“Laura, I decleah, you’re no better than that sassy darkie downsteahs in the kitchen.” Sallie flaunted the elaborate train of her fashionable lilac shot-silk taffeta as she swept around Laura’s room fingering the various personal effects Jettie Mae had helped her unpack.
From the bed where she rested, Laura occupied herself studying the effect of Sallie’s half-crinoline and the way the cascades of lilac material were drawn up behind her to create a devastatingly rich effect that had not yet reached these backwaters of fashion. Cattily Laura observed the flatter skirt in front would not long conceal Sallie’s spreading waistline.
That thought triggered a deep pain, and Laura turned her face to the wall. It did not take much imagination to wonder why Sallie’s usually svelte figure had grown more voluptuous these last months.
Laura’s refusal to reply did not deter her cousin. Picking up one of Mark’s tiny gowns, Sallie sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “The least you could do is write to Dr. Broadbent and tell him to come and marry you. The scandal is simply enormous, Laura. I can scarcely hold my head up and go to town.”
“Then go back to New York, Sallie. From the sounds of it, you preferred the society there.” Laura wasn’t up to being polite. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t have to suffer her cousin’s condescension any more than necessary. As soon as she recovered her full strength, she would take her life back again.
“I never saw so many fashionable people in all my life,” Sallie agreed, with a trace of wistfulness. “They make the folks ’round here look like red Indians.”
Laura noticed the exaggerated Southern accent came and went with Sallie’s moods. From some of the things she’d heard these last days, it seemed Sallie’s Southern-belle pose had made quite a hit in the North. It was increasingly obvious that Sallie had wished to stay when Cash had insisted on coming home.
The differences did not bode well for the new marriage, but Laura had never expected Sallie to make Cash happy, not in the way a good wife makes a man happy. No, they both had what they wanted, and neither required the loving relationship that Laura craved. And would never have.
Tired of her self-pitying thoughts, Laura responded just to keep Sallie talking. “Tell me all the places you saw. Was New York as large as they say?”
Sallie’s eyes widened in remembrance as she turned toward the bed. “You never saw such a hotel! It filled a whole block and towered up to the sky, and everything was plush velvet and hushed voices and there were the cutest little boys in red caps right at your fingertips every minute to help with bags and everything. I felt like a princess.
“And Cash had these friends who’d made some kind of investments in California, and they took us to the most dazzling restaurants! Imagine all the crystal that must go into those chandeliers! And silver glittering all over the tablecloths. I never thought the North had such graciousness, but they beat us proud. Maybe Cash will take me back when the harvest’s in. I never did have time to order some winter gowns. I couldn’t possibly go back to wearing what that little dressmaker in town sews. Why, I bet she doesn’t even have one of those new machines that stitch so much nicer! Did you see this? Did you see how fine a stitch holds these ribbons?”
If Laura had seen the expensively laced ribbons on Sallie’s clothes once, she had seen them a dozen times in the last two days. The lilac had discreet black ribbons covered with black lace down the neatly fitted sleeves and around the cuffs and bodice, and Laura would have given her eyeteeth for anything half so elegant.
As soon as she was able, she intended to duplicate the style herself, but the idea of sewing on all that lace and ribbon without the new sewing machine made her fingers ache to think of it. Still, she knew she could do it, and better.
“You never went to town for your gowns anyway, Sallie. And haven’t you forgotten something?” It was a reminder of a subject that Sallie had not yet broached with her, but one that needed to be discussed.
Sallie gave her cousin a suspicious look. Laura knew her face was no longer puffy from the bruises, but the discoloration lingered. She merely wore her hair in a long braid down her back. Not once had her cousin questioned the reason, but she hadn’t had any hissy fits when Laura talked back either.
Sallie frowned and went back to playing with the pretty china pieces on the mantel. “I can’t imagine what I’ve forgotten. Cash promised to give me anything I wanted. And I want to go back to New York.”
“Sallie, Cash isn’t Ward, and he won’t take you anywhere if your belly’s big with child. You’re going to have Cash’s baby, aren’t you?”
The china figurine fell to the stone hearth and shattered. Sallie glanced at it and stepped away. “What’s that to say to anything? You had one. If you can do it, I can.”
Ugliness lodged beside her heart as Laura glanced at the broken figurine. Uncle Matthew had given her that china doll when she had been only a child. She had carried it to Cairo and back, carefully wrapped in dozens of linens and petticoats. And now it lay shattered like all of her dreams. She closed her eyes against the pain and steeled her voice to be calm.
“You were married in January. When’s the baby due? September? October? Are you planning on waiting until the baby is born before going to New York, or do you want to have it on the train?”
Sallie picked up a hairbrush from the dresser and flung it at the wardrobe door. “On the train! Dammit, why should I be burdened with this miserable brat just when life is fun again? Do you know how hard it is to live day after day in this ratty house, watching things fall apart, watching all the brave boys die and go away, watching an invalid grow older and weaker every day? It’s torture! Pure, unmitigated torture! And I’m never going to do it again.”
If Sallie thought she had a sympathetic audience, she didn’t find it. Laura watched as Sallie stalked the room, anger escalating to rage.
“A baby! Who thought the beast would stick me with his brat so soon? That’s all he talks about. ‘Sallie, don’t you think you should stop drinking wine now that you have the child to think about? Sallie, shouldn’t we go home now that there’s a baby to consider?’ He never gives a damn about what I think or how I feel. All he cares about is flaunting his masculine prowess in getting me pregnant before we’re scarcely wed!”
Oh, well, Laura could sympathize with that. Cash had been crowing over little Mark since he’d brought them home. Discreetly, perhaps, but crowing just the same. She’d known it would go straight to his head if he ever learned he had gotten both Kincaid women with child.
Actually, to give him credit, he’d probably be the same were she Jettie Mae, but that was beside the point. Cash had a soft spot for his progeny and no patience with the women who bore them.
Which suited Laura just fine. Just watching her cousin stalk the room like a cat in a cage was sufficient reason to count herself lucky. Never again would she allow a man to tie her down. Let Sallie suffer the disadvantages as well as the advantages of holy wedlock.
“Sallie, you’ve been a married woman, you knew what to expect. You have no one to blame but yourself. You’re going to make yourself sick if you don’t settle down. Having a baby is no picnic, but you’ll get through it if you just take care of yourself. Have you called on Dr. Burke yet?”
“No, and I’m not going to. It’s embarrassing enough to have a husband touching me whenever he wants. I’m not letting some complete stranger into my room.” Sallie drew herself up proudly, though she blushed at her words.
“Embarrassing” wasn’t exactly the word Laura would use to describe Cash’s touch, but it would not do to dwell on just what word she would use. “Sallie, you’re being a prudish old grandmother. Doctors are the modern way. He’s very nice, and he’s from the North. You ought to like him.”
“Well, you can have him. You certainly ought to find somebody.” With that sarcastic comment, Sallie swept out of the room.
Laura sank back against the pillows and stared at the familiar ceiling of her old room. She hadn’t come very far, after all.
Cash arrived after the evening meal, his cheroot still in his hand as he dismissed Jettie Mae and turned his eager gaze to his son. At his request, he’d been given permission to enter after Mark was fed, and he had come so quickly that Laura was still patting the infant over her shoulder, bringing up milky little burps.
She didn’t understand his fascination with the baby. Other men passed out cigars and went on about their business, but from what she’d heard, Cash didn’t seem able to sleep, think, or talk of anything else. Before she was even awake in the mornings, he was at the nursery when Mark began to wriggle and cry with hunger and wet. He popped in at lunch when he should be out in the fields, often carrying some little trinket he’d found in town to amuse his son. And every evening, after dinner, he examined his child for changes since lunch and to play with him until he slept.
Had Cash been her husband, Laura would have been charmed. As it was, she worried herself to sleep each night with this unexpected behavior. She hadn’t planned on staying at Stone Creek. She wasn’t certain where she was going, but she couldn’t live forever under the same roof as Sallie, not while Cash stood between them.
She wasn’t at all certain of her feelings for Cash, and she didn’t want to be. He had stood her friend too often to deny him, but she couldn’t bear to be in the same room with him now. The longing was too deep, too primeval to resist.
“You make a beautiful mother.” Cash stroked a strand of hair from Laura’s cheek before lifting the child from her shoulder.
“So does Sallie,” Laura replied before she could stop herself.
Cash grimaced and balanced the babe in his arms, admiring the sleepy features of his son rather than meet her eyes. “I didn’t think it would be long before you found out. I’m sorry, Laura. Had you only told me . . .”
She pulled her bed jacket closed and tied the ribbon. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s Sallie you’ve always wanted. I knew that. What kind of friend would I be if I forced you into something you didn’t want because of something I did?”
Cash looked startled. “Something you did? I rather thought it took two, my dear. And did the bruises on your pretty face not shame me, I would shake you until your teeth rattled for not telling me while you had the chance. The child is as much mine as yours. Did you not think I had some right in the matter as to how he would be raised?”
“No, I did not. He is mine. I carried him for nearly nine months, not you. You had next to nothing to do with the whole affair. Men are free to go from woman to woman without ever sharing the consequences. Why should you be any different?”
The infant squirmed at the angry voices. Cash bounced him in his arms and whispered soothing words, then spoke more softly when he replied. “You know damn good and well I don’t care what other men do. I was practically raised an orphan by a man who thought I was good only to be his donkey. Do you think I want my child to be treated like that? What do you think would have happened to him had that Brown cretin got his hands on him?”
Laura flinched, but met his gaze steadily. “I’d not let that happen, and you know it. I am quite capable of taking care of my own child, and I mean to do it, Cash Wickliffe. I’m not staying here forever.”
“You can go anywhere you want, miss High-and-Mighty Kincaid, but my son stays here!” Turning on his heel, Cash stalked out of the room, carrying the infant with him.
Laura stared after him in dismay. Never had she dreamed she would enmire herself so deeply by carrying Cash’s child. She should have married Jonathan and gone with him to Arizona. She had been a fool not to.
Jonathan had been a fool to leave her. Settle the differences between herself and Cash, her foot and eye! There would never be an end to those differences now. They would always be there, staring her in the face, speaking to her through the lips of her son. She would never be free again.
Laura’s thoughts were less dramatic when Dr. Burke gave her permission to take the stairs and return to civilization again. After weeks of captivity she was eager for almost anything but the four walls of her room. She dressed carefully in the gray silk she had taken in again to suit her new figure. She had added some black braid in a V over the bodice and taken in the wide sleeve and used the extra material to make a cuff like Sallie’s. It could never be confused with a fashionable gown, but Laura felt like a new woman wearing it. to
Jettie Mae presided over the nursery, and Laura smiled at the notion of Ward Breckinridge’s child lying in the same room with Cash Wickliffe’s. She was still smiling as she entered the immense foyer at the foot of the stairs. She looked around for someone to talk to, only to discover Cash in the parlor doorway, arms crossed over his chest.
“It’s about time, pequeña. I thought you meant to grow to the bed like moss to a stone. Are you joining me for dinner tonight?”
The idea tied Laura’s stomach in knots, Cash’s dark gaze swept over her, but he did nothing more than hold up the door frame as he waited for her reply.
“I was looking for Sallie. Is she not here?”
Cash shrugged and stood up. “She’s been invited for the evening to her former in-laws.”
“And you didn’t go with her?” Puzzled, Laura said the first thing that came to mind. She could have bitten her tongue off as she realized the dark irony behind Cash’s words and now watched the bitterness flash in his eyes.
“They’re not up to white trash this evening. Maybe some other time. Don’t you think it’s just a little bit humorous that I can sit down at table with some of the richest men on both coasts, but I can’t get past the front doors of my own neighbors?”
He hid the pain well, but the bond between them was such that Laura could feel it just the same. She winced and held out her hand. “That’s quite all right. We can be outcasts together. Will you take me in to dinner or shall I find someone else?”
Cash snorted inelegantly and wrapped her fingers around his coat sleeve. “We can invite Jake and Mort from out back and Jettie Mae to join us, and we’ll be right at home with our own kind, my dear. Fallen women and trash, what a party that will make.”
“If you’re going to be mean, I’ll not eat with you. This is my first night out of that wretched room, and I want everything to be pleasant. So please warn me in advance if you intend to get drunk and I’ll go find Jettie for company.”
Cash sighed and relented. “All right, Laura, I’ll behave. Have I told you yet how beautiful you look without that extra color on your cheeks? You were never meant to be a high yellow, my dear.”
He was teasing her, of course, not meaning a bit of what he said, but Laura still flushed. She had no right to take them in any other way but brotherly ribbing. “I was never meant to die of starvation while listening to idiots, either. I expect sensible conversation tonight. I want to hear what you really saw in New York and not how gorgeous the gowns were.”
Cash chuckled and obediently led her to the dinner table. He liked intelligent women. He had married an intelligent woman. If she was also one of the most selfish bitches imaginable, he could learn to live with it for what she brought him. But occasionally it would be pleasant to converse with someone who was not out to skewer him for what he was worth.
And this adorable little monkey he had known since childhood fitted that role well.