Her Colorado Man (14 page)

He grinned and took her hand. “Are you ready to be my wife?”

“I am.”

The next document she held was a marriage certificate. She studied the judge’s script and their signatures, noting the date. Wilhelm and Mary Violet had their marriage certificate framed and hanging in their parlor, but she and Wes would keep theirs hidden, so no one would see the date. That was all right. Because he was truly her husband, and in her heart it didn’t matter when he had become so.

Right there in the wide hallway, Wes pulled her up close and kissed her hard. “Let’s go find our son, Mrs. Burrows.”

Mariah’s eyes stung and she fought back tears. She leaned her forehead against his crisp white shirt until she got her emotions under control. Wes rubbed her back in a comforting caress.

Voices alerted them to people on the stairs, and they pulled apart, but Wes kept her hand securely in his. Two men and a woman carrying a stack of papers reached the corridor. The woman gave them a warm smile. “Are you newlyweds?”

At their affirmative replies, she congratulated them, and the bride and groom dashed down the stairs.

Their building at the Exposition grounds was the central location for keeping track of family members and schedules, so Wes got their buggy and they set out.

Today artists had easels set up along a stretch of the concourse; several of the paintings had been bedecked with ribbons holding prize medals. “If we have time
later, I’d love to see the paintings and sculptures,” Mariah said.

The sun was high in the sky, a humid wind lifting the flags and edges of the canopies as Wes pulled the buggy around the back of the building under a tall awning. He helped Mariah down, and they strolled hand in hand around to the front.

Several guests sat in the shade, sipping mugs of beer. Aunt Ina stood in the doorway, her sharp gaze landing on Wes and Mariah. She mopped her forehead with the hem of her apron. “Do you know what happened?”

“What’s happened?” Mariah asked, and her first panicked thought was that John James or her grandfather had been in an accident. “Is John James all right?”

“As far as I know he’s fine,” she replied. “But Clara found Hildy on the floor in her room this morning.”

Hildy! “Is she all right?”

“I don’t know. They called a doctor and he had her taken to the Sisters of Charity Ward, where she could be looked after. Clara’s with her. I saw Hildy when they carried her out, Mariah.” She got tears in her eyes. “She looked bad.”

Mariah guided her inside where it was marginally cooler. “You should probably rest. Wes can take over your shift, can’t you, Wes?” She glanced up at him.

“Yes, ma’am. I’d be glad to.”

“I need to go be with Clara.” Ina mopped her eyes with her apron hem. “It’s that man, Mariah. Her
mother’s always had a bad feeling about him, but Hildy won’t hear it when Clara asks questions.”

Mariah had more than a bad feeling about Philo, and she dreaded hearing what had happened to her cousin.

“You take your aunt to the hotel to freshen up, and then see if you can visit Hildy,” Wes told her. “Take the buggy.”

Mariah gave him a grateful nod. He hugged her, and she helped Ina gather her things and they headed for the hotel.

“If it’s all the same, I think I’ll nap an hour,” Ina told her on their way into the hotel.

“Of course.” Once she’d seen Ina to her room, she asked directions to the Sisters of Charity, which she followed until she reached a narrow brick street.

The hospital was a gray stone building with two levels. The smell of ammonia didn’t disguise the sour stench that stung Mariah’s nose. She was directed along a hallway, where she kept her gaze fixed straight ahead without looking into the rooms she passed. She heard moaning from the interior of one and cursing from another.

The nun showed her into a dimly lit room and turned away, her shoes squeaking along the tiled corridor.

Aunt Clara sat on a wooden chair beside a cot, holding the hand of someone Mariah didn’t recognize.

Hildy’s features were swollen and bruised. She had a cut above one eye and her arm was bandaged in plaster. Horror rose up in Mariah’s throat, and she had to swallow hard to fight it down.

“Aunt Clara?”

Her aunt looked up. Her lower lip trembled. “He did this to her.”

“P
hilo is nowhere to be found,” Clara said, “but he did this to her. You saw him last night.”

Oh, she’d seen him last night, and she’d been nothing but eager to get away.

Clara dabbed her nose with a hanky. “One of the hotel residents on the third floor complained at the desk last night that there was a racket going on up above. The man at the desk checked it out and said Philo answered the door and told him a table had broken. He said he’d pay for it in the morning. The rest of us were still at the Exhibition when this happened to her.”

Mariah and Wes had come back to the hotel before the others, but Hildy’s room was halfway down the hall from theirs.

“Patrick and Marc are looking for him. They told the marshal what we believe happened, but he wasn’t helpful.”

“Has she spoken?” Mariah asked.

Clara shook her head and sobbed. “She hasn’t been awake.”

“At all?”

“Not at all.” She raised the sodden handkerchief to her face and swabbed tears. “The doctors said she might have something wrong with her brain.”

All the air sucked from Mariah’s lungs. The room blurred, and she reached blindly, grasping the foot of the metal bed and keeping herself upright.

“Sit down, honey.” Clara got up and gave Mariah her chair. She found another and pulled it across the floor.

As soon as her vision cleared, Mariah leaned forward to take Hildy’s delicate pale hand and press it to her cheek. A thousand regrets welled up and consumed her. Even through her tears, it hurt to look at her cousin’s puffy, battered face. “Is that arm broken?”

Clara nodded. “They packed it in ice and only set it about an hour ago. I guess it’s a blessing she’s not awake and in pain, but I’m scared.”

Mariah laid her face on Hildy’s shoulder and cried. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Regret became a living, breathing thing inside her. She’d seen Philo’s behavior the night before. Because she’d been eager to get away, she’d ignored the signs. “I should have known.”

“We all suspected something was wrong.”

“But I should have
known,”
Mariah cried in anguish.

“You couldn’t have,” Clara assured her.

Though seeing her was torture, she kept her eyes
on her cousin’s face. She would not leave Hildy’s side. She’d sit right here and will energy into her until Hildy woke up.

It was, after all, her fault this had happened.

Roth brought John James to Wes that afternoon, and Wes kept him busy in the kitchen. Later, he took him next door for ice cream. Wes assigned the child manageable chores while they finished supper dishes. Roth’s mother was planning to take Emma and Paul for the evening, and she asked if John James could accompany them.

Wes agreed he’d have a better time with the other children than waiting around for him. He took him for a stroll along the concourse first.

“Where’s Mama?”

“She’s with Hildy at the hospital.”

“Is Hildy going to get better?”

Wes had heard the bad reports from other family members. “The doctors are taking good care of her. She’s at the best place she can be right now.”

“Maybe I can go see her.”

“Maybe in a few days. I’ll come get you when I’m done here tonight, all right?”

“All right.”

Annika and Robert arrived to take a shift, so Wes left and visited the hospital. He got as far as the hallway outside Hildy’s room.

Marc and Patrick, Hildy’s brother and father, blocked his way. “We haven’t found Philo yet,” Patrick said.
“We’ve checked around, think he might be in the clubs or saloons. We’re going to eat and then go looking.”

“I’ll come with you,” Wes told him. “I thought I’d talk to Mariah first. Maybe take her to dinner.”

Marc inclined his head. “You can try.”

Wes entered the room where Clara and Mary Violet held their vigil seated on wooden chairs. His new wife was on her knees beside the narrow cot, holding Hildy’s hand. He wasn’t sure which sight distressed him more: Hildy’s grotesquely discolored face or Mariah’s red and puffy eyes and nose.

Wes stepped closer and said softly, “Mariah?”

Mary Violet and Clara slid their chairs aside, so he could get close.

Sensitive to her distress, he hunkered down beside her. “Mariah?”

“This is my fault.” Her voice was hoarse from crying. She turned her mournful blue gaze on him, and his chest tightened. It was her wedding day, and here she was making herself sick by taking responsibility for something that couldn’t possibly be her fault.

“I know how much you love her,” he said. “Everyone loves Hildy. But this isn’t your fault. She didn’t ask anyone for help or let anyone know how bad things were.”

“I should have known.”

He exchanged a look with Clara before asking, “Had she told you Philo hit her?”

Mariah shook her head and glanced at her aunt. “She hid it. We figured out that all along she’s been hiding
the bruises and telling us she was staying home with terrible headaches. I let her get by with those lies.”

“Darling, why don’t you come have something to eat with me?” He rested his hand on her arm. “We’ll get a meal nearby.”

She pulled away from his touch. “I’m not hungry. I’m staying here.”

He looked at Mary Violet, and she shrugged. “She hasn’t moved from that spot all day.”

If Mariah was determined to stay with her cousin, Wes couldn’t pick her up and carry her out screaming. She knew what she wanted. “I’ll bring you something.”

She didn’t reply.

He looked around, scoured the hall and located another chair, which he brought to Hildy’s bedside. “Sit here,” he insisted.

He took the hand she raised and helped her up. She scooted the chair as close as possible and sat, once again taking Hildy’s hand.

“Have you eaten?” he asked Clara and Ina.

“Patrick brought us sandwiches,” Ina told him. “Mariah wouldn’t touch hers.”

Patrick and Marc waited in the hallway. A muscle ticked in Patrick’s jaw. “I know how she feels. I’m kicking myself right about now, too. A man ought not let something like this happen to his daughter.”

They ate in glum silence in a café across the street from the hospital, and Wes paid for soup, a slice of buttered bread and milk to carry back to Mariah.

She nibbled at the bread, but used the spoon to cautiously trickle tiny portions of the soup between Hildy’s lips.

They didn’t find Philo that night. Wes took Clara and Patrick’s day shifts for the two days that followed, and at night he joined the men in scouring the city.

Faye and Mary Violet prepared to take the children home to Ruby Creek. At the train station, Wes knelt down to John James. “Take good care of Yuri for me when you get home. Mama and I will be there shortly.”

“And Hildy, too.”

“That’s what we’re all praying for, buddy.”

John James wrapped his arms around Wes’s neck. The little boy smelled like clean laundry and out-of-doors, and his hair was soft against Wes’s cheek. “I love you, Papa.”

“And I love you,” he answered, his words thick with emotion. “You be a good boy for your aunts now.”

Wes watched them board the passenger car and minutes later waved back at John James who grinned from the window.

Mariah’s distress for her cousin, at the expense of everything else, including seeing John James off, was disturbing. Wes was at a loss to know how to fix it, except to be there for her.

After three days and nights, Mariah collapsed in exhaustion. Wes caught her before she struck the floor. He carried her to the buggy, then through the hotel lobby and up to their room, where he placed her on the bed.

She still wore the pale yellow dress she’d worn when they’d said their marriage vows. He removed her shoes and stockings, unbuttoned her wrinkled dress and tugged away as many clothes as he could manage before bathing her face and hands with fresh water.

Tucking the sheet around her, he closed the drapes and sat nearby to wait. He went out occasionally, making certain the shifts were covered at the beer garden. That evening Louis came to the room, and Wes ushered him in.

“How is she?” Louis asked.

“Still sleeping,” he answered softly. He lit the lamp on the wall, keeping the flame low, and ushered her grandfather to the side of the bed.

Louis studied her sleeping form. Her skin was paler than usual, and her lashes rested against the dark hollows under her eyes. “I love all of my children and grandchildren,” Louis said. “Great-grandchildren, too. And as much as we try not to have favorites, some just latch on to your heart in a real special way.”

Wes got him a chair. Louis backed onto the cushioned seat awkwardly.

Wes sat facing him. “Yes, sir.”

“This is a real mess, this business with Hildy and Philo. Mariah’s taking it real hard.” Tears welled in Louis’s eyes. “Real hard.”

“For some reason she’s blaming herself,” Wes replied.

“I guess we all pretty much feel to blame for not figuring it out sooner.”

Wes could only nod.

“I’m real glad you came home, son,” Louis said, lifting his gaze to Wes’s. “She missed you, and John James needed his father. It’s a good thing you did, coming home. It’s plain to see how she feels about you. Your heart is on your sleeve, young fellow.”

Over the last several weeks Louis’s grasp on reality had teetered back and forth on the subject of Wes’s presence. Most times the old man spoke as though Wes had truly been Mariah’s husband all along. Wes figured it was better he take that road than to accidentally tell someone the other story.

“I love her,” Wes told him. “I’m going to do everything in my power to make the two of them happy.” He considered the wisdom of telling Louis that they’d been married the morning before they’d learned about Hildy. He glanced at Mariah. She should have a say, however, so he kept silent. If Louis believed they’d been married all along, the news might confuse him.

A few minutes later, Wes walked Louis down the hall to his room, and then returned. Eventually he undressed and got into bed. He took Mariah in his arms and she snuggled close without waking.

He woke at dawn and eased out of bed without disturbing Mariah so he could wash and shave. He left for five minutes to order breakfast and have coffee sent up. When he returned, her eyes opened.

She stared at him, focusing, then blinked and looked toward the window.

“Good morning,” he said.

Her gaze fixed on him. She seemed rested, but it only took moments for that look of tortured regret to return to her eyes. “I didn’t dream it.”

“You didn’t dream it. I’ll go and get a tub ready for you in the bath chamber. You’ll feel better after you’ve bathed and washed your hair. I’ll help you.”

She rocked her head back and forth on the pillow. “I won’t feel better.”

“Well, you’ll feel clean. And I’ve ordered coffee and some breakfast.”

“I’m not—”

“Don’t say it. You’re going to bathe and eat and put on clean clothing. You’re not doing Hildy any good by starving yourself.”

He heated water and returned for her, helping her out of her undergarments and into the steaming tub. He poured pitchers full over her hair until it was soaked, then lathered and massaged the wet locks and her scalp.

“I’m not like this,” she said, reaching to wipe dripping suds from her jaw. “I’m stronger than this.”

“You’re the strongest woman I know,” he answered, still enjoying the feel of her thick, soapy hair between his fingers. “I’ve never washed a woman’s hair before.”

She said nothing.

“I kind of like it.”

Once he had her hair rinsed free of suds, he gave her a towel to wrap it and had her stand so he could wash her.

With every tender caress of the soapy cloth, another fissure widened in Mariah’s breaking heart. There was nothing sexual about the way he cared for her. He respectfully took care of her needs as though she was a needy child.

He wouldn’t be able to look at her body or attend to her like this if he knew. He would never have made her his wife, would never have made love to her in the tender way he had. Wes never would have loved her….

The air had cooled her wet face, so the tears that trailed her cheek scalded.

“Let’s dry you off, darling.” He dried her tears. Her body. Wrapped her in toweling and then her wrapper. “It breaks my heart to see you this way.”

“You wouldn’t be doing this if you knew,” she said. “You wouldn’t love me. You would never forgive me.”

Her statement confused him, but she was distressed and not herself. He picked her up and swiftly carried her down the hallway and into their room. “Our breakfast is here.”

“I can’t eat.”

“You’re going to eat.” His tone held a firmness that told her his tolerance had limits. He set her down on a chair near the small table.

“Will you check and see if there’s been any change?”

He understood she was asking about Hildy. “I will if you eat while I’m gone.”

She nodded, and the towel tumbled loose.

He took it from her head and dabbed at the ends of
her hair, then brought her comb from the bureau. “Can you do this?”

She nodded.

“And eat.” He grabbed his hat. “I’ll be back soon.”

Her arms had never been so heavy, her fingers so clumsy, but she raised the comb and started at the ends of her hair, untangling and smoothing. It was a mindless task, one she’d performed hundreds of times. She finished and looked at the tray he’d set nearby.

She pulled it closer and removed the cover. The smell of bacon and eggs made her belly rumble. How long had it been since she’d eaten? Picking up a fork, she took a few bites and tasted nothing. Her hand shook as she poured coffee, and the liquid slopped over onto the tray. She added sugar to her cup and drank half.

Her stomach felt full. Setting down the cup, she closed her eyes. Normal everyday things. Eating. Drinking. Bathing. What did any of it matter, really? What difference did anything make if you couldn’t protect the people you loved?

She had done Hildy an unforgivable injustice. What if she never had the opportunity to make it up to her? To apologize? What if Hildy never woke up?