Twin of Ice (21 page)

He gave her a sharp look. “You sure you’re all right? You look a little green. Maybe you oughta rest a while. Takin’ care of this house might be too much for you.” He kissed her check before he returned to his office.

It was four days later that Kane decided to visit Vaughn’s Sporting Goods and see what other game equipment was available. His and Edan’s team had been soundly beaten by the team of Ian and Zachary. Ian, having spent most of his young life inside a coal mine, was awed by Kane and not yet sure enough of himself to accuse Kane of not playing by the rules. After all, it
was
Kane’s bat.

Zach had no such qualms. He made Kane follow every rule to the letter and would not let his father be what Kane called “creative.” So far, Kane’d had to forfeit every game because he refused to follow any rule that someone else had made. He wanted to rewrite the baseball rule book.

Now, he and Edan were in the sporting goods store choosing tennis equipment, bicycles, and an entire gymnasium set of Indian clubs and pulleys.

On the other side of the counter was Jacob Fenton. He rarely left his house now, preferring to stay at home and read his stock reports and curse the fact that his only son wasn’t interested in business in the least. But lately, his future had brightened, because his daughter, whom he’d dismissed as worthless long ago, had returned to his house with her young son.

Young Zachary was all that a man could hope for in a son: eager to learn, interested, extremely intelligent, and the boy even had a sense of humor. In fact, Zach’s only flaw was his growing attachment to his father. On afternoons when he should have been at home studying how to manage the coal mines he’d someday inherit, he was at his father’s playing games. Jacob had decided to fight fire with fire and buy the boy all the sporting equipment he could find.

Kane, his arms full of tennis racquets and two pairs of fifteen-pound dumbbells, turned a corner and came face to face with Jacob Fenton. Kane stood there staring, his face rapidly starting to show his rage.

Jacob had no idea who this big, dark man was except that he looked vaguely familiar. The suit the young man wore obviously cost him some money.

“Excuse me, sir,” Jacob said, trying to pass.

“Don’t recognize me out of the stable, do you, Fenton?”

Jacob realized that this man reminded him of Zachary. And he knew quite well why Taggert’s face showed hatred. He turned away.

“Wait a minute, Fenton!” Kane called. “You’re comin’ to my house for dinner two weeks from today.”

Jacob paused for a moment, his back to Kane, and gave a curt nod before briskly leaving the store.

Kane was silent as he put his purchases on the counter and Edan handed the storekeeper a long list of equipment. “Send all this to my house,” he said, not bothering to identify himself before he walked outside and climbed into his old wagon.

When Edan was beside him, he clucked to the horses. “I think I’ll get me somethin’ better to drive around in than this ol’ wagon.”

“Why? So you can impress Fenton?”

Kane looked at his friend. “What’s in your craw?”

“Why are you inviting old man Fenton to dinner?”

Kane’s jaw stiffened. “You damn well know why.”

“Yeah, I know why: to show him that you’ve done better than he has, to show off your pretty house and your pretty silverware and your pretty wife. Have you ever thought what Houston’s going to say when she finds out that you want her just as much as you want a new carriage?”

“That ain’t true and you know it. Houston’s a lot of trouble sometimes, but she does have her compensations,” Kane said, smiling.

Edan calmed his voice. “You said before that after Houston had served her purpose and sat at the foot of your table with Jacob Fenton as your guest, you were going to get rid of her and go back to New York. I believe you said that you were going to buy her off with jewelry.”

“I gave her a whole trunkful of jewels and she ain’t even opened it yet. She seems to like other things instead of jewels.”

“She damn well likes you and you know it.”

Kane grinned. “She seems to. Who knows, though? If I didn’t have any money—.”

“Money! You bastard! You can’t see what’s in front of you. Don’t invite Fenton. Don’t let Houston know why you married her. You don’t know what it’s like to lose the ones you love.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about. I ain’t plannin’ to lose nothin’. All I’m gonna do is have Fenton over for dinner. It’s what I’ve worked for most of my life, and I’m not gonna deny myself the pleasure.”

“You don’t even know what pleasure is. Both of us have worked because we had nothing else. Don’t risk everything, Kane, I’m begging you.”

“I ain’t givin’ up nothin’. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“I wouldn’t miss your funeral, and I won’t miss this.”

As Houston adjusted the
une fantaisie
in her hair, she found that her hands were shaking badly. The last two weeks had been nerve-racking. When Kane had come home and told her that he planned to invite the Fentons to dinner, she’d been very happy because she saw this as a way to close the rift between the two men.

But her happiness had soon turned to despair. She’d never known Kane to be so concerned about anything before. He repeatedly asked her if whatever she was planning for the dinner was of the best quality. He inspected the engraved invitations, had Mrs. Murchison cook the entire elaborate dinner beforehand so Kane could inspect each dish. He stood over the footman’s shoulder as the man polished the hundred-year-old Irish silver. He went through Houston’s closet and said that she had nothing really good enough to wear to this dinner, and insisted that she wear a dress of white and gold and even chose the fabric himself from the selection that the dressmaker brought to the house. He had new clothes made for everyone and hired two tailors to come to the house the night of the dinner to help the men dress. He even had new uniforms made for all the servants, and Houston had to talk him out of forcing the footmen to wear their hair powdered, as he’d seen in one of Houston’s fashion magazines that the Prince of Wales’ servants did.

By the end of the two weeks, everyone was praying for this evening to be over. So far, Sherwin and Jean had turned coward and said they weren’t feeling well enough to attend. Ian, his courage boosted from his past days of association with Zach, said he wouldn’t miss the fireworks for the world. And besides, Fenton, as the mine owner, was his image of the Devil. He was looking forward to sitting, as an equal, at the same table with his enemy.

If the President had been coming to visit, no more care could have been taken—and no group of people could have been more nervous than this household. Houston feared that one of the maids would pour a bowl of soup in Fenton’s lap and Kane would try to murder the girl on the spot.

But what was making Houston’s hands shake was that Kane had promised to tell her what was between him and Fenton. It seemed that she’d wanted to know forever, but now she had an urge to tell Kane she didn’t want to know.

Adding to her fear was a telephone call yesterday from Pamela Fenton. Pam had begged Houston to call the dinner off, saying that she had a bad feeling about what was going to be said. She said that her father’s heart wasn’t strong and that she was afraid of Kane’s temper.

Houston had tried to talk to Kane, but all he had said was that Houston didn’t understand. She had told him she was willing to try to understand if he’d explain things to her.

And that was when he’d said that he’d tell her everything before the dinner party.

Now, sitting before the mirror, inspecting herself, she found herself shaking.

She gasped when she saw Kane behind her.

“Turn around,” he said, “I have something for you.”

She turned back toward the mirror and, as she did so, Kane slipped a cascade of diamonds about her neck. They fitted high on her neck like a tall collar, with looping strands falling over her collarbone. There were long, double-strand earrings to match.

He stepped back to look at her. “Good,” he said, and took her hand in his and led her to his bedroom.

Without saying a word, very aware of the cool diamonds around her throat, she sat down in the blue brocade chair in front of an inlaid round table.

Kane went to a panel in the wall, slid aside part of the molding and released a little handle. The panel moved back to expose a safe built into the wall.

“Very few people in the world know the whole of the story I’m about to tell you. Some people know parts of it and have guessed at the rest of it, but they’ve been wrong. I’ve only been able to piece it together after years of work.”

From the safe he removed a leather portfolio, opened it, and handed Houston a small photograph. “This is my mother.”

“Charity Fenton,” she whispered, looking at the pretty woman in the picture, very young, both her eyes and hair dark. She looked up to see surprise on Kane’s face. “Edan told me who she was.”

“He told you everything he knows.” He gave her a photograph of four young men, all looking nervous and out of place in the photographer’s studio. Two of the men looked like Kane. “These are the four Taggert brothers. The youngest is Lyle, Ian’s father, next is Rafe, then Sherwin, then my father, Frank.”

“You look like your father,” she said.

Kane didn’t reply but put the rest of the contents of the portfolio on the table. “These are originals or copies of all the documents that I could find pertaining to my parents or to my own birth.”

She only glanced at the papers, blinking once at a copy of a family tree that showed a Nathaniel Taggert who’d married a twelve-year-old French duchess, but soon looked up as she waited for him to continue and tell her the story behind the papers, to explain his many years of hatred for his mother’s family.

He walked to the window, staring down at the garden. “I don’t guess you know anything about Horace Fenton, since he died long before you were born. He was Jacob’s father. Or at least Jacob thought Horace was his father. The truth was that Horace gave up tryin’ to have his own kids, so he adopted the newborn baby of some people travellin’ to California after they were killed by a stampede of horses. But Jacob was only a few years old when Horace’s wife finally had a little girl, and they named her Charity because they felt so lucky.

“From what I could find out, there’s never been a kid more spoiled than Miss Charity Fenton. Her mother took her travellin’ all over the world, her father bought her ever’thing she even thought she wanted.”

“And how was Jacob treated?” Houston asked.

“Not bad. Ol’ Horace spoiled his daughter, but he taught his adopted son how to survive—maybe so Jacob could support Charity after her father died. Jacob was trained to run the empire that Horace’d built.

“I’m not sure how they met. I think Frank Taggert was elected to present some grievances to Fenton about the sawmill—that was before the coal mines were opened—and he met Charity. Anyway, they took to each other pretty fast, and she decided that she wanted to marry Frank. I don’t guess it crossed her little spoiled mind that her father would ever deny her anything.

“But Horace not only refused to let his daughter marry a Taggert, he locked her in her room. Somehow, she managed to escape and spend two days with Frank. When her father’s men found her, she was in bed with him, and told her father she was gonna have Frank Taggert even if her life depended on it.”

“How terrible for her,” Houston whispered.

Kane took a cigar from a drawer by the bed and lit it. “She got him, though, because two months later she told her parents she was pregnant.”

“With you,” Houston said softly.

“With me. Horace kicked his daughter out of the house and told her she was no daughter to him. His wife went to her bed and stayed there until she died four months later.”

“And that’s why you hate the Fentons, because you are rightfully an equal their with Jacob, but you were sent to the stables.”

“Equal, hell!” Kane exploded. “You ain’t heard half the story. Charity moved down to the slums where the Taggerts lived, the only place they could afford on what Fenton paid ’em, and hated it. Of course, nobody would talk to her since she was one of the Fentons, but, from what I heard, her uppity ways didn’t help none.

“Two months after she married Frank Taggert—and I have the marriage certificate there—he was killed by some fallin’ timbers.”

“And Charity had to go home to her father.”

“He was an unforgivin’ bastard. Charity’d tried to make it without him, but she nearly starved. I talked to a maid that used to work for Fenton, and she said that when Charity returned she was filthy, thin and heavily pregnant. Horace took one look at her and said that she’d killed her mother and that the only way she could stay was as a servant. He put her to work in the scullery.”

Houston rose to stand beside her husband and put her hand on his arm. She could feel him trembling with emotion. Kane’s voice quietened. “After my mother put in fourteen hours of scrubbin’ Fenton’s pots, she went upstairs, gave birth to me, and then very calmly hung herself.”

Houston could only gape at him. “No one helped her?”

“No one. Fenton had put her in an attic room far away from the other people in the house, and if she did call out, no one could have heard her.”

“And what did Horace Fenton do?”

“He was the one that found her. Who knows? Maybe his conscience bothered him and he went to make up to her, but he was too late. She was already dead.

“Not many people could tell me much of what happened after that, so I had to piece it together. Horace arranged for a wet nurse for me, then spent a day closeted with a battery of lawyers and twenty-four hours after Charity had hung herself, he put a pistol to his head and fired.”

Houston sat down. There was nothing for her to say. She thought of Kane having to live with this tragedy all his life. “And so you were raised by the Fentons.”

“I damn well wasn’t ‘raised’ by anybody,” he shouted. “When Horace Kane Fenton’s will was read two days after his suicide, it was found out that everything he owned had been left to Charity’s son.”

“You?”

“Me. Jacob didn’t own a cent of it. He was left as guardian to Kane Franklin Taggert, aged three days.”

“But I don’t understand,” Houston said. “I thought…”

“You thought that I was born penniless. Jacob didn’t leave the room for hours after the will was read, and when he and the lawyers did leave, he’d managed to bribe every one of them—and to forge a new will that said he inherited everything.”

“And you?”

“People were told that Charity’s baby had died at birth, and I was sent to spend the first six years of my life on one farm after another. Jacob was afraid that if I stayed with one family, I might find out some of the truth of my birth.”

“Or that the Taggerts might find out about your being alive. I can’t imagine Rafe letting his nephew be cheated out of his inheritance.”

“Money gives power, and none of the Taggerts ever had any.”

Houston walked across the room. “And Jacob didn’t want to give up everything he’d worked for all those years. He must have thought of Horace as his father, yet at the last minute he was disowned as if he meant nothing. And everything was given to an infant.”

“Are you takin’ his side?!”

“Certainly not. I’m just trying to ascertain why he would do such a dreadful thing. What if he held the money in trust for you, and when you came of age, you decided to throw him out?”

“I wouldn’t have done that.”

“Of course, he had no way of knowing that. So what now? Will you prosecute him?”

“Hell, no. I’ve known about this for years.”

“You aren’t planning to take the money back, are you? Right now, your own son is living with the Fentons, and you wouldn’t send him out of his home, would you?”

“Wait just one damned minute before you start takin’ Fenton’s side in all this. All I ever wanted to do was have Fenton someday sit down at
my
table, which was bigger than his, and to have a first-class lady at its head.”

Houston looked at him for a long moment. “Perhaps you should tell me the rest of the story. Why are you having Mr. Fenton to dinner, and where do I fit into this?” she asked quietly. For some reason, she could feel fear creeping over her body.

Kane turned his back to her. “All those years that I worked in the stables, all the times I cleaned Fenton’s boots, I thought I was gettin’ above myself when I imagined myself in that big house of his. Pam and I started foolin’ around, and the next thing I know, she’s packed up and gone and left me $500 and a fare-thee-well-it-was-a-pleasure. Ol’ Jacob pulled me into his office and screamed that I’d never get what he’d worked so hard for. At the time, I thought he meant Pam.

“I took the money and went to California, and after a few years, when I’d made some money, I began to wonder about what Fenton meant when he threw me out. I hired some men to search out the answers for me. It took a while, but I finally learned the truth.”

“And you planned revenge on Mr. Fenton,” Houston whispered. “And I was part of your plan.”

“In a manner of speakin’. At first, all I wanted was enough money so I wouldn’t have to worry about bein’ a stableboy again, but after I learned the truth about what’d been stolen from me, I began to imagine havin’ Fenton to a dinner party at my house, and my house would be five times as big as his. And sittin’ at the foot of the table would be Pam, the daughter he said I wasn’t good enough for.”

“But you couldn’t get Pam.”

“I found out that she was married and had a kid—I didn’t know that the kid was mine—so I had to give up the idea of her. Of course, I had to build my house in Chandler because, if it was any place else, nobody would know that the stableboy had made good. And I wanted Fenton to be able to see it every day. So I started thinkin’ who would do as well as Pam at my table, and I knew that the only real ladies in this town were the Chandler twins.

“I hired somebody to find out about you two, and I saw right away that Blair wouldn’t do. Fenton might laugh that all I could get was a woman nobody else would have.”

“You had to have a real, true, deep-down lady,” Houston whispered.

“That I did. And I got one. I was a little upset when I first asked you and you turned me down, but I knew you’d come around. I got more money ’n Westfield’ll ever have, and I knew you’d marry me.”

He removed his watch from his pocket. “It’s time to go downstairs. I been waitin’ for this for a long time.”

He took Houston’s elbow and escorted her to the stairs.

Houston was too numb to speak. She’d been asked to marry him because he wanted an instrument for revenge. She’d thought he wanted her because he needed her, that he’d come to like her, if not love her, over the past months, but the truth was, he was only using her.