Harlot (16 page)

“I’ve asked her to marry me.”

“You can’t marry that whore!” he shouted.

“I certainly can,” Caleb managed past his clenched teeth. “And don’t use that word.”

“What other word should I use for a girl who spreads her legs for money?”

“You’ll use no word at all if you care to keep your teeth.”

Theodore’s eyes bulged at the threat. “You won’t speak to me like that. I should’ve known you weren’t visiting friends while you were gallivanting around here. You had that bitch on her skinny little knees the whole time! And then you came back to
my house
with that filth still on you.”

Something bigger than anger was pushing against Caleb’s brain, urging him to violence.

His stepfather sneered. “You’re mistaking a tight cunt for love, and I won’t allow it. Not at the expense of my good name.”

Skinny knees. A tight cunt. Strange words for a girl who’d nearly been a daughter to him.

And suddenly Caleb knew. He knew exactly, even down to how it had happened. A farmer hadn’t owned that property. The bank had. Theodore had. Caleb hadn’t gotten Jess’s letter after her father’s death because Theodore hadn’t included it in the packet. And he hadn’t given Jess the letter from Caleb either.

“It was you,” Caleb said, hearing the words as if someone else had spoken them. He hadn’t even felt his lips move.

Theodore snapped his mouth shut and gave his head one hard shake. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Caleb stepped forward. He felt the pail drop from his fingertips, heard it thump and roll over the dirt. “It was
you
. You told her I wasn’t coming back. You left her with no choice. You probably made up her father’s debts.”

“Now see here, those debts were real!”

That
was what outraged him? An aspersion on his professional character?
That
was the accusation he answered?

Caleb’s hand shot out and wrapped around his stepfather’s neck. He watched his own fingers tighten, watched Theodore’s face begin to turn purple, and that small taste of satisfaction made him want more.

Theodore struggled, so Caleb shoved him against the shed wall to keep him still. “How many times did you have tea with her father? How many times did you sit across from her at your own dinner table? Were you thinking up ways to rape her the whole time?”

Theodore tried to shake his head. “Wasn’t…rape,” he choked out.

“It was rape,” Caleb growled, squeezing tighter. “You pushed her into a corner and then told her there was only one way out.”

Theodore’s eyes started to roll back in his head, so Caleb let up his grip enough to allow blood flow.

His stepfather coughed and wheezed. “She had a choice,” he managed to say.

“
You
had a choice.” Caleb let go of the man’s throat just so he could slam his head against the wall. Hard. “
You
had a choice, and you chose to violate a girl who needed your help.” Caleb slammed him against the wall again, that animal inside him growing stronger, howling at the sound of a skull hitting hard wood. “How long were you waiting for an opportunity to violate her? How long were you thinking of her as a piece of meat you wanted for yourself? You fucking bastard!”

He leaned in close, ignoring the way his stepfather’s hands clawed desperately at Caleb’s arms. “I’m going to live my whole life happy I’m the one who sent you to hell.” Caleb slammed him into the wood one more time, then pulled his arm back, already envisioning his fist crashing through Theodore’s face, breaking bones and tearing skin and driving all of it into his worthless, vile brain.

“Your…your mother,” Theodore rasped.

Caleb looked over his shoulder, fist drawn back and shaking. There was no one standing there. His mother hadn’t seen a thing.

His stepfather wheezed in a breath. “Your mother. Think of her!”

Caleb’s arm trembled. He pulled his fist back another inch and watched Theodore try to hunch down. “She deserves better than you.”

“This will destroy her!”

Caleb shook his head. He closed his eyes. He needed to make this monster pay. He
needed
to beat him into nothing.

But was he really going to murder his mother’s husband? Destroy her life as well as the life Caleb meant to build with Jess? He’d stopped short of killing anyone in California, despite what the bosses had wanted. But this would be easier, wouldn’t it? Killing this man who clearly deserved it?

But Caleb couldn’t buy land to start a new life if he was a wanted man. He wouldn’t be able to promise Jess much of anything. Then again, he could give her all his gold and let her make her own life, free of this fucking family of beasts who’d hurt her.

“Caleb,” his stepfather whispered. “Your mother’s a good woman. Please don’t do this to her.”

Caleb shook him. “
You
did it.”

“It was a mistake.”

A mistake. Like knocking a glass off a table?

He should kill this man and deliver his sorry heart to Jessica’s door. It’d be the only thing to appease Caleb’s fury. But that would be the selfish way, wouldn’t it? To leave her alone again for the sake of his pride? Not much different from the selfish decision he’d made to leave her here alone and make his fortune in California.

And if he killed Theodore Durst, his mother would need to know the reason. The whole town would.

Caleb lowered his arm. He let his grip loosen.

Theodore fell to the ground and bent over, coughing and sucking in air.

Caleb straightened his cuffs and shook out his aching hand. “Know this,” he said to his stepfather.

The man’s head jerked up, terror still bright in his eyes.

“If I can’t make her happy, if I can’t make this right, I’ll come back here and find you. Every night when you go to sleep, know that you might find me standing at the foot of your bed when you wake up. I will never, ever forget what you did. What you took from her, you fucking animal.”

He walked out, leaving his stepfather huddled on the floor. If the man was bruised or bloodied, he’d have to find a way to explain that to his wife. He’d tell a lie, certainly, but Caleb didn’t know if his mother should ever hear the truth.

His body felt stiff and strange as he mounted his horse and turned it back toward Jess’s. He urged his mare to a run, his blood churning, looking for some release for this new pain. He didn’t know what he planned to do or say. He just knew it needed to be
now
.

He tightened his aching hand on the pommel and leaned in. His horse stretched out and raced down the road. When his mind tried to show him pictures of Theodore violating Jess, Caleb growled and focused on the road ahead, the stand of trees that signaled he was halfway, then the slight curve in the road that was just before her house.

He rode into her yard in a cloud of dust and pulled his horse up too hard. Spotting Jess in the garden, he slid to the ground and started for her.

She stood, putting a hand to her back as if it was sore, and frowning at him. Caleb was ten feet from her when he caught movement from the barn. Bill stepping out to guard her.

Caleb ignored Bill and moved closer to Jess. “It was him,” he said, the words hoarse and dry.

“What?” she asked in confusion, but then her eyes widened and the color fell from her face.

He stopped two feet from her. “Theodore. He was the one.”

She dropped the spade she’d been holding and took a step back. “Oh,” she breathed. Then “oh” again as she sank to her knees in the dirt.

“Jess.” He reached for her as Bill said his name, a sharp crack of warning, but Caleb paid no attention. He knelt and grabbed Jessica’s shoulders to steady her. Both her hands rose to cover her open mouth.

“No,” she said past her hands.

Caleb gripped her tighter. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She stared at him, eyes swimming with tears as her hands fell slowly to her lap. “You shouldn’t have come back.”

“I had to. I love you.”

“How can you say that?” she cried.

“Because it’s true.” He tried to pull her into his arms, but she went stiff.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Miss Jessica,” Bill said from somewhere close. “You all right? You want me to leave or stay?”

Her blue eyes rose, searching the space behind Caleb as if she couldn’t quite place Bill or what he was doing there. “I’m fine,” she said. “He’s fine.”

But Caleb wasn’t fine. He was breaking inside as tears slipped from her eyes.

“You should go away,” she whispered. “Go away and never see me again.”

“I plan to go, but I’m taking you with me.”

“You can’t.” She sat back, wilting, her skirt spreading over the dirt. “Your family… I’ve ruined everything for you.”

“You haven’t. I’m the one who left. I’m the one who gave you doubts. And if he…if he used those doubts against you, it was only because I wasn’t here.”

“Caleb…” She closed her eyes. Squeezed them shut. And when she opened them, some of the wild shock was gone. “How could you even think about loving me? After what I did and with
him
?”

“You trusted him, Jess. And he used that trust to hurt you. He kept your last letters back. He must have. What did he tell you?”

She swiped at the tears on her cheeks, but more spilled over and wet her face again. “He said you had a sweetheart. That you weren’t coming home. He acted so
sorry
about it. When I wrote and you didn’t answer, I knew it was true. I knew I…I didn’t have anyone.”

“That bastard,” Caleb barked. “I should go back and finish him off.”

She grabbed his arm. “What did you do, Caleb?”

“Not as much as I should have. He’ll live.”

Her chest sank as she blew out a long sigh. “Good. Your mother…your poor mother.”

Poor indeed, to be married to a man like Durst, but there was nothing Caleb could do to help that. “Jess, I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t say that. It was my fault. I
chose
it. I was stupid and naïve—”

“If you were, he should’ve protected you from that, not
hurt
you.”

“I don’t know,” she said, covering her face with her hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Who was the other man? The one you ran from?” Even the question made him sick, imagining his stepfather orchestrating something so vile, so evil.

She shook her head, and he thought she wouldn’t answer, but then she whispered the last name he’d expected to hear. “Minister Forbes.”

“What?” he snapped, flinching in regret when she jumped. “That soulless monster. I’ll slit him open from his—”

“No. There’s nothing you can do that won’t make it all worse, Caleb. It’s over now. It’s done.”

She was wrong. There was something he could do. “Let’s leave, Jess. We’ll get out of this fucking town and walk away from these people and never come back. We can marry in California. Take the—”

“No. I won’t keep you from your mother that way. I swear I won’t.”

Even after everything, she didn’t want to hurt him. Didn’t want to hurt his mother.

Love for her swelled up to push all his rage away. The anger had slipped free of him. Maybe not for good, but for now.

He eased closer and sat next to her in the dirt, moving slowly so he wouldn’t startle her again. When he put his arm around her, she didn’t stiffen this time. Instead, she leaned in, and her head sank until it rested on his shoulder.

“Do you think I could ever come back here?” he asked. “See that man? Set foot in his house? I’m done here, and that’s his fault, not yours.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Because you hate me?”

“Because I love you. So much.”

That love inside him swelled bigger, pushing on his lungs until he could hardly draw air. “I love you too. And we’ve waited so long for a chance. Just a chance, Jess. Come away from this place. With me. Let’s see what we have together.”

“You’ll hate me someday. How can you even look at me now that you know?”

“The same way I should’ve been looking at you this whole time. As a woman who found the strength to survive. Who didn’t give up. Who grabbed at life and held on. Marry me, Jess. Give me another chance. I won’t leave this time. I won’t let you go.”

“Caleb,” she sighed. She raised her head and looked straight into his eyes. “Maybe…”

“Maybe what?”

She watched him for a long moment, her eyes measuring something deep inside him. Then she nodded as if he’d passed the test. “Let’s just go. I don’t need a wedding to make it right. We’ll go to California, and this will all be a bad dream. I can’t be your wife, but we can go away. For a while.”

“For a damn long while,” he growled. He kissed her. Kissed her until she melted into him and then laid her head back on his shoulder. “And I will change your mind. I’ll make you so damn happy you’ll have to marry me.”

She laughed.

“I can buy a horse,” he said. “Supplies. We could leave in a few days. It’s still early enough to get over the pass before fall. Or we could take the train—”

“No. No, I want to see everything.”

“Then I’ll get you a horse, and we’ll be in California in weeks. There’s plenty of land to be had. Good ranch land.”

“What if you change your mind?” she whispered.

“What if you change yours?”

She laughed again. “Why would I?”

“I behaved badly,” he stated simply.

“As did I.”

“Then I guess we’ll pull along fine together, won’t we.”

‡