A Bride at Last (17 page)

Then he didn’t want to spend time with her unless they were looking for Anthony? As it should be. She swallowed. “In light of what Richard said, maybe you shouldn’t walk me home.”

He squared his shoulders. “Richard’s right, I can’t stay in town much longer. I’ll be heading back to Salt Flatts as soon as I get the letters from Lucy’s sister and the judge changes the ruling. But I’ll pray I hear from you sometime soon, when you write to tell me Anthony’s back and I can come get him. You would tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispered. Though it’d break her heart, she wanted Anthony to be with Silas more than she wanted Anthony to be with her.

“Thanks for your help, Kate.” His mouth seemed unsettled, like he wanted to say more, but suddenly he jerked his hand up to his hat in farewell, then turned and left her behind.

And she’d gotten her wish. He’d said something that obliterated her hope. Soon he’d be gone and he only wanted to hear from her if she found Anthony.

So why didn’t the knots around her heart loosen?

Chapter 12

Stirring more cream into his coffee, Silas felt Myrtle watching him as she cleaned the last of the dinner dishes. She probably wanted him to leave so she could clean his table. But he couldn’t leave quite yet, not when he needed more coffee.

Or did he? What would it matter if he hadn’t the energy to go looking around Breton for a few more hours in the rain?

He flipped over the letters he’d picked up at the post office yesterday after leaving Kate and read the most important paragraph again.

If I can get Richard to believe this baby’s his, then I won’t have to crawl back home to Father. If Silas ever writes, don’t let him know where I am. It’d be best not to answer him at all. If he ever found out, he’d be the kind to actually want a brat, and I’m not about to go back to that soddy because of his kid.

Rubbing his brow, he shook his head. How had he not seen what kind of woman he’d sent for before he’d married her?
Sure, she’d been contentious and grumpy, but had he been so desperate for family he’d willingly ruined himself?

Lord, I want you to be enough, but I still have this ache for someone to care for and to care for me . . . someone
I can touch. I fear for Anthony something fierce, and
I can’t do anything.

He thumped his fist against the table. He might as well admit he was powerless to help Anthony and leave. His son was lost—quite possibly forever—and there was nothing he could do to save his only family member.

Again.

He couldn’t help Anthony any more here in Missouri than he could in Kansas. The judge had changed his ruling this afternoon, so if Anthony ever showed up, Kate could write and let him know.

He’d already inconvenienced Will enough by asking him to watch his place—and knowing Will, his friend was probably wearing himself out trying to doctor and fix up his homestead at the same time.

Silas sighed. And he’d thought Lucy deserting him was the most hopeless he’d ever been.

Myrtle’s skirts brushed against his leg, and he looked up at her. Her pupils were large and sorrowful-looking under her heavy lashes. “Mr. Jonesey, are you going home anytime soon?”

He grabbed his spoon again and swirled his cream. “You think I should?” Was he that much of a bother? He treated her better than most of the tenants.

She took a step back and laid a hand against her chest. “You actually asking me?”

“Why not?”

“Well . . . because I’m . . . ” She shook her head. “You’re too nice. Not at all like Miss Lucinda.”

“I didn’t know Lucy all that well, but I suspect I’m not much better than her, as none of my family ever cared enough to stay
with me for long.” He sucked in a steadying breath, letting his chest fill with onion-laden air.

“Why’s that? What’d you ever do to anybody?”

She flinched when he looked her in the eye.

“I’m sorry, not my place—”

“I don’t mind you asking.” He shrugged. “The honest answer is I don’t know. Though I wish I did.”

“Did I hear Mr. Fitzgerald right?” Myrtle looked behind her before lowering her voice. “A while ago, he was hollering about you getting the court to take Anthony from him.”

“Yeah, Lucinda’s sister sent me this letter.” He toyed with it again. “Confirms I’m Anthony’s father.”

She shifted her weight. “I’m real sorry he left you, Mr. Jonesey. You thinking of giving up?”

He pushed his coffee away. “I won’t ever stop praying, but I can’t stay any longer. Anthony could be a hundred miles away, and I’ve got a farm with problems. I’ll just have to pray in Kansas. It’s all I can do.”

Myrtle stared at him as if he had something on his face.

Rubbing a hand across his beard, he didn’t dislodge anything. “Do I have food stuck in my teeth?”

“No.” She chewed a bit on her lower lip. “I’m just trying to reason out why Anthony didn’t want to go with you. You seem plenty nice.”

“I’m nothing special.” He snatched the towel from her hand and wiped up his spilled cream, which earned him another wide-eyed stare. “I’ve got two crates full of Lucy’s things upstairs I meant to give you the day Anthony ran. Don’t know if you could stand wearing a dead woman’s dresses, but I’d want you to have them. Remake them to fit you or your siblings or use them for rags—whatever would help you most.”

Myrtle pursed her lips, angry-like. “Anthony’s got his head all screwed up the wrong way, that’s what.”

Silas raised an eyebrow.

“No white man’s ever given me dresses unless he wants—”

“Oh no.” The back of Silas’s neck flamed. How could a girl barely older than Anthony insinuate such a thing . . . even know to insinuate such a thing? The cream in his stomach curdled. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know that’s not what you mean.” She stole the wet towel from him. “I’ll be done here in about an hour, then you come with me to my house.”

“I thought you realized that’s not what I meant.” He cupped a cold hand against his neck, trying not to look disgusted. He didn’t want her to think poorly of herself, but—

“Oh stop. I know where Anthony is.”

The heat in his neck drained, and his legs turned into soft lead. He stood and had to catch himself before he fell over. “What did you say?”

Mrs. Grindall poked her head into the dining room. “Aren’t you done in here yet? You got another tub of laundry to do before you go. I don’t have time for your dillydallying.” She glared at Myrtle, and then at him.

He handed Myrtle his coffee cup, his hand shaking so badly he was afraid the dregs might actually slosh enough to make it over the brim. “Here.”

He couldn’t say any more with Mrs. Grindall staring at him like that. After walking past them both, he stopped outside the dining room and stared at the lopsided pictures hanging on the hallway wall. Had he imagined it, or had Myrtle said she knew where Anthony was? His muscles bunched tight.

He tried to relax, but how could he until he saw his son again with his own eyes?

Moving silently behind Myrtle, Silas followed her down a street he’d visited twice this past month. The only things he’d
unearthed during those visits were suspicious glances and tight-lipped responses. He’d figured a white man knocking on doors in a black neighborhood was so unusual they assumed he had ill intentions.

Myrtle stopped in front of a leaning shack, one similar in size and shape to the structure Kate showed him where his wife and Anthony had lived before Lucy got sick. No bigger than the cramped soddy he used to live in—the one Lucy’d complained about every day. “Didn’t you say you have four siblings?”

“And a father who left us. Mother’s dead.” Myrtle’s eyes darted off to the right.

He looked over his shoulder. Three shacks away, two men stared at him. Another man across the street had stopped walking, a large load of firewood in his arms. The flour-sack curtain in his shack’s solitary window dropped back into place.

Myrtle pushed a stray lock of hair off her forehead. “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been here.”

With a quick glance at him, she inhaled sharply, then turned the knob. A little girl with short curly hair scurried out and clamped herself to Myrtle’s knees. “MeeMee!”

Myrtle placed a hand on what must be her little sister’s back and stepped into the shack. “George, I’ve brought—”

A large mountain of a young man shoved Myrtle behind him and filled up the doorway. His eyes raked Silas. “What’re you doing with Myrtle?”

Silas held out his palms and swallowed hard.

Myrtle popped out from beneath the man’s outspread arms. “I brought him here, George.”

The man blinked, then his face grew harder.

Silas took a step back. “I’m only here looking for my son.” He recalled this man. A few weeks ago, George had given him
a glare as chilly as the one icing his forehead now, but from the yard of a different house.

George glowered at his sister, his rage barely hidden. “Why didn’t you just bring along the lynch mob?”

Silas pulled off his hat and assumed what he hoped was a nonthreatening posture. “I’m not looking to blame anyone for anything. All I want is information about Anthony Riverton.”

The chubby girl who’d buried herself in Myrtle’s skirts peeped up at him as if she’d never seen a stranger before. Myrtle stepped in front of her brother and pushed back against him. “Mr. Jonesey’s all right. He ain’t meaning to harm us none.”

George didn’t take his eyes off Silas. “Doesn’t matter if he don’t want to harm us none. If word gets out we’re housing a white boy—”

Silas’s chest inflated with weightlessness. Here! Anthony was here! “I could come inside and wait until dark to take him home.”

George’s large round eyes found a way to get larger.

“I don’t care why you have him as long as he’s healthy and whole.” He stepped forward. “If you’d like to question me—if you’re worried I’m unfit to be a father—I’m willing to talk, to set your mind at ease.”

The big man’s mouth unhinged. He moved his lips as if he wanted to say something, but no words came out.

Silas tentatively held out a shaky hand. “Please.”

George glanced at his open palm but made no move to touch him. He fastened his gaze back on Silas’s and talked out of the side of his mouth. “Get Anthony.”

Myrtle gave Silas an apologetic look and ducked back under her brother and into the house. A moment later, Anthony came out, arms crossed.

How he wanted to sweep his son into his arms and hug the stubbornness out of him. But he wasn’t about to shout and
alert the neighborhood that George had been keeping a white boy in his home.

Myrtle appeared with the bag he’d bought Anthony weeks ago. “I’m real sorry I didn’t tell you where he was, Mr. Jonesey. I thought I was helping.”

“Don’t apologize. You did help.” He’d have offered his hand to George again, but the man still looked immovable, though his glare had softened. “Thank you for taking care of him.”

“I help those who need it.” George straightened and then slammed the door.

A knock sounded on Kate’s bedroom door. “There’s someone here to see you,” Mrs. Logan’s voice called.

“I’ll be right down.” Kate put the primer she was reviewing on her desk and glanced at Leonora, who’d just put on her long flannel nightgown. The sun’s darkening orange light bled through the cotton eyelet curtains and suffused the oldest Logan girl’s tiny attic room. “Good thing I put off retiring.”

She frowned at her boots at the end of her trundle and then toward her house slippers. Crossing over to the little window, she tried to see down to the front door below, but the eaves obscured the drive, like they always did. Who’d come to see her at this hour?

It wouldn’t be Silas. Mrs. Logan definitely wouldn’t have let him call on her at this hour without having a conniption. Kate sighed and repinned her hair until it appeared presentable.

What if her visitor was Mr. Kingfisher? Would it matter if he saw her in house slippers?

Of course it would. She grabbed her boots.

After making her way down the steep, narrow stairs, she slowed and peeped around the angled wall to the foyer area, but no one stood there. She took the last of the stairs as quietly as
possible and found Mr. Logan smoking a pipe beside his wife in the parlor—no one else. Kate cleared her throat, and Mrs. Logan indicated the front door with a tip of her head rather than putting down her embroidery hoop. “He’s out front.”