Sunset Embrace (5 page)

He coughed unnecessarily, loudly. "All right, she can stay. Temporarily. As soon as I can find a way to feed and take care of him by myself, she'll be out. Is that understood? I'm not running a charity hospital either. Besides, I don't want a woman like her taking care of Victoria's baby I'm sorry about her own baby, but it's probably just as well he died. She's either a prostitute as Mrs. Watkins said, or a girl who has disgraced her family, or a woman who's run away from her husband. In any event, she's not the kind of woman I want handling my son. If it weren't a matter of lift and death, she wouldn't be. Now, under those terms, do you still want to stay?" he demanded of the girl cooing to his peacefully sleeping son.

She lifted her head to meet his glaring green eyes. "What's the baby's name?"

Ross was taken aback by her soft inquiry. "Uh . . . Lee. I named him Lee."

She smiled down at the infant, hugging him close. Her hand smoothed over his head, which was fuzzy with dark hair. "Lee," she murmured lovingly. Looking up at the father with a bland expression, she said, "I'll take care of Leefor as long as he needs me, Mr. Coleman." She paused for a moment before adding loftily, "Even if it means putting up with the likes of you."

P
utting up with the likes of you. Putting up with the likes of you.

Ross tugged mercilessly on the harness as the words reverberated in his head. Who the hell did she think she was to talk to him that way? He patted the horses rump as if to say his anger wasn't directed toward the team that pulled the wagon.

He went back to the fire he had rekindled minutes earlier at the first pinking of the eastern sky. The coffee wasn't boiling yet. It had been his habit to start the fire each morning, to make the coffee, even to get the bacon frying so Victoria could sleep a while longer. She hadn't been accustomed to rising early, much less getting her own breakfast, and the long, arduous days on the trail had taxed her strength.

Ross stared into the crackling fire, asking himself for the hundredth time why she had lied to him. She had said she was only a few months pregnant and wouldn't be having the baby until long after they reached Texas. Because of her slight build, the lie had been believable. But after only a few weeks into their journey her burgeoning abdomen had given her away. Even when Ross remarked on how large she was getting so soon and she had meekly admitted that she was further along than she had first told him, he still hadn't realized how progressed her pregnancy had been Lee had been born several weeks prematurely. Still, the fact remained that Victoria had lied to him in order to get her way.

He could understand why she hadn't wanted her father to know about the baby. Her father, Vance Gentry, had had a hard enough time accepting her marriage to a hired hand. But why the hell hadn't she been completely honest with him, her own husband?

Ross reached for the enamel coffeepot and poured some of the strong brew into a tin cup. On the trail he preferred that kind of utensil to the china Victoria had insisted they bring along. Sipping the scalding coffee, he let his mind wander.

No, Vance Gentry hadn't taken well to his daughter's falling in love with the man he had hired to manage his stables. Gentry had wanted a man with lineage as sterling as Victorias to be her husband. But men of marriageable age from established Southern families were hard to come by these days. The war had seen to that. Victoria was happy with her choice and, as the months passed, everyone at the farm adjusted to the idea of Ross Coleman's being her husband. Everyone except Vance. He was never openly hostile, but his resentment toward his son-in-law couldn't be disguised.

Victoria had sensed that resentment. That's why she had waited until her father left on a horse-buying trip to Virginia to tell Ross about the baby. When he'd mentioned the land in Texas, it had been her idea that they leave before her father returned. Ross had been concerned about her pregnancy and the baby, but she had assured him they would have plenty of time to get settled before their baby was born. Well, the baby had been born. He had the baby, but no Victoria.

No Victoria. He tried to imagine what his life would be like without her. She had come into it so unexpectedly and she had left it just as abruptly. She had been a gift that had been his temporarily, before being maliciously snatched away. In his life now there would be no light, laughter, love. He wouldn't ever see her face again, touch her hair, hear her singing. She was irrevocably lost to him, and he didn't know if he could cope with that.

For Lee he would have to. Husbands lost wives to childbirth every day, and still survived. He would too. He would make a good life for his son. Just him and Lee. Alone together. No, not quite.

Now he had that girl on his hands.

He tossed the coffee down his throat and was pouring another cup when Bubba Langston crouched down beside him.

"Mornin', Ross." Bubba had felt a sense of maturity and importance when the man, whom he considered a paragon of all a man should be, had told him to call him by his given name.

"Bubba," Ross answered laconically, his mind still on his problem.

"Think it'll rain today?"

Foreboding clouds were reflected in the green eyes that scanned them. "Maybe. Hope not. I'm sick of the rain. It's slowing us up."

Bubba cleared his throat. "I'm ... uh ... sorry about your wife, Ross."

Ross only nodded. "Coffee?" Without waiting for the boy to respond, he took up another cup and poured the coffee.

They drank in silence for a moment. Others in the camp were beginning to stir. Wood smoke wafted on the humid air. The rattle of harnesses and the snuffling of team horses, the soft conversations of husbands and wives before the children awoke, the clanking of metal pots and pans, filled the morning with comfortable, familiar noises. That familiarity was reassuring. Ross felt that everything in his life had suddenly become alien.

"Did you see to the horses yet?" he asked the boy.

"Sure did. Took that bag of oats to 'em just like you asked me."

"Thanks, Bubba," Ross said, smiling for the first time. He wondered how he would have turned out had he had a man in his youth to look up to. Probably no different than he had. Some people were born bad, born to scrape and claw through life. He had thought when Victoria Gentry fell in love with him and married him that he had been given a second chance. So much for good fortune among losers. "I'm lucky you were along on this train to help me look after my horses. They're all I've got to get my own herd started once we get to Texas."

The boy's white hair was tossed by a gentle morning breeze. "Shoot, Ross, even if you wasn't pay in' me to look after 'em, I'd volunteer. Pa wants me to be a farmer like him. He's set on findin' a new homestead in Texas and startin' over someplace where it don't flood every year like our place on the Tennessee. I don't want to farm. I'd rather work with horses like you, Ross." He helped himself to another cup of coffee, jubilant that he had his idol's undivided attention. "How'd you get your start?"

Conversation with the boy was keeping Ross's mind of his troubles. As he talked, he sliced strips of bacon from a slab of salted pork- "Well, I was injured—"

"A war injury?" Bubba asked, wide-eyed.

Ross's eyes turned hard and cold as he stared sightlessly into the dense forest surrounding the camp. His voice was low and bitter when he answered. "No. Sort of an accident." He flipped the bacon into the hot skillet. It sizzled and popped. "An old man named John Sachs found me and took me to his cabin. It was way up in the Smokies. He was a hermit. He nursed me back to health." Ross laughed. "Mostly with the rotgut he distilled. When I was well enough to work, he suggested I go down into the valley and see a man named Vance Gentry. He operates one of the finest stud farms in Tennessee. I went to work for him and married Victoria."

"And then the old man, Sachs, he sold you the land in Texas."

Ross looked at the boy from humor-wrinkled eyes. "Have I told you this story before?"

"Sure you have, Ross. But I like hearin' it."

"Old man Sachs had fought at the Battle of San Jacinto The Republic of Texas had awarded grants of land to the men who had fought there. But he wandered back to Tennessee and never had the gumption to go back and claim it."

Ross had been intrigued by the thought of a section of rich east Texas land just lying there unused. He had known that he and Victoria would live forever under her fathers Influence if they didn't leave. Besides, Ross wanted a place of his own, a place to start his own herd of prize horses, a place where he could breathe easier when meeting strangers.

He had offered to buy the land from the old recluse. The man had laughed and simply handed over the deed sent to him by the Texas government years earlier. "I'll die here in this cabin, son," he had said. "Don't have no need for that land. I moseyed into Texas on a lark. That war meant no more to me than a big brawl and a helluva good time. You want that land, it's yours."

When he had broached the subject of relocating to Victoria, she had shown more enthusiasm than he had bargained for. He had wanted to go ahead of her, see the land, get a house started, then send for her and the baby. But she had insisted on going with him.

"Better to make a clean break while Daddy's away, Ross. Let's join up with that wagon train that's organizing down in McMinn County."

Ross had planned on doing that anyway. Traveling in numbers was safer. There was also a distinct advantage to bringing household belongings rather than trying to buy them once there. People were flocking to Texas and then finding when they arrived that homesteading supplies weren't readily available.

Victoria had seen it all as a grand adventure and wanted to keep their departure a secret. He had argued with her. He didn't want her father to return home and find them gone without a word.

"Please, Ross. He'll think up a thousand reasons for us not to go, especially if he finds out about the baby. He'll never let us leave."

Now Ross wrapped two slices of bacon in a leftover biscuit and handed the sandwich to Bubba. "I'd saved enough wages to buy the horses to start my own herd. Now I've got Lucky and five of the prettiest mares you ever saw."

"You sure do," Bubba mumbled around a mouthful.

"Thanks to the grooming you give them every night." Ross chuckled. "Lucky is crazy in love with every one of those mares."

The youth basked in Boss's approval. They were smiling at each other companionably when they heard the fussy cry of the waking infant from inside the wagon.

Bubba whipped his towhead toward the sound. Coming to them through the canvas were soft maternal mur-murings. Then silence. Bubba looked inquiringly at Ross, whose expression had turned fearsomely dark as he stared at the wagons opening.

"That . . . that girl, Lydia. Ma said she'd be stayin' in your wagon and takin' care of the baby from now on."

The lips beneath the black moustache thinned. "It appears that way, yes." Restless and angry, Ross knew he bad to direct that energy elsewhere or he would explode. He rose to his feet and walked to the end of the wagon. Opening up a carpetbag, he took out a mirror, a straightedge razor, a brush, and a shaving mug, and set them on the tailgate. Then he folded the collar of his shirt inside. He had been heating a pan of water near the fire. He dipped the shaving brush into the hot water, then into the mug, and began working up a thick, rich lather. He slapped the white foam onto his Lower face and began lifting off the soap and the stubble of his beard with deft strokes of the razor. Bubba watched, envious.

"She was right poorly when me and Luke found her," he said, conversationally.

"Was she?" Ross swished the razor in the water and tilted his head to one side to see better in the mirror he had hung on a nail.

"Sure was. Lyin' in the rain, pale and still as death."

The jaw being shaved tensed. "Well, she's fair to bursting with life and good health now."

Ross wished to hell he couldn't remember the way the lantern had cast light and shadow over her breasts. The unusual gold color in her eyes had bewitched him not to forget it. He commanded his body to forget. It wouldn't. Even now it responded.

His heritage was manifesting itself. It wasn't decent, his noticing the girl's body and his wife barely cold in her grave. Damn! That's what came from being the bastard son of a whore. No matter how many respectable people you associated with, no matter how refined a lady you married, sooner or later, even when you didn't want it to, the seediness inside you took over. You couldn't outdistance your beginnings no matter how fast you ran.

All it took was one look at someone like that tart in the wagon, and he had no more control than metal shavings being drawn to a magnet. His pretense at being better than he was had been shot to hell. He had come from trash just as she had, but he had lifted himself out of it.

And by God, he would be damned before he would be sucked into that kind of life again. By her or anyone else.

The baby whimpered and Ross knew he was being transferred from one breast to another. His hand wavered. He nicked himself with the razor and cursed under his breath. Bubba shifted nervously from one foot to another, wondering what he had said to engrave that deep cleft between Ross's eyebrows. He had never seen the man so unnerved. Of course the man's wife had just died. That was probably the reason for the scowl on his face as he bent his knees to better see himself in the mirror.

"When do you reckon we'll get to the Mississippi, Ross?"

"A week, maybe."

"Ever seen the Mississippi?"

"Lots of times." Ross wiped his face with a rough towel and tossed the shaving water onto the ground. Carefully he dried the razor and packed it and the other shaving implements back into the carpetbag. The sterling silver set had been a gift from Victoria last Christmas. He tried to think on that as he studiously ignored the gentle lullaby that was being sung inside the wagon.

"Gee. I ain't never seen it," Bubba said of the river. "I can't wait."