Chapter 28

Boston: September 17, 1873

It was raining again, she reflected wearily. It had rained every day for almost a week, keeping her inside. She lifted the lace curtain at the window of her room and looked into the street below. It was nearly deserted except for a single horse-drawn cab. She let the curtain drop and returned to her needlework.

By the time the baby made its appearance, it was going to be the best-dressed infant in Boston. But there wasn’t much of anything else to do. And she had no one to share her pregnancy with—except Hap Walker.

She moved to a table and picked up his last letter. He and Vergara were getting along fine, he said. Between them they’d managed to land that fat government contract, and they’d be supplying beef to the reservations up in Oklahoma. He was learning the ranching business and liking it. She reread it, getting to the part that had interested her most.

You won’t be needing to come back for any trial. Both of the Sandovals were killed trying to escape, then buried somewhere down in Mexico. Before he died, Ramon confessed, implicating his father in the death of your mother. The motive was control of the Ybarra. I know it won’t make you feel any better knowing it wasn’t the Comanches, but Clay wanted me to tell you. Other than that you don’t have to worry none about the place. Vergara and I are keeping it going until you decide to come back.

There was a sharp rap on her door. Hastily refolding Hap’s letter, she went to answer it.

“Mrs. Walker, there’s somebody to see you,” the boardinghouse maid told her.

“Are you sure? I mean, I don’t know who it could be.”

“Yes’m. He said Mrs. Walker—Mrs. Horace Walker. That’s you, ain’t it?”

“Yes. Yes, it is,” Amanda said more resolutely. “He didn’t give a name, did he?”

“No’m.”

Mystified, she hesitated. It couldn’t be Kate—Kate didn’t even know she was there. “It’s a man, you say?”

“Yes’m.” The girl bobbed a quick curtsy, then disappeared.

It was probably a mistake. Nobody knew her real identity, and certainly nobody knew Hap Walker. Her hands crept to the pins in her hair, pulling them out. She was a mess, and she knew it. She was letting herself go terribly. She picked up her brush, then glanced in her mirror, and what she saw there almost made her heart stop.

There stood Clay McAlester, hat in hand. His long blond hair was gone, cropped into unruly waves that reminded her of Alexander the Great. There were rainspots on the shoulders of his neat navy blue serge suit. He even wore a tie. Her first instinct was to hide. Then she felt the surge of anger.

“Leave it down,” he said softly, closing the door behind him.

He filled the whole room with his presence. She spun around to face him. “What are you doing here?” she demanded furiously. “Hap told you, didn’t he?”

“Hap’s not even talking to me, to answer your second question. As for the first, I’ve had a devil of a time hunting you down. It was a whole lot easier finding Sandoval in Mexico than tracking you in Boston.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to be found.”

“I kinda figured that out. Where’d you get the Horace?”

“If you don’t go away, I’ll be turned out of this place.”

“Why didn’t you go to the Ryans?”

“You didn’t tell Aunt Kate I was here, I hope,” she said, alarmed. “You had no right—no right at all! Now she’ll wonder—”

“I didn’t tell her anything. I acted like you were still at Ybarra—like I was just a friend of yours visiting Boston. They’re real nice people.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Amanda—”

“Just go, please.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. Not until I’ve said my piece, anyway.”

He was so close now she could reach out and touch him. She closed her eyes to hide from him. “Please.”

“I want to marry you, Amanda.”

“He said he wouldn’t tell you—he promised he wouldn’t tell you!”

“I’m damned if I know what you’re talking about”

“Why now—why come for me now? You let me throw myself at you when we were at the ranch, and you turned me away! You let me tell you I loved you, and you never said anything! You let me make a fool of myself, Clay McAlester!”

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Well, sorry doesn’t get it! Not now—not after everything else! You threw me at Hap and left! You threw me away, Clay!”

“I know.”

“And then you have the gall—the unmitigated gall to come here and say you want to marry me?” she demanded incredulously.

“Yes.”

“Well, it won’t work! I don’t know how you found me, or why you even tried, but I’m not falling twice for you—do you hear me? It hurt too much getting over you!” She ducked behind him to open the door. “Now just get out of my life forever!”

“All right—if that’s what you want. I just want you to know that I changed my mind before I even got to the Rio Grande. I tried to write you about it, to apologize, but by the time it got to the Ybarra, you were already gone.”

“There wasn’t much you could have said—not after the way you told me good-bye.” She held the door for him. “Now, are you going, or do I have to call for the proprietor to throw you out?”

He was losing, and he knew it. Down to his last card, Hap would say. He reached into his pocket and gambled. “Here—all I’m asking you to do is read this. Then if you want to burn it and pretend there was nothing between us, I suppose I’ll be getting what I deserve. But I’m asking you to read it,” he said again. “If it changes your mind, you can reach me at the hotel down at the corner—I took a room there for the rest of the week.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then I guess I’ll go back to rangering. Eventually I’ll probably go to Austin to read law. But whatever I do, I know one thing, Amanda—I’ll always love you.” He pressed the folded papers into her hand. “If you don’t change your mind, it doesn’t make much difference to you what I do anyway, does it?”

“No.”

For a moment it looked as if he was going to touch her, as though he wanted to kiss her, but then he dropped his hand. “Yeah—well, as I said, if you want to talk to me about anything that’s in there, I’ll be down at the corner.”

It was as though there was a vacuum, a void when he left. She stood there for a moment, listening to him go down the stairs, then she went inside her rented room and closed the door. He had no right to do this to her, no right at all.

For a moment she considered throwing whatever he’d given her into the small heat stove, then curiosity got the better of her. She sat down next to the kerosene lamp and unfolded the papers. They formed a letter, a very long letter, written in a neat, even script, the sort a schoolboy would use to please his teacher. The date caught her attention. He’d written it just a few days after he left the Ybarra-Ross.

She read the first few paragraphs skeptically, then was drawn to his words, and as she read, the man she’d thought she knew emerged once again. A proud man, one torn between two peoples, one with no place he could fit in. A man who’d blown up those wagons, yet was devastated by the ultimate consequences. A man who felt it better to lose now than later, all too sure that one day she’d look at him and be sorry. By the time he’d gotten his head straight and decided he had to take the risk, he was tracking Ramon Sandoval, making her step-cousin pay for what he’d done to her.

I always thought I had to be free to do as I pleased, but there’s not much joy in doing something just to prove I can do it. Not since I met you, anyway. If it means waking up next to you the rest of my life, then you can put a ring around my finger and tie me down with it. Providing I can do the same with you. I’m willing to be as domesticated as you want to make me. You can drag me to Mass, and I’ll sit with you and the kids, trying to make sense of it.

But above all, in nearly every eloquent word he wrote, there was no mistaking that he loved her. If she didn’t take him, he was going back to rangering, he’d just said. That meant he’d already left it. She read further, taking in the part where he didn’t want to own the Ybarra-Ross, that he’d just as soon read law and earn his own living. The law was a good place for a rebel, because rebels were always ready to take up a cause, he wrote. But if she wanted him to be a rancher, he’d try it.

She was reading through a mist of tears, almost unable to finish the rest of his letter. But the most important thing of all wasn’t in there. Not knowing about the baby, he’d come back to her, not because he felt obligated for anything, but rather because he wanted to. Because he loved her.

And suddenly it didn’t make any difference whether it rained or not. She threw on her cloak and ran down the stairs, nearly knocking the disapproving Mrs. Murphy down. Mumbling an apology, she darted out into the cold rain, and ducked her head down against the bitter wind.

The warm air of the lobby blasted her face when the doorman opened the heavy brass door. Breathless, she pushed back her wet, tangled hair, and marched up to the reception desk.

“Mr. McAlester—Mr. Clayton McAlester’s room number, please.”

Clearly unimpressed, the man looked her up and down before answering, “We don’t run that sort of establishment, miss.”

“No—no—you don’t understand.” She sucked in her breath, then exhaled, trying to slow her pounding heart. “I’m Mrs. McAlester,” she announced baldly. Her hand crept up to her hair, trying to pat it into place. “He’s expecting me, but I’m afraid there was a small accident.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes, but I’m all right,” she hastened to add. “I was just shook up a bit.”

His gaze dropped to her cloak, taking in the tailoring, the soutache braid trim, and he relented. “Room 310, madam. It’s up those steps and to the right.”

“Thank you.”

It was all she could do to walk rather than run up the stairs, and when she reached the top, she hurried down the carpeted hall, counting the doors until she reached 310. She hesitated, almost afraid to knock. She stood there, trying to compose what she wanted to say to him. She wasn’t going to tell him about the baby, not yet. She didn’t want him to think that weighed in her change of mind. Finally, she gave his door three quick raps. It seemed like an eternity before he answered it. He was in his shirtsleeves. His muddy shoes were just inside.

As the door swung inward, she blurted out, “I read your letter—all of it.”

He almost couldn’t believe she was standing there. And despite her wet hair, despite her bedraggled appearance, she was in that moment every bit as beautiful as when she’d worn that green dress. He stepped aside to let her pass, then closed the door behind her. His pulse raced as he turned toward her.

“You didn’t have to come in the rain,” he murmured, smiling crookedly. “I would have still been here tomorrow—and probably a lot longer than I was letting on.”

“Yes, well …” The warmth in his eyes made it hard to think. “I came to tell you I’ve changed my mind. There’s nothing on this earth I’d rather be than Mrs. Clayton McAlester.”

His arms were around her, holding her close. His hand smoothed her wet, tangled hair over her soaked cloak. “I don’t deserve this,” he murmured against her crown.

“If we had to deserve everything, we’d never have anything,” she whispered into his shoulder.

“If you want, you can have a big Catholic wedding at Ybarra, but right now I’d like to find a judge. I don’t want to wait for the banns. Then if you’d like, I’ve got enough money saved to take you someplace nice for a wedding trip.”

“Like where?”

He tried to think of a real exotic place, then decided, “How about London? I hear they got all kinds of things over there.”

“No, I don’t need that, Clay. I’d just as soon camp in the desert. As long as it’s not a hundred degrees out, and you don’t make me drink your coffee—or eat any rattlesnake. I don’t care what you say—it does not taste like chicken.”

“You sure you’d want to go back to the desert?”

“Yes.”

Reluctantly, he released her and stepped back. “If you don’t get out of those wet clothes, you’re going to take pneumonia. While you’re doing that, I’ll go down and register you. And I’ll ask the fellow at the desk about the judge.”

“Uh … if I were you, I wouldn’t do that.” Her fingers worked the hook on her cloak. “I sort of told him we were married already.” The cloak slid to the floor, revealing the plain cotton dress. Her eyes on him, she reached to undo the buttons. “I never thought I’d do this again, Clay.” As the dress joined the cloak, she stepped out of it. Her mouth curved seductively. “We can find a judge after while,” she said softly.

“You sure do know what’s on a man’s mind, Mrs. McAlester,” he murmured huskily.

“Do I?”

She never got an answer. This time when he took her into his arms, he bent his head to hers. A low sob rose from her throat, then died in the heat of his kiss. His hands moved eagerly over her hips, gathering her chemise, lifting it up to find the hot, smooth skin below.

“Love me, Clay,” she whispered. “Love me now.”

He lifted her then, taking her to his bed. As she fell back against the featherbed, she was still smiling. Her arms reached out, pulling him down over her, and they were lost in a delicious tangle of arms and legs as they undressed each other. He rolled over, putting her on top. As her legs parted, she received him, then began to move languorously, testing what she could do, savoring the feel of him. His mouth found a nipple, and he began teasing it with his tongue. She threw her head back, giving him better access, and she began to move more deliberately. Her eyes were closed, but there was no mistaking the ecstasy in her face. His hands moved over her back, stroking her bare skin. She twisted her hips, rolling him within her, taking him.

She was panting now, her body demanding more of him. Her head came forward, spilling her hair onto his chest and shoulders, enveloping his face in the auburn silk. She was taking him with her now. His arms closed around her, holding on, while his body rocked in rhythm with hers, straining. And somewhere in the distance he heard his own cries rise in crescendo as he came.

When it was over, she lay there, her head resting on his shoulder. He twisted his head slightly, taking in the soft, white sheets. And he knew she was his destiny. He knew she was forever.