Elizabeth Lane (7 page)

“Hey, where’s that smile?” he cajoled her.

“It’s hiding!” Katy clutched her slate to her chest. “I want Miss Sarah to come back!”

Donovan sighed, wincing at the pain in his ribs. “You’ll see Miss Sarah at school,” he said. “You can show her your carries and borrows there.”

“But it’s Saturday!” Katy pouted. “And tomorrow is Sunday. That’s two whole days!”

“Don’t worry about it.” Donovan mounted the rickety steps to the porch. “You’ll still know how to carry and borrow on Monday.”

“But it won’t be the same!” Katy flounced into the cabin with an impatient little huff. Reluctantly Donovan followed her. Varina was bound to ask him what had happened outside and why Sarah had bolted. He would have to have a good story ready. The truth would not do at all.

He would be glad when the lying was done, he thought. Things would be better when Sarah was gone. And she would go—Donovan had no doubt of that. Her declaration that she would stay was nothing but a bluff.

Mentally he ticked off the days in his mind. Time was running out for Sarah Parker Buckley. He had given her a week to get out of Miner’s Gulch. On Monday, at sundown, her time would be up.

Monday night. And tomorrow was Sunday. Soon—very soon—the battle would be over.

C
hurch services in Miner’s Gulch were a plain affair. A traveling preacher came through town every two or three months to perform marriages and christenings. The rest of the time, the little flock stumbled along on its own.

Over the years, a simple, nonsectarian worship routine had evolved. Each Sunday morning at ten o’clock, the congregation gathered in the weather-beaten church across from Smitty’s saloon. They opened the meeting with an unaccompanied hymn and a prayer, followed by a reading from the scriptures. The rest of the time was set aside for anyone who felt moved by the spirit to rise and speak. At the end of an hour—sooner, if no one had much to say-the meeting ended with another prayer.

Most people looked forward to the weekly service. It marked a break in the gulch’s plodding pace. It gave isolated neighbors a chance to get together, to exchange greetings, news and gossip. It lent unity to a town so disordered that there was no local government, no law enforcement, no court and no usable jail.

Sarah seldom missed the Sunday meeting—not that she could honestly claim to enjoy it. Setting foot in a church-any church—brought back the memory of her girlhood in New Bedford, a girlhood spent cringing in the family pew while her father spewed fire and brimstone from the pulpit,
his words scourging her rebellious young soul like a cato’-nine-tails.

The Sunday atmosphere in Miner’s Gulch was much gentler. But even here Sarah could not walk through the doors of the drab little church without feeling the sting of that old guilt, and with it, the overpowering sense that she was not worthy to be there.

All the same, she went. It was a way to keep in touch with people. A way to belong. Perhaps the only way, she reflected as she twisted her hair into a tight knot and jabbed in the pins with a force that made her wince. The face in her mirror was pale and tired, red eyed from a sleepless night. Raw tension quivered through every nerve and sinew of her body. Her fingers shook as she buttoned the high collar over her throat and added the plain silver brooch that had belonged to her mother.

She felt as if she were dressing for her own execution.

From up the street, a single discordant clang of the church bell quivered on the morning air. The sound went through Sarah like a shock.

It was time.

Hastily she caught up her tiny leather-bound hymnal and the gray merino shawl she wore on Sundays when the weather wasn’t too bad. She pulled the shawl tightly about her shoulders, needing its soft warmth on a day when little else could offer her comfort. At the door she paused to let her gaze drift over the small, crude schoolroom. Her eyes lingered affectionately on the worn log benches, the slates, the blackboard with Monday’s sums already chalked across it in a precise line.

Her own little world. Until this very moment, Sarah had not realized how much she loved it.

The church bell had begun to clang in earnest, its brassy tone resonating up and down the gulch, summoning the faithful and disturbing slackers like the girls above Smitty’s, who were no doubt trying to sleep off a hard Saturday night’s work. As Sarah plucked her key from its hook
and turned to go, she remembered the dying Marie. It was time she paid the poor young woman another visit—tonight, perhaps, if she was able.

Tonight.

Would her world still exist by tonight? Would she?

The morning air stung her cheeks as she opened the door. Its sudden coldness slammed home the memory of Donovan’s kiss, of struggling in his powerful arms, lashed by the bitter spring wind. Even now, when she remembered the wild, angry roughness of his mouth on hers, Sarah’s face blazed like a torch.

She had battled all night to erase Donovan’s image from her mind, as she might rub yesterday’s sums from the blackboard. But her efforts had come to nothing. The memory of his unshaven face, his hard, angry eyes, his bronze skin cool against her palms, was as wrenchingly vivid as ever.

Oh, Sarah knew men, and she was no fool. Donovan felt nothing for her but contempt. Even his kiss had been an act of rage, an overt move to control and punish her. And she had almost let him. He would never know how close she had come to flinging away everything she’d fought so hard to become.

Would Donovan be in church this morning? Surely not, she reassured herself as she locked the door behind her and made her way down the stairs. Varina, still bedridden, would need his help at the cabin. In any case, Donovan had never impressed Sarah as a churchgoing man, which was just as well. What she had resolved to do this morning would be difficult enough without him. With Donovan there, with his eyes on her…but Sarah did not even want to think about that possibility.

Yesterday’s storm had melted to a gritty slush that had refrozen overnight, leaving a quagmire of icy mud. Wary for her freshly polished boots, Sarah picked her way across the morass of ruts and puddles. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Mrs. Eudora Cahill bustling up the
church steps on the arm of her husband, Sam, trailed by their two gangly teenage daughters. As the town’s one-time banker, Sam Cahill had made enough money to retire when the gold veins played out, but not enough to leave the dying boomtown and set himself up in Denver or Central City. Even so, the Cahills owned the most imposing house in Miner’s Gulch. Eudora Cahill functioned as the town’s selfappointed social leader and arbiter of taste. Where she led, other women tended to follow.

And that, Sarah told herself, could be of life-or-death importance this morning. Up to now, she had managed to stay on Eudora’s good side. But Eudora Cahill, like most of the townspeople, was a Southerner. She could not count on Eudora’s support, nor on anyone else’s, Sarah realized. After today, she could depend on no one but herself.

She was halfway across the street, lifting her skirts to clear an ice-rimmed puddle, when she saw him—Donovan Cole, scrubbed, slicked and dressed in his Sunday best, striding around the far side of the church with Annie and Katy dancing along on either side of him.

Sarah’s heart plummeted like a stone. An icy wetness penetrated her boot as she stepped squarely into the puddle.

Not Donovan! Please, anyone but Donovan! Anytime but
this morning!

Sarah battled the urge to turn tail and slink back to her room. Neither Donovan nor the girls had glanced in her direction. Maybe it wasn’t too late. She could pretend to be ill—yes, for that matter, she was feeling a bit ill already.

Sarah hesitated, poised for flight, then brought herself up short. Where was her courage? Where was her resolve, her determination to end the lies once and for all?

She could not lose heart. Not now.

Donovan and his nieces were mounting the steps, their backs toward her. Thrusting out her chin, Sarah marched toward the church. Her boots crunched a determined rhythm through the half-frozen mud. Her throat quivered
with a martial melody, hummed in cadence with her stride. Her lips moved subtly, forming words under her breath.

She had reached the foot of the steps before she realized, to her chagrin, that she was singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Donovan moved down the crowded aisle, Annie holding his right hand, Katy clutching his left. The small church was filling up fast, and the seating appeared to be on a firstcome-first-served basis. Annie spotted an opening for three at the far end of a pew. Tugging Donovan’s wrist, she led him along the gauntlet of knees, petticoats, boots and canes, into a space so cramped that when he sat down, his long legs folded against his chest like a carpenter’s rule.

Making himself as comfortable as his rangy frame would allow, Donovan settled back with a sigh. He could not remember when he’d last set foot inside a church, but Varina had insisted he go and take the girls. For the sake of peace, Donovan had given in. There was no way an hour of hymn singing and Bible thumping could be any worse than arguing with Varina Cole Sutton. What the hell, maybe it would even do him some good.

His gaze wandered idly around the shabby meeting hall, picking out a familiar face here and there—the shopkeeper and his wife; the one-armed Shiloh veteran who managed the livery stable; gray-headed Widow Harley, who ran a boardinghouse for gentlemen across from Satterlee’s store.

He did not see Sarah Parker. Not that he’d expected to. After yesterday, Donovan would’ve wagered a month’s pay that Sarah would not have the nerve to show up here. He had her on the run, he calculated. She was probably at home packing her trunk this very minute.

He had no regrets for what he’d done. Sarah was a spy and a liar. She deserved to be strung up from the tallest tree in the gulch. All the same, he had been more than fair with the woman. Because she’d saved Varina and the baby, he was giving her a chance to run. But that was all. Sarah
would end up very sorry if she called his bluff. Donovan Cole was a man who only bluffed at poker.

Yes, he’d handled the whole dirty business with skill and tact, Donovan congratulated himself—except for yesterday, when he’d seized Sarah in his arms and kissed her till his blood blazed like pine pitch. That was something he hadn’t planned, something he was still at a loss to explain, even to himself.

Only half-aware, he rippled his tongue along the sensitive inner rim of his lower lip. His flesh tingled with the memory of Sarah’s sweet mouth, its silken moistness melting to his heat, opening to the hungry invasion of his tongue. His nipples shrank beneath his shirt as he recalled the touch of her hands on his bare skin, the firm points of her breasts crushed hard against him through the thin fabric of her blouse. The sudden tightness in his loins was so painful that-
Blast it, Cole, you’re in church!

Annie nudged his arm with her open hymnal. Widow Harley had taken her place at the front of the congregation, her rawboned arm poised to lead the hymn. Wrenching his mind back to the here and now, Donovan accepted a corner of the songbook and balanced it on two fingers. As the somber tones of “Rock of Ages” swelled to the rafters, he added his untrained baritone to the other voices.

A smile teased his lips as he caught Katy’s loud, off-key soprano on his right, piping, “Rock the pages, clever me, let me hi-i-ide myself in tea…”

Perversely tempted to join her, he glanced around for any sign of disapproving eyes. That was when he glimpsed Sarah, slipping into the far end of the pew behind him.

Donovan’s throat went dry. She was as primly done up as he’d ever seen her—her lips set in a determined line, her hair pulled severely back from her pale face, her collar buttoned all the way to her jaw and fastened with a tarnished silver brooch. The pince-nez spectacles perched firmly on her nose.

He watched her sit down, remembering her fire as she twisted in his arms.

Who are you today, Sarah?
Who were you yesterday? Which one of you is real?

She sat with downcast eyes, her lips barely mouthing the words of the hymn. She looked tired, even ill, he thought. The clothes, hair and glasses might be part of her act, but the shadows beneath her bloodshot eyes were genuine.

An unexpected jab of worry needled Donovan’s conscience. If Sarah’s condition was his doing…but then, why should he care? The woman was his sworn enemy. She had wronged him, wronged his family, wronged the South, far beyond the point of restitution. Any suffering on her part was no more than she deserved.

He tore his gaze away from Sarah as the hymn ended. It wouldn’t do, after all, to have people catch him looking at her. Someone might get the wrong idea, and he was already having enough trouble with Varina on that account. He would be smart to set a good example for his nieces and pay attention to the rest of the service.

He forced himself to listen to every word of the customary scriptural reading, an obscure and depressing passage from Ecclesiastes, quoted by a dim-sighted old man who kept squinting at the page and clearing his throat. Donovan battled the temptation to pull out his pocket watch and check the time. Varina had told him the meeting would probably end around eleven. How far off could that blessed hour possibly be?

Sarah’s presence burned into his back as his own words returned to haunt him.

If I’d known the truth…I would have stormed your room and bedded you like the false-hearted little trollop you were—and are.

Where had those words come from? Had he meant them—he, who had never plotted violence against a woman in his life? In the depths of his unspoken heart, had he wanted Lydia Taggart that badly?

With a resounding amen, the reading ended. Donovan knew that the time remaining would be left open to the congregation. He strove to keep his mind on Widow Harley’s account of a Comanche attack in the fifties, and on the elderly scripture-reader’s revelation that he’d once seen a vision of the son he lost at Gettysburg. From the slack faces around him, Donovan gathered that everyone else had heard the stories before. They were new to him, however, and he made an honest effort to pay attention.

But listening wasn’t easy. Not with the long-buried fantasies that kept creeping into his mind, tormenting him with the devil’s own fire.

Lydia…soft in the Virginia moonlight, her hair fanned like rippled silk on the pillow, the aroma of jasmine warm on her skin…his hand cupping her breast through the gossamer lace of her nightgown, molding the rose-tipped perfection to the curve of his palm, taking time to tease the nipple to a puckered raspberry, salty sweet to the taste…her hands clasping him close then, fingers raking his hair, urging his head downward along the flat curve of her belly, thighs parting, musk-scented secrets opening to his tongue like the quivering petals of a flower
…

“I’ve never spoken to all of you as a congregation before.”

Sarah’s hard-edged Yankee voice jerked Donovan back to reality. She was standing half in the aisle, her whiteknuckled hands clutching the back of the pew for support. Her face was pale, her posture rigid, taut with strain.

No!
Donovan stared at her, seized by a black premonition of what she was about to do. Suddenly, inexplicably, he wanted to stop her, to shout her down, to grab her and drag her from the church before it was too late. But there was nothing he could do. He sat frozen to the bench, fists clenched in a paroxysm of helplessness as Sarah cleared her throat and continued.