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As he came abreast of the girls, Katy glanced up at him with a hesitant smile. Annie, however, seemed to avoid his eyes. Donovan swiftly saw why. Against her coat, she clutched a ten-pound sack of flour. They had not bought candy at all.
“Please don’t be mad, Uncle Donovan,” Annie said in a firm little voice that echoed her mother’s. “We like candy. We like it a lot. But we need this flour. Ma’s bin is almost empty, and I have to make bread this afternoon.”
Donovan swallowed the sudden tightness in his throat. “That’s fine, Annie,” he said, feeling frustrated and foolish. “But you should have told me you needed flour. I’d have bought a big sack of it, and some candy, too.”
“Oh, no!” Annie protested. “You’re our guest! Ma said we weren’t to ask you for anything!”
“In that case, I need to have a talk with your mother.” Donovan cursed Varina’s pride. The idea that her family was on the brink of starvation, and the woman would not even ask her own brother for help-But anger wouldn’t accomplish anything, he reminded himself. He had to find some other way to aid Varina. Something she would not reject as charity.
There was the mine—she had offered him a partnership. But the thought of grubbing away his days on Charlie Sutton’s worthless diggings was enough to crush his soul.
There had to be another answer, another possibility, lurking just out of reach. Something in the land, perhaps, or even in himself. He would give the matter some serious consideration. In the next few days, when he wasn’t working on the cabin, he would investigate Varina’s mining claim and the terrain surrounding it. He would keep himself fully occupied, leaving no room in his thoughts for the likes of Sarah Parker Buckley.
But even as he made his plans, Sarah’s image burst into his mind. His face blazed, recalling the sting of her slap on his skin. His body quivered with the memory of last night-her body straining against him, the silken feel of her hair, tumbling over his hand. Something clenched inside him—a hunger so raw and fierce that it almost buckled his knees. He stumbled, damning his own weakness.
“Hurry, Uncle Donovan! We’re almost home!” Annie called, and Donovan suddenly realized that the girls had left him behind. He hurried to catch up, breathing hard to clear his mind. He was thirty-six years old, he reminded himself, old enough to know that the woman who called herself Sarah Parker was pure poison. She’d deceived trusting friends and neighbors in Richmond. She’d betrayed Virgil, who had loved her with all the passion of his youth. And for all her virtuous demeanor here in Miner’s Gulch, Donovan knew better than to believe she’d changed. Beneath Sarah’s prim facade, Lydia Taggart was alive and well. She was his enemy. He would see her vanquished once and for all.
The Crimson Belle Saloon had seen better days. Its porches sagged where the unseasoned lumber had warped. Its paint, once a brazen red, was weathered and peeling. The men who drifted in and out of the double doors tended to have a whipped look, as if any spirit they’d ever possessed had been beaten away by the hard years. Even the piano sounded tired.
Not that Sarah was listening. The piano’s tinny, thunking tone had filled her ears for so many seasons that she scarcely heard it anymore. Besides, this evening her mind was on other matters.
Lifting her skirts above the mud, she rounded the corner of the saloon and slipped through the shadows toward the back entrance. Her free hand clutched the canvas valise that served as her medical kit. Her spectacles were in place once more, perched firmly on her narrow nose.
The rear of the Crimson Belle was expressly designed for discreet comings and goings. A cluster of bushy blue spruce trees screened the entry, which opened into a dim hallway with a narrow, inside staircase leading to the second floor. The door at the top of the stairs was locked, but Sarah’s knock—three precise taps, a pause, then two moretouched off a scurry of footsteps on the other side. The bolt rattled and, seconds later, the door swung inward to reveal a frowsy blond woman in a faded mauve silk wrapper. Her husky shoulders sagged as Sarah stepped out of the shadows.
“Ach, thank goodness it is you!” She spoke in a rough cello voice, heavily accented with German. “Marie is worse—the coughing, the blood—”
“Take me to her, Greta.” Sarah clutched her valise and followed the woman down the carpeted hallway, her eyes avoiding the closed door that indicated one of the girls had a customer. She had long since lost count of her visits to these rooms above the saloon, but all the same, she never quite got used to things here. The lamps in the hallway cast a hellish glow through their rose glass chimneys. The air swam with incense, its sickly-sweet aroma mingling with tobacco smoke. From downstairs, the muffled tinkle of the piano did not quite drown out the lustful grunts and whimpers that emanated through the walls of the locked room.
“Here.” Greta opened the second-to-last door to reveal, in the dimly lit space, a thin, dark figure lying on a wide bed. Sarah walked slowly toward her, weighted by a sense of helplessness. She could deliver babies, apply poultices and administer concoctions of whiskey, quinine and camphor, but in this case, there was nothing she could do. Marie, tragically young and no longer pretty, was dying of consumption.
Marie’s weightless hand fluttered like a leaf on the stained brocade coverlet as Sarah approached. “Thank you for coming,” she whispered. “I wanted the chance to tell you before—” She broke off, overcome by a spasm of tearing coughs. The kerchief that Greta pressed to Marie’s mouth came away flecked with blood.
“Don’t try to talk,” Sarah murmured, her eyes welling with emotion. “Just rest. I brought more of that chamomile tea you like. The girls can brew it for you—” She fumbled in her valise for the packet, her vision blurred by tears. Marie belonged in a hospital, with real doctors and nurses, or in some warm, dry climate where her lungs could heal. Here, in this wretched place, there was no hope for her.
“She ain’t slept all day. Ain’t done nothin’ but cough, poor lamb.” Another woman, near forty, with gentle eyes and garishly dyed red hair, had stepped out of the shadows to take the chamomile. “I’ll start some water. Maybe this’ll soothe her some.”
“Thank you,” Sarah said softly. “You’ve been good to her, Faye.”
“We got to do for each other. Ain’t nobody else’ll do it for us—’ceptin’ you, o’ course, Miss Sarah. You been a real angel to us all.”
“Ach, ja,” Greta agreed. “But listen, we been fighting with that bastard Smitty again. He says that if Marie is too sick to work the customers, he can’t afford to give her room and board.”
“Not again!” Sarah sighed wearily, remembering the confrontations she’d had with the Crimson Belle’s miserly owner. Smitty treated his girls like livestock, with no regard for their welfare. They’d lived in the most abject dread of him until last year, when Sarah had stepped in. Conditions were somewhat better now, but the old man’s curmudgeonly heart was as hard as ever.
Sadly Sarah gazed down at Marie’s pale face. It was Marie, she recalled, who had triggered her first visit to these upstairs rooms. The poor girl had miscarried and was near death when a desperate Faye had come pounding on Sarah’s door in the middle of the night. Sarah had saved Marie’s life that time. But there was nothing she could do now. She had no skill, no potion, to turn back the ravages of consumption.
Marie’s skin was so transparent that the delicate blue tracery of her veins showed through at the temples. Her cheeks flamed like two garish red carnations against the white oval of her face. Her eyes had sunk into hollows. It wasn’t fair, Sarah reflected bitterly. Marie was sweet and kind and had never willed harm to anyone. She should have had a different life—a home, children, the love of a good man. Now, even the brief, sad life she’d had was nearly over.
“I could take her to my place,” Sarah said. “At least Smitty would leave her in peace there.”
“Nein,” Greta interjected swiftly. “With Marie in your room, how could you have the children come for their lessons? And what would their mamas say? You would have to close your little school.”
“We can handle Smitty. Don’t you worry none ‘bout that,” Faye added. “We done like you said—told the ol’ buzzard none of us would work ‘less’n he let Marie stay. He’ll come ‘round. Ain’t got much choice. He won’t get no new girls comin’ to a town like this ‘un.”
Sarah sighed wearily, one hand brushing back Marie’s dark, damp hair. “Give her as much of the tea as she’ll take. At this point, there’s not much else you can do. I’ll be around to see her again tomorrow night.”
“No need your takin’ so many chances, Miss Sarah,” Faye said. “You know what some of the ladies in this town would say if they ever saw you comin’ in here.”
Sarah nodded, knowing Faye was right. There were women in Miner’s Gulch, self-styled social leaders like Mrs. Eudora Cahill, who would brand her an instant pariah if they knew she associated with Smitty’s girls. In the days ahead their support would be more important than ever. But right now Marie needed her. And even in the face of wisdom, one did not turn one’s back on a friend.
She leaned over, clasped Marie’s fleshless hand and felt the tightening of the frail fingers. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she whispered. “Meanwhile, you get some sleep. Try to have some beautiful dreams—” The words died as emotion choked her throat. Tears flooded her eyes as she turned away from the bed and left the room.
The night breeze blew cold on Sarah’s damp face as she made her way home through the alley. Thoughts of Marie mingled with the memory of Donovan’s threat, churning like a maelstrom in her mind. There was nothing she could do for Marie. And there was very little she could do about Donovan. Another man might be charmed or cajoled into changing his mind. But not Donovan Cole. He was too bitter, too determined, too cocksure that she would turn tail and run.
She could not let him win.
Whatever happened, Sarah resolved, she would not let Donovan see her fear. Until he played his ace against her, she would behave as if nothing had happened. She would hold her head high and go about her usual business.
Sarah’s heart lurched with the sudden realization that her usual business would include looking in on Varina. She always followed up her deliveries with visits to the new mothers. If she did not come, Varina would wonder why.
Unless Donovan had already told her.
Sarah’s pulse skipped erratically as she mounted the back stairs of Satterlee’s store. Every impulse screamed at her to run—to fling her essentials into a bag, saddle her mule and ride for her life.
But running was out of the question. Miner’s Gulch was her home. If she did not take a stand here and now, no place on earth would ever be home to her again.
The schoolroom was dark with familiar shadows; warm, still, from the embers that glowed in the potbellied stove. Locking the door behind her, Sarah paused at the threshold of her bedroom. Her eyes lingered affectionately on the squat log benches, the slates piled haphazardly in a far corner, the rows of sums and minuses chalked neatly across the blackboard. Not much of a kingdom. But it was hers. She had built it, carved it out of nothing, with pluck and patience as her only tools.
It was good, she reassured herself as she hung up her cloak, opened the bedroom door and lit the brass lamp on the dresser. She had made herself useful here. She had made a difference in people’s lives.
Could it be? Had her father had been wrong, after all?
Her hands moved to the high muslin collar of her shirtwaist, fingers unfastening the buttons with practiced skill until the prim garment fell open in front. Sarah slipped her arms out of the sleeves and hung it with her other things on the row of hooks that served in place of a wardrobe. She could not afford to be careless with her clothes. They had to last.
With a weary sigh, she raised her arms and began plucking away the pins that held her hair in its tight bun. The silky locks tumbled loose, bringing back a sudden stab of memory. Donovan—his fingers tangling in her hair, eyes probing hers, dark and hot, seething with unanswered questions…
Turning, she caught a glimpse of herself in the cracked mirror—arms lifted, cheeks flushed, lips damply parted. She froze, staring at her own image. One hand quivered upward to touch her cheek.
She had almost succeeded in forgetting that she was pretty.
Seized by a sudden wild compulsion, she curved her mouth into a smile, inclining her head, arching the fine, dark wings of her brows. The image in the glass assumed a subtle sensuality, an air of unmistakable invitation.
Lydia.
Sarah’s arms dropped to her sides as the sound of laughter echoed and faded in her mind. Was this what Donovan had wanted when he’d ripped the pins from her hair? Deep inside, without his even knowing, was it really Lydia he had wanted to see?
Driven by dark emotions, she raised her arms again, tightening the fabric of the worn chemise against her breasts. Her hands lifted and spread the satin wealth of her hair. Her eyelids lowered coquettishly.
“You’re no good, Sarah Jane Parker!” Her minister father’s voice rumbled like a tempest out of the past. “Wasting your time playacting! Prancing and posing like a strumpet! Vanity is the devil’s tool, Sarah! Mark my words! Remember them when you’re burning in hell!”
Sarah spun away from the mirror, hands quivering where they pressed her cold face. She’d gotten word from a cousin after the war that her father had died of apoplexy in New Bedford. In the eight long years since she’d run off with Reginald Buckley, he had not once spoken her name.
Sometimes at night, when the wind howled high in the Colorado pines, his voice echoed in her dreams, its thunder blending with the roar of cannon fire, the screams of horses and the groans of the wounded.
“You can’t hide from the sight of God, Sarah Jane! Wherever you go, his wrath will find you, and in the end, you will burn for your sins! The devil will seize you and carry you down, and burn you forever in hell!”
Sarah blew out the lamp and finished undressing in the dark. She tugged her flannel nightgown over her head and buttoned it to her throat with trembling fingers. Moonlight made a window-square on the patchwork quilt as she crawled between the sheets and lay rigid, eyes wide open in the darkness.
Strange, how some things never seemed to change. As a little girl, she had lain awake at night, listening to the creaks and groans of the old frame house, waiting for the devil to come and snatch her from her bed. Twenty years later, she still jumped at shadows, her fear so deep that it defied every effort to reason it away.
When would it come, the moment of reckoning when the fire would exact its toll?
Impatient, Sarah turned over and punched her pillow. She had problems enough in the here and now, she reminded herself. The devil might be biding his time, but Donovan Cole was not. Donovan was not a patient man. His revenge would be swift and without mercy.
Unless she could think of a way to beat him at his own game.
Restless now, she flopped onto her side, feet jerking at the tightly tucked quilts. There had to be an answer—there was always an answer.
All she had to do was find it.
Sleep was impossible. Sarah rolled out of bed, flung on her robe and strode to the window. The tick of the schoolroom clock echoed in the silence as she gazed through the tattered curtain at the black clusters of pine and the moonlit peaks beyond.
There was always an answer. Maybe not an easy answer. Maybe not the answer one would ask for. But an answer all the same.
She shivered beneath the worn flannel robe, hands clutching her arms as she racked her brain and searched her heart. It was there, she knew, if only-The solution fell into place like a thunderclap.
Sarah’s breath caught as she examined it—an idea so simple that she could scarcely believe she hadn’t thought of it sooner.
Simple. And terrifying. Her hands began to tremble as she weighed the risks, the ramifications. No, she did not have the courage. There had to be a different way, something easier.
She waited, cold and alone in the darkness, but when no other answer came, Sarah knew what she must do. She had spent years running, assuming one role, then casting it off for another, losing herself in lies.
It was time to stop running once and for all.
Chapter Four (#ulink_aad92032-d404-52c2-9da4-4e6d0d2256c8)
Hammer blows echoed down the gulch, ringing like gunshots on the chilly morning air. Sarah could hear them a good half mile before she reached the Sutton place. Her throat knotted in dread at the sound. She had hoped Donovan would be elsewhere when she came to check on Varina and the baby. Alas, that was not to be.
She reined in the mule, half-tempted to turn back. But no, that would be the cowardly way. As a midwife and friend, she had duties to perform. If Varina’s volatile brother chose to interfere, she would simply have to put him in his place.
Sarah adjusted her spectacles, plumbing the well of her own courage as the mule picked its way up the slippery trail. She had lived so long with danger that it had become a natural part of her existence. But Donovan Cole was more than dangerous. His was a rage that burned all the way to her heart. Every time he looked at her, his eyes blazed through her prim facade to the lying, faithless hellion she had struggled so hard to put behind her. To Lydia.
As long as she lived in Donovan’s eyes, in his memory and in his hatred, Lydia Taggart would never die.
As the trees thinned, she could make out Varina’s tiny log cabin. She could see Donovan just below roof level, straddling a massive crossbeam on the frame of what appeared to be an add-on room. The mine timbers he had salvaged for the purpose were heavy and awkward. Hammer blows echoed off the canyon walls as he whaled away at a stubborn nail.
A wry smile tightened Sarah’s lips. One thing, at least, was clear: Donovan Cole was no carpenter.
Donovan was so intent on his task that he had yet to notice Sarah’s approach. Despite the crisp air, he had flung off his shirt. Muscles rippled beneath his taut, golden skin. His bare torso all but steamed as he laid into the work with a fury so black that Sarah hesitated, her amusement darkening into fear.
The mule snorted and shook its shaggy winter hide as she reined up alongside the porch. Only then did Donovan pause in his hammering to glare down at her. The contempt in his eyes froze her to the quick of her soul.
“I’ve come to see Varina and her new son,” she declared, thrusting out her chin.
“Varina’s fine,” he growled. “So’s the baby. We don’t need your kind looking in on us.”
“That’s not for you to say, Donovan.” Sarah swung out of the saddle, her medical bag clutched under her cloak. “When I hear it from your sister, that’s when I’ll leave.” She turned and strode determinedly toward the porch.
“That’s far enough.” Donovan’s sharp voice caught her like a blade between the shoulders. “Lady, if you don’t want one hell of a scene—”
“Miss Sarah!” Katy came bounding out onto the porch, her carrot-colored pigtails dancing. “I can do carries and borrows now! Uncle Donovan helped me last night! Come on in, and I’ll show you!”
“That’s wonderful, Katy.” Sarah accepted the chapped little hand and mounted the steps, avoiding Donovan’s seething gaze. How much had he told his sister? she wondered. Varina had been one of her staunchest friends here in Miner’s Gulch. But then, Varina had known nothing about her past.
Sarah stepped into the dimly lit cabin, braced for an onslaught of hostility. Varina may have gone West before the war, but its tragedy had touched her all the same. Like Donovan, she had lost a family home and a much-loved young brother. Who could blame her for hating the woman who’d had a hand in it all?
“Come on, Miss Sarah!” Katy tugged eagerly at her hand. “You can see little Charlie first! Then I’ll show you my carries and borrows!”
Little by little, Sarah’s eyes adjusted to the shadows. She could see Annie washing dishes at the counter, with Samuel clumsily drying them. In the darkest corner, Varina was sitting up in bed, nursing the baby. Sarah’s breath caught.
Varina was smiling.
“Sarah!” She reached out, beckoning with her free arm. “I was hoping you’d come today! Little Charlie and I are doing fine, as you can see. But I’m afraid I didn’t get a chance to thank you properly the other night. Come here!”
Sarah put down her medical kit and moved slowly toward the bed, tears stinging her eyes.
Donovan hadn’t told her. He hadn’t told any of them.
“Here—” Varina seized her shoulder, drawing her close in a loving embrace that almost shattered Sarah’s heart. “We owe you our lives, the two of us. I know I can never repay you, but if you ever need—”
“It’s all right, Varina!” Sarah squeezed the words out of her aching throat. “Seeing you like this, with your family, is repayment enough. I could never ask for more.”
“All the same—” Varina drew Sarah down until their gazes met on the same level. Her eyes were the same color as her brother’s, except that where Donovan’s shot icy sparks, Varina’s eyes glowed with the purest kindness Sarah had ever known.
Her grip tightened on Sarah’s arm. “All the same, Sarah, I want you to know that Varina Sutton is your friend for life. If ever you need anything from me, just ask, and—”
“Varina, I was only doing my Christian duty! It’s all right!” Sarah felt as if she were choking. She should tell her now, she thought. Tell her this minute and get it over with.
But no, it wouldn’t do. Not in this quiet moment with the children so near. Not with little Katy tugging at her skirt and Annie looking back over her shoulder with big, serious eyes. Varina would know soon enough.
The baby whimpered, squirmed and spat out his mother’s nipple, providing a welcome distraction. A tender smile wreathed Varina’s face. “It appears the little mite’s had enough. You can hold him now, if you like. But you’d best lay this cloth on your shoulder. He tends to spit after he’s eaten.”
Putting aside her cloak, Sarah draped the cloth over her shirtwaist and gathered the tiny, squirming bundle into her arms.
“Oh!” she whispered, snuggling the baby close as the sweet, milky aura enfolded her. “Oh, he’s beautiful!”
For Sarah, holding new infants never lost its wonder. She loved their softness, the incredible lightness of their little bodies, their tiny, puckered faces and clasping fingers. What would it be like to cradle a baby of her own? Would it ever happen?
