Only in My Arms (39 page)

She knuckled her damp eyes and gave him a tentative, watery smile. "Relief," she said, explaining her tears. "And gratitude."

He nodded, understanding. His fingers sifted through the curling ends of her soft hair. "I hadn't imagined you would know so much about healing," he said.

Mary remembered how often she had prayed for the skill that was her sister Maggie's. It didn't seem to her that she knew so very much. "I've always worked in a hospital," she said. "That's what the sisters of my order did."

"Tell me about it."

"The hospital?"

"If you want to start there."

She shrugged. "There's not much to tell."

"I don't believe that," he said. "How did you choose your order?"

"I don't know that I did choose it," she said. "At least not consciously. It was the place that called me. My mother used to make visits to the sick every Wednesday. When I was still very young she would take me to the hospital the Little Sisters operated. Usually I would sit beside her while she read to the patients or wrote letters for them. Sometimes I would get them water or help them with their pillows."

Mary turned a little in his arms. "Jay Mac used to argue with Mama about going. He was afraid she would contract some disease. He thought giving her money for the charity would keep her away, but she always delivered it in person and stayed to tend the sick anyway. It couldn't have been easy for Mama to cross Jay Mac, but she did it once a week for years."

"And took you with her."

Mary nodded. "Every week."

"Until you entered the order. Then she stopped."

Mary raised her head and looked at him. "How did you know?"

"Just a guess."

No, she thought, it was more than that. He had the uncanny ability to listen to her and hear more than she could hear herself. It was like having an echo that was clearer and stronger than her own voice. "I suppose," she said slowly, "that once I was there she didn't feel the need to go as often." Mary laid her head on Ryder's shoulder again. "Mama was going to be a nun, you know. That habit I was wearing when I visited you in the stockade wasn't mine. It was hers. She never told me that it had been something she had imagined for herself."

"Didn't she?"

"Not in so many words. She never seemed to regret her life with my father."

"Perhaps that's because she didn't."

Mary was silent for a long time, thinking. "No, you're right," she said at last. "Mama didn't regret the choices she made, but she never quite gave up her dream either."

"She gave it to you."

"She forced it on me." Even to her own ears her tone sounded harsh and unforgiving.

"You didn't want to go to the hospital with her?" he asked.

It wasn't as simple as yes or no. Mary let her hand be taken by Ryder. His long fingers laced with hers as she stared off to the side, seeing nothing but the memories in her mind's eye. "I was interested in the hospital," she said quietly, "but I was fascinated by the sisters. They moved with such poise and purpose and they were such a mystery to me. Kind. Gentle. Brisk. Reserved. I didn't understand their reservation then. I thought it was characteristic of the habit. It was years before I realized that they disapproved of my mother. She was a whore, you know. At least that's how they saw her. And I was the bastard daughter." Mary smiled a little crookedly as tears hovered and then were suppressed. "My mother didn't go to mass after she became Jay Mac's mistress, but she endured the weekly censure of those nuns."

"To help others?"

"To make amends for the choices she made. In some way I was part of it, falling in with plans that were never quite my own. There was satisfaction in helping others, and I was intrigued by the nuns, but the truth is, if my mother had been going to a racetrack once a week I would have liked that just as well." She felt Ryder's fingers tighten on hers. "I wanted to be with her, that's all." Mary's short laugh was humorless, and she shook her head. "That I can be so selfish—"

"Mary," Ryder chided her. "I don't think—"

"No," she said. "It's true. I was the firstborn and for a while I had her to myself. I was the first Mary. Then the others came and I had to share her as well as my name." Mary felt as if poison were spilling from her heart. "The time at the hospital was so special to me. I knew it pleased her to have me there, and she never took any of my sisters. I think I might have threatened them if they had ever expressed an interest. It was just Mama and me, and if I had to share her with the patients it didn't seem so bad because she approved of me helping." Mary took a dry, aching breath and spoke so quietly that Ryder had to strain to hear her. "And when I followed the sisters around I could see that she liked it even better." She took her hand out of Ryder's and raised herself up, drawing the blanket around her breasts. "I'm not a very good person, Ryder. I think I've always been a fraud. Certainly I've been a liar."

Ryder reached up and touched Mary's cheek. A strand of hair clung damply to the curve, and he pushed it back. "You're too hard on yourself, Mary."

She shook her head. "No, I'm—"

"No one has ever expected as much from you as you've expected from yourself. If you're a deceiver, then you're a completely decent one. The years you spent in the service of your Lord weren't a pretense. You helped others. You were generous with your spirit. You championed those without a voice and ministered to those who had a need. That was no lie you lived. Compassionate... fierce... confident... serene—you
are
those things."

She wanted to believe him. She wanted him to believe what he'd said.

Ryder watched her struggle, saw the doubt surface in her eyes. He sat up, leaned against the stone shelf behind him, and drew Mary into his arms. She curled against him, hugging her knees to her chest. As she had on the night of their first meeting, she fit perfectly in his embrace. "Our paths would never have crossed if you had made different choices in your life," he said.

"I'm selfish enough to admit I'm satisfied with the ones you made." He closed his eyes and rested his cheek against her hair. "I like to believe that God was saving you for me. God knows, you saved me."

Mary's watery smile was imprinted against the knuckles she pressed to her mouth. Huddled in the security of his arms, she slept the deep untroubled sleep of a child.

* * *

"Tell me about Anna Leigh," Mary said. She gave up the pretense of reading and closed her book, dropping it back in the basket. Ryder was sitting on the edge of the stone bed. He had the rope handle of the bucket slipped over his foot, and he was raising and lowering the weighted wooden pail to strengthen his injured leg. There were beads of perspiration on his upper lip as he strained to lift it again. "I think you're doing too much," she said. "Stop that and tell me about Anna Leigh."

He paused—the bucket up in the air—and completely ignored Mary's disapproving look. "You're bossy."

"My sisters say the same thing. It's never bothered me." When it appeared that he wasn't going to pay her any more heed than her sisters, Mary took action. Jumping out of the chair before he guessed her intent, she removed the bucket from his foot and dumped the water back in the pool. She hugged the bucket to her to keep it out of his reach and returned to the wing chair. "You'll thank me later."

Ryder didn't doubt it. For as near as he could mark the passing time he had been working the leg back into shape for three days. This was his second session today, and he knew he had overdone it as soon as he got to his feet. Hobbling to the rocker was painful. Having to hobble in front of Mary only exacerbated the ache.

"Smugness does not necessarily become you," he said, easing himself into the rocker.

"As if I care this much for my looks." She snapped her fingers to punctuate her point.

It was true, he thought. She was rarely troubled by how she appeared. She had no practiced gestures or studied expressions. While an air of serenity marked her features most often, she also could be beautifully animated. Well, not always beautifully, he amended. Right now her expression was downright sour. "All right." He stretched his leg. He massaged the injury lightly through his trousers. "What do you want to know?"

"Why was she with you in the first place?"

"You mean why was she accompanying the troop or why was she with me?"

If anything, Mary's mouth became a trifle more puckered. She sighed impatiently as if his question were unreasonable. "Both," she said shortly.

"Well, as long as you're clear..." His comment didn't provoke a smile, and he finally recognized how serious she was. He wondered what had been going on in that fine mind of hers. She must have been mulling over some part of the situation for more than a week. "Anna Leigh accompanied the troop because her father insisted. I assumed at the time that she did it in part just to show me she could. We had a disagreement the night before the wagons left, and she wanted to prove she had the upper hand."

"What sort of disagreement?"

"She wanted me, and I didn't want any part of her. I wasn't kind."

Mary didn't want to know the details. "You humiliated her?"

He nodded. "And she told me she was coming along the next day. I thought it was a spur of the moment decision on her part, but I've wondered since then if it might have been planned all along."

"Why?"

"Well, her father was adamant about her accompanying the wagons. Even when General Gardner and I explained the dangers, he insisted."

"That seems odd, don't you think?"

"Anna Leigh was very used to getting what she wanted. I think that tradition started with her dear papa." He continued to rub his leg absently. "I stayed away from her the next morning. When I reported that I sensed trouble to the lieutenant, he ordered me to take her with me. I was obliged to follow orders, but she knew I didn't want her along. She hampered my climb back up to the ridge, and at the top she insisted on stopping to drink. The trouble was, she wanted my canteen. Complained that her water was tainted. I thought it was another tactic to slow me down and make me pay attention to her. I traded canteens and drank some from hers to prove she was lying."

Mary's eyes narrowed fractionally. "She wasn't?"

"No," he said shortly. "She was telling the truth about that. Whatever contaminated her water laid me out. It probably would have killed her if she had ever done more than sip it."

"Oh, I doubt she would have done that," Mary said frankly.

"How would she have known it was bad if she hadn't tasted it?"

Mary sat back in her chair. "Because she poisoned it, of course."

Chapter 12

Ryder considered Mary's conclusion. "You think Anna Leigh deliberately poisoned her own drinking water?" he asked. "Why would she do that? What did she have to gain?"

Mary's eyes widened. "Besides revenge?"

He nodded.

"Goodness," she said softly. "I am coming to admire Miss Anna Leigh Hamilton more at every turn. If I'm right, then she's really quite good at what she does." She leaned forward in her chair and explained patiently, "She poisoned her water to achieve exactly the end that happened."

"To create an opportunity to accuse me of rape?" he asked.

Mary shook her head. "That's been your mistake all along," she told him. "You've made Anna Leigh's motives too personal. What happens if you consider she had a larger purpose?" Mary did not have to wait long for Ryder to make all the same connections she had. The intensity of his thoughts was there in his eyes. "That's right," she said, satisfied. "She was the diversion. No one could have expected you to be pulled away from your duty by Anna Leigh alone. Certainly not Anna Leigh, not after her experience with you the night before. That's why she used some sort of drug in her water."

"She couldn't have known I would drink it."

Mary recognized Ryder's pride was making him resistant to hearing her explanation. "I'm sorry, Ryder, but I think she could. Anna Leigh was armed with the fact that you already had determined she was spoiled and manipulative. She used those very qualities to make you think she was lying about the water. And it worked."

Ryder stared at the far wall of the chamber, his half smile rueful. He considered how much Anna Leigh had learned about him the night before the Colter Canyon raid. He had shown her that he did not suffer fools gladly, that he was not above humiliating someone to prove his point, and that he had little patience for feminine wiles. Anna Leigh Hamilton hadn't lost any sleep over how to dupe him. He had built the trap for her.