McCrory's Lady (49 page)

My dearest Colin,

      
I found the note Win Barker sent blackmailing you with my scandalous past. At first I worked up my courage to face you and speak my piece, but when you did not return to our suite last night, I knew I had only been deceiving myself Your staying away gave me the reprieve I needed to think things through. I have made the only decision possible. I am leaving with Bart Fletcher.

      
When you petition for divorce, that alone should provide ample evidence to win you public sympathy. Barker will not be able to besmirch the McCrory name if you are free of me. You can denounce my perfidy and everyone will be won to your cause. Only be careful in confronting Barker and his friends. We both know how dangerous they are.

      
I deeply regret the pain my leaving will cost Eden, but feel secure in knowing that she will find happiness with Wolf. Please give them your blessings. And, if you can, forgive me, Colin.

Maggie

      
He opened his hand and stared down at the wedding band, the old Scottish antique he had been so loath to give her. Gleaming dully in the soft light, it accused him, burning his palm. He clenched his fist around it, as if he could bring her back by holding tight to the symbol.

      
Colin laid his head down and cradled it on his arms as pain squeezed the breath from him. Pain and guilt.
Admit it, you fool. You actually thought Maggie could have been working for Barker. Maggie, who loves you so much she's gone into exile in the mistaken belief that she could spare you Barker’s blackmail.

      
He was the one who was guilty, not his wife. His black sins, so carefully and hypocritically hidden, had now returned to pay him back in full measure. He had lost the most precious thing in his life. The woman he loved more than he had ever imagined possible.

      
“Oh, Maggie, what have I done?” he whispered raggedly.

      
Eden stood in the doorway, aching for her father, wanting desperately to comfort him yet afraid to intrude on his anguish. “It isn't too late,” she finally said softly. He raised his head but did not reply, just stared at the letter. She walked across the parlor and put her arm around his shoulders. “Maggie left on the stage for Yuma. You could catch it before it's much past the first relay station. Go after her. She loves you as much as you love her.”

      
Colin finally looked up into Eden's earnestly entreating face. “There are things you don't know... Things that happened long ago...”

      
The agony in his eyes broke her heart. “I don't need to know, Father. Maggie does. What are you waiting for?”

      
“How did you get so grown-up and sensible and I became such an old fool, Babygirl?” he asked with a bittersweet smile. He stood up and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

      
“You are not old—”

      
“Just a fool,” he said abruptly, praying that her instincts about Maggie were right. “But maybe she'll forgive me for it. I pray she can.”

* * * *

      
The chase after the Yuma stage was grueling. Sand, having been stabled for several days, was fresh and eager for the hard gallop, but Colin was not. He did not dwell on his throbbing head, smoke-seared lungs or aching, sleep-deprived body, but rather on what he was going to say to Maggie when he caught up with the stage.

      
Bart Fletcher, the oily manipulator, was with her, acting the noble protector. Her friend and “mentor.” He laughed jealously at that irony; but then was forced to consider that when his wife felt so utterly alone, making her sacrifice for him, she had Fletcher to turn to. After Colin had thrown her past in her face so often, and then the way he had used her the last time they were together, it was scarcely surprising that she would seek out Fletcher.
And the bastard was there, waiting with open arms, I just bet!

      
The stage had just pulled away from the relay station at Picacho Pass. The other passengers quickly dropped off to sleep. Mrs. Yeaton's little grandson had slept through the brief rest stop while the horses were changed. Maggie looked at his fair tousled head, so innocent and sweet; but what she saw was a dark-haired child with whiskey gold eyes.

      
Would she give Colin the son Elizabeth had been unable to? And if so, did she have the right to withhold the knowledge of his existence from his father?

      
She stared out at the silvery landscape rolling by. Steep hills surrounded the road, overgrown with greasewood and catclaw. The tang of pine nuts hung on the chill night air. They would travel straight through to Gila Bend before stopping. By then, surely, she would be exhausted enough to drop off without fear of dreams.

      
Impossible dreams.

      
Bart studied her face, its sorrow softened by the moonlight. He vowed for the hundredth time to make her happy. Having failed to do so in Mexico did not count, he assured himself. After all, that rough, ugly existence was the very thing she had tried all her life to escape. They had the means to do it now. For himself, living respectably had come to mean nothing, but for Maggie it had meant a great deal more than he had ever imagined.

      
No, that was not strictly speaking true, he admitted. He could have imagined it—if he had not been so selfishly mired in his own comfortable vices. Not until she was gone had he realized how much her presence had meant. He would make everything up to her in San Francisco. He would—

      
The sound of a lone rider approaching at a gallop interrupted the even rhythm of the coach. Someone was yelling, but the hoarse cry did not sound like any command a stage robber might give. Taking no chances, Fletcher pulled his Webley Bulldog from the inside pocket of his jacket.

      
“Get down, Megs, until we see what this means,” he whispered, shoving her to the floor behind him and motioning for old Mrs. Yeaton with her boy to do likewise. The young drummer rubbed sleep from his eyes, then paled as he realized what was going on.

      
“Are we being robbed?” He gulped, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing like a cork in the current.

      
“I don't know, old chap,” Bart replied as the driver tugged on the reins, and the coach rolled to a halt. The drummer would definitely be useless in a fight. Bart shoved him down, too. “No shots fired. Bloody strange,” he muttered to himself as the rider pulled alongside the door. Then, he heard McCrory's voice.

      
“My wife's inside and I mean to talk with her.”

      
Maggie exchanged a searching look with Bart, filled with bittersweet hope, but also the certain knowledge that this confrontation must end with someone grievously hurt.

      
“Talk to him, Megs. I'll be right beside you...if you need me.” He opened the door and stepped down, then assisted Maggie from the coach.

      
Her dark rust traveling suit was rumpled and her hair windblown. She felt dusty and disheveled as she smoothed her skirts, delaying the moment she had to meet her husband's eyes. When she raised her head and looked at him, Maggie gasped, fighting the urge to run into his arms and demand to know what had happened to him. He was red-eyed and soot-covered, his clothes ripped and singed. But his face—God above—he was in anguish—or he was angry. With the moon at his back, she could not be certain.

      
“I have some things to say to my wife, Fletcher. In private.” Colin looked at the Englishman, his face shuttered. His frayed nerves made him teeter on the brink of wanting to throttle the elegant dandy.

      
Bart looked at Maggie. “It's up to you, Megs.”

      
“I'll be all right, Bart. Wait here, please.” She took her gloved hand from his arm and approached Colin on trembling legs.

      
He turned and stalked off the rutted road, waiting for her to follow, afraid she would not. He held his breath. When she did follow, he was even more afraid.

Chapter Twenty-Two

      
They walked a dozen yards, behind the shelter of a copse of honey mesquite. Maggie stopped when he did, but he did not turn to face her. She stared at his broad back, aching to touch him. Instead, she schooled her voice to sound calm. “What do you want, Colin?”

      
He turned, cat-quick and edgy. “Isn't that obvious? I want my wife back.”

      
“I'll only hurt you, Colin. I have already.” Tears of denial were gathering in her eyes, threatening to overflow.

      
“No. I'm the one who's hurt you—thrown your past in your face, tried to make you feel guilty for sins long buried. You're not a whore, Maggie, any more than Eden is. I had no right—I above all men—had no right to accuse you. Your noble sacrifice was in vain, don't you see? Win Barker wasn't blackmailing me with your past. He was threatening me with my own.”

      
“I—I don't understand.”

      
He pulled off his hat and tossed it on a rock, then paced, combing his fingers through his soot-streaked hair. “When I first came to this country I was penniless and alone, seventeen.” He looked up with an ironic expression. “An odd coincidence, isn't it? Eden was seventeen, too.”

      
“So was I, when I made my mistake,” she said softly. “A man much like Judd Lazlo courted me and convinced me to elope with him. Then, when I became pregnant and the money he'd stolen from my father ran out...well, he became abusive and I left him. I had to protect my child.”

      
A sledgehammer to his heart could not have hit him harder. He wanted to take her in his arms but did not dare...yet. “What happened to the child?”

      
“She died at birth.” She sighed raggedly. “I was ill and alone, a thousand miles from Boston. Not that my father would've been so forgiving as you were with Eden. Anyway, the woman who'd taken me in happened to run a bordello... When I recovered, my bookkeeping chores were expanded to include other duties.” She met his eyes, her chin upraised with as much pride as she could muster. “I got out as soon as I could.”

      
“And never let another man touch you...until me.” He smiled sadly. “I guess you never had much luck picking men. I was given the most precious treasure on earth and I threw it away with both hands. Maybe, it was my own hypocrisy, my own guilt that made me too proud to admit I love you.”

      
She stood transfixed.
He loves me
. It could not be. Could it? “Tell me about what happened to that seventeen-year-old boy, Colin.” She walked over to a large flat rock and took a seat, motioning for him to sit beside her.

      
Colin dropped onto the hard surface, unaware of the chill. His mind was back in the heat and stench of Sonora and Chihuahua, reliving the horror of all those butchered Apaches. “I joined up with a bunch of scalpers,” he began without preamble. “Their leader was a man named Jeremy Nash, but no one on the border called him anything but the Aussie.”

      
“You said something about an Aussie when you were feverish. I didn't know...”

      
He looked at her with stricken eyes. “I wasn't sure what you knew—what I'd said when I was raving. Then, when Win Barker blackmailed me...”

      
“You thought I was the one.” Her voice held a mixture of incredulity and pain.

      
“A part of me was afraid to believe in you. If you were innocent, I was still guilty. I'd never faced my own past. I should have known you could never have betrayed me. A part of me did know that, but I was too big a fool to pay attention.”

      
“But then who—”

      
“It was me, Megs.” Bart stepped from the other side of the mesquite and faced McCrory, who had risen menacingly. “I'm sorry for eavesdropping, but I had to be certain you wouldn't try to force her or hurt her.”

      
“But why? How?” Maggie's voice was bewildered.

      
Bart smiled sadly, then cocked his head at that familiar jaunty angle and replied, “The how is easy to answer. I recognized him as soon as I saw him in San Luís.” He turned to Colin. “You wouldn't have remembered me from those days. I was just a lowly clerk in the Sterling Mining Company's back office. I kept accounts on the bounties paid the Aussie and his men. I was a rather bookish sort compared to your exceedingly colorful band.”

      
His expression grew thoughtful as he looked down at Maggie's upturned face. She was confused but not condemning. “The why—there's the rub. I convinced myself I was being noble. You told me how afraid you were that Barker would succeed in having your husband killed. I knew you were in love with the bloody bastard, so—”

      
“You told Win Barker so he would blackmail Colin instead of killing him,” Maggie supplied with dawning recognition.

      
Fletcher's expression was wry now. “Don't ascribe any nobility to me, Megs. I don't deserve it. There was still a good chance a stubborn Scot like McCrory would refuse to give in to Barker. And then when the truth came out...well, better if you learned it from someone else besides me. But, as God is my witness, I didn't know that you thought Barker was using
you
in the blackmail, Megs—that you were leaving McCrory to save his reputation from being destroyed by your past. I would've told you the truth.” He paused and smiled at her wistfully. “At least, I think I would have.”