Compromised Hearts (21 page)

“I’ll try, Mama.”

She sighed heavily as she heard him walk away. His voice had revealed how hard he was trying to be brave. Emily was not sure he could right his fear of the dark.

As she crouched near her door, she could not stop thinking of all that could go wrong, and when she heard Thornton’s soft approach she held her breath. She would not let him know how deeply disappointed she was if he had failed.

“I gots them, Mama. There’s a lot o’ them.”

Emily felt like cheering but restrained herself. The door was still locked, and there were still a lot of things that could go wrong. Trying to get him to find the right key was the first step.

“We want a long skinny one with two little bits at the end.”

“There’s six of those. Which one?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart. You’ll have to try each one.”

It was hard not to scream as she listened to him try each key. Time went by with an aching slowness as she fretted over whether or not his small fingers were using the right key or if it was truly the wrong key. When at last she heard the click of the lock giving, she jumped to her feet just as Thornton opened the door and gave her a proud smile.

“Oh, you are so brave and smart!” she cried softly, hugging him tightly. She had to smile at the way he straightened his small shoulders and puffed out his small chest.

“Now what do we do, Mama?”

“Get out of here.”

“Where we going?”

“We mustn’t talk now. We have to leave before anyone wakes up. Go and get dressed, love, and put your things in your bag. We’ll talk all you want once we’re away from here.”

She did not think she had dressed or packed her things so fast in her entire life. Quietly she slipped from her room, shutting the door and locking it. If she replaced the keys, perhaps Dorothy and Harper would not notice her absence at once.

Thorton needed help as she had suspected. She finished putting his few things in his small bag as he dressed himself. As best as she could, she hid all signs of a hasty departure. Then, hand in hand, they crept
down the stairs. Thornton waited silently as she replaced the keys, and then they slipped out of the house and started to walk down the road.

“Where we going, Mama?”

Sighing, for she had hoped that he would forget to ask that question, she replied, “I’m not quite sure.”

“Let’s go to Uncle Cloud.”

“I don’t think we should, honey. He hasn’t been to see us. He might not want us.”

“He did too come.”

Stopping short, Emily stared down at the boy. “What did you say?”

“I said he did too come. You sent him away,” he accused, glaring up at her.

“What are you talking about? I never saw him. Are you sure about this?”

“Real sure. He talked to me while
she
went to tell you he was dere. She said"—he frowned as he sought to recall every word of the conversation he had not really understood—"she said you didn’t want to see him, that it was forgot or sumpin’ like dat.”

“What did Cloud do?” she asked weakly.

“He said ‘forgot it is,’ and went away.”

“When was this, honey? Can you remember that?”

“Yup. Just after church. Not last time. Before that.”

“Over a week ago,” she whispered in shock. “Just as he had promised. How could they do that to me?”

“You shouldn’t of sended him away. That was mean, I think.”

“I didn’t send him away. I never would’ve sent him away. Dorothy never told me he came asking after me.”

“She lied?”

“She lied. I wonder what else she has lied about.”

“Are we going to Uncle Cloud?”

“Oh, honey, I don’t know. He doesn’t know that Dorothy lied to him.”

“Then we tell him,” Thornton replied with the simple logic of the very young.

“Let me think just a moment, darling.”

Emily tried to push away the shock of Dorothy’s actions and think clearly. She knew Cloud had no reason to believe that what he had been told was other than the absolute truth, and it would have sorely stung his pride. The last person he would want to see now was her. He would undoubtedly slam the door in her face before she could utter one word in her defense.

Her eyes widened and she looked at Thornton. Cloud would not slam the door on the child. With the child as the key, she just might find opening enough to talk to Cloud. She was not quite sure of what that would accomplish, but it was all she could do.

Her first and only thought had been to get away. It was not until she was standing in the road that she fully realized she had no place to go. If nothing else, Cloud might help
her find a place away from Lockridge. She would never use the fact that she carried his child to force him into marriage. However, she was quite capable of using it to get him to aid her. He was responsible, after all, and the child’s welfare was at stake.

Badly stifling a massive yawn, Thornton asked, “Are you all done finking?”

“Yes, I’m all done. We’ll go to Cloud. He might be at the saloon, so we’ll look in there as we pass it.”

Just short of the saloon, Emily stopped, backing into a shadowed alley. Her sudden reluctance was mostly a result of being unsure of how to proceed. She did not really think it would be wise to march in and ask for Cloud. A lone woman did not stroll into a saloon in a woman-starved town late at night. Even she could see that that would be asking for trouble.

“Thornton, honey, I’m going to have to ask you to do something else for me.”

“What’s dat?” Thornton’s big eyes were weighted with sleep even though he tried hard to fight it.

“I want you to go into the saloon and find out if Cloud’s in there. You can describe him if you must, but I think everyone in town knows him. Don’t tell anyone I’m out here except for Cloud.”

She huddled against the wall when he left. Several men staggered by the opening of her alley refuge but she remained unseen. It seemed an awfully long time before

Thornton returned, and she had begun to fear that someone had taken it into their head to return the boy to Dorothy and Harper.

“He weren’t in dere. Said he’s at Wolfe’s,” Thornton reported. “Are we gonna walk there?”

“Yes, honey, we are going to walk there. Do you think you can walk at least part of the way?”

“Yup. It’s a long way, though.” He frowned as they started down the road. “A real long way.”

“I can carry you if you grow too tired, but do try to go as far as possible. It’d be a big help for me.”

A brisk walk, if kept up, could have gotten her to Wolfe Ryder’s in but a few hours, but that was a pace she could not maintain. Thornton’s little legs could not manage a walk as brisk as hers. He tried not to lag, but she often had to slow her pace considerably in order for him to keep up.

Even so, it was better by far than if she had had to carry him the whole way. She was not sure, but she felt it could not be good for the child struggling to grow within her womb. Emily was not so sure that, laden with Thornton and their baggage, she would make much better time anyway.

“What’re we gonna do when we get to Uncle Cloud’s, Mama?”

“I’m afraid I can’t really say. He might not believe me when I tell him that Dorothy lied
to him.”

“He’ll beweave me. I’m a boy. You’re just a girl.”

Grimacing, Emily had to agree with that. Cloud, cynic that he was, would indeed believe Thornton before he’d believe her. To her disadvantage was the fact that he would undoubtedly want to know why Dorothy would lie, and Emily had no idea of the why of the whole matter.

“I’m not sure what is going to happen, darling. He might believe that Dorothy lied, but it might not make any difference. Cloud might not want us to stay with him.”

“He likes us,” Thornton protested quietly.

“Yes, he does, sweets—especially you. However, liking someone doesn’t mean you want them to come and live with you or that you want to take care of them. It’s a big responsibility to care for a woman and a child.”

“You don’t think he’ll wanna take care of his baby?”

Yet again Emily was shocked into stopping and staring. “How did you know about the baby?”

“I heard them talking on it. She said he’d lefted a baby in you and you needed to get a papa. I tink Cloud should be the papa, not that other man.”

“Cloud should be, but he doesn’t have to be if he doesn’t wish to,” Emily explained gently, if sadly.

“Dat’s okay. We done real good and we got
no papa. We can take care of that baby.”

She hugged and kissed him before starting them walking again. “You’re not to say anything to Cloud about the baby, Thornton. I am the one who must tell him at the right time and in my own way. He’s got to be told just right so that he won’t think I’m trying to force him to be a father.”

“I hope he wants to be one. I’d like to haf Cloud as a papa. We make a real good family.”

“That we would, Thornton,” she said quietly. “It would be very nice. But let’s not hope too hard.”

About halfway there, she had to carry Thornton. The boy was nearly asleep on his feet. Using a blanket sling as before, she secured him to her back, picked up their bags, and started off again. She wondered if she would have been so eager to leave Boston if she had known how much time she was to spend as a pack mule. It would be very late when she reached Wolfe’s, but she prayed someone would be awake enough to lead her to a bed.

J
ames and Wolfe decided it was past time to put a stop to Cloud’s headlong dive into a bottle. If nothing else, they were tired of carrying him to bed every night. Cloud needed a lot of drink to get drunk, so it was often very late before he was ready to be put to bed.

‘I just can’t believe he’d go like this. The man was as hard as rock.” James shook his head in a gesture of disbelief as he and Wolfe made their way to the veranda where Cloud sat staring out at the horizon and drinking whiskey.

“Rock can be broken,” Wolfe muttered as they stepped outside. Wolfe looked at his older brother with a
mixture of concern and disgust. He had not been surprised when, rejected by a woman for the first time in his life, Cloud had decided to get drunk. However, he had never expected his brother to stay drunk quite so long. He frowned; if the problem was Emily, Cloud had waited two weeks to get upset about it. Wolfe was suddenly not too sure of what to do.

“Cloud, I think it’s time we had us a serious talk.”

He looked up at Wolfe, who stood on his right, sensing James moving to stand on his left. “About what?”

“This isn’t like you, Cloud,” James said, “and it isn’t getting you anywhere.”

“Nope. It isn’t. I suppose you have a suggestion.”

“Well,” James said, nervously clearing his throat, “maybe you should go and talk to Emily.”

“I did. No, that’s not quite right. I tried to talk to Emily.”

“It’s the first I’ve heard about it,” grumbled Wolfe.

“Perhaps I had a premonition,” Cloud drawled, starting to take a drink but changing his mind.

“What the hell happened?” Wolfe urged when Cloud seemed loathe to elaborate.

“Dorothy answered the door. She went to get Emily, but returned with only a message. Emily did not want to see me. She felt our association was something best forgotten.”

There was a lengthy silence as James and Wolfe thought over what they had just heard. Cloud found that the words still seared him to the bone. It seemed a cruel irony that he had to taste his first rejection from Emily, the one woman in all his thirty years he wanted acceptance from.

“I don’t believe it,” James said suddenly, then saw Cloud tense. “Hell, I believe you—I just don’t believe Emily’d do that. I traveled with you. I saw the way you two were.”

Cloud shut his eyes for a minute. In all his wallowing in self-pity, his cursing of Emily, he had ignored one thing. It was something he had succeeded in ignoring for too long.

“There’s something I ought to tell you, James. Emily did not share my bed by choice. When I found her trudging along that day, I gave her an ultimatum. She could either continue along on her own or pay a certain price for my assistance. You can guess my price.”

“You really can be a bastard when you try, can’t you,” Wolfe said calmly.

“Sometimes I don’t even have to try.”

“That was the bargain referred to now and again, wasn’t it,” James continued.

“Yup. I really just put it out of my mind.” He rubbed his forehead. “Took one look at her and wanted her. I also knew she wasn’t going to let me seduce her. Hell, I doubt I could’ve taken the time. The wanting was that bad—and I won’t make that admission twice.”

“You didn’t really have to make it this time,” James said. “It was clear enough most of the time.”

“Well, I finally just took that damn bargain into consideration,” Cloud said heavily. “Emily never forgot. The whole arrangement offended her little puritan soul. She felt like a whore.”

“Surely Emily didn’t really believe you’d leave her and the boy alone?”

“I’d like to think she doesn’t really believe it now, Wolfe, but that first day she did, or did enough not to call my bluff. Course, if she knows different now, she knows I was bluffing, which would anger her. My only defense is that I didn’t know she was a virgin. I thought Thornton was her child. Course, if I’m honest, and I seem inclined to be at the moment, I don’t know if it would’ve made a hell of a lot of difference to me. Still, it meant she paid a damn high price.”

Neither James nor Wolfe argued that. For a while the three men stood deep in thought. A solution would not be easy, if even possible, Wolfe mused. Cloud had certainly put his worst foot forward in his dealings with Emily. This was not some simple misunderstanding.

“Nope. I still don’t believe it. It just doesn’t suit her.”

“What are you muttering about, James?” Cloud asked wearily.

“I traveled right at your side. I figure I know the little lady as well as anyone. It just
doesn’t seem her way to send that Dorothy to tell you to get out. If Emily wanted to tell you off or spit in your eye, she’d do it herself. She’s never backed off from anything before.”

“No, she hasn’t.” Cloud felt a small stirring of hope. “Then again, why would Dorothy lie?”