B000XUBEHA EBOK (24 page)

“You’re quiet tonight,” he said after they’d eaten supper and washed the plates in the river. That was another thing. Since the night of the kiss, the tension between them was as thick as a wall. They didn’t talk as easily.

“There’s something I’ve been thinking about since the night at the gypsy camp,” she said. “I’d appreciate hearing your opinion.”

Finally. It was time they cleared the air. When she started fiddling with the braid laying over her shoulder, he knew she was disturbed. Well, he was, too. He put down the bridle he’d been repairing. A man couldn’t work and talk about kissing at the same time.

“I told you the nonsense Madam Blatski predicted. You know, about money and more children.” Frowning, she met his gaze across the flames. “Since then, I’ve realized that I don’t think about Clarence as often as I used to.”

This was an odd approach to the matter at hand, but sometimes she came at things from a different direction than he would have guessed. “Go on,” he said cautiously.

She twisted her hands together and worried her bottom lip. “Before you rode up my driveway, there wasn’t a single day that I didn’t think about Clarence and Claire. It was like picking at a scab, keeping the pain alive. And that’s what I wanted, what I deserved.”

Maybe this conversation wasn’t going to end talking about the kiss.

“What the gypsy woman said about more children, well, that implies another husband.” Her hands came up and she rubbed her cheeks. “And that thought made me realize that, now, several days can go by when I don’t think about the husband I had.” Guilt pinched her features and she frowned toward the river. “I don’t think about writing ‘I hate you’ or about how Clarence died. That’s never happened before and it feels wrong.”

She wasn’t going to confront the kiss. They would go on keeping a distance, avoiding eye contact, trying like hell to elude an accidental touch.

“I don’t believe in fortune-telling. But suppose I did marry again. Someday, way in the future. It wouldn’t be right to marry someone if I was thinking about Clarence every day, would it? So, is not thinking about him a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Is this what you want my opinion about?” She nodded earnestly. Damn it. “I thought you said you never intended to remarry.”

“I did say that, and it’s true. I’m not a good wife. But just for a minute, pretend the gypsy woman is right and someone wants to marry me, and maybe I’m considering it. You were Clarence’s friend. What do you think Clarence would want me to do?”

Whenever she made a reference to Cameron and Clarence being friends, his chest tightened and he felt cold inside. “I don’t know what Clarence would think. But it seems to me that ten years of grieving is enough.”

“That’s another thing I don’t feel good about.” After a minute she drew a breath and continued. “To be honest, I think the grieving ended long ago. I don’t think about Clarence because I’m still grieving. I don’t know why I’ve kept him in the front of my mind. Regret, maybe. Remorse.”

Cameron knew. “Ten years of punishment is also enough.” A few months ago he would have laughed himself weak if someone had told him that he’d rather talk about a kiss than talk about Clarence Ward. “You can’t change what you wrote in a letter long ago. It’s time to stop blaming yourself and move on.”

“How odd.” She stared at him. “The gypsy said something about blame and forgiveness. But she meant Clarence’s parents.”

“Are you sure?” He picked up the bridle and turned it in his hands.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?” His gaze held hers across the campfire. The flames were too bright to tell if a rush of color spread up her cheeks, but he had the impression that she definitely understood his reference.

“There’s nothing to be gained by talking about something that shouldn’t have happened.” Her voice was low and she didn’t look at him. But she pulled on her braid.

She was right of course.

Why had he forced the issue? What did he want her to say? He didn’t know. It just seemed that when something momentous occurred it should be acknowledged. And for him at least, kissing her had been momentous.

“I apologize.” She’d know what he was apologizing for. Maybe that was enough of an acknowledgment.

She started twisting her hands again. “No one’s to blame. The thing is, it would be so easy to . . .” Even in the firelight there was no mistaking the scarlet burning on her cheeks. “And I can’t deny that I . . . but—”

But he was a man who couldn’t offer a woman a lasting future, and he was the man who had killed her husband and ruined her life. Holding her in his arms and kissing her had made him hope the obstacles could be overcome. Which demonstrated how love could make a fool of a man.

Love? He sat up straight and blinked. This was the first time he’d actually applied the word. Love?

But of course he loved her. He’d loved her for ten years. He loved the look of her in the photograph, had loved the angry, feisty young woman who wrote the letter demanding that her husband come home. And he loved the woman she had become. Still angry, still feisty, but seasoned by life. She’d lost the surface artifice that didn’t matter and she’d found an honest center.

God help him, he loved her.

“Cameron?” Wetting her lips, she looked at him uncertainly. “Did I say too much?”

“No.” He stared at her, knowing he could never have her. “I’m going down to the river to have a smoke.” If he stayed with her another minute, he’d say something that would embarrass them both.

The next day they shared the evening meal with a family heading toward Texas. The Eliots’ son looked to be about Claire’s age, Della thought. Being a boy, he was probably a little taller, a little heavier. Fascinated, she watched his every movement, trying not to stare.

At the back of her mind, she’d been toying with the idea of talking to Claire. She wouldn’t identify herself, wouldn’t upset Claire or cause any upheaval in her life. She’d just talk to her a while.

But watching the Eliots’ boy made her aware of how little she knew about children. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to the boy—why would it be different with Claire? Knowing what interested a child was something a person grew into. A mother started learning about her child from the minute that child was placed in her arms, and she never stopped learning. A mother and her child kept pace with each other.

Was it possible to make up the missing years? Della considered the Eliot boy and swallowed a rush of panic. She had no idea what a ten-year-old child needed or wanted. No notion of what would make that child laugh or cry. The lost years could not be retrieved.

At the end of the evening, the Eliots returned to their own campsite, but not before shaking hands all around and wishing everyone a safe journey. The Eliots called Della “Mrs. Cameron,” and neither Della nor Cameron corrected the error. There was no sense scandalizing a nice couple.

In the beginning, when Cameron first proposed this journey, no thought of impropriety had entered Della’s mind. She’d been so dead to men/women tensions that a chaperone had seemed unnecessary. Moreover, she’d told herself that she didn’t care what other people might think or assume.

But things had changed. She was starting to care what others thought, and she was no longer immune to desires she’d believed long dead.

Della stood in the shadows and listened to the Eliots’ receding voices. “It was a nice evening,” she said. Having company around the fire gave her something to think about besides Cameron. Wondering what he was thinking. Wondering why it had become difficult to talk to him. Wishing they could still whistle together and be easy with each other.

Cameron didn’t say anything. He’d been particularly quiet lately. They’d kept a distance between them since the night of the gypsy camp. Several weeks had passed since that night, but Della remembered every detail as vividly as if she had stepped into Cameron’s arms only last night.

She gave her head a shake, scattering pieces of a memory that wouldn’t leave her alone. “The Eliots didn’t have an accent, did you notice? Living in the West tends to flatten regional accents. I don’t hear the South when you speak, and I doubt you hear it in my voice.”

Cameron still didn’t say anything. He stood near the horses, listening to the night, facing the dark flow of the river.

“At least Harold Eliot didn’t want to shoot you.” Eliot had been the awed, handshaking type. If his son hadn’t been present, he would have asked about outlaws and gunfights. “I liked having company for supper.” Before the Eliots had arrived at their camp, Della had brushed out her hair and pinned it up, and had donned a clean white shirtwaist. Now she started removing the hairpins holding the knot atop her head.

Out of nowhere, a rush of anger enveloped her. Lowering her arms, she squeezed her fist around the hairpins and stared at nothing. She wasn’t Mrs. Cameron, she would never be Mrs. Cameron. And she would never sit beside a fire and smile proudly as her child recited a poem for company. Clarence would never forgive her. She would never forgive the Wards for stealing her baby. She could never regain those lost years. If she’d had any tears left, she would have wept.

She would never again live in a fine house or have lace curtains at her windows. Wouldn’t own a satin gown or a velvet cape, and had no need of such luxuries. Never again would she attend a grand ball or have an idle afternoon without a dozen chores waiting.

Drawing a deep breath, Della lifted her chin and tilted her head to gaze up at the stars. Did those things matter?

Never again would she listen to the horror of approaching artillery or look back to see flames consuming a house where she had lived. Never again would she stand on a corner and watch wagon after wagon of dead soldiers roll past her shocked eyes. She doubted she would ever be gut-wrenching hungry again. She would never stumble along behind another hearse, blinded by pain and anguish.

She had a lot to be grateful for.

At the top of her gratitude list was James Cameron. It seemed a hundred years ago that they had gazed into each other’s eyes across the hotel’s dining room table and said: I like you. Now a kiss had dried up easy conversation, and she couldn’t tell him that she was grateful that he’d been Clarence’s friend, and she was happy that he was her friend, too. Fortune had smiled the day James Cameron rode up her driveway. He was opening the world for her, and because of him, she would see her daughter.

And he had taught her that all men did not kiss alike.

As she brushed her hair and plaited it into a long braid, Della watched him moving between the horses, talking to them in a low voice. It would be so easy to love him. In her heart she believed that she could heal the dark places inside him. And she suspected that he could make her whole, too.

But for how long? A year? Three years? Five? How many years of waiting in fear for the day when he didn’t come home?

No. She couldn’t walk behind his hearse. And he wouldn’t ask it of her. Sometimes she recognized a certain look in his eyes that made her turn away and swallow hard. But he never followed up on that look. He was a gentleman, and he was proud.

“Oh, Cameron.”

With all her heart she wished things could have been different for them.

At least three major trails poured travelers and immigrants into Santa Fe, one of the oldest towns in the West. Covered wagons lined up along San Francisco Street, waiting to pay duty before they found space at one of the tent towns that had sprung up on the outskirts near the Rio Santa Fe. Stages raced along the narrow streets with no regard for pedestrians or other conveyances. Wagon drivers shouted and waved their fists.

“It’s sheer chaos,” Della said, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

That it was. They were stuck on the wrong side of a long line of prairie schooners, trying to reach the stables. From where he sat atop Bold, Cameron could see a Mexican cantina, a French bakery, and a rubbish dump. To his left, two Indian men smoked and observed a half dozen German immigrants arguing over the backs of their oxen. Dogs barked, horses reared. The noise and odors made Cameron wish for the clean quiet of the plains.

The covered wagons moved forward a few feet then stalled again. He could see the stables between the wagons, but no one would yield an inch to let them through.

“I’m in no hurry.” Della had to shout to be heard. “There’s so much to see.”

For their entry into Santa Fe, she had aired and brushed her riding skirt and jacket. A crisp white shirtwaist showed at the lapels. Last night Cameron had polished her boots while she mended her gloves. This morning for the first time in weeks, she had wrapped her hair in an elegant bun and teased out a few tendrils at the nape and before her ears. The blue-tinted sunglasses that he’d given her at the start of the journey were scratched and nicked now, but she still wore them. Looked good in them, too. But he should have insisted that she wear one of his dusters. The choking dust hanging over the street was worse than anything they’d encountered on the trail, and already fine particles were settling on Della’s hat brim and shoulders.

“Son of a gun. I know you.” A man came out of the cantina and peered up at Cameron. “That there is James Cameron,” he said to everyone within hearing. Rocking back on his heels, he sized up the situation in the street.