Schulze, Dallas (24 page)

The hell of it was that he did know it, Bishop thought, feeling
more than a little frustrated himself. She wasn’t talking about the physical
aspect of their marriage. Inexperienced as she was, she had to know that
that
wasn’t in need of work. What she was talking about was something else,
something not so easily defined. It was the kind of thing that women set store
by and that most men could happily ignore in favor of the simpler and more
easily grasped pleasures of the flesh.

“No separate bedrooms,” he repeated and saw her eyes flare with
quick anger. He waited for the explosion but she caught herself with a visible
effort. When she spoke, her tone was painfully level.

“I’m not asking for that much. Perhaps just until the baby’s born.
That’s not much to ask, is it?”

It damn well was, Bishop thought, feeling a gut-deep sense of frustration.
He seemed to see a wavery image of Isabelle superimposed over Lila. Isabelle,
with her pale gold hair and soft blue eyes.
It’s just until the baby’s born.
Please, Bishop, let me go home to St. Louis. I’m afraid to have a baby out
here. I’ll come back as soon as the baby is born. I promise.

Only she hadn’t come back. When he’d gone to St. Louis after
Gavin’s birth, Isabelle had begged him to let her stay longer. The baby was so
small, she’d said. Why put him at risk by taking him into the untamed West?
When he was a little older, it would be better. He’d given in to her pleas. To
tell the truth, his tiny, helpless son had scared the hell out of him. And
despite the mutual dislike he shared with his mother-in-law, she was certainly
in a better position to see to Isabelle and Gavin’s care.

Time had passed and his trips to St. Louis had grown farther
apart. Gavin was two when Bishop realized that, if he didn’t get his wife and
child away from her mother, he was going to lose them forever. So he’d turned a
deaf ear to Isabelle’s tears and moved his family as far from St. Louis as he
could get them. He took a job guarding gold shipments on the journey from the
gold fields to San Francisco and settled Isabelle and Gavin in a small house in
the city.

Isabelle had tried. God knows, she’d tried. But, never a forceful
woman, she seemed to have lost all ability to make a decision on her own. She’d
simply given over control of her life to her mother. Without Louise to tell her
everything from what to wear to how to think, she’d been lost. She’d looked to
Bishop for the guidance she couldn’t seem to live without. By the time
Angelique was conceived, he’d begun to feel more like her father than her
husband.

Maybe if she hadn’t become pregnant again, things would have been
different. Maybe Isabelle would have gotten stronger, more independent. But
when she found out she was carrying another child, she’d begged him to let her
go home. He could have pointed out that “home” was supposed to be wherever he
was, but he hadn’t. Something had told him it was too late, that she was lost
to him. He took her back to St. Louis and left her there to await the birth of
her child. And never saw her again.

“Bishop?” Lila’s questioning tone dragged him back to the present.
“Just until the baby’s born? That’s not asking too much, is it?”

“No separate bedrooms.”

Without giving her a chance to continue the argument, he turned
and strode from the room, sweeping his hat off the dresser on the way out.

“We’re not through talking about this,” Lila said, following him
into the kitchen.

But she might as well have been talking to the wind. He strode
out, leaving the back door to bang shut behind him. Lila glared after him, her
hands clenched into fists at her side. He was the most annoying, obnoxious,
frustrating man she’d ever known. After stamping over to the stove in a most
unladylike fashion, she jerked the lid off the pot simmering there. Then she
snatched up a wooden spoon and stirred the stew with vicious force.

Life would have been much easier if Bishop hadn’t come back to
Pennsylvania. She could have married Logan and been perfectly content with him.
He would have treated her like a gentleman should treat a lady. He wouldn’t
have been so infuriating. With just a cock of his eyebrow, Bishop could set her
temper soaring. Logan would never have
dreamed
of cocking an eyebrow at
her. And he would have understood her desire to have separate rooms. Lots of
couples had separate rooms, even if they’d married for the usual reasons. It
was a perfectly civilized thing to do. But if she said as much to Bishop, he’d
probably say that he hadn’t claimed to be civilized any more than he’d claimed
to be a gentleman. Lila jabbed at a potato, shoving it under the bubbling
juices. She should have married Logan, she thought again. He wouldn’t have
upset her like this.

The door opened behind her and she spun, ready to deliver a
blistering diatribe about people who walked out in the middle of arguments. But
it wasn’t Bishop who entered. It was Gavin and Angel. Lila told herself she
wasn’t disappointed. She’d be just as happy if Bishop never came back at all.
She forced a smile for the children.

“Supper’s almost ready. Why don’t you two get washed up?”

Bishop could eat alone if and when he bothered to return. Better
still, he could go hungry. It was the least he deserved.

***

Dinner was eaten largely in silence. Gavin was never talkative but
Angel could usually be counted upon to fill any awkward gaps in the
conversation. Tonight, tired out by the excitement and turmoil of their move
from the hotel into their new home, she barely stayed awake long enough to get
through her meal. Without her friendly chatter, the big kitchen seemed
painfully quiet. Lila looked up several times to find Gavin watching her. His
blue eyes, so like his father’s, seemed to hold a question. But each time their
eyes met, he looked away without speaking and Lila simply didn’t have the
emotional energy to pull whatever it was out of him.

This wasn’t at all the way she’d envisioned the first evening in
her new home. Bishop was conspicuous by his absence. Angel was practically
falling asleep in her plate. Gavin was watching her with those eyes that were
much too old for a boy of twelve, and she was caught between the urge to track
her husband down and take an unladylike but satisfying swing at his arrogant
nose and the desire to put her head down on the table and howl like a baby.

Lila might as well have been eating sawdust for all she tasted her
food. She was relieved to see the meal end, relieved to be away from Gavin’s
watchful eyes and the empty plate at the end of the table. Pushing her chair
back, she came around the table and scooped Angel up into her arms. She
balanced the sleepy little girl on her hip to carry her to bed.

“Take the lantern and bring in some wood for morning, please,
Gavin,” she asked over her shoulder as she left the room.

He didn’t respond but she knew he’d do as she asked. That was
another way in which he was too adult for his age. There was none of the
rebelliousness she remembered in herself at that age, none of the irritating
whining she’d inflicted on anyone foolish enough to listen to her. If he’d been
a meek or shy child, she wouldn’t have questioned his acquiescence. But she
didn’t believe there was a meek bone in Gavin’s body. Beneath his quiet
exterior was solid steel. Not unlike his father.

The McKenzie men were enough to drive a sober woman to drink, she
thought as she set her stepdaughter down on her bed and began undressing her.
It was too bad they weren’t more like Angel. Not that the child didn’t have a
will of her own— Lila remembered in particular a certain soft blue dress that
was currently trimmed in bright red ribbons—but Angel had the courtesy to wrap
her determination in a soft package, which made it much easier to swallow.

Angel was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. Lila
lingered next to the bed, watching the sleeping child. How had the child’s
mother known what to name her? Bishop had said that his first wife had died
soon after giving birth. Had she looked at her newborn daughter and seen the
sweetness in her even then? Or had she given her the name Angelique as a kind
of prayer for the child she’d known she wasn’t going to be there to watch over?

Lila touched her hand to her own stomach. Thinking of the. life
growing there, she offered up a prayer that she’d be able to see her own son or
daughter grow to adulthood. But there was no sense worrying about that now. Or
any other time, for that matter. It was in God’s hands and she had to trust
that He would take care of her and the child she carried. With a sigh, she
turned and left the room, pulling the door almost shut behind her.

Gavin had just finished filling the wood box when she entered the
kitchen. She saw at a glance that he’d brought in a good mix of small and large
pieces, along with plenty of kindling to make it easy to get a fire going in
the morning.

“That looks fine, Gavin. Thank you.”

She expected him to mumble an acknowledgment and leave the room.
Though she liked to think that he was starting to feel trust, if not yet
affection, for her, he was not much inclined to seek out her company. But
tonight he surprised her by lingering in the kitchen. Lila gave him a
questioning look as she began to clear the table, but whatever was on his mind,
he didn’t seem in any hurry to bring it up. Reminding herself that patience was
a virtue, she continued with what she was doing, leaving him to decide when he
was ready to speak.

She drew enough hot water from the reservoir in the stove to fill
a dishpan. There weren’t many dishes so washing them was the work of just a few
minutes. All the time she worked, Lila was acutely aware of Gavin’s presence.
By the time the dishes were rinsed and set to dry and he still hadn’t said
anything, her patience had run out. Drying her hands on a soft linen towel, she
turned to look at him.

“Are you going to tell me what’s on your mind?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” She arched one brow in disbelief. “You just wanted to
watch me wash the dishes?”

He shrugged and looked down at the floor. Looking at him, Lila was
struck by how young he was. He acted so much older than his years that it was
easy to forget that he was still a child.

“What is it, Gavin?” she asked quietly.

He shrugged again and she thought he might not answer, but then he
spoke without looking at her. “I saw him leave.”

“Your father?” She’d yet to hear Gavin refer to Bishop as anything
other than “him” or “he.”

“Yeah. He looked angry.”

“He might have been a little ... upset,” she temporized. Lord, she
didn’t know anything about being a mother. How was she supposed to handle this?
Nothing in her past had given her any idea of what to say to him. As far as she
knew, her parents had never exchanged so much as a harsh word with each other.
What if he asked her why Bishop was upset?

“Is he coming back?” His tone was casual but there was nothing
casual about his eyes when he looked at her.

“Coming back? You mean tonight?”

“Ever.”

It took Lila a moment to realize what he meant. When she did, she
was horrified that he should think Bishop might leave for good.

“Of course he’s coming back! Why on earth would you think he
wasn’t?”

Again that casual shrug but she had no trouble seeing through it
to the fear beneath. “He didn’t come back before.”

“Before? You mean when he left you with your grandparents?”

“Yeah. And when Mama was going to have Angel and he left us there.
He didn’t come back then.” Lila stared at him, at a loss for words. How could
she have missed seeing how Gavin felt? Had she been so absorbed in her own
fears and uncertainties that she’d failed to see his?

“Sit down, Gavin.” She pulled a chair out from the table and sank
into it, gesturing him to another. He hesitated a moment before obeying. He sat
rigidly upright in the chair, his eyes wary as he looked at her. “Your father
was upset tonight. We ... disagreed rather strongly about something. But that doesn’t
mean he isn’t coming back.”

“How do you know?”

The stark question revealed a deep vulnerability that broke Lila’s
heart. “Because he wouldn’t leave us like that. I don’t know what happened
before. But I do know that he wouldn’t just walk out on the three of us—four,”
she added, touching her stomach. “I don’t know why he left you and your mother
in St. Louis but I’m sure there was a good reason. Did you ever ask your mother
about it?”

It was a risky question. For all she knew, Bishop’s first wife had
had nothing good to say about her husband.

“I asked once. She said I wasn’t to blame him for going—that she’d
sent him away. She said he was a good man who’d made a bad choice. I didn’t
know what she meant but she started to cry so I didn’t ask anything else. She
said it was her fault he wasn’t with us.”

A bad choice? In his choice of wife, perhaps?
Lila wondered. She filed the idea away for later consideration.

“Didn’t you believe her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Again that carefully indifferent shrug, as
if they were discussing a topic that held little interest for him.