Liz Ireland (13 page)

For a moment she simply stood, her heart pounding so loudly in her chest that she couldn’t think of anything else. Lord, that man was handsome! It struck her then how overwhelmingly glad she was to have saved his life. If Lang had died, the earth would have lost one of its finest specimens of man. Her skin felt feverish just watching him, and she wondered fleetingly what it would feel like to be held in
those
arms.

Her face paled. How terrible to have such thoughts—especially when she had just been kissed by Barton. And yet, she suddenly remembered how giddy she’d been feeling around Lang, and confusion overtook her. Naturally she felt attracted to Lang—he was a dark, attractive stranger—but Barton was a solid Midday citizen, and she’d yearned for him for years.

Lang’s dark eyes flashed at her. “Where have you been?”

His petulant tone jostled her out of her confusing thoughts.

He quickly donned his shirt. “You usually come up before now.”

“Barton was here.”

Lang sent her a distressed glance.
“Barton?”

She let out a laugh. Why, Lang sounded almost jealous! “We went for a walk.”

One dark brow rose curiously. “And?”

She crossed her arms. “What makes you think there’s any more to tell?”

“Because walking doesn’t usually make you hum with happiness, or your eyes shine.”

Emma chuckled and then practically flung herself on the bed. Since Lang wasn’t on it, it couldn’t be too improper. “All right,” she admitted in a rush as if Lang had browbeaten the news out of her, “he kissed me!”

Lang just stared at her. Apparently he didn’t share her joy.

She sat up straight and tried to be more sober, but the effort was futile. That kiss had been more intoxicating than a whole snifter of brandy. At least in retrospect. At the time it was actually happening she’d been too stunned, not to mention uncomfortable, to be intoxicated. “I think he likes me very much,” she said, unable to keep the breathless tone of disbelief out of her voice.

Lang didn’t seem to believe it, either. “Are you sure that’s what it is?”

“What are you talking about?” Emma asked.

“Emma, doesn’t it strike you as strange that the sheriff is spending so much time with you so recently after my arrival here?”

She frowned, considering. Of course it was a coincidence.
Rose Ellen had also brought up the subject of “Mr. Archibald.” But what did it matter?

“He hasn’t mentioned me?” Lang persisted.

She thought back. “Once.” And she took great pleasure in puncturing the smug look that came over Lang’s face. “He told me how smart I was to take in a boarder.”

Lang was surprised. “That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

He shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

“Like what?”

“The way he’s hanging around here.”

Emma tossed up her hands in frustration, then bounced off the bed in a huff. “Is it so difficult for you to believe that a man might be interested in me just for me?”

“When it’s the sheriff? Yes!”

“Well, thank you!” Emma felt red with fury. “Now I can see what you really think of me. You sound just like Joe Spears—and my sister!”

His mouth popped open, then closed. “Emma, I didn’t mean it that way.”

“It certainly sounded like it,” she retorted.

“I only meant that…well, how trustworthy is this man?”

He meant that it wasn’t likely that a handsome sheriff would suddenly appear out of the blue and declare himself to her. That’s what she’d thought, yet it had happened. “He’s the sheriff, from one of the oldest families in the county. And he cares for me.”

“Or so he claims….”

“I realize I’m a twenty-eight-year-old spinster,” she raged, her chest heaving indignantly, “but stranger things have happened! Where is it written that the whole world should experience love, except for Emma Colby?”

“Emma, I never said that.”

She didn’t hear him. Tears burned her eyes, and she could feel her last hold on control slipping away from her. “Where are the requirements for being marriageworthy written in stone? I’ve never seen them! If they are available, I’d like to look over them to find out just under what circumstances I’m allowed to find a little happiness for myself!”

In a frenzy, and before she could burst out in tears, she flew from the room, shocked and humiliated by her outburst. The whole house had probably heard her raving like a madwoman!

What a fool Lang must think she was!

But what an irritating man! And how like a male to assume that
he
must be the reason for everything. The sheriff declares love for her, and Lang is at the heart of it. She let out a derisive, defensive hoot and threw herself across her bed, where she wept for longer than she had since her father died. This should have been the happiest day of her life. She should have been rejoicing at finally getting what she’d wanted for so long. She should have been reliving her first official kiss again and again.

Instead, she was confused and exhausted and emotionally drained. Worse still, she couldn’t banish the image of Lang’s skeptical look, and that question.
Doesn’t it strike you as strange…?

Rose Ellen consumed so many chocolates that by suppertime she was in a particularly foul humor. All through the meal—which, feeling frightfully full, she could only pick at—she pouted, by turns saying nothing to anyone and then lashing out unexpectedly at Emma, or Lorna, or Annalise. Emma and Annalise bore her criticism with disapproving frowns, but at dessert, when Lorna took a second helping of cake and Rose Ellen made a pointed remark
about guests eating them out of house and home, Lorna dropped her fork and fled from the room.

Emma wondered how she came to be living in a house of overwrought nerves. Until recently, she had led such a quiet, solitary existence! But she’d finally had enough of Rose Ellen’s bullying. After Annalise excused herself from the table, she eyed her sister reprovingly. “You can’t go on sniping at Lorna, Rose Ellen. I won’t allow it.”

Astonishment and vexation glared back at her from Rose Ellen’s beautiful eyes. “I can’t believe you would speak to your own sister that way!”

Emma shifted uncomfortably. It wasn’t easy giving her only family member ultimatums. For all their differences, she and Rose Ellen had never had a truly sour relationship, and they had even been close when they were children. “I don’t want to be unkind, Rose Ellen, but your behavior is putting me in an untenable position.”

“You’re a fine one to lecture me on
my
behavior!” Rose Ellen railed. “The only reason I’m even here is because you created such a scandal that I considered it my responsibility to come home and set you straight.”

Emma laughed.

Rose Ellen’s eyes flashed. “Yes, set you straight!” she repeated forcefully. “You might be older, Emma, but I’ve been married and have experience of the world. And men.”

At that last word, Emma felt a spike of dread. “And?”

“And from what I can see, your relationship to Lorna McCrae has loosened your moral standards! First you take in Lorna, then you start up some sort of liaison—the nature of which I still cannot fathom—with Mr. Archibald, and now you’ve allowed the sheriff to hoodwink you into believing he cares for you!”

Emma, who had been bristling indignantly through her
sister’s speech, flushed with anger at that last accusation. “Barton
does
care for me.”

Rose Ellen let out a sigh that was almost a sneer. “Oh, Emma, don’t be naive!”

The doubts Lang had planted in her head that morning echoed again now, making Emma defensive. “I am not being naive. I have proof—or I did have, until you gobbled down all those chocolates.”

Rose Ellen clucked her tongue dismissively. “Candy? If I had a penny for all the candy I’ve been given over the years, I’d be the richest woman in the state. Yet you can’t think all those men really loved me.”

“I didn’t say the sheriff loves me,” Emma said, although she assumed he did. “I said he cared for me, that’s all.”

“The chocolates were just meant to flatter you. Apparently the tactic worked better than he could have possibly dreamed. The man’s probably jubilant!”

Emma practically leapt out of her chair. Why did everyone make it sound as if the sheriff could only be using calculation with her? “I’d watch what I said, Rose Ellen,” Emma warned, raising her chin haughtily. “You might be making slurs against your future brother-in-law.”

There! She’d gone out on a limb admitting the sheriff’s hint at marriage, but it was high time Rose Ellen learned that she wasn’t the only woman in the world who could turn a man’s head.

But her sister didn’t look at her with new sudden admiration, or envy. Instead, Rose Ellen’s cheeks paled, and the room suddenly went still. “Oh, Emma. What have you done?”

Emma called on every last scrap of pride she had to square her shoulders and look her sister in the eye. “Nothing that I haven’t seen you do on numerous occasions. I
allowed a man who declared himself fond of me to kiss me.”

Rose Ellen stared at her hard for a moment. “What did he say to you?”

“That’s my business.”

“Doesn’t it strike you as strange that a man who’s barely paid you any attention in twenty-eight years would suddenly heap flattery on you, Emma?”

“He didn’t heap flattery on me,” Emma said. He’d told her that she had gumption, which she thought only the truth. “We just talked like two adults.”

“About what?”

“About my plans for the farm.”

“Oh, Emma!” Rose Ellen shook her head mournfully.

Her nerves jangled with foreboding. If Rose Ellen were simply jealous, she would have continued being scornful and angry, but right now Emma detected pity in her tone. “Barton was very interested in my ambitions,” Emma explained. “He thinks the farm is a very sound idea….”

Rose Ellen’s patience—thin at best—finally snapped. “That’s because he plans to be the farm’s lord and master.”

Emma blinked.

“Don’t you see? I went to town and told him about your plans. Before yesterday afternoon, Barton Sealy didn’t know you were Daddy’s sole heir.”

The dizzying events of the past day reeled in Emma’s mind like a funnel cloud, the bottom point of which was a devastating kernel of understanding. Barton found out she had money, and that very day he came to her house and began to court her. Her blood went cold. “You told Barton that?”

“I thought everyone knew, but he told me everyone in town thought you would be moving to Galveston with
me,” Rose Ellen explained. “Which is only logical. I still think you should, especially now.”

“Rose Ellen…” Emma said warningly.

Rose Ellen sighed. “Anyway, the sheriff promised he would come talk you out of your foolish plan. I should have smelled something fishy when he seemed so eager! His eyes practically glittered when I told him you had a crush on him all those years!”

Emma had to hold on to a chair to keep her legs beneath her. “You told him
that?
”

Rose Ellen looked alarmed. “Well, didn’t you?”

A wave of nausea struck her like a blow.
He’d known all along
. When he’d asked her so humbly if she’d ever thought about him
that way
, he was certain of her answer. He didn’t think he’d been chasing the wrong sister, or that she was pretty, and he probably didn’t even admire her gumption. Gumption! That should have given her a clue right there. What man on earth ever had admired
that
trait in a woman? Joan of Arc had been burned for it, and Queen Elizabeth had died a virgin.

So, probably, would she. It had all been an act. A calculated plan, just as Lang and Rose Ellen had said. She nodded weakly, cursing herself for being all kinds of a fool.

Her sister looked almost sorry for her. And a bit angry, even. “I never did trust that sheriff!” she exclaimed heatedly. “I’m so glad I didn’t marry him!”

But Emma almost had. As the scenes with the sheriff flipped through her mind, she thought glumly of how gullible she had been. Even Rose Ellen hadn’t fallen for a man’s flattery the way she had today. After thirty minutes of her babbling about fertilizer, a man had taken her into his arms, declared his devotion, and she hadn’t detected the slightest bit of insincerity. She writhed in humiliation,
realizing that only an old maid blinded by the first smooth talker ever to cross her path would behave with such astonishing credulity.

But even she had been suspicious of the man at first! Unfortunately, her caution had been thrown to the wind in the face of his supposed interest in her farm plans…and then in her.

Lang had tried to warn her, she remembered suddenly. Gently, he’d tried to shake her into understanding what her stiff-necked pride refused to let her comprehend. Her suitor had ulterior motives.

She patted a hand across her forehead, which was beaded in sweat. Her whole body felt clammy, dirty, soiled.

Rose Ellen gaped at her. “Are you all right?”

Emma nodded. “Of course. I’m not the first woman to be played for a fool, I suppose.”

“How true!” Rose Ellen chimed, then slipped a hand up to cover her pink lips. “I mean…it’s certainly good you’re being so realistic.”

“I’ve had a lifetime of practice.”

Rose Ellen nodded. “A lot of women would go into hysterics after having been duped.”

The trouble was, the numb weariness overcoming Emma
felt
like hysteria. She just wanted to hide forever. She never wanted to see the sheriff again, or anyone else, for that matter.

It was funny—she’d been Lorna’s champion because she felt so sorry for her. For weeks she’d empathized with Lorna, had shaken her head at how William Sealy could be so cruel and heartless, how families could scorn someone they supposedly loved. She’d decided she knew just how she would feel in Lorna’s shoes. But in reality, she didn’t have a clue about the true humiliation and anger and
resentment Lorna must be experiencing. She’d taken only a small taste of the full plate Lorna was getting, and her spirit felt trampled.

“I think I’ll go to bed early tonight,” she said, turning.

Rose Ellen’s dismayed voice followed her to the door. “But what about the supper dishes?”