Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (33 page)

Chapter Fifteen

      
If she had punched him in the gut with a singletree he could not have felt more shock. He reached over and took the glass from her white-knuckled hand, setting it on the table. Neither one of them needed to be muzzy-headed at a time like this—if they weren't both addled already. “Would you mind explaining that?” he said quietly.

      
Roxanna took a deep breath. The tight incredulity in his voice was not reassuring, nor was the intent way his black eyes studied her. “I went to school with Alexa. We were friends.”

      
“Past tense? I imagine impersonating her so you could marry her rich San Francisco fiancé might put a strain on the friendship.” His whole body felt numb. This was no joke! He had not misunderstood her disclaimer.

      
His sarcasm stung. “Alexa’s dead,” Roxanna said as the painful memories of her friend's last days washed over her again. Since marrying Cain, she had given so little thought to the tragedy of Alexa's brief life. “I was living with her in St. Louis. Jubal's letter came just before she died of consumption.”

      
“And you decided to take her place—marry a millionaire and live happily ever after.” The shock was beginning to wear off, replaced by a killing anger. He had fallen under the spell of a cheap fortune hunter! “How in the hell could Jubal believe your impersonation?”

      
Roxanna rubbed her temples, looking down at the carpet, unable to meet his cold black eyes. “Jubal hadn't seen Alexa since she was little more than a child. We had the same unusual coloring...and I knew all about her family.”

      
“How convenient, Miss—what did you say your name was, wife?”

      
A flicker of anger broke through her numb lethargy.
This isn't fair!
she wanted to cry, but deep in her heart she knew he had a right to feel betrayed. “Roxanna Fallon,” she repeated dully.

      
“I assume you have no family, Roxanna—or was the assassin I shot hired by your father to kill me for daring to touch his lily-white daughter?”

      
“No, Cain. My family are all dead...in the war. And that man wasn't trying to kill you. He was hired to kill me. So was the one who broke in here last week.”

      
Tears leaked in crystalline rivulets down her cheeks as she huddled on the chair, looking small and forlorn...and still so lovely. He almost reached out to touch her cheeks but stopped himself with an angry jerk of his hand and leaned back, scowling instead. “Why?” he demanded flatly.

      
“A woman named Isobel Darby hired them.”

      
“I assume she had a reason.”

      
“She believes I'm responsible for the suicide of her husband. He was a colonel in the Confederate army...and I was a Federal agent.” Roxanna could never tell him about her obscene bargain with Darby, that horrible degrading night, the shame which had haunted her every day of her life since. She could not bear for anyone to know—especially her husband.

      
“A spy. No wonder you're such an accomplished little actress.” This explained a lot of things that he had pushed to the back of his mind ever since he met the incredibly resourceful Alexa—no, Roxanna—in Leather Shirt’s camp. “It must have galled you when the betrothal with Powell fell through and you had to settle for hired help—a half-breed at that,” he added bitterly.

      
“That's not true! I wouldn't have been able to go through with marrying Larry—not after I met you.” She would have thrown away everything—respectability, wealth, security—just to have this man love her. His expression was shuttered now, the raw fury banked, but she knew he did not believe her.

      
Her eyes shimmered with tears as they met his beseechingly. He could smell the scent of lilacs as she leaned closer, reaching out her hand to him, a pale soft little hand with his heavy gold wedding band shining on the third finger. Roxanna Fallon was his wife. He enveloped her hand in both of his big ones, pressing tightly, pulling her closer until their faces were inches apart.

      
“I don't know what to believe, Roxanna. You've lied to me and used me. You weren't a sheltered young virgin raised in genteel society, that's for damn sure. Was I your first lover?” He felt her flinch and try to pull away from him, but he only tightened his grip. “Damn, even that! I'd always heard virgins bled on their wedding night. It never even occurred to me to question why you didn't,” he said with self-disgust at his gullibility, throwing her hand back to her as if it were an adder. He got up and paced across the room, standing with his back to her.

      
“I've loved no one but you, Cain. Given myself to no one but you.” That was true—what she had lost in Vicksburg was not given—it certainly was not love. But how could she expect him to believe her? “I'll go to Jubal in the morning and tell him the truth myself,” she said in defeat, rising on rubbery legs that somehow supported her leaden body.

      
“No.” If Jubal ever found out...what would the old man do? God knew MacKenzie had fallen for Roxanna's act hook, line and sinker, the same way he had. Jubal wanted to believe she was Alexa. He'd grown amazingly fond of her over the past months. Would the truth make him fire Cain as well as denounce Roxanna? Damn if Cain intended to find out!

      
His voice cut like the slice of a whip. In an instant he crossed the room and seized her by her shoulders. “You won't tell Jubal anything. What's done is done. From this day on, you are Alexa. You dealt yourself this hand, sugar. Now you are damn well not going to fold.”

      
She felt his fingers digging into her flesh like steel talons. Why did he want to continue this farce? “But what about Isobel Darby? She's followed me ever since her husband's death. Even blackmailed me in Cheyenne.”

      
“How convenient you had the MacKenzie millions at your disposal,” he said curtly. “I'll handle this Darby woman. After two failed attempts on your life, she'll reconsider. I'll damn well see to it that she does.”

      
If Roxanna hoped there was some spark of compassion left, the cold finality of his last words settled the matter. She needed time alone to think, to figure out what to do, but not tonight. She was so tired, so confused and shaken. Her first impulse was to tell Cain she was finished with deception. If he could not forgive her and love her for who she was, she was going to tell Jubal the truth and pack up and leave. But she had the baby to consider, not just herself anymore. How could she care for a child if she was cast adrift penniless again with Isobel still trying to kill her?

      
She turned to tell him he was going to be a father but could not form the words. The way he felt right now, he might question whether this child was even his. She must play out the charade and let him deal with Isobel Darby.

      
“Do you understand me...Alexa?”

      
His question broke into her chaotic thoughts. “Yes, I understand, Cain.” With that she turned and walked into their bedroom. She fell face down onto the big wide bed and closed her eyes. Just as exhausted sleep started to descend on her, she heard the outside door slam and Cain's footsteps fading in the stillness of the night.

* * **

      
He tried to get drunk. When that didn't work, he found several miners passing through who had been more successful. When their slurred epithets about his parentage carried across the tent, he was grateful. With a savage joy he beat them senseless, then rode away from camp headed for nowhere in particular.

      
When the sun began its abrupt climb heavenward, spilling amber and orange against the lightening canopy of eastern sky, he reined in his horse and surveyed the vast emptiness of the Red Desert, one of the most desolate stretches of land on the Union Pacific trail. Right now his life seemed even emptier and as insubstantial and transitory as the wind moving across the sand dunes. He could lose it all—Jubal's trust, his job as operations chief, the money and power it would have brought him, the vindication of succeeding in a world that scorned his kind.

      
And all he could think of was Roxanna Fallon. His wife. He leaned on the saddle horn and stared at the molten golden ball of the sun...and saw her face, wide turquoise eyes brimming with tears, soft pink lips trembling, so vulnerable-looking as she assured him that she loved him. An assertion he was afraid to trust. Why should he? After all, by her own admission she had been a spy. He imagined she had been damn good at it. He and that canny old Scot had sure fallen for her lies. So had everyone else, from Doc Milborne to Sees Much.

      
Then again, maybe the old shaman knew the truth, or some part of it. He had always pursued his own mysterious course. Even as a boy Cain had been discomfited by Sees Much, who seemed to understand the innermost secrets of his heart. He laughed to himself at the irony of it all. He had felt so guilty about using Alexa to get what he wanted from Jubal MacKenzie, and all the while she had been using them both.

      
How many other fools had fallen for her sweet deceptions? How many men had she lied to—or lain with? “At least I can absolve myself of the guilt of deflowering an innocent under false pretenses,” he muttered aloud, hating the idea that his doubts about her past lovers bothered him as much as the possibility of losing everything he had worked to achieve on the Union Pacific.

      
The best thing he could do, he decided as he retraced his path back to the rail camp, was to track down this Isobel Darby and deal with her before she went to Jubal and exposed Roxanna Fallon for the fraud that she was. What the hell had his wife done to cause such hatred? Cain was not certain he ever wished to know.

      
When he returned, Jubal was waiting with questions about the attack, highly agitated that some maniac had tried to murder his granddaughter. “I tell you, lad, if I'd had the son of a bitch in these hands”—he held up his great gnarled paws—“I'd have made him die far slower than a clean shot in his heart. But I'm grateful that you finished him. I couldna' find out anything aboot him. As if he and the other one dropped out of the sky just to terrorize the lass.”

      
“This one's dead, Jubal. Whatever his motives, it's over. But I think it might be best if Alexa went to Denver with you when you meet with Powell. The rest and divertissement of civilization will be good for her.”

      
MacKenzie studied Cain for some sign that Alexa had told him about her condition but could read nothing behind that inscrutable Indian facade of his.
No wonder he has such an affinity for the celestials
, he thought wryly. “Aye. I'll take her to Denver. But as to the great man, he isna' coming. And just when I was almost ready to expose him with his hand in the Central Pacific till.”

      
Cain blinked. “I take it you've uncovered something about those missing shiploads of supplies?”

      
“Aye.” He shoved a sheaf of papers across his desk. “Take a look at what my agents in New York just found.”

      
Cain perused the report which connected Andrew Powell with an eastern holding company that contracted with Collis Huntington to ship two hundred tons of bolts and fishplates to the Central Pacific warehouses in San Francisco. “He not only owns the supplier, he owns an interest in the shipping firm as well. Not surprising but rather clumsy.”

      
Jubal stroked his beard. “Aye, I thought so too. A dangerous thing to cross Mark Hopkins, not to mention old Collis himself. But there you have it in black and white. The only thing left to do is verify some money transactions in San Francisco banks and we'll have him nailed to the cross—or rather the rest of his cronies on the Central Pacific board will,” Jubal said with relish.

      
“I'd like to go to San Francisco and count coup on the bastard in person, Jubal,” Cain said coolly.

      
MacKenzie could sense an edge in his protégé’s voice. “Still hate his guts for the way he endangered Alexa in that train wreck, eh?”

      
“That and the way he's sabotaged our operation and caught the Cheyenne in the middle.”

      
“I suppose you have a right, lad. Aye, after we settle in Denver, go and beard the lion in his den.”

      
Keeping the keen edge of satisfaction out of his voice, Cain asked, “Isn't the meeting in Denver off?”

      
“No. I said Andrew Powell wasna' coming. He's sending his son,” Jubal replied, curling his lip as if he'd just sucked on a persimmon.

      
Cain smiled coldly. “Good. You certainly don't need me, then. I have enough trouble to occupy myself here with renegade raids, sabotage and workers threatening to strike for pay in arrears. You can browbeat Larry into agreeing to stop at the Nevada line if the old man isn't there.”

      
“Maybe,” Jubal equivocated, “but I think you should go too, get yer wife settled in Denver first.” He hesitated when Cain made no response, then said, “I heard aboot that fight in the big tent last night.”

      
“A couple of miners looking for trouble with a breed. Nothing new in that.”

      
“Aye, except that you were drinking. You and Alexa have a fight?”

      
“That's between me and my wife, Jubal.”

      
Cain's voice was as cold and clipped as the old man had ever heard it facing down a gun sharp or a room full of drunken trackmen. MacKenzie watched his operations chief storm out the door. “And what exactly was all of that aboot, laddie?” he murmured on the empty air.