Fool's Gold (32 page)

‘I’d already been married a year. It wasn’t a good marriage. My husband deserves a place in the history books,’ she said bitterly. ‘First victim of gold fever. We were at the first camp in ’49. He was probably already in debt then, but I didn’t know … Fisher treated me, when we first met, with a kind of familiarity I had not suffered before. Perhaps he already thought he had rights, who knows? But I thought he was just — it was just — because there were so few women.’ She held out her empty glass and he refilled it for her without comment. ‘We had a miserable few years, but I always told myself that if it didn’t work out, I could go back to my mother’s home, Valley Hall in Connecticut. Soon after I inherited it, my husband gambled it away — to Fisher. And that was the end of that dream.’

‘Go on.’

‘He — Robert — talked of having staked me against the house. Said he’d left me to Fisher after his death. It was such a ridiculous thing to say that I took no notice. I was so furious about the house I could think of nothing else. Robert died while I was working for Angelina. After that, things got better. Chen Kai and I set up in business —’

‘And Tamsin?’

‘She was an orphan. From the picture wagon. We just — took her in.’

‘Go on about Fisher.’

‘We didn’t come across him again until last autumn in San Francisco.’

‘Chen Kai told me.’

‘But he wasn’t there when we met. Fisher came in to have his photograph taken with one of Belle Ryan’s whores on his arm. He — he got me into a corner and he asked me if I wouldn’t like to have Valley Hall back again. He said if I married him, I’d have my inheritance back again.’ She shook her head. ‘It was odd. He was insistent, almost obsessed. Kept saying I was rightfully his.’

She took a drink. The whiskey seemed to have no more effect on her than water. ‘I should have had more sense,’ she said tragically. ‘God knows why I acted as I did.’ She shrugged. ‘I think inside I blamed him for Robert — for all the wasted years. I said that he was the last man in the world I’d ever marry. I said he could keep Valley Hall and welcome, and I hoped the society had been to his taste.

‘He was furious, but I didn’t care. Unfortunately the woman with him was not stupid. She scented a story — perhaps an opportunity for blackmail. She found out the story from one of his men — he surrounded himself with slack tongues.

‘Seems he’d set himself up as the Squire of Valley Hall, with a houseful of his old New York cronies he wanted to impress. Of course, Connecticut Society shunned him, gave him the cold shoulder, the servants all left and he was made to look a fool in front of his gang. God knows why, but he convinced himself that it was my doing and that if Robert had paid the debt in full and he’d got me with Valley Hall, Connecticut Society would have welcomed him with open arms.

‘It was too good a story to pass up. She told me — and half of San Francisco.’ She shivered. ‘That was when our troubles started.’

Outside the rain began to fall heavily, drumming on the tiles, but she didn’t move. He crossed the room to put a shawl around her shoulders and sat beside her.

‘I tried to find Monique, to stop her spreading the story, but she’d vanished from the face of the earth. His doing, I’m sure. And by then it was too late anyway.’

‘The props and then the camera …’

‘And then the studio.’ She took a steadying sip of whiskey, but her voice was shaking as she went on. ‘When we nearly lost Tamsin in the fire, I wanted to go and see him, beg him to leave us alone, offer to kill the story. I don’t know.’ She shivered. ‘But Chen Kai wouldn’t let me. He said we must get away, out on the road again. For a while I thought we’d got free, but …’

‘He took the wagon. Chen Kai told me.’

She nodded. ‘He won’t have told you the rest.’ She drained the glass in one gulp and rose jerkily to cross the room. ‘We were in a shack just outside Coloma,’ she began in a low voice. ‘Chen Kai had gone to see an old man about a camera; I was printing some views I planned to tint and sell to raise some cash.’

The scene was as clear in her mind as if it had been yesterday.

‘Tamsin always knew she had to keep away when the chemicals were out. She was over by the door playing with Beatrice. There was a crash and the door was kicked open. Fisher stood there, with two of his men behind him, all armed. Tamsin started crying and he — he knocked her across the room, stunned her.

‘I screamed at him to leave us alone. He’d taken my inheritance, my livelihood, what more could he want?

‘He said I’d humiliated him, that I was a haughty New England bitch! He said he’d dealt with Monique. Now it was my turn.

‘He — his eyes were quite mad. I knew what he wanted.

‘He was coming at me. I was terrified.’ Her voice dropped. ‘I reached under the bench for the gun and screamed at him to keep away, but he just laughed. He said: “You won’t use that, you whore!”’

She could see him now laughing at her, coming at her. His hand fell to his waist and he began slowly, so slowly, to unbuckle his belt.

She shook her head. ‘I pulled the trigger. One of his men dived at me at the last moment and jogged my arm.’ Her voice rose to a scream. ‘I shot the wrong man! It should have been
him
!’ Then, once more, that calm, monotone voice. ‘He didn’t care about his man. He just … I tried to fight him — I couldn’t stop him — he — he — all with the dead man lying there.’ The gorge rose in his throat, nearly choking him. He wanted to hold her, comfort her, but somehow he knew it wasn’t the moment. ‘He was gloating, gloating … In the fight, the bench had gone over and there were bottles, the chemicals, all over the floor. My hand knocked against one. I loosened the stopper and threw it in his face.’ She turned back to face him. ‘And I’d have watched it eat him away too, I would have! But they said they’d shoot Tamsin — until then I’d thought she was dead. I had to tell them how to neutralise it. They saved his evil face.’

‘They took you to jail?’

‘And Fisher came every day to gloat.’ She came across to stand before him. ‘I’d have swung to rid the world of him,’ she said brokenly. ‘But I never meant to kill the other man.’

‘He was probably just as evil as Fisher.’

‘Or maybe just an ex-miner, down on his luck, taking any job he could get!’ she riposted angrily. ‘Maybe some woman’s man, some child’s father. Whatever he was, he was some mother’s son.’ Her voice dropped pathetically. ‘There wasn’t a day passed in jail but I thought of that. Each day Fisher came to taunt me: he’d drop the charges, he said, if I’d marry him and go with him to Valley Hall. He was mad, obsessed, he couldn’t believe I’d rather hang.’ She shuddered. ‘And every day I wondered why it had to be the other man instead of him.’

He drew her down to sit beside him and took her restless hands in his.

‘How did you get out of jail?’ he asked gruffly. ‘The Vigilantes didn’t usually let people go except on a one-way ticket to the Sandwich Islands.’

‘Or to the gallows.’

‘Tell me,’ he said softly. ‘No more secrets.’

She closed her eyes in pain. ‘The doctor — the doctor told Chen Kai I was sick. Kai … guessed I was … pregnant.’ He let his breath out in a hiss. ‘I — hadn’t told him, you see, everything that had happened.’ Blindly she held out the empty glass and he could not refuse her, knowing what it was costing her to relive the horror. ‘If he hadn’t had Tamsin to think of, I think he’d have killed Fisher then.’ She gazed down into the amber liquid. ‘He knew I’d kill myself rather than …’ Her voice trembled as she tore the memories painfully from the dark recesses in which they had for so long been hidden away. ‘He brought me in a herbal draught. It worked, thank God, but I was very ill. In the end it was the doctor who saved me. He didn’t like Fisher; he’d tried to bully him into handing me over. He also disapproved of the Vigilantes. Under other circumstances, he said, I’d get a fair trial and be acquitted on grounds of self-defence. So he drugged me again and told them I’d died.’

As she finished her story she was shaking uncontrollably. ‘Oh, Alicia!’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘What a terrible time!’ She began to shake and he slipped his arm around her shoulders and drew her towards him.

‘I don’t deserve your sympathy,’ she muttered into his shoulder. ‘I’m a murderess twice over. That man, and …’ She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

He held her close to him as she struggled to control the shuddering that racked her slim body.

‘The doctor bought you time,’ he murmured into her soft hair. ‘Don’t throw it all away now.’

‘I’d rather be dead than in his hands again.’

‘The Vigilantes have disbanded — no one wants to rake up old scores again. And they’d hesitate to indict my wife for a dead woman’s crimes.’

‘Your
wife
?’ She looked up at him, startled.

‘If he tried anything — well, I’ve some influence still in San Francisco. You’ll see. They’ll prefer to leave Mrs Langdon dead and buried. Who’s to say there’s any connection with Mrs Cornish? And there are plenty to back me up — Cooper, Revel, Leon. And if that’s not enough, I’m sure money will persuade them not to see the connection,’ he replied cynically.

‘You’d use bribery to save me?’ she exclaimed. ‘When you wouldn’t use it to save Tresco?’

‘Not just for you!’ he said harshly. ‘What future is there for Tamsin with you in jail? Look, you must see you’ve no choice. If he finds you and you’re out on the road again, away from Tresco, I won’t be able to help you. They’ll likely lynch Chen Kai, put you back in jail and Tamsin in an orphanage.’ His voice softened. ‘I can only help you if you give me the right to protect you.’

‘Why should you take on our problems?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve told you before. Chen Kai and Tamsin fit in here, they’re happy here. Tresco needs a woman and I need a wife.’

‘A wife who’s a murderess?’ she said, her voice trembling on the word.

‘I killed a man once,’ he said slowly. ‘Back in Cornwall. But I don’t call myself a murderer. His death saved two lives and a lot of misery and suffering. You had the courage to do the same.’

‘I don’t want to marry you,’ she sobbed. ‘Don’t want to marry anyone. I can’t … I … couldn’t … You’ll want an heir for Tresco. Even if I could … after …
that
… in prison … I …’

He reached out and brushed the damp hair from her face. ‘Let’s jump that fence when we come to it,’ he suggested. ‘But for now you need to say whether I send for Reverend Cooper or not.’

She reached out for the glass, but he moved it out of her reach. ‘Decision first,’ he told her implacably.

To run away from Fisher again, to go on the road that led God only knew where, or to stay and with Cornish’s help face him out, stand her ground. To stay and make a home for herself and Kai and Tamsin in the ‘pretty green place’, even if it meant taking on a husband she didn’t want. And even as she thought it, she knew she was being unfair to him. This was not a man like Fisher, or even like Robert. He could be harsh and autocratic sometimes, but she was not perfect either. He was kind to Tamsin, a good friend to Kai. When they were not fighting, she enjoyed his company.

‘Yes or no?’

She shivered and nodded her head slightly.

‘Say it!’ he insisted.

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ she yelled.

He poured a small measure into the glass together with the contents of the small bottle Chen Kai had given him and sat with her while it took effect. As her head began to nod, he slid his good arm round her and drew her closer until her head rested against his chest. He laid his cheek against her soft hair, breathing in the fresh, herby smell of it.

Only tonight, when he had been in danger of losing Alicia, had he realised how much he loved her. Over the past couple of months she had become so intrinsic a part of his life that he had not noticed how much she had crept into his heart. Even the revelations of her recent past had not changed his feelings, except to make him even more determined that she would not suffer again. How he would cope with Fisher in the morning, how he would manage to keep his hands from him, he didn’t know. And yet, for Alicia’s sake, he must.

In the inner room the little girl muttered in her sleep and he smiled softly. The three strangely assorted travellers had blended in so completely that it was hard to remember the time when they had not been part of Tresco.

Alicia stirred in his arms.

‘Jack?’

‘I’m here,’ he said softly. He wanted to say more, to tell her the way he felt, but it would be unfair to burden her with his feelings when she had been through so much already tonight. It could wait.

As her breathing grew steadier, he swung her legs up, covered her with the counterpane and slid a pillow gently beneath her head.

He turned the lamp down low and slumped wearily into the chair. A Hell of a way to make a proposal! he thought. A Hell of a way!

He left her at dawn, impressing on Chen Kai the need for the three of them to stay out of sight until the last of the guests had gone. After a late, hearty breakfast, he deliberately took those of his guests who cared to come to look over the ranch. Angelina was nowhere to be seen, but Pearl was busy in the kitchen garden.

Inevitably, McCann — Fisher — made a coarse remark, but Cornish, who would have liked to kill him with his bare hands, forced himself to laugh it off. ‘Pearl’s betrothed to Li, one of the men working on the building,’ he said casually. ‘As for me, when I lost the lovely Belle to Emory, I renounced women!’ Lamarr smirked.