Redeeming Love (25 page)

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Michael knew it wasn’t the whole truth, but it hurt none the less. “Don’t lie, Amanda. Can’t you get it through your head I love you? You’re my wife now. Whatever happened before, it’s in the past. Leave it there.”

The lull was over. The storm was on them in a fury.

“Two weeks ago, you wanted to hear everything about me. Do you still want to know
everything?”

“Leave it be!”

She stood up. Keeping her back to him, she ran a shaking hand along the mantle. “You still don’t understand, do you? Even if I wanted things to work, others out there won’t let it happen. Like your fine upstanding brother-in-law.” She smiled dryly and looked up at the wall. “Did you see his face when he recognized me?”

“I’m sorry he hurt you.”

She swung around, glaring at him. “Is that what you think?” She gave a short laugh. “He can’t hurt me. And neither can you.” She wasn’t going to give either of them the chance.

Paul spent a day cleaning his cabin and thinking what to do about Angel.

He had to go back and talk to Michael about her. He couldn’t remain silent.

Michael had every right to know about her deception. Once he knew all the facts, he would do the right thing and toss her out. Like a cat, she would land on her feet.

The marriage could be annulled. It probably hadn’t even been performed by a sanctified reverend, so it wouldn’t count anyway. Michael could put the whole bad experience behind him. With wagon trains pouring into California, he was bound to find another woman, one that would make him forget Angel.

Michael came over and chopped wood with him. They talked, but it wasn’t the way it had been. Paul had too much on his mind, and Michael was strangely pensive. “Come on over for supper,” Michael said before he left, but Paul couldn’t stand the thought of eating with Angel across the table.

Michael looked annoyed with him. “You’ve hurt Amanda’s feelings.”

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Paul almost laughed. Hurt? That hardened harlot? Not likely, but he knew exactly what she was doing. She was driving the wedge between him and Michael. She was out to destroy their friendship. Well, if she wanted to play rough…“I’ll be over tomorrow.”

Angel was outside beating blankets on a line when he arrived. She paused and looked straight at him. She wasted no time flinging the gauntlet in his face. “He’s working down at the stream on the springhouse. Why don’t you get it off your chest before it eats you alive?”

“You’re betting I won’t, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I think you will. You can hardly wait.”

“Do you love him?” he sneered. “You think you could make him happy?

Sooner or later, he’s going to see you for what you really are.”

Her hand whitened on the stick. Shrugging, she turned away.

“You don’t care about anything, do you?”

“Should I?” She began beating the blanket again.

Paul wanted to grab her and swing her around so he could lay his fist into her arrogant face. “You’re just asking for it.” He headed straight for the stream.

All the stiffness went out of her as Angel watched him go. She sat down weakly on a stump, refusing to acknowledge the feelings coursing through her.

“You came just in time,” Michael said, straightening and wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. “Give me a hand with these planks, will you?”

Paul helped him place the notched log, planed flat on one side. “Michael, I’ve got to talk to you about something,” he said with a grunt as the log banged into place. Michael gave him a dark look he could not decipher. The heat of his own anger made him plunge ahead. “It’s got nothing to do with what happened on the Yuba or why I can’t make up my mind whether to stay. It’s got to do with something else. It’s got to do with your
wife.”

Michael straightened slowly and looked at him. “Why do you feel you have to say anything?”

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“Because you have to know.” He could still see her arrogant face.

“Michael, she’s not who you think she is.”

“She’s exactly who I think she is, and she’s
my wife.”
He bent to his work again.

She really must have gone to work on him the past day. Furious, Paul slammed the next log into place. He looked back across the yard at her. She stood in the doorway of Michael’s cabin. In Tessie’s clothes. He wanted to go over there and rip them off her. He wanted to beat her and chase her right out of this valley. Michael, of all people, tricked. Michael with his high ideals and strength of character. Michael with his purity. It was inconceivable. It was obscene.

“I’m not going to leave it alone. I can’t.” Michael wasn’t even looking at him. Paul caught his arm. “Listen to me. Before she was your wife, she was a prostitute. Her name’s Angel, not Amanda. She worked in a brothel in Pair-a-Dice. She was the highest-priced soiled dove in the whole town.”

“Take your hand off my arm, Paul.”

Paul did. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” He had never seen Michael so angry.

“I know all about it.”

Paul stared at him. “You
know?”

“Yes.” Michael bent for another log. “Take the other end, would you?”

Paul did so without even thinking. “Did you know before or after she got the ring on her finger?” he asked cynically.

“Before.”

Paul banged the log into place. “And you still married her?”

Michael straightened. “I still married her, and I’d marry her again if I had it to do over.” A simple statement, calmly and quietly delivered, but his eyes were burning with wrath.

Paul felt like he had been punched, hard. “You’re besotted with her.

Michael, she has you fooled.” He had to try to reason with him. “It happens.

You haven’t seen a woman in months and then you do, and she’s got pretty blue eyes and a beautiful body, and you lose your head over her. So enjoy her for a while, but don’t try and convince yourself she’ll make a decent wife. Once a prostitute, always a prostitute.”

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Michael clenched his jaw shut. Almost Angel’s own words about herself.

“Stop judging.”

“Don’t be a fool!”

“Shut up, Paul. You don’t know her.”

He laughed at that. “Oh, I don’t have to. I know enough. You’re the one that doesn’t know. How much experience have you had with women like her? You see everything and everyone through your own set of principles, but the world isn’t like that. She’s not worth the pain she’ll bring you. Listen to me, Michael! Do you want a woman who’s been with a hundred men being the mother of your children?”

Michael stared at him. Was this what Angel had put up with all her life?

Condemnation and blind hatred? “I think you’d better stop right there,” he said tightly.

But Paul wouldn’t. “What would your folks say if they knew about her?

Would they approve? What about the neighbors when they start arriving?

Good
people.
Decent
people. What’re they going to think when they find out your pretty little wife was a high-priced prostitute?”

Michael’s eyes darkened ominously. “I know what
I
think and what God thinks, and that’s all that matters. Maybe you ought to get your own life in order before you examine hers.”

Paul stared at him, smarting. Michael had never used that tone of reproach on him before, and it hurt. Couldn’t he see he was only trying to help; he was only trying to prevent him from being destroyed by that worthless woman? “You’re like my own brother,” he said thickly. “You saw me through the worst times in my life. I don’t want to see you destroyed by some conniving witch who’s got your heart so twisted around her little finger you don’t even know you’re heading for disaster!”

A muscle jerked in Michael’s jaw. “You’ve said enough!”

But all Paul could see was a prostitute in his beloved Tessie’s clothes.

“Michael, she’s nothing but
dung!”
He didn’t even see the fist coming. He didn’t even know what happened. Pain spread along his jaw, and he was lying on his back, Michael standing over him, fists clenched, face livid.

Michael caught him by the front of his shirt and yanked him to his feet, shaking him like a rag doll. “If you love me as you claim to, then you love 178

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her as well. She’s part of me. Do you understand? She’s part of my flesh and my life. When you say things against her, you say them against me. When you cut her, you cut
me.
Do you understand?”

“Michael—”

“Do you understand?”

It was the first time in his life Paul had been afraid of his brother-in-law.

“I understand.”

“Good,” Michael said and let him go. He moved away, his back to Paul, trying to control his anger.

Paul rubbed his bruised chin. She was the cause of this dissension between them. It was her fault.
Oh, I understand all right, Michael. Better than
you do.

Michael rubbed the back of his neck and looked at him. “I’m sorry I hit you.” He let out his breath and came back. “I need help, not hindrance.

She’s in pain you can’t even begin to understand.” He made a fist, his face tormented, his eyes filling with tears. “And I love her. I love her enough to die for her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.
Be silent!”

And Paul was, while they worked, but his mind was yelling the whole while. He was going to help Michael the best way he knew how. He was going to drive her out. Somehow. The sooner, the better. He would find a way.

Michael broke the tension. “You’re going to have to go to town and lay in supplies for winter. I haven’t got enough to stake you.”

“I haven’t any gold dust.”

“I have a little laid by. It’s yours. You can use my horses and wagon.”

Paul felt ashamed. But why should he? He was only trying to keep Michael from being hurt. Michael was a thinking man. He would come to his senses. His big problem was overlooking defects of character in others.

He looked at a harlot and saw someone worthy of love.

Paul seethed. Already she was coming between them. Already she was breeding contention. He had to think of some way to flush Angel out of her comfortable hole and send her back where she belonged. And he had to do 179

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it before she broke Michael’s heart into little pieces.

They set the last plank into place. The inside walls were up. Michael said he could manage the roof on his own. He put his hand on Paul’s shoulder and thanked him for the help, but the tension was heavy between them.

“You’d better head for Pair-a-Dice tomorrow. Tell Joseph I’ll settle up with him in a few weeks. He’ll see you get everything you need.”

“Thanks.” Pair-a-Dice. Maybe he could find out a little more about Angel and her weaknesses when he got there. The Duchess would want her best girl back, and she could always send that big hulking giant who guarded her like she was the crown jewels to get her.

When Michael came in at dusk, Angel didn’t ask what Paul had to say. She put supper on the table and sat down with him, back straight, head up. He still hadn’t said anything. He was probably thinking everything over, examining and weighing. So let him.

The heaviness was back inside her, and she pretended it didn’t matter.
He
didn’t matter. When Michael looked at her, she tilted her chin and looked straight back.
Go ahead and say what’s on your mind, mister. I don’t care.

Michael put his hand over hers.

Pain gripped her heart, and she yanked her hand from beneath his. She couldn’t look at him. Taking her napkin from the table, she shook it gently before meticulously placing it on her lap. When she raised her head again, he was looking at her. His eyes, oh, his eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that. I told you before, I don’t care what he thinks of me, and he can say anything he wants. It’s all the truth. You knew it. And it doesn’t matter. He’s not the first man who’s looked down his nose at me, and he won’t be the last.” She remembered Mama walking down the street, and the men who had come to the shack walking right on by like they didn’t know her at all.

“I might believe you if you weren’t so angry.”

Angel raised her chin. “I’m not angry. Why should I be angry?” She had no appetite, but she forced herself to eat anyway, just so he couldn’t make something of it. She cleared the dishes. Michael put another log on the fire.

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“Paul will be gone a couple of days. He needs supplies. He’ll be over tomorrow morning for the horses and wagon.”

Angel lifted her head slightly, thinking. She poured water into the basin and washed the dishes. Michael wouldn’t take her back where she belonged, but she knew Paul would. Just to save poor Michael from himself.

Something squeezed tight inside her at the thought of leaving Michael.

She forced herself to think instead of the satisfaction she would feel when she faced the Duchess again and demanded her money. She could always enlist the bartender’s help if she had to. He was as big as Magowan and had plenty of practice with his fists. As soon as her gold was safely in her hand, she would be free.
Free!