Daisies In The Wind (29 page)

After failing to coax her into swallowing
more than a mouthful or two of soup, Rebeccah took to sponging her
skin with a cool cloth. A cold autumn darkness was falling, a
darkness mixed with bits of swirling snow, when Caitlin opened her
eyes and seemed to focus her attention with great effort.

“Who is here?” she asked weakly. “Billy?
Wolf?”

“It’s Rebeccah.” Leaning closer, Rebeccah
caressed the frail hand lying limply on the sheet, and kept her
tone soothing. “I’ll get them for you. ...”

“Wait.” Caitlin’s breaths came in short,
painful wheezes that made Rebeccah wince. Her faded eyes struggled
valiantly to make out the figure of the young woman sitting by her
bedside. “Promise me ...”

“Yes, Caitlin, anything. What can I do?”

“Take care of Wolf. He ... needs you.”

For a moment Rebeccah was speechless. She
moistened her lips. “Your son is quite self-sufficient, Caitlin,”
she responded at last with a note of rueful humor. “Other than
needing for you to get well, he really doesn’t—”

“Yes, he does,” Caitlin insisted, sounding
crotchety for the first time since Rebeccah had known her. Suddenly
she began struggling to sit up. “He needs ...
you
.”

Alarmed by her patient’s restless distress,
Rebeccah eased her back against the pillows. “There, now, Caitlin,
you must lie still. Please, don’t upset yourself. Let me sponge
your face. There’s no cause for being so troubled. Wolf is
fine.”

The brief burst of agitation had already
taken its toll. Caitlin’s chest heaved with the effort of
breathing, and her skin looked ashy gray beneath its flush of
fever. Still she would not be silent.

“Ever since Clarissa, Wolf has been alone.”
Her lips struggled to form the words. “He was so hurt ... I thought
he’d never let himself love anyone again ... But when he talks
about you .. . or listens to Billy talk about you ... he gets this
look on his face ...”

Sharp wheezes burst from her. Rebeccah’s fear
grew, her eyes darkening with concern. “Don’t talk anymore,
Caitlin, please.”

But the old woman went doggedly on, her voice
no more than a whisper. “Rebeccah, he doesn’t look like that when
he talks about that Westerly girl or ... Lorelie Simpson ... only
when your name comes into the conversation ... He cares for you, I
tell you. Don’t hurt him,” Caitlin begged.

Hurt Wolf? Rebeccah shook her head, confused
by Caitlin’s words.
He cares for you
. Could it be?

“Rest easy, Caitlin. I would never hurt
Wolf.”

“Do you ... promise?”

“I would sooner hurt myself,” Rebeccah
whispered fiercely, her voice breaking. Then, gazing at that dear
face so wracked in misery, the next words poured out of her before
she realized what she was saying.

“I love him, Caitlin. I love him so much, it
hurts
me
every time I think of it. I’d never hurt him.
Never.”

A wan smile broke across the seamed features.
Her sparse eyelashes fluttered wearily closed. “I’m ... glad.
You’re a fine young woman,” she murmured. “You’re special,
Rebeccah. And good. You have a ... sensitive heart. I knew that
from the very first. Not at all like Clarissa....”

What did that mean?
Startled,
Rebeccah could only gaze at Caitlin’s shuttered eyes.
Not at
all like Clarissa.

She didn’t understand. But it was late, and
Caitlin was too exhausted to endure even a single question. Noting
the darkness that had come over the mountains, Rebeccah realized it
was past time to be headed home.

She found Wolf downstairs talking in low
tones with Emily Brady. Billy had fallen asleep across the
sofa.

“I’m going to sit up with Caitlin tonight so
Wolf can get some sleep. Billy needs to sleep too,” Emily commented
with a worried glance at the boy. “He’s plumb tuckered out from
worrying about Caitlin all last night. They were both up until
dawn.”

“She’s sleeping at the moment.” Rebeccah
noted the chill that had seeped into the room and immediately took
the Indian blanket folded across the back of the sofa and draped it
across Billy’s inert form. She wanted to reach out and smooth the
hair back from his brow, but, conscious of both Wolf and Emily
watching her, she refrained. Instead she went to the fire and poked
at it until the embers stirred to a brighter blaze.

“I’ll be going now,” she said, reflecting
with sudden self-consciousness that she had betrayed enough
motherly instincts for one night. If she wasn’t careful, they would
all see how concerned for Billy she was.

“I’ll take you home,” Wolf said, rising and
striding toward the door.

“That’s not necessary.”

“Don’t argue. Emily, I’ll be back within the
hour.”

He took Rebeccah by the arm before she could
protest further and propelled her out to her buckboard. “Look, I
need to talk to you anyway. I’ve been sending wires all over the
west, but no one seems to have a handle on where this Neely Stoner
might be,” he told her as he lifted her onto the seat. He deftly
tied Dusty behind the buckboard, then sprang up on the seat beside
her with an agile leap. “I’ve got a hunch he’s close by. If you
think I’m going to let you traipse around at night alone with him
and those other varmints gunning for you, you’re dead wrong,
Rebeccah. And if you say one word about not wanting to be beholden
to me, I’ll personally wring your neck,” he promised.

But his tone was almost caressing, and she
gazed at him in surprise. “I’m ... very pleased for the company,”
she said meekly. “I only wanted to spare you any inconvenience,
since I know how worried you are about Caitlin,” she explained.

“You’re not an inconvenience, Rebeccah.”

Snowflakes danced across her cheeks, but a
tiny warm flame shot through her at his words.

Suddenly the wind howled across the open land
with an icy blast that made her shiver. Wolf’s strong arm slipped
around her shoulders and pulled her close against the warmth of his
body.

“Better?”

“Yes ... much better.”

They rode in silence. It was almost
unbearably wonderful to sit like that, with his arm around her,
feeling cared for, protected. A longing grew deep inside of her.
Sweetly hopeful emotions that she had never experienced before
sprouted within, like warm, fertile seeds blooming in a barren
garden.

“I overheard what you said to Billy at the
schoolhouse today. About change. I want you to know that I
appreciate your talking to him like that. It won’t be easy for him
if Caitlin—”

“She’ll get well,” Rebeccah said quickly.
“She must.”

“I don’t make it a habit to lie to myself,
Rebeccah, or to anyone else,” he said quietly. “I’ve faced some
hard things in my life, and this is one of the hardest, but Doc
Wilson doesn’t hold out much hope. He thinks it’s only a matter of
a day or two.”

“Oh, no!”

He halted the horses as she began to cry.
Both arms wrapped around her, and she was pressed up hard against
the roughness of his coat, inhaling both his warm, comforting scent
and his reassuring strength. “You’re a baffling woman, Rebeccah
Rawlings,” Wolf muttered.

He was stroking her hair with gentle fingers,
comforting her in her grief, when she knew she ought to be
comforting him.

“You’re so calm,” she blurted. “So strong.”
She leaned her head against his chest. “Were you this strong when
Clarissa died, Wolf?”

She felt him tense. Every muscle went taut,
and his sharply indrawn breath sounded loud as a drum roll in her
ears.

“Haven’t you learned by now that I don’t care
to discuss my wife?” He released her abruptly, turning away.

Rebeccah, her face still streaked with tears,
realized she had again made a terrible mistake. Of course she knew
that every time she mentioned his wife, Wolf either pulled away or
worked himself into a fury. But she’d hoped by now, based on what
Caitlin had said, that he was beginning to recover from her death,
that he was starting to fall in love again.

“I’m sorry,” she said miserably, feeling a
weight like an anchor in her chest. “I know you must have loved her
to distraction if even the mention of her name causes you such
pain.”

“Loved her to distraction?” He cracked out a
hoarse, bitter laugh. “I hated her more than any human being I’ve
ever known.”

Blood pounded in Rebeccah’s ears. She swung
around to stare at him incredulously. “
Hated
her?”

It didn’t make sense. It seemed impossible to
believe, based on the assumptions she’d been making ever since
she’d heard about his marriage—but the harsh expression on his face
and the banked fury in his eyes told her it was true.

“I thought you were still grieving for her. I
thought no one would ever replace her.”

“Rebeccah, it’s wrong to speak ill of the
dead, so I won’t say much about Clarissa. But what would you say
about a woman who gives birth to a child and then decides she’s
bored taking care of him, is tired of staying home every night
tending to her family, and wants only to go out dancing and
drinking whiskey with any cowpoke who winks at her? What would you
say about a woman who took to lying to her husband, sneaking out
behind his back with gamblers and drifters and riffraff, who left
her own baby home all alone?”

“She did that—to you and Billy?”

He nodded grimly, his breath coming out in
short white puffs as he spoke. “I knew the marriage was a mistake
almost immediately. I met Clarissa only a few months after I met
you that first time in Arizona. She was eighteen years old,
beautiful and full of life, always laughing, restless for fun. Oh,
we had fun together, that’s one thing I can say. I was never bored
in those days with Clarissa. She enchanted me.” He paused, staring
out at the vast expanse of glittering stars as if searching for
answers to questions beyond comprehension. “I think there was
always something restless and discontented in Clarissa, a coldness
and an almost defiant wildness, but I was too much of a lovesick
fool to see it. Maybe I just didn’t want to see it. Or maybe I
thought that if she loved me enough, I could change her, make her
happy. I knew I wanted her more than I’d wanted any other woman I’d
ever met.”

Rebeccah watched his face, her heart aching.
All those nights on the run with Bear in Arizona after she’d met
Wolf at the hideout, when she’d been thinking of him, dreaming her
foolish little-girl dreams, he’d been pursuing and marrying
Clarissa. And starting his family with her. Within months, Wolf
told her, Billy had been conceived.

“She was excited about having a baby at
first, but she hated it when she started getting larger. Clarissa
was so proud of her figure. I thought she’d be fine once the baby
was born and she went back to her normal size and shape, but it
soon became obvious that something was wrong. She didn’t seem
interested in Billy. I mean, she fed him and changed him, but she
didn’t like rocking him to sleep, she never sang to him or seemed
to want to hold him—or even talked to him much. She told me she was
going loco staying home with a crying baby all day.

“I had taken a job as a deputy in Texas.”
Wolf’s voice was flat, almost emotionless, but his eyes shone with
remembered pain. “The pay wasn’t much, but I managed to scrape
together enough money to pay a local Mexican woman to come help out
with the chores and the cooking—and with Billy—so that Clarissa
would be happy. But she wasn’t happy. One time I came home to
supper and she was drinking whiskey. Entertaining a gambler named
Stone Dillon. Right in our front parlor.” His eyes narrowed with
anger, and he clenched the reins until his knuckles whitened. “And
Billy was squalling upstairs, hungry, his swaddling clothes sodden,
but she was too busy to go to him. I went crazy. We had a terrible
argument, and I nearly killed Dillon on the spot. Clarissa cried.
She begged my forgiveness. She could do that mighty prettily too,”
he said with a short bitter laugh. “She swore upside and down it
would never happen again; she picked up Billy and started cooing to
him and covering him with kisses. I thought maybe she’d realized
she had to change her ways. But then I got called away to Waco to
testify at a trial, and when I got back a few days later, the worst
thing of all had happened.”

“What could be worse?” Rebeccah whispered,
her heart going out to him. The painful memories were etched deep
within his eyes, and she longed to gently kiss away the grim,
tormented set of his mouth. “Tell me, Wolf,” she said in a low
tone, sensing it would be healing for him to talk about it, to
purge such awful memories from his mind.

“I came back from Waco a day early. It was
late at night, but I’d ridden straight through the day and evening
to reach home—to be with Clarissa, to see my wife and son.”

“And?” Rebeccah breathed, feeling a prickly
dread begin to grow.

He stared straight ahead. “And I found Billy
in his crib, covered with flies, burning up with fever. And no
Clarissa.”

“Wolf!”

“He was screaming, sobbing loud enough to
wake the devil—as ill as I’ve ever seen a child, Rebeccah—and he
was all alone.
Alone
, damn it. Clarissa, it turned out,
was in some saloon in town, hanging all over Stone Dillon while he
cleaned up at five-card stud.”

“How could she do a thing like that?”

“She claimed Billy wasn’t sick when she left,
that he was only asleep. As if that made everything right.”

Wolf turned to meet her gaze. “After that I
knew I couldn’t trust her to care for Billy,” he said heavily.
“Something was missing inside her, some bond between her and the
boy—between her and me too. I wrote to Caitlin and asked her to
come live with us so that I would know Billy would be looked after
whenever I wasn’t there. But Clarissa didn’t wait for Caitlin to
come. She up and left one morning, ran off with Dillon and didn’t
even leave a note.”