Marry Me (15 page)

“He had a daughter.”

“Ah,” she said lightly. “There she is at last. I was wondering if you were ever going to get to her.”

“Julia. She was two years younger than me and for a long time I was only vaguely aware that she existed. I lived for those times I had Mr. Bates’s full attention and really wasn’t all that interested in remembering that she’d far more claim on him than I.”

Emily tried to identify how his voice had changed. Deeper, perhaps. A barely there tremor beneath the words. An almost imperceptible hint that betrayed the anguish beneath the smooth recitation.

Unthinkingly, she turned her head and pressed a kiss on his chest. Hard, wide-mouthed, so shockingly blatant that had she stopped to consider she never would have done it. Hadn’t realized such a thing would ever occur to her.

He went rigid. “Lord.” Beneath her mouth, she felt his heartbeat pick up speed. “If you’ll do that every time I make a confession, we can stand here all night and I can tell you about every cookie I stole and every swearword I spewed in my entire childhood.”

His hand came up, fisted in her hair, holding her there. And then slowly he loosened his grip, by increments, and ran his hand through the full length of her hair, again and again, and she was glad she’d not pinned it all away today.

She turned her head again, resting her cheek against him. Darkness had dropped, a blue velvet curtain over the small slice of sky she could see above the lift and spread of the land. Even as she watched, one star winked on, as if the heavens had lit the eve’s first candle.

“Tell me more.”

“She grew up. So did I. And when I was eighteen years old—I’d just started at the university, and I was so full of it, and myself—I came out of Mr. Bates’s study, took a small detour to the garden to enjoy the sun, and there she was. I know it sounds silly, and young, and…false, but I just saw her, and that was it for me.”

“It doesn’t sound silly. Not to me.” It sounded enviable. And
that
was silliness indeed to wish that Jake Sullivan might have taken one look at her and fallen instantly in love.

“Well, it did to me. I told myself it was just…well, why
wouldn’t
she draw me? She was everything I wasn’t. She belonged there, and I didn’t. But I wanted to. And I wanted her.”

“And she felt the same way?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even speak to her that day. I knew I couldn’t get my mouth to work.”

“She must have been lovely.”

“Oh yes.” And he wished, irrationally, that Emily hadn’t said that so easily. That there’d been a trace of jealousy in her voice, to hear him praise another woman. He’d no idea his pride required such plumping. “Ethereal as a fairy, as if she wasn’t of this earth. But that wasn’t what drew me the most. It was that she looked at me like—well, I knew I could conquer the world. That she
believed
I could conquer the world. Her father was about challenge, and making me prove that I could make a place in his world. She never saw that there was a difference between us.”

“She loved you right away?”

“Oh, we were friends. Or so we pretended. We talked. Met in secret, walked in the gardens, left little notes we knew would make the other laugh. We pretended it would be enough. But I always knew. I think she did, too.”

His throat closed. He could stop right now. Emily wouldn’t push. He’d told her enough.

But it would be unfair to quit now. Unfair to Emily to let her view him as a tragic figure, one who deserved her sympathy.

“I couldn’t leave it at that. It wasn’t enough for me. I couldn’t
not
—oh, hell, Em. She was nineteen years old, sheltered for every one of them, and she cried when she told me there would be a baby.”

Emily realized he couldn’t be more than four years older than she. But he’d already lived so much more than she had. She’d seen people die, had even held the hands of a few as they slipped away. But she’d never loved with her whole heart and lost. Even her parents—she’d been too young to remember her mother, and her father had never been more than a vague, shadowy figure, patting her on the head before disappearing for days at a time. It seemed a canyon between them, him on one side, her on the other, separated by this vast and terrible experience. And yet she felt closer to him than anyone. She couldn’t imagine the man he’d been before; this experience had transformed him into the grave and solitary man she knew.

“I married her the instant I could arrange it. How could I not? She was carrying my child. I figured it would be hard. But we loved each other, and I was willing to give everything I had to take care of her and our baby.
Wanted
to do it. It never occurred to me it wouldn’t be enough.”

“Don’t say that.” She couldn’t bear that he would think his best inadequate. And she had no doubt at all he’d done his best.

He fell silent. Debating whether to insist upon his guilt, she’d wager. “Go on,” she urged him.

“I had to leave school, of course. Mr. Bates certainly wasn’t going to continue to pay my tuition after what I’d done. Not that it mattered,” he added quickly, unwilling to sound disloyal. “Northwestern only enrolls single students.”

“But—” Why? she wondered. Why wouldn’t he have expected support from his new father-in-law, his mentor? The sound of his heartbeat filled her head, resonated with her own. “He didn’t approve?”

“Good God, Emily, of course he didn’t approve!” And she knew that however harshly his father-in-law had judged him, Jake judged himself more severely. “I seduced his daughter.”

“And you loved his daughter. You married his daughter.”

He chose not to debate the point. “I had a family to support. I wanted to give them a home, a place of their own.”

“So you came here.”

“So I brought her here.” She felt his chin move gently across the top of her head, as if he were taking in the view. Perhaps remembering what they’d seen when they arrived.

“She was…oh, I don’t know why I ever thought it might suit us! She was too gentle for this place. The pregnancy was hard. Finally I swallowed my pride, took her home, and begged her parents to let her stay. They finally did, even though her father told her the day we left that if she went out the door with me she could never come back.” He paused. Swallowed hard. “It was too late.”

“Jake.” Leaning back into his embrace, so she could judge the effect of her words, she chose them carefully. “I do have some experience here. To be precise, I’ve been present at the birth of thirty-seven babies.”

She saw the shift of muscle in his jaw as his teeth clamped together. “Thirty-seven? You remember every one?”

“Every single one. You don’t forget miracles, not even after a thousand, if you’ve been privileged to witness them.”

A shudder ran through him.

“Most of the births have been perfect. A few have…not. Jake, if there’s one thing you absolutely must understand, it’s that if you’d never taken her one foot from her house it might not have changed anything. You brought her back to Chicago before the birth, yes?”

“I…what else could I do? I couldn’t let her deliver out here alone. The nearest doctor’s thirty miles away and he’s drunk more often than sober.”

“Bringing her home sooner, or not taking her here at all—it likely made no difference.”

God, but he wanted to believe her. But she hadn’t been there. She didn’t know. “You didn’t see how much it changed her. From the moment we came here. How hard it was on her, how much of her strength it sapped. I should have known. Should have realized it sooner.”

“The hardest thing about medicine for me has always been the ‘ifs.’ You never know what might have happened had you done this differently, made another choice. Because there’s no chance to try again, no opportunity to correct your mistakes. And you never even know if they
were
mistakes. Sometimes you do the absolutely right thing and bad things still happen. It could have been simple coincidence that she became ill when you arrived here.”

Perhaps she was right. It didn’t change his ultimate culpability. “Be that as it may, it still remains that the child was mine.”

“Oh? And you forced her?”

He shoved her away. “Of course not!”

“Jake.” She’d pushed too hard, Emily thought in regret. She’d wanted so badly to help him forgive himself that she’d only made things worse. He stood apart from her now, his hands on his hips, expression fierce and haunted as he stared into the last, dying flame of the sunset. “Jake.” For an instant, for the first time since she’d awoken to a stranger beside her bed, she feared him. Still, she’d pressed the issue, and so she must take the risk. Her body painfully tensed, she laid her hand upon his arm, and let out a rushing breath of relief when he allowed it to stay. “I know that. And so did you. It does no one good for you to accept more than your share. And I doubt Julia would want it any more than I do.”

He didn’t answer. The wind mourned through the grass. Somewhere high, a hawk wheeling against the darkening sky called to an absent mate. But at last he placed his hand over hers where it rested on his forearm, then linked his fingers with hers.

It wasn’t agreement. Not even a
maybe
. But it wasn’t a
no,
and hope lifted her heart.

“Two days old. I haven’t seen her since she was two days old. Jesus, she was so small. Hair like peach fuzz. She didn’t even open her eyes to look at me.” His voice broke. “Em, I don’t even know what color her eyes are.”

“But—but…your daughter?”

“Yeah. We named her Jenny. I don’t even know if they still call her that.”

“But I just assumed—” She’d assumed the baby had died with her mother. An unbearable tragedy, all too dreadfully common. “Your daughter’s alive?”

“I…” His voice trailed off, a wafting of pain. “I assume she is. Christ, Em, I didn’t even think of that.” His fingers crushed hers painfully. So be it; if the bones broke, well, they’d heal. “I just…she’d be nearly fourteen months old by now. They’d tell me if she’d died, wouldn’t they?”

“You’d know.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yes,” she said, and hoped there was enough conviction in her voice. “You’d know.”

“God!” He yanked her back to him, bringing her hard up against his chest, the same position he’d shoved her from a few moments before. But this time it wasn’t she who held him, and it wasn’t gentle. He clutched her to him, hanging on with the desperation of a man clinging to his last hope.

She had to wait until she trusted her voice. “Where is she?”

“Bates House. Last I knew.”

She could scarcely breathe. She didn’t care; air seemed insignificant.

“Julia went into a coma two days after the birth. They threw me out. Had a footman club me over the head and dump me in the street. I tried—I tried everything to get back there. But I couldn’t. Ended up in jail twice while I tried. He had everything on his side, all the power, all the money, all the connections.” And the right, he didn’t say. But Emily suspected he believed it. As much as Mr. Bates might blame Jake for Julia’s death, it was no more than Jake blamed himself. “And then they draped the door in black and I knew. I walked straight into the nearest saloon and spent a year trying to drown it out.”

She’d known all along he’d suffered loss. Too much mournful sorrow and raging anger fueled him for it to be anything else. But this was worse, a thousand times worse than she’d ever suspected.

And there was nothing she could do for him but hang on.

Because she’d judged that three more minutes in the same room with that idiot Joe Blevins
and
the monkey was likely to move her to physical violence against one, if not both, Kate excused herself with a delicate reference and lurched out the door.

Heavens! For all his other flaws, Blevins certainly could brew some potent liquor. Kate frowned and braced herself momentarily against the wall until she found her balance. There. Not so bad, after all. She prided herself on being able to sip a few genteel glasses of wine at dinner and keep complete control of her faculties. This couldn’t be that much more difficult.

Why, it was nearly dark. Night fell so quickly here, much more so than at home. No gentle dusk, slowly deepening in a soothing drift of beautiful blue. Here night crashed down, sweeping lashes of strong color that were soon punched away by the dense, insistent black.

Where were Emily and that man? They’d been gone so long. They wouldn’t have dared to leave for home without her. At least she didn’t think so.

Unless, of course, Jake had become heartily sick of a chaperone interrupting his fun and had seduced Emily away for an evening of unbridled lust.

Oh, that was probably what had happened! He certainly didn’t appear to be the sort of man who’d politely wait for his pleasures. And even she had to admit that his manly display of righteous anger, threatening Mr. Blevins into treating his poor, pregnant wife with due consideration, would spur a flutter in any woman’s heart.

She swayed forward, deciding that it would indeed be wise to visit the necessary before demanding to be taken home. Though who would escort her there proved a dilemma. Joe deserved to spend the rest of the evening dancing attendance upon his wife, but she doubted Mr. Biskup could be persuaded to leave that disgusting creature behind.

Perhaps she’d find her own way home. She was almost sure it was…
that
direction. The grass was bent and bruised, as if someone had just passed that way. Undoubtedly a path.

She wished Jake were here so he’d be forced to acknowledge she was not the complete greenhorn he considered her. Triumphantly she plunged into the faint trail, feeling like an accomplished tracker.

The looming onset of night made her pause only briefly. Once night fell surely she could find her way back just by following the lamplight glinting through a window.

She found them just before sunset, the two of them standing on a slight rise, holding each other, completely limned in golden light.