Harlequin Historical February 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: The Major's Wife\To Tempt a Viking\Mistress Masquerade (19 page)

Her sister gasped.

“I know why our mother did what she did. It wasn't because I was a fussy baby or because I was a girl and not a boy, or any of the dozen other reasons you've claimed over the years. She was distraught that Father had been captured. That he was a prisoner of war. She couldn't imagine living without him.”

As if thoroughly startled, Rosemary glanced around the room. “How do you know that?”

The long talks with Ilene Ketchum came to mind, how Millie had wished her mother had lived so she could have taught her all the things Mrs. Ketchum had. But she wasn't about to tell her sister any of that. “Our family secret wasn't much of a secret. When you're an army man, you have no secrets.” That bit of truth jabbed her heart. Seth's secrets, especially what she and Rosemary had done to him, would follow him forever. That realization struck home, and sickened, Millie glared at her sister. “Do whatever you have to do, Rosemary. You always do. Just know I'm not going to clean it up. I have my own life to see to.”

Millie led the way into the kitchen, where Lola stopped, and stared at her. “You still want tea?” the woman asked.

“Yes, I do. Don't you?”

“You're not worried about her?” She pointed a thumb over her shoulder, toward the room they'd just left.

“No. What good would that do any of us?”

“You've changed, Millie,” Lola said. “I like it.”

“Yes, I've changed, but I don't know what good it's going to do me.”

“Anything you want it to, darling.”

The word
darling
sliced her heart. Millie closed her eyes and felt the pain. In an odd way she needed it. Needed to remember how Seth had called her that.

“Sit down, girl,” Lola said. “I'll make the tea and then you can tell me how you fell in love with Major Parker.”

“It wasn't hard,” Millie answered, taking a seat. “It wasn't hard.”

Rosemary burst through the door just then.

Holding her breath, awaiting the wrath of her sister at having heard what had just been said, Millie wrapped her fingers around the bride's necklace hanging at her neck.

“I'm leaving tomorrow,” Rosemary said. “Moving to England, and I want that dress.”

Millie glanced down at the velvet traveling suit. “No,” she said. “This dress was a gift. Why are you going to England?”

“Moving,” Rosemary corrected. “I'm moving to England.”

“Why?”

“She has to,” Lola said. “It was part of the deal she made with the people she sold her baby to.”

Millie shook her head. “You
sold
your baby?” She should have known there was more behind Rosemary's insistence that she go to Fort Sill.

“Well, I couldn't very well take him to England with me, could I?” Rosemary asked.

Millie bit her tongue, gave herself a moment to process an answer. For the first time ever, maybe Rosemary had thought of someone besides herself. The child was better off with the McPhalens. “Nadine will love him as her own,” Millie finally said.

Rosemary didn't try to hide her surprise, but her lips quivered for a moment, and Millie wondered if giving up the baby had been harder than her sister had imagined it would be.

“Well, now that you seem to know everything,” Rosemary said a moment later, “I need you to give me some money.”

“What for?” Millie asked.

“For my move to England.” Squaring her shoulders, she continued, “Nadine and Louis have purchased my ticket, but they won't give me the rest of the money until I'm on the steamer. I've ordered gowns and such that must be picked up today. My scheduled departure is tomorrow.”

Millie was amazed by her own new abilities, such as how she was clear-headed enough to ask, “What would you have done if I hadn't returned today?”

Running a finger along the edge of the table, her sister said, “I've arranged to sell a few household items, but now that you're here...”

“It won't be so easy,” Millie finished, understanding where the leather couch from Papa's office had gone. Another understanding, though, was the one that Millie focused on. “We aren't so different, you know. You and I.”

Rosemary frowned. “How so?”

“All our lives,” she said, sadness growing inside her, “we've both wanted to be loved. But since neither of us knew what it was, we didn't know what we were looking for.” A huge, invisible fist was squeezing the blood out of Millie's heart and she had to know one thing. “You had no intention of ever divorcing Seth, did you?”

Her sister didn't meet her gaze. “People respect a major's wife.”

If either of them knew about being a major's wife, it was she, not Rosemary, and that's when Millie knew she could never give it up as easily as her sister was. Being Seth's wife. “I'll give you the money you need,” she said, “but I'd like you to promise me something.”

Skepticism glowed in Rosemary's eyes.

Millie reached over and took her sister's hand. “Our mother's death was tragic. Father being gone all the time was hard, but we always had a place to live. Food. Clothes. Lola,” she added with a smile. Wind's grubby peppermint stick flashed in her mind and she shook her head. “We were always looking for love to come from the outside, but that's not where it's at, Rosemary. It's inside us, and neither you nor I knew how to let it out.” Now she was remembering how she felt standing next to Seth, the pride, and how she loved her body when he touched it. “Promise me you'll learn to like yourself. Once you do that, the rest will come. You have to love in order to be loved.”

“You've changed,” Rosemary whispered.

“I know,” she answered, just as softly. “And you can, too.”

For the first time ever Millie believed the tears glistening in her sister's eyes were real. Those same tears appeared again the next day when they hugged goodbye on the dock. Leaving Richmond and the life she'd always known had been what Millie had needed, and she prayed the same would be true for Rosemary.

Later in the day, as Millie walked toward the front door, her heart did a little flip-flop, wishful thinking at who might be knocking. Seth was on her mind nonstop, more poignantly after her trunk and traveling bag had been delivered from the hotel in Washington, along with a note saying her other items would be shipped from Fort Sill upon his arrival there.

It wasn't him, of course, as she knew it wouldn't be, and seeing Nadine McPhalen on the stoop, Millie voiced the only thought that formed. “Rosemary isn't here.”

“I know,” the woman said. “I watched her board the steamer this afternoon. I've come to talk to you, if I may.”

“Of course, come in.” Millie stepped aside, and gestured for the woman's light shawl, for the unseasonably warm November didn't require heavier garments. Yet. The weather would change, just like everything else had. Chasing aside the thought, she said, “I'm sorry, I didn't see you at the dock today.”

“I wasn't there to be seen,” Nadine said. “I was there to see with my own eyes that she left.”

A chill rippled Millie's skin. Nadine and Rosemary, though complete opposites, had been friends for years. Cautious, because her willpower to let her sister's mess stay her sister's problem might be challenged, she waved a hand toward the parlor. “Please, make yourself comfortable. I'll just go ask Lola to bring us some tea.”

“Could I ask Lola to do so? I have another favor to ask of her.”

Swallowing at the thickness in her throat, Millie nodded. “All right, I'll be in the parlor.”

“Thank you.”

Nadine returned within seconds. Millie had just sat down on the white sofa, the one she and Lola had carried in from the office and repositioned in its rightful place this afternoon. The other woman didn't sit, but paced back and forth, the skirts and slips of her yellow dress swishing loudly.

“Goodness,” she finally said, stopping near the sofa. “I don't know where to begin.”

Millie drew in a fortifying breath. “Well, Nadine, just say it. There's nothing worse than keeping it bottled up.” She knew that so well. So very well.

“Oh, Millie,” the woman said, dropping onto her knees in front of the sofa. “I'm so sorry. I hope you can forgive me.”

“Forgive you?”

Nadine wrapped both hands around one of Millie's. “Yes. It was wrong of us to have you do such a thing, but there was no other choice.”

Her heartbeat was accelerating, pounding at the base of her throat like a woodpecker on a dead stump. “I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Nadine.”

The woman's blue eyes took on a startled look. “You don't?”

When Millie shook her head again, she sat down beside her.

“My life is now complete because of you, Millie.”

An eerie sensation settled around Millie's shoulders.

“You see, Millie, my husband, Senator Louis McPhalen, is the father of your nephew.”

Millie made no outward sign that she'd already known that.

“It's startling, I know. I myself was enraged when I first heard,” Nadine said. “Then again, that's what Rosemary wanted. She was delighted to throw it in my face.” The woman smiled then. “But it all worked out so splendidly, I might even forgive her. Someday.”

Refusing to jump to her sister's defense, despite her old habits, Millie offered a slight smile.

“I can't have children,” Nadine said. “After five years of us trying, the doctor said it just isn't going to happen.”

A wave of anguish took Millie's breath away, for just this morning her monthly had arrived. She'd hoped it wouldn't, for then she'd have a reason for Seth to listen to her, had even imagined what he'd do when she traveled to Fort Sill to tell him. That had been a dream, shattered by reality, and now the pain renewed itself all over again.

“I told Louis,” Nadine said, “that I'd forgive him for his little indiscretion with Rosemary—for we all know she's free with her favors—if he found a way to get me the baby. Rosemary then tried to say the child wasn't Louis's, and who knows, maybe it's not, but that doesn't matter. He's my son now.”

A splattering of joy erupted inside Millie. The child would have a good life with Nadine. “Yes, he is.”

“Because of you.”

She shook her head.

“Yes, Millie,” the woman said firmly. “You. When Louis began negotiating with Rosemary, she threw around her threats like always, and the only one that scared us was the fact that her husband, Major Parker, could return and discover her condition. Louis was aware of the major's plan to visit Washington, and the furthest he could get it postponed was mid-October, due to winter traveling. We were afraid how the major might react to Rosemary's condition, and needed to make sure he didn't arrive before the baby did. We thought you and your sweet disposition might be able to convince him to postpone the trip a bit longer.” Nadine squeezed Millie's hand firmly. “And you did. We are so thankful for that. And Millie, we're so sorry to have involved you in all this.”

Trying to grasp it all, she asked, “You wanted me to go to Fort Sill?”

“Rosemary said you'd refuse, but eventually she agreed to convince you to do it. To visit your brother-in-law, and have him escort you home after the baby was born.”

“My brother-in-law.” It had been so long since Millie thought of him in those terms, it didn't seem as if she was thinking of Seth.

“Rosemary said she was divorcing him, couldn't stay married to him after this. Maybe her conscience finally kicked in, or maybe it was the amount of money we offered her. Either way, it worked. We all got what we wanted.”

Millie nodded, but inside she was screaming. Everyone else may have gotten what they wanted, but what about her and Seth?

“I didn't know you'd returned until I saw you at the dock today. I'd assumed so, though, because Louis left last week, right after the baby arrived, to attend the Indian negotiations. You see, I'd left town a few months ago. Told everyone I was expecting, and went to stay with my aunt so I'd have complete rest. I was just over in Browns Corner, so when Louis wired that the baby was arriving, I rushed home to present everyone our newborn son.”

All the time she thought she was being selfish, she was being used. As was Seth.

“Millie?”

She glanced up, and her heart somersaulted as Nadine waved for Lola to step closer, holding out a tiny bundle.

“Meet your nephew. Louis William McPhalen III.”

Millie's hands shook as she took the infant in her arms and folded back the corner of the blanket covering his little face. The blue eyes gazing up at her brought tears to her own eyes. Maybe because they were as dark as Seth's, or maybe because she was falling in love with this little blue-eyed man as quickly as she had the other one she knew. “Hello, there,” she whispered. “I've wanted to meet you for a long time.”

Nadine rested a palm on the baby's head. “I can't promise that I'll tell him I'm not his birth mother someday,” she said. “I honestly don't know if I'll have it in me. But I can promise to tell him about his aunt Millie, and how she traveled all the way to Indian Territory just for him.”

A tear ran down Millie's cheek, and she had to sniffle and blink to keep others from following.

“He'll always know what you did for him, Millie. So will Louis and I. Our entire family owes you so much that my thank-you seems a pittance.”

Glancing toward the woman, seeing the tears trickling down her face, Millie shook her head. “Holding him is more than I ever dreamed. More than I hoped. Thank you for this,” she said, cradling the baby to her cheek. “Thank you for giving my nephew the home he deserves.”

* * *

One good thing came out of the mess Seth's life was in. The anger burning inside him couldn't be contained, and that made Congress listen, not just McPhalen.