Harper's Bride (31 page)

He smiled at Jenny, showing new toothless
gaps in his gums. "She favors you, girl." Melissa bit back a
protest when he took Jenny's hand in his own very dirty one. Jenny
pulled away from him and started crying.

"Oh, dear," Melissa said, and jogged her in
her arms, "she's not used to strangers."

Pushing a litter of paper and an empty bottle
aside, Jack lowered himself stiffly to a threadbare sofa that
leaked its horsehair stuffing. "We're not strangers, we're family,
and she damn well better get used to us," he grumped. His lack of
compassion or understanding was so familiar to her. Then he fixed
her with a stern look. "Where's your man, Lissy?"

She took a breath. "He died in Dawson. They
said it was pneumonia." She supposed she should at least pretend
grief for decency's sake, but she couldn't make herself do it.

"Died!" her brother and father both
echoed.

"It happened earlier this summer."

After a moment of stunned silence, James
spoke. "Well, by God, that's a tragedy." He sounded genuinely
sorry. "He was a good man, the best friend I ever had." He slumped
down next to his father and looked ready to cry.

Oh, she was tempted, so tempted, to tell them
about the "good man" and how he'd settled his debt with Dylan. But
she decided not to. She had the sick, uneasy feeling that they
wouldn't find anything wrong with what Coy had done.

"So you're a widow woman now." Jack glanced
at the filthy house and nodded decisively. "A good thing you've
come home. You belong here with your family."

"Say, that's right," James added, the
benefits of her return obviously dawning on him.

Melissa gaped at them both in horror. "Oh,
I'm not coming back here!" she blurted.

Struggling to his feet again, Jack advanced
on her and pointed a shaking finger at her, apparently taken aback
by her refusal. Melissa had never refused her father or spoken out
in her life. "Why, the hell you aren't, Lissy. You aren't so big
that I can't still whup you for your sass. You'll do as you're told
and that's that. A woman gets into all kinds of trouble without
menfolks to protect her."

Protect her? While threatening to beat her?
She wished she could laugh at his ridiculous pronouncement. But
fear made her clutch Jenny more tightly, the same gnawing,
soul-withering terror that she'd grown up with.

"James, tell that driver outside to go along
now. Girl, where are your belongings? When Billy gets home, he'll
go with you to collect them."

"Well, I gotta put my pants on," James
muttered, and climbed to his feet.

Melissa's heart pounded in her chest with a
suffocating sensation. The image came to her of Coy standing at her
washtubs in Dawson.
I'm giving you five minutes to get your gear
. . . or I'll teach you a good lesson for talking back to me.
What she needed or wanted was of no consequence. The slow-burning
anger that had ignited when she arrived continued to grow within
her. Coy, her father, her brothers—none of them had cared about
her. They saw her only in terms of the convenience and personal
comfort she could provide. It was a startling realization that even
her father didn't love her, but looking at him, she at last
recognized it was true. With that knowledge came a new kind of
freedom, and her paralyzing fear fell away.

"Don't you do anything of the kind, James,"
she said in her most commanding tone.

"Huh?"

She kept her eyes on her father. "I came back
here because I thought you had the right to meet your
granddaughter, and that she should know her grandfather. But I was
wrong. I don't want her to know a man like you."

Jack Reed sputtered like a landed trout, but
plain astonishment apparently kept him from stringing any words
together, and Melissa plunged on, finding courage and growing fury
with each passing minute. She'd grown up around men like her father
and Coy—she hadn't known she should expect to be treated with more
respect. But Dylan, while he offered no quarter to his enemies, had
opened her eyes. His kindness to her and Jenny had proved to her
that not all men were like the ones she'd known.

"You bullied me and Mama, and beat both of
us—"

"I never raised a hand to one of you unless
you had it coming," he protested indignantly. Jenny, responding to
the tension of angry voices, began crying again.

"Who were you to decide that?" she demanded,
her voice climbing in volume. "I know now that you didn't care
about any of us. Your first love was the bottle, and you sent Mama
off to work because you wouldn't. We would have starved if not for
her!" Her breath came in short jerks, and Jenny screamed in
earnest, adding to the chaos. "I'm never coming back here. Never."
She spun around and strode to the door.

"By God, we'll see about that!" Jack lurched
forward and grabbed Melissa's arm to stop her.

She looked down at the grimy hand gripping
her sleeve, then met her father's eyes dead on. "Take your hand off
me. Now."

Gaping at her with anger and genuine hatred,
he released her. So icy and direct was her tone that even James
backed up a step.

Melissa yanked open the door and hurried down
the walk with Jenny howling over her shoulder. The cab driver,
seeing her approach, jumped down from his seat.

"If you hadn't been holding that baby, I
would have taken my shaving strop to you, you ungrateful bitch!"
her father yelled after her.

"M-ma'am, are you all right?" the driver
asked, helping her into the carriage.

"Yes, please . . . please just take us back
to the hotel. Right away." Melissa felt her courage crumbling
around her, and hot tears burned her eyes.

"Yes, ma'am!"

The break with her family was complete. Now
she knew how Dylan had felt when he told her that he didn't want to
see his own family again. If the earth opened up tomorrow and
swallowed Jack Reed, she knew she wouldn't care a bit.

Allred Kaady straightened from the sack of
oats he'd been cutting open. "Why, I can hardly believe my
eyes—Dylan Harper! When did you get back into town?"

Grinning, Dylan stepped into the cool gloom
of Kaady's Livery and let the tall, bony man pump his hand. "Early
yesterday morning, Red. I'm staying over at the hotel. How are
things here at the stable?"

Red shrugged, grinning back. "I ain't
complaining. A couple of folks around here have bought one of those
new horseless carriages, but hell, they make so much racket and
smoke, their day will pass. Then those people will be on my
doorstep to buy a real carriage." He sat down on a vacant hay bale
and motioned Dylan to another one. "Tell me, where've you been
these past two-three years? We were ready to give you up for
dead."

Dylan sat and glanced at the cool, dark
confines of the stable, inhaling the rich, familiar scents of horse
and hay. "I knocked around for a while, but I was in Dawson for
most of the time."

"Went up for the gold rush, did you?"

"I was already there when it got started. I
owned a trading store. I bought and sold miners' outfits. I never
saw so many men digging in the dirt in my life. You'd be surprised
what people will do for the chance to get rich."

Red looked wistful. "I was tempted to give it
a try myself, but then I figured, what would happen to my boys and
girls if I went? I couldn't leave 'em with just anybody, and you
weren't here to take 'em." A stranger wouldn't realize that he was
referring to his horses and not his children.

Good old Red, Dylan thought. Still here in
his baggy overalls and battered straw hat. "That's okay. It's good
to see that some things don't change. Anyway, I was trying to
decide if I wanted to spend another winter up there when I happened
to come across an old copy of the
Oregonian
. I read about my
brother and the old man."

Red fidgeted a bit. "Say, I'm sure sorry
about that. It was a surprise to the town." Dylan thought he was
being especially tactful, given that Columbia Bank had nearly
foreclosed on him for being one day late with a loan payment, after
he'd established a long history of paying on time. Dylan never knew
for sure what had happened, but he suspected that Griffin Harper
had extorted some kind of bribe from the liveryman that didn't go
on the books. A bachelor in his mid-fifties, Red's whole life was
tied up in this stable, and he would have done anything to keep
from losing it to the bank. The old man had probably known
that.

"You know we were always at odds, the three
of us. Especially just before I left." Dylan stood and walked over
to the stall containing Red's sweet-tempered sorrel mare. Sticking
her head out, she bumped her nose against his chest and sniffed at
his shirt pockets. He laughed, then to the mare he added, "I swear,
Penelope, you'd follow anyone home if you thought you'd get an
apple. I don't have anything for you."

Red laughed. "But she knows a soft touch when
she sees one."

Dylan's smile faded. "Like some women I
know."

The older man pulled a straw out of the bale
he was sitting on and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. "She's
still living up there, if you're wondering." The whole town had
known that Elizabeth and Dylan were engaged, but only Red really
knew how much he'd cared about her.

"I thought she might be."

"But maybe not for long. It turns out there
were a few years' worth of taxes that haven't been paid on that
property. The county assessor aims to collect."

Dylan stared at him. That was startling news.
"And if they aren't paid?"

"Well, I guess the sheriff will put it up for
sale. I think they've held off as a courtesy to your brother's
widow."

This put everything in a new light. The plan
that Dylan had formulated during the trip over from Portland became
more firmly fixed in his mind.

"Red, can I rent Penelope here for a little
ride? I'd like to take a look at the home place."

Red studied him for a moment, then stood up
to get a saddle. "Sure, go ahead and take her. If you don't bring
her back tonight, I won't worry."

*~*~*

The mare was a sturdy, dependable mount that
didn't need much control, so Dylan had time to think as he rode out
to the house. Regardless of the circumstances, or how many times
his thoughts turned to Melissa, it was good to see these grasslands
again. The Yukon had been majestic before the stampeders arrived,
but not beautiful like this. The last of the day's sun was warm on
his back, and off in the distance he heard the twitter of
meadowlarks as they winged toward their nests for the night.

Remnants of summer's wildflowers edged the
road, and to his left the Columbia River stretched out below. Dylan
could think of no place else on earth that looked so good in all
seasons, even in the gray, rainy spring. He wished Melissa were
here to see it.

"Damn it," he swore aloud, "let's get going,
Penelope." He had to stop thinking about her, wondering about her,
envisioning her. She and Jenny were part of his past, and he had to
try and keep them there.

But thinking about his impending meeting with
Elizabeth was no more comforting. How would he feel about seeing
her after all this time?
After . . . everything? Would the pain of her
betrayal, once exquisitely sharp, spring to life again when he saw
her?

At last, he reached the long, graveled drive
that led to the house where he'd grown up. He couldn't think of it
as a home—he'd always felt alone and out of place there. Passing
the stables, he saw the stall doors hanging open, swinging lazily
on the light breeze. The stalls themselves were empty and rundown,
and the entire structure needed to be cleaned and painted.
Remembering the fine, blooded stock that had occupied the stables
before, and how tidy and well kept they were, he felt a flash of
white-hot anger. It was as if Griffin Harper had done everything he
could to obliterate Dylan's hard work, and his very existence.

But he got the biggest surprise of all when
he rounded the last turn in the drive and saw the house. The
stately colonial seemed just as desolate and forsaken, and in
little better condition than the stables. What had happened here?
he wondered. Red hadn't said anything about the property going to
ruin, but it looked as if no one had lived here in months. The lawn
had grown into a wild tangle that fell over the flagstone walk, and
weeds grew through the gravel. For as long as Dylan could remember,
the old man had kept two gardeners busy six months out of the year
tending the grounds. No one had touched these in a long time.

Dylan climbed down from his saddle and led
Penelope to the hitching rail by the back door. Tying her up, he
walked slowly around the place, looking up at the windows,
searching for signs of life. Maybe Elizabeth was away or had moved
back to her father's house. But where was the staff?

Finally, he walked around to the double front
doors, turned the knob, and stepped inside. There he found the
entry hall and parlor as he remembered them, although he thought a
piece or two of furniture were missing

"Ada, did you forget something?" a familiar
female voice called from the dining room.

His heart began thudding in his chest, and
his hands suddenly grew damp. "It's not Ada. It's me, Dylan."

A moment of silence that seemed to stretch
into an hour was followed by soft, hurried footsteps Elizabeth
rushed out to the hallway and stared at him. She stood with her
hand at her throat, utter surprise and perhaps a little fear
stealing the color from her creamy cheeks. Her black wavy hair was
swept into a coronet at the back of her head, and wispy tendrils
curled in front of her ears. He saw no sign of mourning dress,
though. She wore a beautiful white gown made of gauzy organdie,
decorated with panels of inset lace. Looking as if she were
preparing for a dinner party, she was as breathtaking as ever.