Rivals (18 page)

“That may not be a wise thing to do under the circumstances, Hattie,” he replied. “She's seeing Stuart—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” she interrupted impatiently. “You told me.”

“You need to talk to her, Hattie.”

“I have. That's why I want you to send those documents to her.”

“No, I mean, you need to warn her about Stuart.”

“I can't. She already thinks I'm a senile old woman who doesn't know what she's talking about. She's not entirely convinced we're even related. She thinks I made it all up. Heaven knows why. If I told her the truth about Stuart and tried to warn her that she's walking into a trap with him, she'd never believe me. More than likely, she'd be convinced I was crazy. Worse than that, she'd go to Stuart with the story. He'd twist things around and sweet-talk her into turning against me. No, I need to have her here when I tell her. I need to convince her that what I say is the truth.”

“How do you know Stuart hasn't talked to her?”

“She would have told me if he had.”

“You can't be certain of that,” Ben argued.

“Yes, I can. She would have confronted me with any story he might have told her, but she didn't. She swore she mentioned my visit to only two people, and neither of them was Stuart.”

“He's playing it very cool, isn't he?” Ben murmured. “I'd still like to know how he found out about her so quickly. We've got a leak somewhere, Hattie.”

“When will you have my new will ready?” she demanded. “I know Stuart. He'll contest the handwritten one we did in your office.”

“I'm typing up the last of it right now, here at home. I'll bring it out for you to sign as soon as I'm finished. I thought it would be best if no one in my office knew about it.”

“Good. And be quick about those copies, Ben. I'm running out of time.”

“I know, Hattie. I know.”

Then he rang off and once again she was surrounded by the companionable silence of the house. This time she could draw no comfort from it, not when she knew the very walls around her were threatened. Her glance strayed to the pair of antique oval frames that sat on the desk next to the telephone. Silver filigree surrounded a photograph of her parents taken on their wedding day. But it was the picture in the second frame that claimed Hattie's attention. She stared at the photograph of a young, dark-haired girl with big, trusting eyes, her face shining with innocence.

“This is your fault, Elizabeth.” The tenderness of love softened her voice and added an unspoken forgiveness to the words as Hattie reached out and lightly stroked an arthritically crooked finger over the cheek of the girl in the picture, her baby sister.

Elizabeth Morgan had been sickly almost from the day she was born. Countless days and countless nights Hattie had nursed her fragile sister through bouts of colds, fevers, pneumonia, and influenza. At times, it had seemed that delicate little Elizabeth had caught every sickness that went around, but with her it had always been worse than anyone else had. Often Hattie had wondered whether her sister might have been stronger if their mother hadn't been so ill before she was born. She gazed at the photograph and the aura of fragility it had captured forever.

“Why did I send you into town that day? Why?” It had been an innocent errand to pick up a few nonessential supplies that could have waited for another day, but Elizabeth had wanted to go—she'd wanted to be helpful instead of always a burden. And Hattie had let her go alone.

Elizabeth was late—later than she should have been. Hattie's imagination worked overtime, envisioning dozens of dreadful reasons—but she couldn't know how dreadful. Cranky with worry, she jumped on Elizabeth the instant she returned.

“Where have you been? Do you realize how late it is? How could it possibly take you this long to run a simple errand?”

Elizabeth laughed at her questions, as usual, not at all bothered by their sharpness. “Don't fuss at me like I was one of the hired hands, Hattie. I would have been back sooner, but halfway home, I had a flat tire.”

“A flat tire.” Her glance sliced to the car, noticing for the first time that the tire on the left front wheel was darker than the others—and minus the clogs of dried red mud that marked them. “You couldn't have changed it yourself.” Elizabeth wasn't strong enough to either jack up the car or remove the lug nuts, and Hattie knew that.

“No. A man on a motorcycle stopped and changed it for me or I'd still be there.”

“Not one of those hoodlums in a black leather jacket.” She shuddered inwardly at the thought of her Elizabeth in the company of one of those toughs with their disgustingly long hair.

“He was nice, Hattie. And he wears the leather jacket to protect him from flying gravel and things like that.”

But Elizabeth didn't tell Hattie the way he'd looked when he took his jacket off—or the way his muscles had bulged beneath that thin T-shirt when he'd been changing the flat—or the way his shiny black hair had gleamed in the sunlight—or the way he'd swaggered a little when he walked—or the way he'd looked at her as if she was a piece of candy he wanted to eat. At twenty-seven, Elizabeth hadn't had much experience with men, seldom dating in high school partly because she'd been sick much of the time and partly because Hattie had been strict about when she could date—and who. But mostly because she was painfully shy.

And she knew that Hattie wouldn't approve of this boy at all. Although he wasn't a boy; he was a man in his early twenties, younger than she. She'd been a little scared when he first rode up. Everyone knew that the guys who rode motorcycles had a reputation for being fast. But it had been a little exciting, too. That's why she had let him coax her into trying on his black leather jacket. She had liked that—and the way he had smoothed his hands down her arms once she put it on.

“Have you ever ridden a motorcycle?” he'd asked.

“No.”

“Come on. I'll take you for a spin on mine.”

“I—can't.” She knew she shouldn't even be talking to him, let along trying on his jacket and definitely not riding his motorcycle. Yet he made her feel so daring—and pretty. She wasn't of course. She was plain—a dark mouse and not vibrant and strongly handsome like Hattie. “I'll be late as it is.”

“Where's home?”

“Morgan's Walk.”

“You live there?” He looked again at the car, then back at her.

“Yes.”

“What's your name?”

“Elizabeth. Elizabeth Morgan.”

He'd lifted an eyebrow at that. “You must be the dragon lady's baby sister.”

“You shouldn't call her that.” For an instant, she regretted letting this conversation begin.

“I'm sorry.” He smiled, and it was the kind of smile that made her want to melt. “If she's your sister, then she can't be all bad.”

“She isn't. She's wonderful.” But guilt set in. “I'll have to go. She'll be worried about me.” Hurriedly she removed his jacket and gave it back to him.

“You aren't going to run off, are you?” he protested when she moved to the car and opened the driver's door.

“I—Thanks for stopping to help…and changing the tire for me.” Yet the way he looked at her, Elizabeth had the feeling it was more than thanks he wanted. “I…please, let me pay you something—” She reached for her purse on the car seat.

“Keep it,” he said. “I don't take money for helping a lady in distress, especially such a beautiful lady.”

No one had ever told her she was beautiful. No one.

But she didn't mention any of that to Hattie—or the feeling that her knight in shining armor had just ridden up on a motorcycle. It would have sounded too silly, especially when she didn't know his name.

For days afterward, Elizabeth lived in secret hope of seeing him again. She made up excuses to go into town, thinking she might run into him. Finally, at the Columbus Day Parade, she found him again. And when he asked her again to go for a ride on his motorcycle, she got up enough nerve to go with him. She loved every minute of it—the racing down the highway at ninety miles an hour, the wind roaring in her ears competing with the wild pounding of her heart, and the hugging him tightly most of all. He turned off on some country road and stopped along a quiet riverbank. There, with the sun glittering on the water and a canopy of autumn red and gold leaves overhead, he kissed her.

Afterward, with her whole body still tingling from his kiss, she whispered, “I don't even know your name.”

“I don't want to tell you,” he murmured against her neck. “When you find out who I am, I'll never see you again.”

“No. How can you say that?”

“Because—” He lifted his head, his gaze burrowing straight into her—all the way to her heart, it seemed. “—I'm Ring Stuart.”

For a moment, Elizabeth felt cold with fear, knowing what would happen if Hattie ever found out whom she was with. It didn't matter to her though, not now that he'd kissed her. “I don't care what your name is, Ring Stuart,” she declared fervently, and he'd kissed her again, reminding her why she didn't care.

In the weeks that followed, she arranged to meet him whenever and wherever they could, but never often enough or long enough. Yet the very infrequency and shortness of their meetings gave each one an intense sweetness.

Immersed in the fall ranchwork, Hattie didn't guess what was going on, not until she insisted that Elizabeth ride with her out to one of the pastures and check on the winter graze. Charlie Rainwater, one of the ranch hands, rode along with them. He was the one who drew Hattie's attention to the change in her younger sister.

“Does Miss Elizabeth have herself a fella or something?” he asked.

“No,” Hattie denied immediately, regarding the idea as ludicrous. Not that she was against Elizabeth's having a beau. She had simply given up on her younger sister ever marrying, convinced that she was destined to be a spinster like herself. After all, Elizabeth was twenty-seven years old and had never had a steady beau. Hattie didn't think it was all that surprising. As much as she loved her, she recognized that Elizabeth was too plain, too thin, too shy, and too sickly—hardly wife material. Yet Charlie's comment troubled her. “What makes you think she has a boyfriend?”

He shrugged his shoulders and nodded his head in Elizabeth's direction. “Just watchin' her over there, hummin' to herself and pickin' them bouquets of dry weeds—and lookin' dreamy-eyed as a doe. You put that together with all the trips she's been makin' into town lately, and I figured she had a fella stashed away somewheres.”

Hattie didn't miss the implication of that comment—the implication that her Elizabeth was meeting someone on the sly. Her little sister wouldn't do something like that. If Elizabeth had a boyfriend, she'd bring him to Morgan's Walk so Hattie could meet him. Wouldn't she?

She started noticing things after that—little things like the flimsy excuses Elizabeth made to justify her trips to town, the flush that was in her cheeks when she came back, and the shininess in her eyes. Finally, hating the suspicions, Hattie ordered Charlie Rainwater to follow Elizabeth the next time she went to town and find out once and for all whether she had anything to worry about.

“Ring Stuart?! You mean Jackson Stuart's boy?”

“That's the one,” Charlie confirmed when he reported back to her.

“You must be mistaken.” Her Elizabeth wouldn't be with a Stuart.

“There's no mistake, ma'am. It was Ring Stuart, all right. I didn't want to believe it either. That's why I made sure. I didn't think there could be two people who walked down the street like they owned it—like the way he does. And there isn't.”

“What do you mean—she
met
him?”

“Just that, she met him. She took that blouse back to the store like she said she was gonna do. Then she went over to this park, and there he is waiting for her.”

“Maybe it was just a coincidence that he was there.”

“It's possible, ma'am,” Charlie conceded, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and staring down at the pointed toes of his boots.

“But you don't think so,” Hattie guessed.

“No, ma'am.”

“Why?”

He seemed reluctant to answer that, then finally glanced at her from beneath the brim of his battered hat. “When she saw him standing there, ma'am, she ran right into his arms like she was comin' home after being' away a long time.”

At that moment, her shock had shown—her shock and that sense of ultimate betrayal. “That will be all, Charlie.” She dismissed him, unable to ask more, not wanting to hear more—not wanting to know how completely Elizabeth may have betrayed them all…with a Stuart!

“I knew you'd react like this, Hattie,” Elizabeth said when Hattie confronted her. “That's why I never told you. I didn't keep it from you to hurt you. I just knew you wouldn't look at Ring and judge him for himself.”

“He's a Stuart.”

“That's his name, yes. But what does that mean?”

“How can you ask that? You know—”

“All that happened years and years ago, Hattie. I wasn't alive then and Ring wasn't either. You can't hold him responsible for something his father did. Ring's different.”

“He's a Stuart. He's cut from the same cloth, and it's bad cloth.”

“That isn't true. Ring is good—”

“Good for nothing like all the rest of them.”

“Stop talking like that. You don't even know him.”

“I know all I need to know about him.”

“How can you condemn him just because his last name happens to be Stuart? Why does that automatically make him bad? Why can't you forget something that happened over fifty years ago? It didn't happen to you.”