or anyone boring." He emphasized the word
anyone
in such a way that she knew he was referring to her.

For sweet heaven's sake. John's son was flirting with her!

She turned away. Celeste knew that by a man's standard she was
beautiful. Her thick, wavy hair was a natural red gold, her eyes bright
green, her porcelain skin flawless, save for the sprinkling of freckles
on her nose. She had full breasts and a narrow waist and legs—a
gentleman had once told her—that stretched to the moon. But Celeste
despised her appearance. Perhaps if she'd been moon-faced and
bucktoothed like her younger sister, she would not be selling her body
to make enough money to keep her secret safe in Denver.

Fox rose. "Well, shall we go?"

They walked side by side down the wooden sidewalk, through the
residential part of town, past storefronts and saloons, many closed and
boarded up. Celeste took the long way through town, so as to avoid
Peach Street and Kate's Dance Hall. She wanted Fox to herself a little
longer, the truth about her safe from him just a few more hours.

As they walked, they chatted amiably, as if they had known each
other a very long time. Celeste told herself that she was comfortable
with Fox because he was John's son, but the truth of the matter was
that she was insanely attracted to him. His flirtation on the porch
seemed to be evidence that he was attracted to her, as well. It wasn't
that he had done or said anything obvious, it was just that after all
these years, if there was one thing Celeste knew, it was men. What was
truly charming about Fox's interest in her was that he wasn't blatant,
at least not compared to the fellows that passed through her life at
Kate's.

Fox and Celeste reached the grave site just as the sun was setting
in a ball of fire beyond the crests of the snow-sugared mountains to
the west. The small, whitewashed clapboard church was surrounded by
dozens of graves marked mostly by wooden crosses, but a few headstones.

Most of the men who rested here had died in mining accidents, either
by cave-ins or runaway ore wagons. A few had died of gunshot wounds in
bar brawls. There were no female graves, to Celeste's knowledge, save
for Lottie's. She'd died last year of the clap.

Celeste led Fox to his father's grave, weaving her way between the
many burial mounds arranged in orderly rows. The Reverend Joash Tuttle
kept a neat graveyard, as neat as his church on the bluff, as neat as
his parlor with the horsehair settee.

Grass had begun to grow over the mound of earth that covered John's
grave, and the wildflowers Celeste had planted were beginning to spread
with bushy green leaves and buds. By midsummer, the daisies and
bluebells would be in full bloom.

Fox halted at the foot of the grave and stared at the polished granite headstone.
John L. MacPhearson,
it read.
Loving Father.
The inscription was followed by his dates of birth and death. He had been a few months short of his fifty-first birthday.

"Loving Father,"
Fox read sarcastically. "Yeah, right, John." He turned away.

Celeste was as surprised by his bitterness as she was by the pain in
his voice. John had painted a verbal portrait of devoted father and
son, telling Celeste that he didn't see Fox often because his son was
so busy traveling the world as a successful businessman. Had it been a
deliberate lie, or perhaps just wishful thinking?

"How'd you get the stone so quickly?" Fox asked, apparently
recovered from his emotions. He stood with his back to the grave,
studying the whitewashed church with its cupola bell tower.

"He ordered it before he died." Celeste lifted her cotton skirts and
sank down on one knee to pull a weed from the grave. "He looked at
hundreds in a catalog before he chose just the right one. Had it
shipped from Denver."

"How morbid."

"Perhaps to you or to me." She tossed the weed over her shoulder and
reached for another. "But for John it was a way of preparing himself
for the inevitable. He liked to make plans; it made him feel secure."

Fox turned back to the grave, rolling a small rock with the toe of
his polished shoe. "He shouldn't have had to choose that headstone
alone. I should have been here for him."

She rose and brushed the gray dust from her sprigged skirt.

"You should have been here," she agreed, "but he wasn't alone."