Sweet Boundless (24 page)

Quillan nodded, mounted his own box, and eased his rig around. It might be miles before he met another wagon, but he’d been there at the right moment for Stanley Benson. It felt good to have strained. It took some of the edge from his temper. Plus, he’d helped someone.

He should pat himself on the back? Of course he’d help a fellow freighter, even a stranger on the road. It was his code. Never pass a need by. He hearkened back to Carina’s broken wheel. The first time he’d laid eyes on her he’d seen trouble. Yes, he’d mistaken her for a loose woman, though only because his mind made the assumption that no other sort would find her way alone to a camp like Crystal.

He’d been less than forthcoming with charity. He remembered her hand flying in his face with furious indignation after he put her wagon over the side. If only they’d left it at that. If only he hadn’t . . . What? Fallen in love? He could hardly claim that after his last performance. You didn’t hurt the people you loved.

Or did you? Hadn’t he disappointed Cain time and again by refusing to acknowledge God? Hadn’t he caused his death by marrying Carina in order to have his final revenge on Berkley Beck? Quillan slammed his fist into his thigh. He should have let her marry Berkley Beck. She would have had more joy in the union.

Thoughts of Beck and Carina together twisted inside him, and with them his own desire renewed. How could he want her now? What kind of base creature was he to want a woman he only hurt? Not only. He’d saved her life three times, given comfort and solace and safety. He’d been gentle once in his lovemaking. But that was before. Before Cain died.

Quillan groaned. Was this some convoluted grieving or a punishment from God? If that, Carina suffered more. A pang of regret seized him. He didn’t want to hurt her. Yet he did, every time they came together. He had to stay away. That was the only answer. He had to keep away from her. For her sake more than his.

THIRTEEN

I am held in esteem by all except my own husband. Two months of silence. Is it all I will ever have from him?

—Carina

THE SNOW SETTLED IN, coming in daily flurries and sometimes more, keeping the cave’s secret better than Carina and Mr. Makepeace could have. Several times over the past two months they had discussed their find, Mr. Makepeace focusing on the limestone cavern itself, while Carina’s thoughts were always drawn to the painted chamber.

She didn’t bring Wolf and Rose’s story up with Alex Makepeace. She had told him all he needed to know. If he learned more of the tale from the miners, she couldn’t control that, but she guarded Wolf’s privacy as fiercely as she had guarded the secrets of Rose’s diary. Looking out through the snowy window, her heart sank.

Had she betrayed Rose by putting her diary into Quillan’s hands? Hadn’t that been her intention from the start, maybe even Father Antoine’s as well? Quillan had a right to know his mother. At least through her words. Had he read them in this two months he’d been away? Would he?

Turning from the window, Carina walked to her bed and sat. She took her own diary from the crate beside the bed. While the snow fell outside, she turned its pages, reading there the snippets of prayers and thoughts she’d penned these last months. They seemed artificially bright and cheerful. Had she meant to conjure a hope that was seeping away? Or was she just pretending?

She came to the first blank page and sighed. What did she really feel? She took up her pencil.
My heart is heavy. My spirit drags. Ah,
Signore, you are far away. As far as the one to whom I’ve given my
heart
.

She felt so tired. She hadn’t slept well, nor had she eaten much lately. How could she with the stress that unsettled her stomach? She kept thinking of how she could have handled it differently. What if she’d simply welcomed him?

But no, her temper had shown itself. Yes, it hurt, his rejection. But did that mean she must hurt back? He was afraid to care, she knew that. And now she’d given him good reason. Oh! She set the journal aside and stood up.

A wave of weakness swirled her head as she stalked to the window. She felt trapped. Thinking she had some mild ailment this morning, she’d turned the cooking over to Èmie and Lucia and the new helpers, Celia and Elizabeth. These last were twins, thirteen years old, whose father had been “rocked up.”

Alex Makepeace had brought them to her attention. He’d seemed defensive when she pressed him for an explanation of this condition he called “rocked up” or “dusted.” It was a sort of miners’ consumption, as best she could tell. But he had known she was looking for additional help, and he knew also to choose those who needed the work.

These girls had come to her clean but wary. Carina guessed kindness was something with which they had little experience. She dropped her forehead to her fingertips and closed her eyes.
Signore, forgive me
for complaining
.

A figure passed her window, bundled against the snow. Even so, she recognized Dr. Simms making his way to Mae’s kitchen, where he’d linger with Èmie until his duties took him elsewhere. It wouldn’t be long now before they married. Carina half smiled. She was happy for Èmie, though she didn’t think anyone quite deserved her.

There was nothing but goodness inside Èmie Charboneau. Èmie would never have flown at Quillan like a fighting cock. She would have forgiven his injury and welcomed him gently. Carina sighed, surprised to find a tear slipping from the corner of her eye. Her own nature was too contentious, too proud.

Bene. She’d likely have no opportunity to fail him again. Fail him? The thought rose inside like a fanged snake. Was it she who had failed? She touched the lip he had bruised with his fierce kisses. It had long since healed. But the wound in her heart was unrelenting.

Another tear came. What was wrong with her? Why was she so emotional? Perhaps at last she was starting her time. That would account for the stomach distress as well, though she’d felt no bleeding. When she’d missed the first time, she had thought perhaps he’d injured her. But he had not been brutal, only selfish and cruel. Now she guessed it was the heaviness of spirit that affected her body.

She went and lay down on the bed. She was tired. A day of rest would revive her. Tomorrow she would think of something special to prepare. And she would teach Èmie to make it as well. More than anything she enjoyed their time together in the kitchen. Èmie and Mae. Where would she be without them?

Quillan jumped down from the wagon and left it in the Denver city livery. He strode down the street to his hotel, sneaked the dog past the desk clerk, and climbed the stairs to his room. He considered changing course for the dining room, then realized he wasn’t hungry, even for the passable fare the hotel offered. He continued up.

The coals in the brazier had all but died since he’d left them early that morning to do some trading about town. As Quillan added coal and encouraged a small blaze, Sam searched out the corners of the room with his nose, then, satisfied, plunked down before the fire and sighed. Quillan warmed his hands a moment, then took a seat in the chair to the side of the fireplace.

Stretching his legs out before him, he made his muscles relax. Absently he reached for the books he’d recently purchased and stacked on the small round table beside him. Lifting one, he clipped the thick parchment shade of the lamp. Lurching to steady its wobbling, he knocked another book to the floor. Two more slid down behind it. The pile was ungainly.

Quillan lifted the books one by one, some small individual sonnets, others tomes he’d collected about town. He piled them in his lap to organize by size and avoid further disaster with the lamp. Near the bottom, his hand rested on the red leather of his mother’s diary. It sat there with its secrets still locked up.

No, he hadn’t thrown it away. Neither had he opened it. He stared at it now with mixed feelings. Did he want to know what its pages held? He’d gotten over the shock of its existence, but not past the churning emotions it conjured. What could his mother say in those pages that he didn’t already know? What excuse could she give for her life?

He picked it up and laid it with the other small books. Then he stacked the large ones on the table. Beside these he made a pile of the small books with the diary atop. Hesitantly, he touched the nameplate.
Rose Annelise DeMornay
. His fingers slid to the key.

Determination hardening his jaw, he picked up the diary and worked the dangling key into the lock. Carina had read the book. She knew what it contained. He ought to know as much. He opened to the first page.
This is the journal of Rose Annelise DeMornay written
by my own hand this year of 1851
.

His mother wrote in a delicate hand. Her flowery script seemed incongruous with his image of her. He clenched his teeth as he turned the page to the first of her entries.
It is the way of dreams to become
nightmares. What seems beautiful is seldom as it seems. Can any who
have lived not believe in death? Can any who have loved not know what
it is to hate?

Quillan stared at the words, feeling them seep inside him.
Can
any who have lived not believe in death? Can any who have loved not
know what it is to hate?
His chest was tight, and he released a slow breath. At least he came by his hating honestly.

He read on. His eyes grew grainy, straining in the dim lamplight, but he read on. Certain phrases he stopped and read over and over.

I find myself at odds with my own heart, longing and at the same
time despising myself for that longing.

To rise to higher joy is to risk a deeper sorrow. Do I dare reach for
the sun?

A single moment of joy can slake the throat of a dying spirit. An act
of kindness, no matter how small, becomes a mercy drop from heaven.
Where are these drops? Where is my joy? Each moment is consumed by
fear and trembling. My anguish weakens me, body and soul. Where will
I turn for peace?

In spite of himself he ached for her, not wanting to understand but finding a terrible kinship of feeling. At first he had thought himself the illegitimate offspring of her illicit affair. Then he read:
I am
become most despised. Even the result of my forbidden love could not
remain within me to be born alive. Had it done so, it would have looked
upon its mother’s face in shame
.

Quillan looked up from the book into the fire, scarcely more than glowing coals now. A dead sibling. Would this sibling have felt the shame he felt for her? He watched the dog sleeping contentedly. Quillan almost wished he’d stayed as oblivious. But he hadn’t. He’d started this book. Now he meant to finish it.

He returned his eyes to the page. He read on about his mother’s plight, her search for shelter and acceptance. Where were those who should have protected her? Shielded her? Loved her? Why was she so alone? And then the story changed, and he read about his father. Wolf.

What strange quirk of fate, to be saved from disgrace by a savage.
Yet is he more a savage than those who would have bought me? Who is
this man? A stranger, yet when he found me with his eyes, I knew him.
His name is Fate. He knew me by my pain, and I him, by his. We are
bound together, he and I
.

Quillan tensed. As he was bound to Carina? He was half tempted to close the diary, cast it away. He didn’t want to know more. He’d been told it all already. He closed his eyes and imagined the flames consuming the hand that had written those words. He forced the image away.

She went on to describe Wolf in ways Quillan had never imagined. His kindness, his knowledge of nature and humankind. His belief in a benevolent power, yet his own struggle to understand himself. Quillan found himself wishing for more. Why hadn’t she written everything, every word they spoke, every expression? He could picture them only vaguely.

Wolf is the most beautiful man I have ever seen, his hair next to
honey, his skin bronzed by the sun, but his eyes the color of a stormy sky
. Of his mother there was no physical description, but he guessed he favored his father. At least by her words they shared characteristics, maybe features as well. Their eyes and hair. He gripped the book’s edge, wishing he knew.

He read of his own conception, feeling the stirring of shame until he came to a passage that made him pause and read it twice.
Is there a
marriage on earth more blessed by God than the joining of two hearts in
simple fidelity? Yet when Father Charboneau came to us a fortnight ago,
Wolf insisted our marriage be sanctified by the Christian rite. For my part
I accepted his wisdom, and this child is proof of God’s blessing
.

They were married? Before his birth?

The child grows large within me. I no longer fear his fate will be that
of my other’s. This one is strong and eager for the world. He will make
his own name
.

Quillan forked his fingers into his hair. Make his own name? He’d fought to do that all his life, having been deprived of one he might have carried proudly.