Sioux Slave (35 page)

Jim didn't seem to realize the truth, and he was so in love with Camelia that Elizabeth had kept her mouth shut, hoping for the best. For a while, it seemed it might work out. Three years after Lenore's birth, Camelia produced a second daughter, and this one was definitely a Carstairs. However, that Memphis gambler, Clint Nutter, began to come around again when Jim was gone on plantation business. Elizabeth didn't know what to do, so she pretended she didn't know, although she confided the problem to her old friend, Pierce Hamilton.

The clock on the music room wall chimed eleven times. Yes, Elizabeth thought with a sigh, it was just about this time of night that it had happened. Jim gone on business, the two little girls asleep upstairs, Elizabeth playing her piano. She'd heard the stairs squeak and knew Camelia was sneaking out to meet that man. What could Elizabeth do? Would her son believe her if she told him?

It had been a warm spring night and the windows were open. Elizabeth heard the lovers' voices outside in the darkness and imagined them in an embrace. She thought she heard a horse approaching. Who could that be?

Alarmed, Elizabeth had run to look out the window at the east lawn. The lovers stood there in an embrace, oblivious to the rider as he reined in; watching. The moon had come out from behind the clouds and she saw the man on the horse and his expression. Jim had come home unexpectedly.

Mostly what had happened after that was a merciful blur. Elizabeth remembered running for the door. Knowing she must stop this fight, yet knowing she was not going to be in time. She would always remember how soft the grass was beneath her slippers as she ran to where the two men were fighting, how pale her daughter-in-law's face was in the moonlight as she watched helplessly. Pale as her namesake flowers.

The gambler had a derringer. Elizabeth saw the sudden gleam of it in the moonlight. Camelia screamed. Jim knocked it from his hand and it slid across the grass as the two men grappled.

Camelia was on it in a heartbeat, aiming the gun. “Stop it, Jim, or I'll shoot!”

Had she meant to fire or had the gun gone off accidentally? Elizabeth would never know. The men were still fighting. Even as Camelia fired, they moved, so that Clint took the bullet.

Jim let the dead man fall. “Camelia, give me the gun!”

She resisted, they struggled over its possession even as Elizabeth watched helplessly. And then it fired again.

“Oh my God!” Her son stared down at the gun in his hand, his face ashen. Camelia fell across the lawn, her green dress blending in with the grass, her red blood in such stark contrast to her pale white face, pale as the white camelias she loved. Jim fell to his knees, hugging her to him. “Camelia! Oh, Camelia, I love you so! Why did you cheat? Why wasn't I enough for you? I would have done anything for you; I loved you so.”

Camelia looked up at him, smiling ever so slightly, the scarlet blood running down her snowy skin, the green dress. “You did something for me,” she whispered with a one last bit of irony, “you gave my lover's child your name.”

Camelia's final cruelty. Elizabeth would never have told him. Now she pulled him to his feet, put her arms around him. “Son, you didn't mean it. I know you didn't!”

“It went off,” he said woodenly, blinking as if walking in his sleep and hoping any moment now he would awaken, “I was trying to take it away from her!” He put his face in his hands, sobbing.

Elizabeth sobbed, too. She would always remember how pale the beautiful face was in death. Camelia's golden eyes were open, staring at the dark sky. “Jim, we've got to do something. The law might not believe it was all an accident!”

“I don't care! She's dead! I want to die, too!” His green eyes were wild with horror.

It was like reasoning with a crazy man. “No, Jim, you've got to live. The children. Think of the children.”

He laughed hysterically. “One of them's not even mine, did you hear that? I think I realized it from the first, but I loved her too much to care.”

Elizabeth hugged him, her mind thinking fast. What to do? Pierce Hamilton dropped by just then, on his way from a party at another house. “Great Caesar's ghost! Anyone else witness this?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “What do I do, Pierce? We must protect my son. The Carstairs name must not be smeared.”

“Get Nero out here. We can trust him and I'm going to need help.”

By morning, Jim was headed West with his child. He couldn't bear to take the other man's daughter. All these years she had waited for word, and now she knew that her son lay in an unmarked grave near an ill-fated wagon train. It was ironic that he would never be buried in the Carstairs old family plot by the church. At least Elizabeth finally had his daughter back. She had a feeling God wasn't through with punishing Elizabeth for her part in the cover-up. What was she going to do about Lenore?

The sound of a buggy pulling up out front startled Elizabeth out of her thoughts. Were they back from the party already? She sat listening to Nero going down the hall to open the door. What choice had young Rand made? The girl he loved or the Erikson money? What was so ironic was that he would have the Carstairs much larger fortune—all of it—if he chose Kimi. True to her word, Elizabeth hadn't changed her will. The money was scheduled to go to the real Carstairs heir.

 

 

Kimi let Nero help her from the buggy, brushed aside his questions as she ran inside, her heart pounding. Nana came out of the music room. “My dear, what's wrong?”

She must not break down and cry; it would weaken her resolve. “Nana, I—I'm going away. Tonight.”

“Young Rand announced his engagement to Lenore then?” She took a deep breath, almost as if she were in pain.

“I don't know, Grandmother,” she shook her head. “I came to realize tonight that I don't belong here, that Rand would be better off without me, so I'm going away.”

Elizabeth's eyes closed briefly, and then she turned and looked toward the painting. The beauty in the portrait almost looked as if she were smiling cruelly. “So Camelia, you had the last laugh after all—God's punishment for an old woman.”

Was Grandmother losing her mind? Absently Kimi reached up to touch the medicine charm hanging around her neck.
Daddy,
she thought, remembering now how he had held her, trying to carry her to safety. “He loved me every much, didn't he?”

Elizabeth stared at the painting and the handsome man with the watch in his hand. “He loved you very much,” she whispered, “almost as much as I loved my child and his father.”

“Oh, Grandmother.” She took the old lady's frail hands in her own. “I know this will hurt you, but I must go away.”

“Back to the Indians?” Her mouth trembled, revealing how much she cared for her granddaughter.

Kimi nodded. “Please try to understand. That little girl in that portrait is gone, long gone with the passage of time.”

Grandmother nodded. “Everyone gone, all but Camelia. She will be with me always. I hear her sometimes, her mocking laughter, the rustle of her skirts. I saw her reincarnated tonight; my punishment.”

Kimi didn't know what the frail lady was talking about, but maybe it didn't matter. “It's just that, well, I love Rand, but I'll never fit into his life, not like Lenore would. Whatever Laurel Carstairs was, she was lost along with her father far away from here. In her place is a girl who is really Sioux in her heart and who will never feel at home any place else, so I'm returning to them.”

Elizabeth Carstairs turned away, her shoulders shaking, stared at the portrait. “So Camelia, everything works out even in the end. This is my final punishment for what I did that long ago night, I find my granddaughter, only to lose her again.”

Tears ran down her cheeks, and Kimi hugged the frail body to her own. “Nana, I don't know what you think you're guilty of and I don't care. I love you and I'm glad we found each other again, if only for a few days.”

They put their arms around each other, and for a long moment they clung together.

The old lady looked at her, tears on her wrinkled cheeks. “How can you do this when you love him so?”

Kimi sighed and turned away. “That's precisely why I'm doing it, because I love him and want him to be happy. I would only humiliate him and make him regret marrying me. No sacrifice is too great when you love someone.”

“Spoken like a true Carstairs.” Nana seemed to force herself to smile. “All right, if your mind's made up, I'll help you. I've got some cash in the house and I want to give you that mare you like, Onyx. Nero will take you to the train. Now get ready.”

Her heart breaking, Kimi ran upstairs, changed out of the beautiful ball gown. For one evening she had been almost like the Cinderella she vaguely remembered from her story books that Daddy used to read to her a long, long time ago. Except this time, the girl didn't want the palace and the lifestyle that went with the prince.

In moments, she had a few belongings and was hugging her grandmother one last time.
“Pilamaya,”
she whispered.
“Thank you
. I love you, Nana; I love you so!”

As Kimi went outside, she paused, waiting for Nero to put her things in the buggy. No doubt Lenore and Rand were announcing their engagement now and everyone was drinking toasts of champagne. Kimi only regretted that she hadn't had a chance to say good-bye to the kindly judge. She turned one last time and looked off toward Randolph Hall, thinking about the man she loved. She would never, never forget him, but she loved him too much to stay and ruin his life.
“Wakan Tanka nici un,”
she whispered.
Good bye and may the Great Spirit go with you and guide you.

She was sobbing as Nero helped her into the buggy and tied the mare on behind.

Elizabeth stared after them long after her granddaughter had left. God had a way of dealing out justice after all. She almost seemed to hear her daughter-in-law's mocking laughter drifting through the house and the ghostly strains of her own piano echoing through the eerie mansion.
Alas my love, you do me wrong, to caste me off discourteously.. . .

Almost blindly, she went to the French doors, opened them, and stared out into the shadowy plants of the conservatory. More than the pistol had been buried hastily in the east lawn. Ironic, maybe, that her daughter-in-law not have a respectable grave in the Carstairs family plot in the churchyard. The beauty slept forever with her paramour under the camelia bush in the conservatory Elizabeth had built later. She'd had to live with that secret all these years and the stress was gradually killing her. Elizabeth would do it again to protect her son and his child, but it had all come to naught. God is not mocked.

The sound of a carriage in the drive. Laurel had changed her mind and returned after all. With a glad cry, Elizabeth ran to the door and flung it open. It was Pierce Hamilton and young Rand Erikson. They both looked grim.

“What is it? Where's Lenore?”

Pierce took her arm. “I think we'd better go in the music room and sit down, my dear. Something terrible has happened.”

Someone knew, she thought, but Pierce seemed to read her thoughts, shook his head. “No, not that. Let's sit down.”

Woodenly, she let him lead her into the music room. She sank down on the sofa, waiting. Pierce put a goblet of sherry in her trembling hand.

She watched the judge pour himself a brandy and offer one to Rand, who shook his head. “Lenore was a heroine tonight,” Pierce said softly as he turned around to face her, “she did the Carstairs name proud.”

Was he never going to tell her what had happened? She took a sip of sherry, looked questioningly at young Rand. He nodded agreement. “Yes, Lenore behaved like a true Carstairs, everyone says so.”

Something terrible has happened, she thought, and abruptly, the sherry sloshed over her frail, trembling hand. “Tell me, Pierce.”

“It was all over when I got out on the balcony. Shelby Merson's in jail and the sheriff will be over to question you later.”

The clock ticked and ticked and ticked. Elizabeth seemed to hear her daughter-in-law's mocking laughter drift through the old house. “You're telling me Lenore is dead, aren't you?”

Young Rand's face twisted with pain as he looked at her, nodded. “She—she was trying to stop Shelby from throwing me off the balcony,” he whispered. “Terrible accident.”

Elizabeth tried to feel something, some hurt, but she felt only guilt because she had never loved Lenore, knowing she was not really her granddaughter. Lenore had had her mother's looks and Clint Nutter's morals. Elizabeth cleared her throat. “We'll give Lenore a beautiful funeral and headstone in the Carstairs family plot next to my James.”

Pierce got up, poked up the fire so that it blazed brightly. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, although her chest was hurting again.

The young man made a helpless gesture. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Carstairs.”

“It's all right,” she answered numbly, thinking of all the people who would be coming, the flowers and food, everything she had yet to deal with. She saw the question in his eyes that he had been waiting to ask.

“Mrs. Carstairs, if I might see Laurel—”

“No,” she shook her head. She must stall him, give Laurel time to make her train. “She didn't want to see you, young man. It was probably a wise decision. I'm not sure you care enough about her to make the sacrifice it would take to have her.”

He swore softly under his breath. “Excuse me, ma'am, I sympathize with you on your loss, but I had already let Lenore know I was going to break the engagement, that I loved Laurel.”