The Beloved Woman (35 page)

Justis settled back in his chair and eyed her with loathing. “What kind of bribe do you want this time, Amarintha? What’ll it take to keep your mouth shut?”

She smiled. Years of waiting had finally paid off. “Marriage.” The color drained out of his face. Good. She loved this kind of power. It was so new, so thrilling.

“You’re crazier than I thought you were,” he said, staring at her in horrified disbelief.

“I don’t care what you think of me. Either you marry me or I’ll have my dear, deranged daddy nullify every contract and deed you ever signed in the state of Georgia. You’ll lose everything because you married an Indian. That makes you an Indian, and Indians have no legal rights. My daddy despises you—you’re the only man he can’t humiliate. He’d just
love
to ruin you.”

“Let him try. Damn you to hell, you pitiful, scheming lunatic. I couldn’t marry you even if I wanted to. I’m already bound to a wife.” He jabbed a hand toward the cabin door. “Get out of my sight.”

Amarintha sighed. She’d let him have his rage. She would enjoy it, in fact. “No one knows about your first marriage but me. No one else will ever know it. I won’t tell. You won’t. We’ll marry, we’ll set up housekeeping for a few months, then you can go back to your squaw and never give me a second thought. But I’ll be Mrs. Gallatin—the only Mrs. Gallatin as far as Gold Ridge is concerned. I’ll expect you to build me a nice house and set up a generous bank account in my name.”

He got up, kicked his chair across the room, then bent over his desk toward her. Was he capable of hitting her, she wondered idly. The thought didn’t bother her a bit. She was adept at dealing with much worse threats.

“I’ve already got a wife,” he repeated.

“She need never know you’ve got another one.”

“I’d rather geld myself than share a bed with you.”

“I wouldn’t care if you sliced off the whole ugly business. I don’t want your filth inside me.”

“Dear God, what do you want from a husband, then?”

“Escape,” she retorted. “A home of my own. A new name. A name for my child.”

“Your
child
?”

She nodded curtly. “I’m just a month along. We’ll be married right away, and no one will pay much attention when the babe’s born a month early.”

“Who’s bastard would I be givin’ my name to?”

“That’s none of your business.”

He looked as if he might explode with fury and frustration. “Do you think you can lead me around like a bull with a ring through his nose? I’ve got enough money stashed in New York to keep me rich even if I lost everything I own in this town.”

“Yes. But what about your partner? What will happen to poor, half-crippled Sam and his family if somebody takes over your holdings?”

“I’ll look after Sam. He won’t suffer.”

“Hah. Liar. I see the worry in your eyes, you arrogant fool. Besides, no matter what you arrange for Sam, there’s one thing you most certainly can’t help but lose. The Blue Song land.”

He slammed a fist onto the desk. His voice came out low and lethal. “Nobody’ll take that land from me.”

Amarintha smiled. “The law says you’re a Cherokee now. Go out to the Indian territory if you want to own land. My daddy can turn the law to your ruination and have the Blue Song property auctioned off. Believe me, he’s got important friends in this state who’ll help him. He got the governor to put your squaw in the stockade last year.”

She laughed, watching different expressions cross her husband-to-be’s face. More fury. Despair. Distraction. And finally a grim look that drained all the life out of his eyes.

“You love that savage so much, you’ll do anything to keep her land for her,” Amarintha said happily. “That’s what I was counting on.”

* * *

K
ATHERINE SMILED AND
patted her stomach as she felt the babe kick. She loved the feeling of companionship from having it nestled inside her. Adela and her large brood, plus Vittorio, were leaving for California in one week. After they departed she’d have too much time to sit and wonder why Justis hadn’t returned yet. She hoped the babe kicked often—she needed the distraction.

She was six months into her pregnancy and could no longer hide it under cloaks and shawls. Propriety dictated that she disappear from public view until after the babe was born, and she dreaded spending her days in her room growing bored and anxious.

Someone knocked on the door to the suite. She put a
stack of financial reports down and, drawing a large silk shawl around her, hurried to answer. Thomas smiled at her and bowed, then held out a crumpled, dirty packet.

“I’ve another letter from Georgia for you, ma’am. Looks like this poor thing has been a bad, slow route, but at least it’s here.”

After he left, Katherine studied the unfamiliar hand that had addressed the letter. The script was a haphazard scrawl, as if the writer had been excited or upset.
Something awful had happened to Justis and a stranger was writing to tell her
. Terrified, she quickly ripped the seal.

Katherine frowned in bewilderment as she unfolded a front page from the
Gold Ridge Gazette
. The poorly typeset little weekly had been a source of some amusement to her. But who would send her a clipping from it? No one knew where she was except for Justis, Rebecca, and Sam, and this wasn’t from one of them. And the clipping was several months old. Bewildering. Then her gaze lit on a somewhat smeared headline halfway down the page:

Beside it was written in that strange, unnerving hand: “Your husband is coming home—or is he? His white wife is carrying his child.”

Sometime later Katherine was under control enough to make her way upstairs to Adela’s apartments. When the sturdy little Californio saw her face she gasped and came forward, her arms out. “
Querida
, what is it?”

Katherine dropped to her knees and buried her face in Adela’s flowing black skirt. “My husband has died,” she whispered.

B
ITTER
J
ANUARY WIND
whipped Katherine’s cape and stung her face as she stood on the deck of the big
square-masted brig watching New York slip away behind her. Vittorio laid his arm around her shoulders in a companionable way.

“Come below, Catalina,” he called against the rush of wind and snapping of sails. “Adela is worried about you. Mourning is very hard on any woman, but for one who is going to be a mother—”

“My child will be strong,” Katherine said. She dug her mittened fingers into the deck’s railing. “Strong and perfect.”

“Yes, yes. In California your
bebé
will grow up strong and perfect. We will have a priest christen it with a good Spanish name—”

“A priest?”

“Of course! Your child must be a Catholic and a citizen of Mexico, as you must be. You will have a new life, a new home. Try to look toward the future. The ship’s safe is full of your gold. You will be a wealthy Californio and live at my rancho as an honored guest.”

“I have told you already. I cannot live permanently as your guest. I must make my own life.”

He took her by the shoulders and jerked her around to face him. Katherine was numb inside—except for the occasional movements of the babe, she would have felt completely hollow. The roughness of his touch provoked only a dull curiosity in her, and she puzzled over the cool command in his eyes. She had never seen him look or act this way before.

“Your life is going to be very different now,” he said loudly, and she couldn’t tell if he was yelling merely because of the wind. He had changed since hearing that—as she continued to explain to everyone—Justis had been killed in a mining accident. Now Vittorio was too sure of himself with her, almost imperious. A small, still-alert part of her brain warned her to be wary of this new side of him.

“We have a journey of six months ahead of us,” he
told her. “It will give you time to contemplate your new position and adjust to it. When we reach California you will have stopped grieving for your husband. You will have the
bebé
to care for. You will be ready to do what you must.”

“What I must?” she asked, frowning.

He shook his head. “No more talk. You should go below to your cabin and rest.”

“I want to stay here until the coast is out of sight. Alone.” Anger flared even under the smothering mantle of her despair. She would not be controlled by any man ever again.

Vittorio saw the implacable defiance in her eyes. He stepped back and bowed politely. “As you wish. For now.”

After he left her she turned toward the fading coastline, her teeth clenched.
For now
? Forever. She was free, finally free, and she would raise her child as she pleased, in a place where there were fewer rules—or at least different rules—and an enterprising woman with plenty of gold could have her own rancho. Perhaps in California an Indian and her half-breed child might prosper.

Katherine sagged as a new wave of sorrow tore at her resolve. She needn’t worry about Justis pursuing her; he had bound himself to a new life. He had betrayed and deserted her in a disloyal, dishonorable way that she could never have imagined, and she couldn’t understand how she had misjudged him so much.

The coast became a blurred line hung with blue-green mist, a color that reminded her of the mountains back home.
Home. The Sun Land
. She was leaving it very far behind this time. She was going so far toward the sunset that she would never come back. She would no longer exist except in the memory of a man who was now dead to her. Because he would always stand in her soul, she was dead too.

* * *

J
USTIS HELD HIS
letter—the letter that had arrived at the hotel a week after Katie’s departure—in his hand.

Thomas continued to stare at him as if a phantom had just strode into the hotel’s grand lobby. “Glory, sir, she told me you were dead,” the porter said for the fifth time. “The poor lady was so despairin’ in the way she acted that I never thought she’d be tellin’ me a lie. Sir, let me bring you something hot to drink before that Irish blood of yours turns to ice. You’re shiverin’ like a two-bit sinner. What did you do, sir, run all the way from your ship? And it sleetin’ like a bitch outdoors!”