Desert Angel (12 page)

“You’ve had a baby,” he stated the obvious. “When?”

“Three days before I came here,” March couldn’t understand his sudden questions. He had said that Pa had explained her condition, why did he seem so surprised?

“Where is it?”

March briefly closed her eyes at the expected flash of sorrow. “She died at birth.”

“A girl?”

“Yes, but she came too early. She never had a chance.”

“I think you owe me an explanation,” he stated again.

Trying to shield as much of herself as possible with the bodice of her dress, she raised questioning eyes to him. “What did Pa tell you?”

“That you were having your woman’s time, and were a little weak.”

March shook her head. “How like him, he tells a lie easier than other people tell the truth. If he thinks it’ll save his hide or earn him some money, he’ll lie.”

Jim saw the pain in her face, heard it in her voice. “Tell me about it,” he encouraged, fighting to control his own feelings that he had been used by her and by her father.

March leaned over and softly kissed Jamie’s head. She loved him so much, his innocence, his acceptance. Even though she’d only taken care of him for a week, she thought he already recognized her voice. When she spoke to him his tiny head would bob up and he’d search for her.

When he knew the truth, Jim might decide she wasn’t fit to be the caretaker of his son. What would she do if she had to leave Jamie, once again losing her baby, only this time because of her past? She felt again the anguish of betrayal, the humiliation of deception.

Jim watched the play of emotions cross her face. He saw her love for his son and her grief at the mention of her own child. Without the necessity of words, he understood her fear that she would lose another child if he took Jamie from her. He also recognized her embarrassment, but deep in her eyes, turning their stormy gray to deep violet, he saw a burning hatred.

“You were raped,” Jim stated quietly.

If ever there had been a time in her life when she wished she could lie as easily as her father, this was it. She knew a simple lie would save her job and Jim’s respect. But there were too many people who knew the truth, and would be all too willing to tell their version of it to him, once it became common knowledge that she was employed here.

She wasn’t a tramp or a whore. She had too much self-respect to lower herself to that level. She was innocent of crime, betrayed by softly spoken words and promises that were made with no intention of fulfilling; guilty for believing that she was valued for what she was, not who she was.

Raising her troubled, violet eyes to him, she shook her head. “No … I wasn’t raped.”

EIGHT

March watched his expression harden at her denial. If she hadn’t been raped, there was only one conclusion that he could reach. And who could blame him for that, she thought sadly as she lovingly caressed Jamie’s soft cheek. A decent woman never allowed a man, other than her husband, to touch her. Only a woman of ill repute, someone without morals, would give herself outside of marriage.

Should she admit the truth? Even at the risk of losing her job and ultimately having to give up the child she loved, could she find the strength to admit it?

The truth had been so inconceivable, so shattering to her, that it had overshadowed even the shame of her pregnancy.

“Since you’ve been given the job of caring for my infant son, I think I deserve to know the rest.” His icy eyes showed no mercy; his square jaw was firm with determination. Only one kind of woman had a baby without first having a husband, and he didn’t want that kind taking care of his child.

“I don’t think his innocence has been tarnished by his short time in my care.” March fought back the tears of humiliation. She had known that this past week had been too good to be true, and that it would never last. Good things didn’t happen to people like her. Hadn’t that already been proven to her, did she have to have the lesson repeated before she could learn it?

“Well? I’m waiting.”

March dislodged Jamie from her breast and raised him to her shoulder to pat the air from his stomach. Discreetly rebuttoning her bodice, she decided that the baby could wait a short while before finishing his meal. When this interview was over, she’d carry him upstairs and nurse him in private. Providing that her employer would let her stay long enough.

“If you don’t plan to finish it, I’ll take the baby.” Relieved that her enticing flesh was covered from his gaze, Jim stood up from the desk and approached her.

March couldn’t believe how deeply it hurt to know that she had been judged and found guilty, and that Jim didn’t want her to hold his son any longer than absolutely necessary. It made it easier for her to decide to tell the truth, all of it. At this point, she had nothing to lose and everything to gain. She kissed the fuzzy head and reluctantly handed the child to his father.

When Jim was once again behind the desk, the baby cradled securely in the crook of his arm, he turned questioning eyes toward her.

“I met him in town — “

“Oracle?” Jim interrupted, naming the small town that was much closer than Tucson.

“Yes, it was just before we moved into your line shack. We’d been sleeping out in the open with only a lean-to for protection. Pa moved us into the shack when it turned cold. He said there was no reason for us to freeze, when there was a perfectly good cabin just sitting empty.”

Jim sneered at her father’s description of the line shack. It was little more than some boards thrown together with a leaky roof overhead. The holes in the walls wouldn’t keep the frigid winter wind from blowing through. It had never been intended for permanent habitation, in fact it was barely suitable for temporary shelter.

March looked down at her hands, wishing she still had the comfort and security of the baby in her arms. “I’d found a job at the cafe serving meals and washing dishes. The woman that normally did it had broken her leg, and needed time off until it healed. I knew the job would only last a few weeks, but with winter coming on, we desperately needed the money I could make. Besides, at the end of the day I was sometimes able to take home some of the food that was going to be thrown out.

“He came in most mornings for breakfast. One day he asked if he could come calling. I thought he was serious about being a suitor. It certainly didn’t seem to bother him that we didn’t have a home, and that Pa was drunk nearly all the time. He ignored the little ones and was polite to Ma.

“It got so that he’d be waiting for me every night when I got finished with work … said that he would walk me home, because a lady shouldn’t be out at night without protection.” March leaned her head back and stared at the swirling design in the plaster ceiling. “He never mentioned that the person I most needed protection from was him.”

Her voice was soft but firm, nearly emotionless as if she recited a litany. But Jim detected the deep pain she was fighting to hide. Whatever had happened, and he intended to know it all before the night was through, he’d bet his best bull that this woman-child was not promiscuous.

“I thought he loved me … he said he loved me … I should have known better. People like him don’t fall in love with people like me.”

“People like him? What do you mean?” Jim’s voice held a wealth of gentleness at the question.

“Rich people, people who have everything.” She waved her hand around the room, unknowingly putting Jim in the same classification. “People who take things like books and peaches for granted.”

“He’s wealthy?” He tried to ignore the sting of her insinuation that he was spoiled and unfeeling, simply because he had a comfortable lifestyle.

“Yeah … you could say that. Not him, really, but definitely his father.”

“Who is he?” He felt anger tightening his gut. He didn’t want to know, not really, but the question was asked before he could stop himself. If he knew, he might come to feel that it was necessary to protect her honor. He might do something stupid, like find the boy late one night and beat some much-needed sense into him. He might forget to stop while the kid was still breathing …

March ignored his question. She knew that Jim would hear the story in town and find his own answer, it wasn’t necessary for her to name the man. “He’d talk about his plans for the future,” she continued as if never interrupted, “someday he’d inherit his father’s spread and what he wanted to do to improve it. He talked about a wife and children, implying that I’d be that wife and those children would be ours.

“He’d sometimes bring me gifts, little things that I’d never had before … a ribbon for my hair, a chocolate candy, a bouquet of flowers that he’d picked while waiting for me to get off of work.”

March smiled, a self-disgusted smile at the innocent she had been. She looked at Jim, unaware that the tension had left his face, replaced by an understanding sympathy. “I believed him, Mr. Travis. Me, with a father who wouldn’t know the truth if it hit him in the face, believed that lying, conniving bastard. I was so stupid I deserve everything that happened.”

Jim looked down at his son, watching as the baby attempted to get his thumb in his mouth. He knew what was coming, knew what March would say. He’d sat in enough bars overhearing loud-talking braggarts boasting of their conquests. Some boys seemed to think it made them more of a man to have taken the innocence of a young girl. Jim thought it was about the lowest thing a man could do.

“Sally finally came back to work and I didn’t have a job any longer. He came by one day with a packed wicker basket … said he wanted to take me down to the river and have lunch.

“I was the dessert. He talked of setting a wedding date. He kissed me … and I didn’t make him stop. I was so happy that I was to be his wife that it didn’t seem wrong.” Her voice trailed off to barely a whisper. “It seemed so very right.” She had thought she’d cried her last tear for her lost innocence, but March found herself blinking back the moisture filling her eyes. She raised her head and met Jim’s compassionate gaze. “I did nothing to stop him. I willingly went into his arms and let him have his way with me. “If that makes me a whore, then I’m a whore.”

“Don’t use that word, March. It’s too harsh a word to ever cross your lips.”

“I’ve been called that and much more. He wasn’t quiet about what he did, and long before the baby started to show, the good people of Oracle made it clear what they thought of me.”

“They judged without knowing all of the facts,” he defended quietly.

“Oh, they knew everything. The good Christians of Oracle preach forgiveness, but practice the opposite. Their lives can’t be happy unless they can pass on malicious gossip. If the truth isn’t colorful enough they’ll add their own versions, and if someone’s life is destroyed because of it, they justify themselves by thinking that’s what the person deserved.

“In fact the tale, embellished by wagging tongues, spread so quickly that for several weeks afterward there was a regular trail of men coming out our way. My father beat me until he left bloody welts all over my body, because I wouldn’t go with them. You haven’t heard the entire story, Mr. Travis.

“You see, that afternoon when we returned, I thought it was to tell my parents that we were getting married. But instead, when we got there, he pulled out his money clip and handed my father fifty dollars. Told Pa that I’d been a virgin after all, but next time he’d only pay ten, unless I learned the tricks, then he’d consider paying more. He didn’t want to waste his money on a woman who just laid there without moving.” Jim could see the innocent girl she had been, standing proudly, probably a little bashfully, in front of her father, waiting for the man she loved to ask for her hand in marriage. He couldn’t begin to imagine her hurt and bewilderment, when she realized that it had all been a prearranged plan from the very beginning.

He uttered a harsh expletive, but Marsh didn’t even flinch. “Yes,” she said, “I believe that is exactly what he said he had done to me, and that’s what all of the others wanted to do.

“My father was delirious with delight. He had found a new gold mine, and all he had to do was hold his hand out and wait for the money to drop into it. He was most unhappy when I wouldn’t cooperate, so unhappy that he began to beat me quite regularly.”

March shuddered at the remembered beatings, and knew she’d wear the scars, both physical and mental, the rest of her life. When she had continued to refuse the demand that she service the men, the whippings had gotten so severe that, at first, she was afraid she would die from blood loss or infection. They continued day after day, until pain became a way of life, and she began to pray that she would die. It seemed to be the only way she’d ever be free of his rage.

“Didn’t your mother try to stop him?” Jim asked incredulously.

“She did what she could, but I don’t think you realize how helpless a woman is in this world, Mr. Travis. We are dependent on the men in our lives to feed and protect us. Men are considerably stronger, and if one of them decides to start beating on a woman, there is little she can do but pray he’ll get tired before he kills her.

“A woman has to think of her children — all of her children. She can’t protect one if it means that she endangers the others. She can’t do what she’d really like to do to the man — kill him while he sleeps — because then she would be found guilty of murder, and her children would be left with no one. No court in the land would accept her defense that she was protecting herself. A man is allowed to beat his wife, his children.