Tarnished Angel (56 page)

    Her unexpected refusal left Charles momentarily unable to speak. He raised his hand to her cheek to stroke back an errant    curl as Camille raised herself on tiptoe and pressed her lips against his for a brief, lingering kiss.

    "And so
c'est
fini
, Charles."

    With a tight lump in his throat, Charles nodded. "Yes, it's finished, Camille."

    Her bright eyes lingering only a moment longer on his, Camille turned away. Her step was rapid as she continued up Fourth Street, and Charles watched her swaying form until she disappeared from sight. He turned away, his eyes touching on the entrance to the Can-Can. He remembered the breakfast waiting for him, but his appetite had left him.

    Hatred laced with contempt reverberated through Harvey Dale as he saw Charles Carter disappear into the Can-Can Restaurant. He glanced up Fourth Street in the direction Camille
DuPree
had walked only minutes before, a vague satisfaction touching his mind. The petition he had initiated had been effective, and the red-haired French whore would soon be returning to France. If he was to judge from the look on the doctor's face, Carter was not taking the loss of the woman lightly.

    Harvey resumed his rapid step. He could not afford to waste any more time thinking of Carter and his whore. He had received a summons from China Mary, instructing him to come to her quarters immediately. He cared little that the summons was more a command than a request. He had already surrendered his pride by appealing for help to that sly Chinese hag, and he knew he would do whatever else he had to do to get Devina back.

    Harvey shuddered. A vision hovered in the back of his mind, driving him, giving him little peace. He had dismissed Morrison's hatred from his mind, the promise of revenge he had seen in Morrison's eyes when the sheriff had dragged him off to Yuma Prison three years before. But the memory had returned to torment him since Morrison had kidnapped Devina.

    Harvey's heart jumped to a ragged beat. Even now Morrison could be taking that hatred out on Devina. Even now he could be hurting her, terrorizing her. Even now he could be touching her, forcing her to…

    A sudden, uncontrollable spasm shook Harvey, and he missed his step. Managing to right himself before he stumbled, Harvey took a moment to regain his composure. The vision persisted, and Harvey started to shake. He had to find Devina.

      Starting forward once more, Harvey increased his uneven step almost to a run.

    As Harvey Dale crossed the intersection of Fourth and Allen, Jake cautiously stepped out of the entrance of the Occidental Hotel. He had had a close call a few minutes earlier. First he had almost come face to face with Charles Carter, and then he had almost run smack into Harvey Dale.

    Jake pulled his hat lower on his brow and began to follow at a safe distance behind Dale, as he had for the better part of the week. Dale looked even worse than he had the day before. He looked seedy, exhausted, almost frantic.

    Jake didn't like the way things were going. Dale was stalling, and Ross was probably madder than a hornet, waiting at the cabin with no news of how things were going. Jake would have to ride back to the cabin tomorrow to tell him something or there would be hell to pay.

    Jake suddenly realized Harvey Dale was almost running down Third Street, and Jake rounded the corner just in time to see him step into China Mary's establishment. Jake slowed his step, abruptly filled with contempt for the hypocrisy of Dale's pretended concern for his daughter. Harvey Dale's Chinese mistress was a poorly kept secret, and it seemed the threat on his daughter's life had not lessened Dale's desire for her.

    Disgusted, Jake turned back toward Allen Street. He'd give Dale one more day.

    Ross lowered his head to trail his mouth over the graceful column of Devina's throat as she lay sleeping in his arms. He separated his lips against her delicate skin, tasting it, gently drawing it into his mouth. He had been aware that the emotions raging between Devina and him had altered drastically, but it was with particular difficulty that he had finally admitted to himself that he loved this beautiful woman as intensely as he had once thought he despised her.

    Ross glanced at the morning sunlight slanting under the cabin door. A new day, and he knew he would not be able to avoid Devina's questions much longer. But they were questions for which he had no satisfactory answers. How could he tell the woman he held in his arms, the woman he had thoroughly loved, that his craving for vengeance against her father had not diminished? How could he tell her that when her father met the terms of ransom he had no intention of letting her go?

    A flicker of movement crossed Devina's perfect features. Her delicate lids were fluttering, slowly rising, and Ross gave himself up to the tenderness that soared anew inside him. He had not thought himself capable of this depth of emotion. The strength of his love for Devina and the power it wielded intimidated him. In holding her in his arms, in loving her, he had discovered a new facet of passion, an incredible joy, a well of tenderness and caring within him of which he had been unaware. He realized for the first time that his bitterness and demanding need for revenge had made him less than the man he once was. He also knew that Devina could help make him whole once more. With these realizations came a driving certainty that without her he would never be whole again.

    The glorious blue of Devina's eyes touched his face as she raised her hand to his cheek. He touched his lips to her fingertips, knowing that although the words had risen to his lips countless times in the past few days, he could not tell her he loved her. That would put her in a position of strength against him that he could not yet afford.

    Devina's eyes drifted to the cabin door, and a pensive frown creased her brow. Ross felt the change her thoughts had wrought within her the moment before she turned back to him with a soft question.

    "When are you going to take me back to Tombstone, Ross?"

    The warmth within Ross turned cold. "Are you anxious to get away from me, Devina?"

    "No… yes…" Devina shook her head and he could feel her heart begin to pound against his chest. Her confusion touched deeply protective instincts inside him, and he fought their debilitating effect.

    Devina swallowed with difficulty, and Ross was aware of the effort she made at control. She gave a short shrug. "It's just that I don't know what to think. I can't believe my father is a villain."

    "You mean you don't want to believe it."

    "Ross, please." Devina took a deep breath. "I don't really understand any of this."

    "How could you understand?" A familiar harshness touched Ross's heart. "You were brought up in luxury. You never had to work a day in your life… you and my brother, Charles."

    The acknowledgment of Charles's and Devina's common bond stirred an aching jealousy in Ross, but he attempted to dismiss it with a short shrug.

    "Your first memory isn't one of scratching in the desert sand at your father's side while he worked in the hot sun with a pick and shovel. You didn't grow up knowing your mother had left your father for another man without a backward look, a rich man who could give her more of the things she wanted in life. You weren't faced with the realization that she coldly left you behind as if you were so much excess baggage, but that she took her other son with
herthe
son the rich man wanted to raise. You didn't share your father's dream of finding the strike that would prove to her, the only woman your father ever loved, that he wasn't just a dreamer after all, that you and your father were both worth more than she had thought."

    Ross paused, drawing his agitation under rein as he perused Devina's intense expression. "You didn't experience all of those things, Devina, so you couldn't appreciate what I felt when my father's letter reached me in San Francisco saying he had finally struck it rich. I had been on my own for a while; but it was as if I hadn't been gone a day. I took the first stage to Tombstone, and my father and I celebrated the strike."

    Ross paused again. "Your father cheated that claim away from him, Devina." Devina's expression was suddenly stricken, and just as suddenly he realized that she believed him. Intensely grateful for that belief, he regretted the pain in her eyes, even as he recognized his need to continue.

    "Pa and I tried every legal means we knew, but it was useless, Devina. I don't have to tell you what the realization that he had been cheated out of his life's work did to Pa. He hadn't told me how sick he had been, that he had been seeing that quack, Dr. Harlow, about his heart. The first I found out about it was when I came back to the shack Pa was living in and found him collapsed on the floor. There wasn't much anybody could do for him, considering his state of mind. I knew the only way to help him was to convince Harvey Dale, somehow, that he had to make things right."

    Ross gave a short, bitter laugh. "I don't have to tell you how successful I was. Your father was very blunt about the whole thing. He said if my father was too much of a fool to protect his interests, then he deserved what he had gotten. I went kind of crazy when he said that. I warned him, made all kinds of threats. I told him he wouldn't get away with cheating my father, that I'd see he paid for what he had done, one way or another." Ross laughed again. "As it turned out, I played into your father's hands by making those threats in front of witnesses. Your father capitalized on those threats when there was an accident in one of his mines in which six men were killed. He took the opportunity to get rid of me by laying the blame for that accident on me. By this time I had managed to establish a reputation for myself as a troublemaker and when Sam Sharpe, Wally Smith, and your father were done, the town was ready to lynch me."

    Devina's face was pale, and she attempted to speak, but Ross halted her words with a shake of his head.

    "No, Devina, let me finish. I want you to know everything so you can understand." Ross stopped himself. It wasn't yet time for him to tell Devina he wanted her to understand so that she could trust him enough to love him as much as he loved her.

    "That's when my brother, Charles Carter, first walked into the picture, after having ignored my father's letters and attempts to contact him for twenty-six years." The renewed interest in Devina's eyes caused jealousy to burn anew inside him. He could not restrain the acid tone of his remarks.

    "No, Carter didn't come in and rescue my father and me from our stupidity, although I think he could have if he had wanted to. To tell you the truth, I don't really know how Carter happened to show up when he did. I can only think that word of Pa's strike got back to him and he wanted his share. If that's so, he must've had a big disappointment when he arrived in Tombstone. At that point, Pa was a poor, broken, sick old man, and I was hiding out, a fugitive with the whole town after my neck. Carter went to see Pa and then managed to contact and meet me. I found out later he went to see your father, too. And when all was said and done, he made his choice. He chose to believe your father. He asked me to meet him again, but the second time he brought the sheriff with him."

    "No! That can't be!" Speaking for the first time, Devina shook her head in vehement denial. Her fair skin flushed as she continued emphatically, "Charles couldn't do that! I know him. He couldn't do that even if he believed you were guilty."

    Jealousy framed into pain at Devina's instinctive defense of Carter, and he refused to listen to the remainder of her protest.

    "Don't tell me what my brother would or wouldn't do! You weren't there when the sheriff showed up at the door behind Carter, when the posse dragged me back to Tombstone and threw me in jail. You weren't there when my loving brother faced me through the bars and very calmly told me it was better that way."

    When Devina made no further attempt to interrupt, Ross made an effort to draw his racing emotions under control. His smile was bitter.

    Ross hesitated. "As for Carter, I still can't figure out why he decided to stay in Tombstone. I suppose the one thing I can thank him for was giving Pa a decent burial, or right now
Pa'd
be lying in a pauper's grave on Boot Hill."

    Ross paused for a long moment. "But, as it turned out, Carter did me a real favor. If it wasn't for him, I never could have walked into your house the night of the party and taken you off to the garden. And you wouldn't be here with me right now."

    Devina was momentarily silent while myriad thoughts moved across her pensive expression. Then she said softly, "I'm glad Charles didn't have any part in the plan to kidnap me. I knew he couldn't have from the first. Not Charles. He isn't that kind of man."

    Devina's response pushed all thought from Ross's mind but the jealousy that consumed him. Gripping her chin roughly, he forced her to meet eyes hot with menace as he held her startled gaze with his own. "You believe everything I've told you about your own father, but you don't believe a word I've said about Carter. Why,
dammit
? Answer me!"

    Devina shook her head, bewildered. "Ross, please, I"

    Trembling with rage, Ross gave her chin a hard shake. "Who do you really see when you look at me, Devina? Do you see me, or do you see Charles Carter?"

    "Ross, you don't understand."

    "Don't I?" He propped himself up on his elbow to glare threateningly down into her face. "I was just wasting my time, wasn't I, thinking I could explain, make you see? It's funny how a man sees only what he wants to see, until the truth is thrown in his face and he can't deny it any longer." Ross took a hard breath. ''Charles is the man you want, the man you've always wanted, isn't he, Devina? He's the man you see when I hold you in my arms."