Claire, Angela - Heart of Stone (Siren Publishing Classic) (14 page)

“Big words, Jake. But I seen how you look at this whore.”

Jake’s mouth tightened, but he held the gun steady, pointed right at
Winthrop
’s head.

“I kill her, what good’s it gonna do to kill me? You love her. Any fool can see that. That’s why she had to die in the first place.”

“If you let her go now, I’ll give you a fair start on trying to get away. You have my word.”

“Get away to what? I can’t start over all again. I got my place here. I got my daughter.”

He had no sooner uttered the words than Regina Winthrop was suddenly in the mouth of the cave, standing right beside Jake. She looked dusty and shaken, so different than Melinda had ever seen her. Her voice shook as she reached her arms out to her father. “Don’t do this, Daddy. I’m begging you.”

“Stay back, little girl. I’m sorry I had to belt you one back there, and I don’t want to do what I got to do in front of you, but I will if I have to.”

“Please, Daddy…”

“Stay back! I’m warning you.”

Winthrop
backed away, dragging Melinda with him, farther into the cave. Jake advanced slowly as well, the gun still trained on
Winthrop
. The shot disoriented her, because it came from behind where she and Winthrop were standing, not in front.
Winthrop
let go of her abruptly and collapsed with a cry, and there was Jesse Whelan, gun in hand, behind them. He’d come out of the darkness of what she had assumed was a closed cave.

Melinda was in Jake’s arms a second later. Whether he had come to her or she had come to him, she didn’t know. It just felt so good to be safe, to be leaning her head on his shoulder, comforted by the warmth of him.

“My God, Melinda. I could have lost you.”

Jesse leaned over
Winthrop
, turning him over brusquely. “It’s in his shoulder. He’s not going to die, Reggie. Not yet anyway. We’ll see what the law has to say about him though.”

Regina
approached, her hand over her mouth, but before she could get there, somehow
Winthrop
grabbed the gun he’d thrown to the ground earlier.

Jake quickly pushed Melinda behind him.
Winthrop
put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Jesse rushed to
Regina
and turned her away, but Melinda didn’t know if she had seen the terrible remains of what had once been her father. Melinda knew she had, and with half his head blown away, she hoped his daughter had been spared that image.

* * * *

They left
Winthrop
’s body in the cave. The undertaker would have to retrieve it later. For now, it was as much as they could do for all four of them, Melinda on the back of Jake’s horse and
Regina
on the back of Jesse’s, to ride into town and tell their story to the sheriff.
Regina
’s halting, tear-choked admission of what she had heard from her father chilled Melinda almost as much as her own recount of
Winthrop
’s violent abduction did. In the end, there wasn’t much to be done for it, except to try to catch the man who
Regina
had heard talking to her father in his study. She and Jesse rode away with the sheriff to the
Winthrop
spread to try to do so, but all involved assumed the man had long ago ridden off, probably never to be found.

As they sat in the sheriff’s office, preparing to go home, Jake’s arm still securely around Melinda, he said to the deputy, “Can we have just a minute here?”

The deputy nodded. “’Bout time for my dinner anyway. I’ll head over to the hotel. You take care, Jake. Ma’am.” And with that, they were alone.

Jake rested his head on hers. “Melinda, I can’t say how sorry I am for all of this.”

Melinda pulled back to look into his tired eyes. “None of this was your fault, Jake. You have nothing to feel sorry for.”

“It was. I was spouting off to
Winthrop
when we were in town how I might marry you. I did it just to get him off my back. I had no idea he’d—”

She held a finger up to his lips. “Shhh. Don’t be silly. This isn’t your fault.”

He kissed her fingertips but then pulled them away. “Let me finish. I was spouting off about marrying you, not believing for a minute that I meant it, but
Winthrop
was right. I did mean it. I was just so much a God-awful fool I didn’t know it. When I thought I lost you today… Melinda, I love you. I do. Will you marry me?”

It wasn’t exactly the typical scene for a marriage proposal, her shaking in her dirty, tattered nightgown, both of them dazed and exhausted from the events of the day. But it was about the sweetest thing she’d ever heard.

What she had to say in response was just about the saddest, to her anyway. “I love you, too, Jake. I have from the first. That’s why I made love to you, because I couldn’t face living without having just, just
been
with you. And I don’t regret a second of it.” He leaned down, a smile on his face to kiss her, and she let him. But when it ended, she said. “I can’t marry you, Jake.”

It hurt her to say it, and it looked like it stunned him to hear it. Part of her smiled at his arrogance even while she was crushed she would have to disappoint him. “I would give anything to marry you, Jake. I would. I’m more honored than I can say that you would ask me. But I have to say no.”

“Why?”

She hesitated, but she knew she was going to have to explain, going to have to tell this man she loved the secret that she wanted no one else, especially not him, to ever know. It just wasn’t fair otherwise. She owed him an explanation.

“I suspect I know why,” a familiar voice at the door said. They both turned in surprise.

“Lil.” Jake stood up and went to the doorway, kissing the withered, paper-thin cheek of the tiny woman who had entered, a young man holding a suitcase behind her. “Jesus, what are you doing here? Could this day get any more bizarre?”

“I expect not,” she said sternly, “from what I’ve been hearing around town and what the deputy just told me. You alright?”

“I’m fine, Lil.”

“Good. And you?” She turned her bright blue gaze on Melinda, who rose and went to take her hands. “You look a little worse for wear, but you’re a hardy young thing. I told my boy here that, and I can see it’s proven true.”

“She’s amazing,” Jake said, a little muted.

“But she says she won’t marry you, eh, Jake? Not something you thought you’d ever hear, you conceited young rascal, is it?”

Jake smiled. “Not something I wanted to hear from Melinda at any rate. And I’m still waiting to hear why, when she says she loves me.”

“Jake, can we just go somewhere for a minute? I need to tell you something.”

“Oh, hogwash. I know what you think you need to tell him, my dear. That your mother went insane, that she was insane even before she delivered you, and that’s it’s hereditary, so you’re any moment likely to go stark raving mad. That’s it, right?”

Melinda blanched. To hear it said out loud, for the first time since she had heard it herself those many months ago, shocked her.

“Lil,” Jake said, putting a protective arm around Melinda. “Just wait a minute here.”

“No, I’m an old woman, and I can’t wait even a minute. Once I heard that tomfoolery—”

“Hogwash,” the young man with her interrupted mildly, drawing their attention for a minute. Now who was he?

“Hogwash, tomfoolery, whatever you want to call it. Once I heard it, I had to come out here right away. And I brought this young fellow with me, a fine young doctor I’m pleased to say who was good enough to fill in for us at the orphanage for a while, but who had a hankering to go west. Jake and Melinda, I want you to meet Dr. Scott here.”

Doctor? He looked too young to be a doctor, certainly in comparison to the old doctor at St. Michael’s, the lecherous old sod. Dr. Rathbone. Even the name was distasteful to Melinda.

Melinda and Jake looked at Dr. Scott, speechless. They turned back to Lil, who continued.

“Melinda, I know what that ass who called himself a doctor told you back in
Boston
, but he was lying. Dr. Rathbone told you that your mother was institutionalized after she had you and died shortly thereafter in an insane asylum. That the neighbors who brought you to the orphanage gave him your mother’s files and he confirmed she had a type of hereditary insanity that you would surely inherit any time now. That you could never risk having children or marrying, that’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yes, he said I should stay there where he could keep an eye on me.”

“His hands on you more likely. Melinda, he used this ruse more than once with one of our unsuspecting girls. It was only when one of them, after years, came forward and told me that I realized what was going on under our very noses. He was preying on girls, only a few, only the ones he wanted, and filling them with this horrible dread so that they would become dependent on him and, well, I’m sure you can guess the rest.”

She remembered his leers and clammy hands on her shoulders, and she didn’t doubt that was what he meant to do to her. But thanks to Lil, she unwittingly escaped him.

“Is…was, any of it true? What he said about my mother?”

Dr. Scott came forward, digging a file out of the side pocket of the suitcase he carried. He handed it to her. “Your mother died in childbirth, Miss O’Chauncey. Unfortunately a common occurrence, especially when a woman has a doctor as incompetent as the one who attended your mother. Dr. Rathbone, as I’m sure you guessed. A pathetic doctor, but rather a good record keeper, unfortunately for him. It’s all here. Your mother was Brigid O’Chauncey, and she wasn’t sixteen as he had told you. She was twenty-two, and she was married.”

“I have a father?”

“Sadly, no, she was widowed during the pregnancy, which likely increased her stress and made her more vulnerable to Dr. Rathbone’s crackpot medical malfeasance. There were no neighbors. She was all alone having come with her husband from
Ireland
, and Rathbone merely took the child, you, to the orphanage and concocted the rest for you years later.”

Melinda felt strangely detached, having this weight lifted off her shoulders. She turned to Jake and said matter-of-factly, “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I love you. Yes, I’ll marry you. Yes, I’ll try to be the best wife to you and mother to Ginny and any other children we have that I can be. Yes. Yes.
Yes
.”

Jake gathered her up in a whoop and spun her around before settling into a long, thorough kiss.

Lil watched with a smile. That had worked rather nicely, if she did say so herself. Now, was there a preacher in this backwater town?

Epilogue

“So this is what Sally’s looks like upstairs. I’ve always wondered.” Melinda giggled as she caught sight over Jake’s shoulder of the frolicking cupids painted on the ceiling. She lay back on the red satin sheets of the four poster bed, her arms wrapped around Jake’s neck as he leaned over her, their legs intertwined under the covers. It felt so wonderful to be naked with him again, skin to skin. The last time they had been in bed together seemed like a century ago, although in fact it had only been this morning.

“All of Sally’s doesn’t look like this, my sweet wife. We have the very best accommodations for our wedding night.”

“Oh, is this the bridal suite?”

Jake laughed. “On the contrary, we’ll probably be the first and only couple ever to make love in this establishment who are actually married to each other.”