Capture the Sun (Cheyenne Series) (2 page)

      
With that she pressed the ring-in his palm. The carriage had conveniently stopped in front of the large brick house where the Pattersons lived. Before Gerald could gather his scattered wits, Carrie was pulling on the coach door.

      
Frantically, without thinking, he blurted out, “Don't leave like this, darling! Let me explain. Oh, Carrie, we can still have a life together. Don't you see? Once I get established and build up a good practice, I'll be a wealthy man. Then I can do as I please. I'll take care of you, Carrie. Charity need never know—”

      
When the full implication of his rash proposition struck her, she felt ill. With a whimper of frenzied pain, she slapped his pale handsome face with all her strength. Her other hand still held the door latch tightly. Furiously she yanked it open and fairly tumbled out of the coach before the embarrassed driver could assist her.

      
With Gerald's voice still echoing in the cool March air, Carrie fled toward the sanctuary of the house. She rushed around the side, using the back door, wanting no one to witness her distress. She could well imagine Aunt Patience's satisfied smirk upon seeing her in tears.

      
“Might as well use the servant's entrance. That's all I am here anyway, an interloper, a surrogate maid to Charity and Faith on Tilda's day off.”

      
Having reached her third-story room without encountering anyone, Carrie lay across her narrow bed. The room was stifling in humid St. Louis summers and freezing in bitter St. Louis winters. Today in the brisk sunny March weather, it was bathed in golden light, enriching the faded wallpaper and the thin bedspread tossed carelessly across a lumpy mattress. Her fingers clenched and unclenched, bunching the scratchy fabric into a mass of unsightly wrinkles. Her thoughts ran riot in confusion and pain. “Oh, Gerald, how could you? We would have managed together. We didn't need their money, only each other.” The hoarse whisper seemed louder than it really was in the still room.

      
Downstairs in the front parlor, a plump, gray-haired woman stood by a window overlooking the street. Patting a curl on her elaborately coifed but faded hair, Patience Patterson smiled. The malevolence of the expression on her righteous, potato-faced countenance would have shocked even her closest confidants. It was an unmasking she allowed few people to see. Patience, as her name suggested, was a skillful planner, one to outlast the competition. Along with a sizable dowry from her father, that cunning endurance had helped her to snare Hiram Patterson.
 

      
Now she plotted for her eldest daughter. From the moment Charity had set eyes on the winsome young medical student Gerald Rawlins, she had been smitten. Of course, it had taken some doing to convince Hiram that the penniless youth was worthy of his daughter, but she had managed it. After all, he was a Rawlins, and if sponsored in his profession he could become quite prominent, perhaps the city's leading physician.

      
After watching her distraught niece flee the carriage in front of their doorstep, Patience was certain Gerald had told the girl of his and Charity's future. It was all working out splendidly! She glided across the floor toward the small cherrywood table in the corner and again perused the letter. Yes, it would happen just as she had envisioned last year. Her cousin Noah was coming east for a business trip and a visit. He was also in the market for a wife now that he was free of that terrible Jameson hussy. And, of course, Patience had the perfect wife for him—young, educated, healthy, and most especially, damn her, beautiful!

      
Patience had watched in growing horror as Carrie matured beside her own daughters, like a blossom among thistles. Where Charity and Faith were short and tended toward plumpness, Carrie was statuesque and slender. While their hair was lank dishwater blond, Carrie's was a riot of fiery bouncing curls. With her green eyes and flawless complexion, she fairly glittered, an outstanding beauty in any roomful of St. Louis belles. Then, too, there was always that air about her, the veiled defiance, the spirit Patience had never completely been able to break. Well, she knew Noah Sinclair, and he would finish what she had started.

      
He was arriving tomorrow night. It was perfect. She and Hiram would put his suit to Carrie while she was still prostrate over Gerald's betrayal. Patience would take no chance on Carrie's catching any of poor mousey Faith's beaus, nor leading the still-besotted Gerald to disgrace his new fiancée with infidelity. No, she would send Carrie away from her family, to the far reaches of Montana, over one thousand miles distant. Once again Patience read Noah's letter with a triumphal glitter in her lead-gray eyes.

      
“My dearest Cousin Patience,” it read, ”I will be arriving on March fifteenth and look forward to meeting your niece. She sounds most adequate for my needs…”

* * * *

      
Carrie stood in front of the mirror, making a last perusal of her toilette. Her bright hair was piled high on her head in an elegant pompadour with wispy tendrils escaping alongside her high cheekbones. The new dress, a surprising gift from Aunt Patience, fit her to perfection. The moss-green watered silk molded around her breasts and fell simply from the fashionable bustle. Tailored to accent her superb figure, it was the style of dress she loved most.

      
“I guess it's her token peace offering now that she's won Gerald for Charity.” Carrie shrugged; trying desperately to feel some of the light insouciant air she affected. It was no use. She felt used and cheated. Gerald had been her first love, her knight in shining armor, her means to escape the hopeless cold existence of this bleak house. Now all that was ended. Since they had bought off Gerald, what did the Pattersons intend for her?
      
Spinsterhood? No, that would mean Uncle Hiram would have to support her for the rest of her life. Surely his miserly soul could never abide that. Then, what?

      
As she descended the long flights of stairs to the front hall, Carrie heard voices, her aunt and uncle, her two cousins and another male voice, an unfamiliar one. When Charity had come to tell her to wear her new dress for dinner, a strange light of excitement had shone in her usually lackluster eyes. Was it something to do with this stranger?

      
Quietly she walked to the walnut sliding doors that divided the front parlor from the hall. The unknown man was tall and lean. Carrie judged him to be around fifty or a little older. She was sure he had once been handsome, but now his face was harsh and bitter, set in cruel lines. His hair was still golden, except for the encroachment of gray at the temples, and his face was darkly tanned by the sun. Fleetingly she compared it to Gerald's blond pallor, Gerald who never ventured outdoors. It was obvious this man had spent a lifetime under a merciless sun.

      
Her scrutiny was suddenly interrupted when Aunt Patience caught the glimmer of Carrie's bright green gown from the corner of her eye. “There you are, tardy girl.” With a falsely fond smile, she glided over to take Carrie's arm and escort her into the big, cluttered room, filled with bric-a-brac and expensive Victorian furniture.

      
“Carrie, I would like for you to meet my dear cousin, Noah Sinclair, from Montana Territory. Noah, here is Carrie.” Was there just the faintest touch of veiled meaning in the way she worded the introduction?

      
Uncertainly, Carrie smiled and made her curtsy. Noah's cold blue eyes seemed to rake her with a scorching fire from head to foot before he spoke.

      
“I have been looking forward to this meeting for a long time, my dear.” The lips smiled, but the glacial eyes did not.

      
Carrie's puzzlement changed to alarm and a prickly warning inched its way up her spine when she glanced from Noah Sinclair to Charity. Her cousin looked as if she had just been selected Veiled Prophet Queen of 1880, the highest debutante honor in St. Louis. Why should Patience and Charity want this stranger to meet her? Carrie could not remember her aunt ever mentioning a cousin from some godforsaken place in the Far West.

      
Later that night, as Carrie passed the library on her way upstairs, she heard the voices of her Uncle Hiram and Mr. Sinclair. Dinner had been an agony of strained conversation, with her aunt's cousin contributing little to lighten the tense atmosphere. Charity and Faith were their usual coy, fluttery selves. Noah mostly ignored them, concentrating what little attention he gave to the women on Carrie and Patience. Her aunt's deference to the man was almost nauseating to Carrie.

      
Sinclair answered questions in monosyllables or with forceful opinions if his interest was piqued by a particular query. When Hiram mentioned the railroad's progress into the West and intimated it could not go as far north as Montana, Noah immediately interrupted to pronounce that a line would be completed to Miles City within the year. Carrie felt that Noah Sinclair was a man well accustomed to getting his way, and probably quite ruthless when crossed.

      
After a miserable night spent tossing and turning, Carrie awakened early to the sound of hard spring rain dashing against the glass panes of her window. Unable to fall back asleep, she sat up and rubbed her eyes, preparing to arise and slip downstairs for an early breakfast in the kitchen. As often as possible she avoided formal meals with her relatives, preferring the kinder company of the cook and gardener. She especially wanted to avoid Noah Sinclair this morning.

      
Thinking about him once more, she shivered. All last evening he had watched her, like a wolf stalking its prey. His cold blue eyes took in everything, although he said little to her. She shook her head to drive away the absurd fancy. “Wolf, indeed! He's just a lecherous old man, every bit as unpleasant as his kinswoman. I will simply avoid him until he's gone.”

      
With that she began to dress, donning an ugly gray muslin gown. Even in her plain wardrobe, it was exceptionally unbecoming. “I certainly don't have to dress for any man's fancy anymore, now that Gerald—” Carrie cut herself off. No self-pity. She was well shut of any man who could be bought, but the ache of betrayal remained.

      
As Carrie descended the stairs on her way to the kitchen, she heard voices coming from the parlor. The heavy sliding doors were ajar, and Aunt Patience and Noah Sinclair's voices carried into the hall.

      
“She'll come around quickly enough, Noah. No need to fear. The poor child has just suffered a terrible shock. You see, she was quite infatuated with the young man my Charity is going to marry. When their wedding date was announced the other day, well, it took Carrie rather by surprise. Of course, there was no doubt that Gerald Rawlins would choose my Charity over her! All the more reason for her to be grateful for your suit, Noah. You're here at a most opportune time.”

      
Noah snorted in derision, imagining exactly what had induced a man with normal eyesight to pick that fat tan wren over her flame-haired cousin. “Yes, I imagine my arrival has been timely. The point is, Patience, that I have but a few days before I must leave for Miles City. I can't play the ardent swain. I wasn't interested in doing it thirty years ago, and I'm not about to start now.”

      
“Never fear. After all, while she's prostrate by rejection, she'll be in a receptive mood for a secure match with a wealthy older man. Any young woman with sense and no money would be insane to turn you down! If you want her, she's yours, dear cousin.”

      
“Oh, I want her right enough, Patience.”

      
The slow drawling chuckle that followed left every hair on Carrie's head standing on end. Her breath froze in her throat and her hand clamped on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. They were plotting for her to marry him! The nerve—the insane, vicious nerve of that woman! Furiously, Carrie drew several breaths to ease her trembling limbs. She must think rationally. Her first impulse was to storm into the room and refuse then and there in front of the conspirators. However, reason quickly prevailed. Aunt Patience would exact terrible revenge for such an unthinkable breach of decorum. No, she would wait until her uncle came home this afternoon and reason with him.

      
When her parents, Josiah and Naomi Patterson, had been killed five years ago in a riverboat explosion, she had found herself alone and virtually penniless. Her father had invested his wealth none too wisely and had been skirting on the edge of bankruptcy at the time of his death, a fact her aunt and uncle reminded her of all too often. Grudgingly he had taken in the bright, indulged child of his only brother. Although he never took her side against his wife, Carrie was sure her uncle would not expect her to quickly marry a man she had only just met.

* * * *

      
“But, Uncle Hiram, you can't be serious!”

      
The stricken way Carrie's voice broke when she spoke almost made Hiram Patterson weaken. He was rather put off by Patience's cold, arrogant cousin. He could see why the girl did not favor him. But a man must be practical. His investments in the past few years had not been good, and he could not afford the expense of a debut for his wastrel brother's daughter as well as both his own. Then there was the matter of all that money for Rawlins's schooling and setting him up in practice. Damn Patience and her plotting! Rawlins wasn't the son-in-law he needed to take over his bank when he retired. He was furious with his wife, indeed with all women, at the moment. Carrie's tearful pleading was becoming increasingly irksome, and he wanted the interview terminated.

      
“I'm sorry, my dear, but there's nothing to be gained by this unseemly display. Noah Sinclair has done you the honor of asking you to marry him. He is a very rich man. He'll make a fine husband for you.”