Sweet Boundless (32 page)

Mae glanced her way. “What’s flustering you?”

“Am I trouble, Mae? Do I . . . do I give people trouble?” Even as she said it, she recalled the bullets thumping into Mae’s body, bullets meant for Carina Maria DiGratia. “Oh!” She threw up her hands and stalked across the kitchen and back. “I don’t mean to cause trouble. But somehow I end up in it.”

“What trouble are you in now?”

“What trouble? My husband won’t stay home. You think I’ve taken up with another man, and he—” Carina gripped her hands together and faltered under Mae’s gaze. “He looks like the devil walked over his grave.”

“I thought maybe you were coming around to that.”

Carina rushed to her, caught her hands together. “So you saw it, too? Do you know what it is? Why is he so angry? So miserable?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“But you guess.”

“Whatever I guess I keep to myself.”

“Mae!” Carina gave Mae’s hands a shake. “Now is not the time to mind your business. Tell me!”

“You’ve stirred the kettle.” Mae sighed. “I know you meant well. But you don’t understand how things work in a mining community. You’ve put Mr. Makepeace between a hammer and an anvil.”

“How?”

“Setting precedent with those miners’ families.”

Carina stared a moment. “Thirteen men were killed. In my husband’s mine.”

“It’s not his mine. And even if it were free and clear his alone, it would still be a dangerous precedent. You can’t go taking responsibility for accidents that no one else can or will pay for. The other mine operators are up in arms, and Mr. Makepeace is their target. That’s all.”

“Well, he can tell them it was my doing.”

Mae snorted. “That’ll go a long way in saving him face.”

Carina threw up her hands. “Has the world gone mad? Is everyone pazzo? What are the women and children to do if their men are dead?”

Mae was silent.

“What!” Carina demanded.

“It wasn’t your place, Carina. Not as your husband’s spokesman or in any capacity in the mine. Especially not through Alex Makepeace. Now he’s as culpable as you.”

Carina swallowed her indignation. So that was it. Her innocence had once again caused trouble. But why was it so wrong to help people in need? Quillan would have done the same. But he would have done it quietly. Not as an ultimatum to Alex Makepeace that set a precedent to the other mine owners.

She sank to the chair. “Will I ever get it right?”

“I don’t know about that.” Mae smiled. “You act with your heart, Carina. Maybe that’s how it should be.”

Carina forked her fingers into her hair. “If Quillan were here, he would have handled it better.”

“But he’s not.”

Carina met Mae’s eyes. That was the first time Mae hadn’t defended Quillan outright or excused his absence as a matter of course. It was almost a criticism, and it so took her by surprise Carina couldn’t answer. No, he was not there, and she had acted as she thought best. What more could she do?

Carina stood and checked the stewing hares in the oven. If she had put Alex in a bad place, the best thing now would be to let him handle it. If it strained their relationship, well, that too should rest awhile. Grabbing a pair of hot pads, she pulled the pan of stewed hare from the oven.

Celia came in with a tray and Carina loaded it with steaming plates, then did the same with Elizabeth’s tray. Carina would stay in the kitchen until Alex had gone home. No sense making him more miserable with her presence. She fought a deep loneliness that was becoming chronic. Resting a hand on her abdomen, she wondered why thoughts of the child inside didn’t comfort her now.

Quillan watched Leona Shepard stare out the window as though something vitally important might appear at any moment. The startled intensity of her gaze had twice made him look to see if something truly had frightened her, but there had been nothing but the neighboring houses and perhaps a passing carriage.

The white cords of her hair were fuzzy with inattention, and her skin was like softly veined wild rose petals. Maybe she’d been lovely once. She could have been now, but for the distorting of the features, the sagging mouth, the bloodshot, terrified eyes. And her lack of flesh that lent the overall skeletal appearance.

He felt uneasy scrutinizing her so, but he had to reconcile this creature once and for all with the image he carried of her in his mind. He wanted that much at least to come from this time. He’d intended to leave after the service Sunday morning, but snow had kept him from starting out. Even if he could have traveled, it wasn’t fair to Jock and Jack and Sam. Now it was Tuesday, and the reverend was out and about his charitable duties.

Once again Quillan waited in the room of the woman who had made his youth a torment. Understanding her illness had removed some of the sting, but he was uncertain what more was left to do. If the weather cleared today, he would go. Or tomorrow or the next day. He had already determined it was time.

The reason he had come no longer existed. He couldn’t confront her with his mother’s journal and demand an accounting of the lies Mrs. Shepard had told. He couldn’t even lay the blame to her account. All he could do was put it behind him. He knew the truth now.

His mother had loved him. Enough to put him into hands she thought would be safer, stronger than her own. Safe from Wolf and their entangled pain. He no longer saw Wolf as a monster. Knowing, as Rose hadn’t, that Henri Charboneau had been the killer, even that taint was removed from his parentage. Yet what did it change?

Mrs. Shepard gripped the shawl around her shoulders and made a pitiful mewling.

Quillan leaned forward and held her shoulder. “It’s all right.” But it wasn’t right. Nothing was right, not for Leona Shepard, not for the reverend, not for Quillan. And, he thought, certainly not for Carina. Why had he embroiled her in his life?

Because he loved her. He didn’t know how to show it, but her incessant presence in his thoughts confirmed it. From the time he dumped her wagon and she’d waved her hand furiously in his face, spitting fire, she’d captured more of his thoughts than anyone before.

Every time he’d passed her in the street, when he had looked at her with smug, taunting indifference, she’d made a new impression on his mind, the sunlight shimmering in her hair as on a crow’s wing, her willowy waist, her hands so expressive. When he’d seen her broken and in pain and drawn her up from the mine shaft of the Rose Legacy, feelings had stirred in him too powerful to address.

When he’d told her he’d marry her to keep Berkley Beck from the privilege and first entertained the idea of taking her into his arms as his wife, those feelings had proved as potent as he feared. When he’d seen her on her knees and spoken cruel words to break the terrifying closeness they’d shared, he’d known the feelings could destroy the defenses he’d built over years of rejection. When she’d stood teary eyed after Cain’s death and promised to wait for him, he’d almost given in.

What if he had? Would they be snuggled up warmly in that little house of hers, sharing a meal of some fantastic creation that only her hands could prepare? There would be no hallway to Mae’s. No hordes of men seated at tables enjoying her rich and savory fare.

He dropped his face in regret. Mrs. Shepard looked away from the window. One clawed hand gripped his, and her mouth worked, the tendons straining in her throat.

He must have startled her, disturbed her with his own regret. “It’s all right,” he said again, voicing the lie.

She looked at him. “Quil-lan.” This time it was unmistakable.

He leaned forward, searching her face. What was she saying? What did she want from him? “Yes. Yes, it’s Quillan.”

“Quillan.” Tears started and streamed from her eyes.

His hand shook as he held her shoulder, searching himself for some response. What did he feel? Did he care that she knew him, that the knowing brought her pain? Slowly, hating himself for weakness, he folded her into his arms. Her fingers dug into the tendons across his shoulders as she sobbed.

“It’s all right.” And now he meant it.

She softened in his arms like a bird growing limp. Babbling, she petted his arm, playing with his name. “Quil-lan, Quillan, Quillan.”

He said nothing, only let her stroke him until she pushed back, catching his face between her palms. Her mouth hanging, she studied him, her eyes almost cognizant. Then, as though a shutter closed, she looked away to the window and grew rigid, picking at the shawl.

Quillan let go of her and stood. Whatever had passed between them, it was over. He left her staring and wandered out into the front room of the house. Should he tell the reverend what had transpired, that she’d recognized him and spoken his name? Did she have lucid moments with her husband? Would he regret that he had missed it?

Quillan sighed. He’d done all he could there, made whatever peace he could with his past. Now it was time to consider his future. He looked out at the sky breaking up into ragged strips of cloud. He could leave today. He went into the room he’d slept in these last days and gathered his things.

Carefully, he lifted his mother’s journal. DeMornay. Where were her people? His family? Denver? Should he try? He swallowed the swelling in his throat. Maybe someday. Now he would go to Crystal. If Carina was still there . . . His stomach clutched. He felt an urgency for her. Something was changed, as though a vacuum inside had opened up and only Carina could fill it.
Let her be there!

He heard the door before he’d finished tying his pack around his meager belongings. The reverend was home, and they could say their good-byes. Quillan shouldered the pack and went out to take leave of his foster father.

The reverend seemed to know what Quillan meant to say. Maybe the pack on his shoulder, maybe the look in his eyes. Reverend Shepard shrugged out of his coat and hung it on his hook, then turned with a sigh. “You’re going, then?”

Quillan nodded.

“And did you find what you were seeking?”

“Not what I came for.” Quillan glanced toward the bedroom where Mrs. Shepard sat picking her shawl and jumping at shadows. Not the satisfaction of confronting and attacking. “But maybe what I needed.”

The reverend nodded, raised a hand to Quillan’s shoulder. “God bless you, son.”

Quillan looked into the gray-brown glassy eyes. He could tell the reverend he wasn’t his son. They’d never seen fit to make him so. But in a sense he was. He carried inside him the lessons the reverend had impressed upon him over years of tutelage, and they hadn’t all been learned at the end of a rod.

Quillan pressed the old man’s hand. He glanced again at the room where Mrs. Shepard sat. “She knew me. She spoke my name.”

Slowly the reverend smiled, just a faint crinkling of the eyes, a slight upturn to the mouth. He nodded, and Quillan saw the reverend’s eyes grow bright with tears. He pressed the old man’s hand again and turned away. Shouldering the pack, he opened the door. “Good-bye, Reverend.”

His foster father raised a quivering hand in farewell.

EIGHTEEN

For my impulsive nature I make no excuse. God did not create us all tortoises to contemplate each step. Yet if I have acted wrongly, I pray the Lord will forgive. It was my heart which dictated the deed.

—Carina

CARINA KNEW THE MEN were trouble when Èmie first showed them to a table. They could only have gotten their names on the list since the trouble with the mines had alienated some of her former customers these last two weeks. There had been no lack of others to take their places, but these four had the look of the roughs who had previously terrorized the town. She knew. She’d seen enough of the roughs in her dealings with Berkley Beck.

Though washed and dressed appropriately, they were unmistakably different from her usual clientele. Did everyone else notice? She could be mistaken, but Alex Makepeace seemed to have been disturbed by their appearance. Did he know them or guess something of their manner? Had he tried to catch her eye?

They had hardly spoken since she’d demanded he follow her orders. She knew things had grown difficult for him. The relations between his operation and others were strained. Even Joe Turner. And all because of her impulsive act. She sighed. It was better to let things settle on their own, but she missed their chats. She missed his smile. It was not so easy these days, nor so genuine.

Carina passed Èmie in the hall. It was Èmie’s first night back to work since her wedding, and they’d hardly had a moment to talk. She was aching to share in Èmie’s happiness, just to hear her talk of her husband and the expansion of their cabin and the plank floors he was putting down. But she was busy, so busy. She should be thankful. Such success! Yet the uneasy feeling wouldn’t leave her.
What is
it, Signore?

She had little time to ponder it, though, between carrying trays and serving up plates. Celia was up to her elbows in dish suds, and Elizabeth looked like a rabbit hopping back and forth between tables and kitchen with the used dishes. Lucia carried pots of coffee and bowls of sugar. There was no cream.

Carina carried four bowls of steaming minestrone for the men who had concerned her and were now seated in the center of the room. They eyed her darkly as she approached, and again her senses sharpened. Where was the courtesy to which she was accustomed? Did they mean to provoke her?