The Enchantment (42 page)

Emma's lower lip trembled. She bit down on it, hard, and wrenched her moist gaze away from the baby's head.

"I got to go pee, Mom."

"Aye," Molly answered. Standing, she stepped gingerly over the sprawled toddler and eased the sleeping child away from her breast. "Here, take the wee one, will ye? Young Willie's just learnin', an1 I need to help him."

Emma paled. "Oh, I—"

"Thanks," she said, shoving the infant into Emma's arms. "Come on, Will." Taking the boy's hand, she led him out the front door.

Emma was alone with the baby. She screwed up her courage and glanced down. Huge brown eyes blinked up at her from a small, pink face. Tiny, bow-shaped lips pursed into a taut frown.

Emma brought a hand to the child's face and gently stroked the unbelievably soft cheek, the downy white curls.

Regret merged with sadness and twisted her insides. This was what she had given up by leaving Cibola.

She

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tore her gaze away from the baby and glanced at the spotlessly clean, welcoming house. Love. A home.

Children. That's what she'd walked away from.

Marry me, Em.

When you loved me and I loved you, then both of us were born anew.

Images and words tumbled through her mind, reminding her with blinding force of how good it had felt to be in love. How right. She remembered Larence's gentleness as he stroked her fevered brow and offered her sips of lifesaving water. She remembered his easy laughter, his strength. It's okay to be afraid.

And she remembered his touch. Oh, God, she thought, biting her lower lip, his touch.

Don't worry, love, what I lack in technique, I make up for in patience. . . .

Tears burned behind her eyes, slipped silently down her cheeks. The flowers blurred into a colorful smear, and she yanked her gaze away. Through the window she saw Captain MacEwan supervising the loading of the wagon, and the pain in her chest trebled. Fear and regret and longing churned in her stomach, made her feel nauseous and headachy. The noose of irrevocability and remorse tightened around her neck, made it difficult to breathe.

How could something be right if it caused so much pain?

For the first time she allowed herself to question her decision. Really question it.

She glanced around, and this time she noticed things she hadn't noticed the first time, like the chipped spout of the china teapot and the ragged, oft-resewn hem of the curtains.

A spark of something dangerously akin to hope slid

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through her blood. Tightening her hold on Susan, she stood up and moved toward the slatted box at the couch's arm. The knickknacks were hand-carved bits of wood, as were the frames.

The MacEwans were poor.

Emma stiffened in shock. She'd never thought about the difference between being poor and having limited money. Why? she wondered. Why hadn't her razor-sharp mind probed the obvious question?

Perhaps the question itself was too rooted in darkness; perhaps deep down, her mind had thought to protect her soul. She didn't know. She knew only that for her, it had always been all or nothing. A person was either rich or poor, secure or at risk.

She'd spent a lifetime running from the horrible specter of her childhood, running headlong into anything and everything that appeared to keep the icy chill of poverty at bay. But she'd started running at a tender age, and from her first step, she'd run hard and fast and never looked back.

Blind, naked ambition. It had started her moving and kept her moving. But somehow her mind had never quite caught up with her body. Like a child, she'd fixed a face on poverty; to her it had always been the lightless, soulless facade of Rosare Court. Never once had she considered that she might have been . . .

immature. That poverty might sometimes wear a gentler face.

Now, looking around the cozy MacEwan home, she considered that and more. Much, much more. With each realization, her heart lightened. She felt like a woman coming out of a long-term coma, seeing a new world for the first time.

Her room in Rosare Court had once looked like this. True, it had been nothing but a sagging old tenement

t

room, but her mother had filled it with flowers and laughter and bits of tired lace. It had been a home.

And they had been a loving, happy family.

Poor but happy. As a child, she hadn't needed money to be happy. All she'd needed was her parents and the warm, protective cloak of their love. It wasn't until after their deaths that the poverty had become unbearable. . . .

And maybe that wasn't even the complete truth. Maybe it wasn't the poverty, but the lack of love that had been so bloody awful.

God, how had she forgotten? Why had her child's mind focused so completely on the negative and completely suppressed the positive?

Molly and Willie swept into the room on a cloud of laughter, followed closely by Francis. When the big man slammed the door shut, the windows and floorboards rattled.

"I went pee all by myself!" Willie yelled. Francis dropped to one knee and opened his arms. Willie spun around and hurled himself into his daddy's beefy embrace. "Did ye now, Wee Willie?" he said gruffly, rubbing his son's curly hair. "I'm proud o' ye." "Thanks for watching our Susiepins," Molly said, taking the baby back in her arms.

Emma stared at her now empty arms. She could still feel the warmth of the baby's skin, still hear the quiet, regular cadence of her breathing. The scent of cotton diapers and talcum powder lingered on her sleeves.

Lifting her gaze, she saw the MacEwan family, standing huddled together like a Christmas photograph.

Their smiles and quiet laughter filled the small, sparsely decorated room and gave it a richness Emma had never

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seen before. The knickknacks on the tables glowed like the finest gold.

And that's when she knew. She'd been wrong to choose the money. Wrong to leave Larence and the only chance for happiness she'd ever had. Nothing, no amount of money or security or gold, was worth the single moment she'd held that baby, or the second it had taken Larence to whisper the words / love you.

The realization lifted a thousand-pound weight off her shoulders. Suddenly she felt light enough to fly.

She'd made a grave mistake, but it wasn't too late to fix it. She'd go back to him, tell him how much she loved him, how desperately sorry she was to have left. She'd do anything to make things right with him.

Anything.

And she'd never, ever leave him again.

She straightened, tilted her chin. She was just about to tell MacEwan her claims about Cibola had all been a hoax when she glanced out the window and saw the men loading dynamite on the wagon.

" What the—" She barreled past the MacEwan family and burst out the front door.

' 'What are you doing?" she yelled to the young man organizing the crates on the planked bed.

Startled, he looked up.

She marched down the creaking steps and across the yard. Twigs and rocks crackled beneath her punishing steps. "Who's in charge here?" she demanded when she reached the wagon.

A grizzled, hump-backed little man spat a wad of tobacco and thumped himself on the chest. "I am, ma'am. Drake's the name."

"Why are you loading dynamite onto my wagon?"

He spat again, a huge, brown-gray blob that hit the

sandy dirt near her bare feet and splattered upward. "Well, ma'am," I ain't gonna crawl through no hole like a goddamn snake. We'll just set a few blasts, then walk in an' grab the gold easy as Christmas candy."

Shock rooted Emma to the spot. It was a moment before she could find the words to speak. "W-What about the artifacts?"

"Arti-whats?"

"You know, the baskets, the water jugs, the bows and arrows."

The look in his eyes changed. He studied her as if she were a foreign object of questionable value. Or no value at all. "Who cares about a bunch of jugs?"

"/ care," Emma answered instinctively. The words stunned her. She rocked back on her heels, her eyes widening as she realized it was true. She did care about the baskets and the jugs and history of the place.

She cared deeply.

"Well, I'll be . . ." she muttered, shaking her head.

Drake took a step backward. "What's that, ma'am? You okay?"

She flashed him a bright, white grin. "Yes, Mr. Drake. I believe I finally am."

"You want me 'n the boys to—"

"No, sir, I do not." She skipped over to where Tashee was tied to the wagon. Quickly checking to see that her canteen was filled and her bedroll was intact, she untied the little burro and began leading her toward the gate.

"Hey, Miss Hatter!" Captain MacEwan's voice boomed across the yard. "Where ye goin'?"

Turning, she held up her left hand. The wide Cibol-lan wedding band glinted in the afternoon sun. And suddenly she knew why the necklace had disappeared

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but the ring had not. The marriage, if nothing else, was meant to last. "You were right, Captain, I lied. I'm not Emmaline Hatter. I'm Mrs. Larence Digby. And there is no Cibola. I made it all up."

A loud string of curses followed her blithely uttered statement, but Emma paid the disgruntled men no mind.

Humming a happy tune, she mounted up and headed out.

She was going back to her husband.

"Whoa, girl," Emma said, reining Tashee to a stop. Leaning sideways, she plucked the last marker from the pinon tree's branch. The pencil-sized bit of pale blue cotton fluttered in her palm. Lovingly she ran her forefinger along the trembling cotton. Someday these scraps would hold a place of honor in her home.

On the mantel, or next to their bed, in a cut-glass or pottery bowl. Where other women would display fresh-cut roses or dried violets, Emma would showcase these ragged pieces of fabric.

She'd show them to their children, time and again. Bring them out at Christmas and on the anniversary of their wedding in Cibola, and tell the children about how foolish their mother had once been. And about how she had changed. She would use these little bits of cloth to teach the power of love.

She tucked it in her pocket, along with the other markers she'd collected since leaving the fort.

"Okay, Tash, let's go."

The burro pricked up her ears and began plodding forward. Emma tented a hand over her eyes and stared ahead. Dawn was just breaking across the sky in a profusion of pink and gold. Ahead, a huge slab of rock

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jutted into the still-darkened sky, its black face silhouetted by tenuous strands of magenta light.

Emma's breath caught. They were almost there. Anticipation surged through her blood.

God, she felt good. Better than she had in years. She finally understood what real, honest-to-God hope felt like, and she couldn't imagine how she'd lived her whole life without it. Having hope for the future and something to look forward to made her feel buoyant. Lighter than air.

Almost there. The thought came again, brought a renewed smile to her lips. Soon, she thought. Soon the horrible mistake she'd made in leaving Larence would be behind her, forgotten. She'd do anything—anything—to make him forgive her. And she'd spend the rest of her life proving to him that she was worthy of the love he'd bestowed on her.

She strained forward in her seat and urged Tashee to a trot.

Half an hour later the bouncing duo came to the box canyon's secret entrance. Emma reined Tashee to a circumspect walk. The burro picked her way through the thin, twisting slit of a path. Reddish gold sandstone hemmed them in and reached to the robin's-egg ribbon of sky overhead. The crunching impact of each step reverberated through the confined space.

They came to the end of the trail, and Emma slid off Tashee and ran, stumbling on the loose rocks, to the makeshift rope barrier. Untying the big knot, she flung the coil aside and raced into the box canyon.

Tashee trotted past her and barreled toward the pond.

Bright yellow-orange black-eyed Susans blurred before her eyes as she tore through the knee-high grass.

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Burrs clung to her skirt, tugged at her hem, but she wrenched the fabric free and kept running.

"Larence!" she yelled, laughing, at the top of her lungs. His name bounced off the silent stone walls and echoed back at her.

Diablo jerked up his head and looked at her. Beside the horse, alongside the small green pool, was the pile of Larence's supplies. Some distance away the pack mule was busily munching on the choice grass.

Emma felt a surge of joy. Everything was exactly as she'd left it. Exactly. God, in His infinite wisdom, had believed in her even when she'd stopped believing in Him. And He'd given her a second chance. For once, He'd answered her prayers.

She wouldn't botch it this time. Emma might not be the brightest flame in the fire, but she learned fast.

And she never made the same mistake twice.

"Hi, Diablo," she shouted with a wave as she ran past the big sorrel and headed for the plain's center.

Panting, heaving for breath, she clutched her side. Lord, but she was out of shape. Wheezing, she bent over for a moment—only a moment, for she didn't have a second to spare—and tried to calm her breathing. A dozen slim spears of grass tickled her nose.

She smiled and started to brush the grass away. Then she stopped, and inhaled deeply. The rich, springtime-fresh scent of grass and flowers and good earth filled her nostrils.

Slowly she straightened. Bright yellow sunlight beat down on her, and for the first time she noticed how hot it had become. A few vagrant drops of sweat popped out along her hairline and itched across her brow. The flesh between her breasts grew moist.

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Standing tall amid the grass, she tented a hand against the sun and squinted toward the opening to Cibola.

The smile slid off her face.