Colorado Dawn (15 page)

“Where are you going?”

She paused at the doorway. “I’m going to pack. I have a funeral to attend.” She brushed past Buckford at the bottom of the stairs. “And don’t even think about offering to come with me. It’s too late for that.”

Her door slammed at the top of the stairs as effectively as she’d slammed the door on his efforts to comfort her.

David groped for the edge of the settee and sank onto it. He put his face into his hands, trying to make sense of what had just happened, but only one thing stood out in his mind.

She was leaving him.

Packing her bags and boarding a train.

The truth hit like a blow from an ax handle. Though he had tried to prepare himself for it from the moment he married her, the reality halved his heart. He had let his guard down, had actually started imagining she might stay with him, that together they could find happiness in spite of his infirmity. What if he had gone with her to her aunt’s? Would she have come back to him if he had sent her alone?

She thinks I don’t love her
.

Shoving his fingers into his hair, he squeezed his hands into fists. Her accusations zipped through his head, and he was guilty of every one of them. He
had
held her away from him and kept his most intimate and personal thoughts to himself. Because he had been afraid and ashamed, he had refused to accompany her on a family visit. But that didn’t mean he didn’t love her.

He had been trying for days now to think of a way to swallow his pride and tell her he wanted to be a real husband to her, to share their lives together the way they had planned when he first asked her to marry him. He’d even had Buckford send a note to Rex about learning to get around outside the house starting as soon as the winter break ended in order to be ready to take Karen on a trip in the spring.

But it was too late now. She was leaving him. She didn’t want him to go with her, and he had no right to ask her to stay.

He pushed himself up from the settee and shuffled across the room to the doorway. “Buckford?”

David jumped when a voice came from quite close by. “Yes?”

“My wife”—the words jabbed—“is going on a trip. I would appreciate it if you would go to the depot and procure her ticket in a private compartment with a sleeper. Spare no expense. I want the best you can get. Then go find a shop and procure a traveling blanket and pillow and some reading matter. Anything you can think of to make the trip easier.” He swallowed against the ache growing in his middle. “When you get back, be ready to take her to the station.”

“Very good, sir.” Buckford’s voice held not a note of censure. “One ticket?”

“One ticket, Buckford. There’s money in the cash box upstairs.” He hadn’t been in the office since they’d moved into the town house. He’d shut the door on that part of his life. After handing Buckford the key to the cash box, David resumed his seat in the study, helpless to do anything else.

What seemed like hours later, Buckford returned to the town house. The smell of smoke and sunshine lingered on his clothes. “Sir, I’ve been to the depot.” He pressed a pasteboard rectangle into David’s hand. “Here is the ticket. I did as you asked and reserved a private compartment in a Pullman car. The train leaves in two hours.” He paused. “There is still room on the train if you should choose to accompany her. I can pack for you very quickly.”

David shook his head. “No, she has enough details to see to without having to look out for me, too. Though I’d like to be there to support her during the funeral, she’ll have an easier time without me.” Just as he’d thought. Life would be easier for her without his clogging things up and needing to be looked after. “Check with her to see if she needs any telegrams sent ahead to anyone and be sure to cable the depot in Kansas City and have a carriage waiting for her and someone to handle the baggage.”

“Very well.”

Before Buckford could leave, David rose and touched his arm. “Thank you, Buckford, for taking care of all these details I can’t do myself.”

“My pleasure, sir.”

A giant fist crushed David’s chest. Mackenzie history was repeating itself, and he was helpless to stop it.

He accompanied her to the depot. She didn’t speak to him on the journey, and she didn’t cry.

He recalled the last time he had seen Karen before the accident, the last time he’d put her on a train. Bags at her feet, checking her pocketbook for her ticket, torn with excitement at seeing her aunt again, worried about Hattie’s ill health, and saddened to be parted from him, even for a little while. She had chattered all the way to the train that day. He hadn’t been conflicted in the least. He had known without a doubt he would miss her every day they were apart, and his world wouldn’t be right until she returned. With no regard for the fact that they were standing on the platform at the depot with anyone and everyone looking on, he had swept her into his arms and kissed her. His embrace had knocked her hat askew, but she hadn’t seemed to mind, returning his kiss with passion. He had looked into her beautiful blue eyes and brushed her lips with his once more before putting her on the train.

This time, he might’ve been a stranger to her. She took the ticket he presented her while Buckford instructed a porter to label her trunk and wheel it to the baggage car.

David stood helplessly by, listening to the sounds the train made, hissing and clicking in preparation for its trip across the plains. “You’ve got money for your meals and anything you might need?”

“Yes, David.”

“You’ll cable when you arrive?”

“Yes.”

“If you need more money, the First Union Bank in Kansas City will honor your personal check. Or I can wire you funds.”

“Yes.”

The train whistle shattered the air, startling him. Someone—the conductor?—shouted, “All aboard!”

All he wanted to say jammed in his throat. He settled for touching her arm, her shoulder, then her face before lowering his lips to her cool cheek. “Good-bye, Karen.”

She moved away, and Buckford guided him back from the train. With a growl, tons of metal began to move. Steamy mist drifted across his skin and the smell of cinders and ash filled the air.

January 4, 1884

Karen spread the page out on her black skirt and read the scant lines for the tenth time. How different from the love letters he had mailed to her the last time she stayed in this house. Though with all that had happened to them and between them, it wasn’t surprising.

“We never realize what we have until it is gone.”

How many times had that truth been brought home to her over the past week? She glanced at the calendar on Aunt Hattie’s kitchen wall. Monday, the seventh. Rex would be there now. Would he be making David use the despised handwriting frame and practice his letters?

The funeral had been the loneliest day of her life. Her heart ached for Aunt Hattie, and every time Karen turned around, she expected to see her aunt’s dear face. Pastor Hamilton delivered a beautiful service, touching and full of remembrances and words of comfort. Later, Karen knew she would draw on those words, once she could think about them without breaking down. She withdrew a black handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes before folding David’s letter and putting it back in the envelope.

David.

Under the layers of grief for her aunt, Karen had piled up a store of guilt for the way she’d treated her husband, for the harsh words she’d spewed at him. That guilt was in no way assuaged by the knowledge that she had been in shock, overwhelmed with loss and sorrow.

Tiredness washed over her, a lethargy that had dogged her on the endless train trip and continued through the funeral. Her thoughts were wooly and chased each other like fat, stumbling sheep. She didn’t know which one to follow, so she followed none. For now, Aunt Hattie’s house was a safe, soothing refuge where she didn’t have to think too much and didn’t have to battle her stubborn husband. She could just drift.

Pushing back the teacup, she rose and went to the bedroom to lie down. She’d think about her husband later.

February 1, 1884

“Read it again, Buckford.” David folded his hands in his lap then remembered to add, “Please.”

The houseman read the letter once more, slowly. “Would you like to dictate a reply, sir?”

He stirred. “Later.” At the moment, he could think of no way to frame a reply that wouldn’t either sound dictatorial or pleading. “Could I have the letter, please?” He took the paper and tucked it into his jacket over his heart. “That will be all, Buckford. Thank you.”

When the houseman’s footsteps receded, David was left with nothing but his thoughts chasing one another like ravenous wolves. His insides writhed as he lined up the facts. A month had passed before she could bother to send a letter. The handsome, single pastor was coming to call, and the ladies of the church were matchmaking. Karen mentioned an annulment case, and she didn’t know when she would be coming home. Even a blind man could put those pieces together. All the excitement surging through him when Buckford brought a letter from her had dried to a trickle of guilt-ridden malaise for having driven her to these circumstances.

Would she come home at all? Had he lost her for good? Was this how Uncle Frank had felt, as if everything truly precious in his life was slipping away and there was nothing he could do to change it?